After some deliberation, I am calling an Open Dinner in Austin, Texas next Monday, May 21st. We'll meet at the Hyde Park & Grill at their original location on Duval Street, at 6:30 pm. Please let me know here in comments if you'll be attending, as headcount can be something of an issue at that restaurant.

See some, all or none of you there.

So I'm thinking about an art-fiction project. Somebody would have to be very chill to collaborate on this with me, so I don't know it if would work out, but here goes.

I want to write a fairly surreal piece of short fiction, something on the far tilted end of New Weird. And I'd like to publish it by having it tattooed as a full sleeve on someone's arm. I envision the words spiraling down from the shoulder to the elbow to the wrist.

The really hard part is I'd like to encode something a lot shorter by having every 7th or 10th or 14th word be red in the tattoo, and have the red words constitute a micro fiction embedded within the main story.

I don't know if I could get anyone to commit to this — that's a lot of needle time, and a lot of spend with the tattoo artist, which I can't afford to underwrite these days — but I think it would be cooler than hell.

Your Wednesday moment of zen.



San Francisco fire hydrant. © 2006, 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

The current photo series is from my 'favorites' file, hence the dates jumping about



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Entry Points into Fiction: Text Shows You How to Read It — Jeff VanderMeer is wise.

Brit Lit Map — A cartographic Wordle.

Online map calculates travel times in Ancient Rome — Cool! (Via a mailing list I'm on.)

The Liberating Embrace Of Uncertainty — I don't agree with everything in this piece, as the writer buys a little too much into the woo side of things, and deliberately conflates empirical truth and spiritual truth, but it's still pretty interesting.

A Mathematical Challenge to Obesity — Interestingly, we also found that the fatter you get, the easier it is to gain weight. An extra 10 calories a day puts more weight onto an obese person than on a thinner one. I could have told them that.

Humanoid Robot Swarm Synchronised Using Quorum Sensing — Proof-of-principle experiment shows how humanoid robots can co-operate on a large scale by copying the behaviour of social insects and bacterial colonies. The article is basically talking about SkyNet, but the accompanying photo is hilariously cute.

Cambrian shutter of doom becomes sucker of worms — This photo is the opposite of cute.

Researchers generate electricity from viruses — Imagine charging your phone as you walk, thanks to a paper-thin generator embedded in the sole of your shoe. This futuristic scenario is now a little closer to reality. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a way to generate power using harmless viruses that convert mechanical energy into electricity. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived — The Oatmeal goes to town on Tesla and Edison.

A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College

6 Ridiculous Lies You Believe About the Founding of America — This topic is treated in great detail in the book 1491. (Thanks to Melissa Shaw.)

The Right’s Righteous Frauds — With a headline like that, this piece could refer to almost any leader in the conservative movement.

Wrong man was executed in Texas, probe says — Because capital punishment makes us all safer.

‘Hug The Monster’: Why So Many Climate Scientists Have Stopped Downplaying the Climate Threat — Gee, maybe they've been quiet because of savage, fact-free attacks from certain ideological sectors. Whaddaya think?

Is world outpacing U.S. on health care? — Nothing to see here, citizens. Move along. We don't want any of that Kenyan Muslim socialist HCR that was originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation and promoted by the GOP.

How Economics Explains The Rising Support for Gay Marriage — Interesting thesis. My own experiences certainly dovetail into this discussion.

Gun Rights — From the Mitt Romney campaign Web site: Mitt will work to expand and enhance access and opportunities for Americans to hunt, shoot, and protect their families. Wow, the things conservatives get up to in their free time. (Via danjite.)

Who Really Caused The Deficit? — Under Obama’s watch the national debt has risen from roughly $10 trillion to $15 trillion, a record high. But to what extent are his decisions while in office to blame? The answer: very little. The vast bulk of the debt is the result of policies enacted during the Bush administration coupled with automatic increases in federal spending and decreases in tax revenue triggered by the economic downturn. Those are economic facts of life known to experts but that often gets lost in the political debate (and which Obama’s opponents are willing to obscure). That's the Tea Party message in a nutshell: Mad about the deficit? Blame Obama and vote for the guys who created it!

?otd: Austin or San Antonio?

---

5/16/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (Kalimpura copy edits)
Body movement: n/a (airport walking to come)
Hours slept: 6.0 (fitful)
Weight: 241.6 (!)
Currently reading: Light Breaker by Mark Teppo

I am currently more than halfway through the copy edits of Kalimpura, recently received back from Tor. The manuscript is actually pretty clean, and the copy editor's queries are both minimal and very much to the point. I'm going to assume this is a good thing, though as calendula_witch recently said to me in a related context, she feels like she's cheating when she receives a clean manuscript to work on.

However, one thing that has always baffled me is why fiction publishers use manuals of style for copy editing manuscripts. In my case, per the abbreviated notation in the style sheet that accompanied my copy edit, M-W 11th, Chicago 15th, Words into Type, and Garner’s Modern American Usage.

I do understand why some aspects of house style are important, such as getting the ellipses and em dashes correct. That's a book design and typesetting thing. For example, the style sheet says the following:

em-dashes:
“Use this form—” When an action. “—interrupts the speech.”
“Use this form”—when an action occurs simultaneous to speech—“without interrupting it.”

Okay. Fine with me. This is how Tor wants their books to look. Hooray! I'm not a book designer, and I certainly didn't embed any punctuation geekery in the manuscript I turned into them.

But on usage and spelling...? Fiction is in one important sense all about voice. And there's a lot of changes that get made in the copy edit that I have to stet. There are certain archaic or non-standard spellings I favor. "Storey" for "story" when describing buildings. "Dreamt" instead of "dreamed". "Til" instead of "till". All of which get carefully amended to the current standard written usage, and all of which I just as carefully stet back to my original.

Don't even get me started on the that/which distinction. The rule about restrictive and non-restrictive clauses is a piece of prescriptivism demonstrably at odds with the way people actually use those words, and I personally will deliberately stray from the rule for the sake of smoothness of the reading. (i.e., not creating a clunky string of serial uses of "that" or "which")

Likewise "who" and "whom". I know the difference perfectly well, thank you. But almost no one uses "whom" in casual speech, so in dialog my characters don't, unless they're the sort of personality who would be either that formal or that persnickety. Also, "they/their" for third person gender indeterminate is a very common usage dating back hundreds of years in English, and really doesn't need to be corrected.

Oh, and comma splices, I loves me some comma splices when I'm writing fiction. So what? It's my voice.

Fiction isn't formally correct, and it shouldn't be. It should reflect the author's voice. I can write very formally when I need to. I do it all the time for business writing in the Day Jobbe (though that has its own usages and quirks). I also do some legal writing in the Day Jobbe (disclaimer: I am not an attorney and I do not practice law, I do, however, routinely draft certain contract provisions for our Legal department to review), as well as some technical writing that is distinct from my business writing. I even occasionally do marketing writing there, though less often than I used to. Each of those forms has their distinct speech register, expected norms of usage, and formalisms.

The really great thing about fiction is that you get to craft your own speech registers, your own norms of usage, and your own formalisms. While I definitely need to be internally consistent in style and usage within the text (though I can readily imagine exceptions even to that statement), I don't need to be consistent to formal usage, so long as I remain clear and comprehensible.

So I'm always puzzled about why publishers instruct copy editors to round off all the interesting bits.

Some pen and ink sketches from over the weekend, when she wanted to pass the time a while.


Self portrait


Cityscape

Also, she designed the backdrop for the set of the eighth grade play, a stage adaptation of Momo by Michael Ende [ Powells | BN ]. (She is playing the title role as well.) The high school is planning to repurpose the backdrop for their own play.


the_child her own self on the set

Art © 2012 B. Lake, all rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.

Photo © 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Your Tuesday moment of zen.



Calla lily. © 2006, 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

The current photo series is from my 'favorites' file, hence the dates jumping about



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

On Wordcount, and Snitty Entitlement — Lilith Saintcrow is interesting.

Superheroes and cringe comedy: Why women aren’t allowed — Pandagon on The Avengers, and specifically, the Black Widow character.

5 Transformative Uses for Disney's Touch-Sensitive Technology

Legalize Pot, Save Public Education, and end Student Indebtedness

Report: Global biodiversity down 30 percent in 40 years — Freshwater tropical species hardest hit, says World Wildlife Fund. The human race is an Extinction-Level Event.

All the Water on Planet Earth — Interesting visual illustration of the volume of the hydrosphere. However, look closely at Greenland on the 'dry' globe. Pretty sure that's an ice sheet showing there.

Record-setting 2012 warmth largely confined to North America, western Europe — One of the ironies here is that, even though the global temperatures are fairly typical of the last decade, the unusual spring warmth might have an outsized effect on public opinion. People in the US seem to rely on their personal experience (along with the economy) when they formulate their opinion on climate change. Right. Because what does the data count against staving off the evil liberals?

Prosecutorial Discretion And Child Sexual Abuse — Ta-Nehisi Coates commenting on a New York Times report on the sexual abuse of children among ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn. This is precisely why we don't need religious "morality" in our laws and social norms. Are Christianist congregations any better about this?

Another “Hot Text” For the War on Women: Rosemary’s Baby — Interesting. (Via scarlettina.)

Equality is bigger than the president — Barack Obama and gay marriage. If school desegregation amendments had been placed on state ballots in the 1950s, “separate but equal” might still be the law of the land in the South. Fortunately, state-sponsored segregation was not put to a popular vote. The "will of the people" isn't always right. That's the error of majoritarianism.

Why We Regulate — But regulations are evil! Ask any conservative. (Apparently conservatives don't drink air, breathe water, take medicine or expect a stable economy.)

What Eduardo Saverin Owes America (Hint: Nearly Everything)

Austerity geniuses — Hullabaloo on the magic of Republican economics, as practiced by (among others) Democrats.

?otd: Will the tune come to you at last?

---

5/15/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (Kalimpura copy edits)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.25 (solid)
Weight: 242.2 (!!)
Currently reading: Light Breaker by Mark Teppo

I have this whole theory about the non-normative nature of the science fiction genre and its transformational narratives. Luckily for you, I'm not going to talk about that in this blog post. Not much, at any rate. (Ask me some other time.) A somewhat more plain-English way of articulating one of the key concepts behind that theory is to say that most of us read science fiction to experience something meaningfully different than what we find in our everyday lives.

One of the signature fillips in the original Star Trek was the doors on the starship Enterprise. It's hard to remember this now, but when Star Trek went on the air in 1966, those automatic doors we're all so used to at every grocery store and whatnot basically didn't exist. The bridge doors sliding open and shut with a "schmuck" sound behind Shatner's every entrance were very, very strange. Different. A simple signifier of a bold, new world. (We saw an attempt to recapture that sensibility in Deep Space Nine with those weird rolling cogwheel doors.)

Different.

In a similar vein, a very common narrative trope in science fiction is that future spaceship operations will have their roots in naval tradition. So, for example, almost all spaceship or starship crews seem to follow naval or merchant marine ranks. Ships have "hatches" instead of "doors", "decks" instead of "floors", which is often reflected in science fiction usage. Less often but still common are usages such as "overhead" for "ceiling", "bulkhead" for "wall" and "passageway" for "hallway" or "corridor". This is both part of how we've been trained to think about spaceships in our narratives, and part of making things in the narrative feel just a little different, an echo of the frisson we got from the original Star Trek's bridge design.

Lately I've been doing a fair amount of workshop critique reading for various events, and as happens anytime one reads a number of manuscripts, certain coincidental trends emerge. In this case, it's writers setting stories on space stations or spaceships where the interior fittings are described with common architectural terminology. This bothers me vaguely based on my lifelong training as a genre reader, as well as the sensibilities I've evolved as a genre writer these past two decades and more.

I really can argue this both ways quite readily. Part of the challenge of making the unfamiliar feel real in fiction is leaving in enough bits of naturalistic reality that the reader can follow along with the adjustments in reality that the story offers. (Oddly, the_child and I were discussing precisely this point a day or two ago in a slightly different context.) This is the source of that piece of genre writerly folk wisdom that says you get to do one impossible thing for free in your story. If you change everything at once, the story becomes incomprehensible.

In other words, having people on spaceships live in rooms and open doors and walk down halls and stare at the ceilings keeps the reader from being distracted by wondering what the hell an "overhead" is, when that's not the point of the story. At the same time, people who live in rooms and open doors and walk down halls and stare at the ceilings may as well be hanging around in my house. It doesn't feel different.

And different is what science fiction is all about.

Still, I can forgive this in pursuit of the story. Every writer has their own vision of how the narrative should flow. Every writer's vision evolves.

But I really, truly draw the line at slamming the doors on your spaceship. That whole concept is so predicated on contemporary Western interior design, and echoes strongly of teen tantrums and relationship spats. It makes all the sense in the world in a romance novel taking place in a naturalistic contemporary setting for the protagonist to slam a door. That's an emotional signifier and a familiar action. But damn it, I want my spaceship doors to go "schmuck", or dilate, or hiss gently into the walls, or dematerialize, or at the least clang ponderously. I don't want them to be slammed.

There's a fine line between the familiar and the banal. For good science fiction to work, you really need to keep on the right side of it. Otherwise you're missing the whole point of the genre, methinks.

Do the doors slam on your spaceship?

Yesterday morning, lillypond and I took our mother tillyjane to breakfast at Petite Provence. I did my best to eat lightly and carefully in the face of some very good food.

Yesterday midday, lillypond and I took our stepmother and dad to the Chart House for lunch. Again, I did my best to eat lightly and careful in the face of some very good food.

Yesterday afternoon, the_child and I attended the Engstrom-Rees smoked meat cookout chez Engstrom.

The pork butt broke down my resolve.

Those bastards.


Meat slingers Jacob Engstrom and Ed Rees

It was too damned good.


The implement of my destruction

They actually laid on quite a selection of smoked meats, including beef brisket, a whole duck, lamb and the aforementioned pork butt.


The brisket lurks at the top of the photo, clad in foil and awaiting its turn, while Ed slices the pork butt


The duck coming off the smoker


My downfall, the pork butt


Gourds on the smoker, for that pseudo-healthy rationalization


Suckling long pig, a/k/a Ed's daughter

I never got around to the duck or the squash. The lamb had a nice flavor, with a terrific rub, but was a tad tough. The brisket had a good flavor as well, nice bark on it, tasty and a bit chewy, but really needed an hour or two more on the smoker, as it hadn't gone fork-soft yet.

The pork butt, however, was a sin against man and nature. The meat divine, as it were. Pig perfection. Ed had made a very nice, savory mustard BBQ sauce to go with it, more or less North Carolina style, but that was gilding the lily of the well-seasoned, tender meat.

That is what cracked my resolve. I am a weak, weak man. But a well-fed one.

Photos 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Your Monday moment of zen.



Bamboo. © 2006, 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

The current photo series is from my 'favorites' file, hence the dates jumping about



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Special Needs in Strange Worlds | Jay Lake – Cancer and Writing — A weekend reacharound repost, because I think this is important. In which I guest blog at Bookworm Blues.

Behind Every Great Novelist — Oh, how true… (Thanks to goulo.)

Fantasy Philately: Collecting Stamps from Tatooine and Alderaan? — (Thanks to scarlettina.)

Women are better than men — Roger Ebert is, as usual, interesting.

Radioactive man? Milford resident pulled over by state police — Weird. (Thanks to my Aunt M.)

Human-Caused Lunar Methane — Hahahaha. (Via threeoutside.)

It’s Not So Lonely at the Top: Ecosystems Thrive High in the Sky — The Amazon tepuis. I would love to go see these. (Via my Dad.)

Capitalists and Other Psychopaths — More on the psychopath ratio on Wall Street. Language Log injects a note of reality into the discussion.

“At a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me, personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.” — Pharygula takes issue with Obama's comments on gay marriage.

Top GOP Pollster to GOP: Reverse On Gay Issues — I'd love to see this happen, but it isn't going to. The GOP is enslaved to its base, which continues to slaver for an ever more closed and intolerant society. And a lot of Republican figures would have to eat a hell of a lot of crow to walk back their stance on gay marriage. (Via my Aunt M.)

Evangelicals Unhappy With GOP’s Gay Marriage Strategy — Huh. Whaddaya know?

U.S. Ranks as 25th Best Country to Be a Mother — A woman in the United States is more than seven times as likely to die of a pregnancy-related cause in her lifetime than a woman in Italy or Ireland. Gee, I wonder which political movement in this country is dedicated to undermining women's health at every turn, and fiercely opposed to ay efforts to rationalize and improve the healthcare system. We're number 25! Thanks, conservative America.

Romney, bullying, and me [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ] — Another weekend reacharound repost, because I think this is important, and the comments I got on both sides of the blog are also important.

Republicans only interfere with morals — Republicans claim to be the party of small government, but the reality is that they're the party of using government when they see fit. When dealing with religious beliefs, Republicans talk about government staying out of the way. When it comes to personal choices dealing with relationships, what religion others follow, or choices about a women's body, small government rhetoric is pushed aside and intrusive government arrives with a vengeance.

Bush Convicted of War Crimes in Absentia — Unfortunately, here at home we will never see any review of the Bush administration's conduct concerning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As any conservative can tell you, blow jobs are much more important than the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people on knowingly false premises. So is Kenyan Muslim socialism. (Via danjite.)

?otd: Can you leave your friends behind? (Note the importance of proper apostrophe placement, or lack thereof, in that question.)

---

5/14/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (Kalimpura copy edits)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.75 (solid)
Weight: 244.4 (!!!)
Currently reading: Light Breaker by Mark Teppo

Happy Mother's Day to my mom and step-mom, and to Mother of the Child, and to you.

Whoever you are, you probably started out life with a mother. If you're lucky, you still have her. You might be a mother, or be partnered with a mother. If you have kids, they quite possibly have a mother. Even if you're a male mom, you're still a mother.

So, well, Happy Mother's Day to you and all the mothers in your life.

Some generally unrelated squibs for your amusement…

Writing

In between bouts of napping in a Lorazepam-induced haze, I got through about a quarter of the Kalimpura copy edit on the plane yesterday. So far it seems to be a pretty clean manuscript. There's a little mental game I play with myself on copy edits, which is to count how many pages I get without a single markup. Those pages are the ones I "won". So far, in 104 pages processed, exactly two have been clean.

This isn't as bad as it might sound, as many of the CEM markups are typesetting notes and whatnot, so for example, every manuscript page with a scene break on it has markup. Likewise some basic usage stuff which doesn't reflect errors on my part or copy editors queries, but rather conformance to Tor's house style. However, for my little mental game, only clean pages count, regardless of the reason for the markups. 2/100 is about average for me, I think.

Go, me!

Weight

I hate part of this monster for dinner last night:


Terminator sandwich from the Rock House Grill at Cartlandia.

This may have something to do with me weighing in this morning at the highest weight I've been at in several years. So, time to get very serious about diet and exercise. The frustrating thing is that chemo has apparently changed my metabolism. (Again.) Despite yesterday's sandwich, I've been eating and exercising at levels consistent with my behaviors prior to this last round of cancer, which were sufficient to keep my weight down in the 220s. That same level of diet and exercise now seems to peg me around 240. So I'm going to have to work more and eat less to maintain where I used to be. Which is both irritating and discouraging, to say the least.

Architecture

So my hotel bathroom in Columbus, OH had apparently been designed by an architect who'd never actually shut a bathroom door, or taken a shower. This was a nice, upscale business class hotel, where I wouldn't expect such weirdness.

The bathroom was sort of triangular in shape. I'm not sure why, as the building itself was a pretty standard 15- or 20-story box like most hotels of its class. Because of the triangular shape, the bathroom door was hinged down the middle, as well as being hung from the doorframe in the usual fashion. Sort of like one of those bifold closet doors gone freelancing. So you pushed open the door and folded it at the same time.


The bathroom door

However, that is a solid core door. It's fairly heavy, and only made heavier by all the hardware. Not so hard to open from the outside, but if you're inside the bathroom and have managed to close the door, in order to open it again, you have to do a little dance around the vanity and the toilet. There's simply no place to stand when the door is swinging open or shut. And if there's a bathmat on the floor in the usual place one might put a bathmat, just outside the shower, it's pretty much impossible to open the door again because it snags on the bathmat. God help you if you've dropped a towel on the floor.

The pièce de résistance, however was the shower.



It's quite elegant looking. That's a long shower pan on the floor, with a floor-to-ceiling pane of glass blocking the water splash in lieu of a shower curtain. However, in order to turn the shower on, you have to step into the enclosure and reach forward to the water controls. This results in an unavoidable blast of water in the face, as there's no other way to approach them. In an unfamiliar hotel, you have no idea how hot it's going to be on any given setting. In my case, nearly scalding water nailed me in the face, which I then had to reach through, twice, to adjust to a tolerable temperature.

There's no damned way to control the water except by standing in it, thanks to that pane of glass.

Not to mention which, once you insert your corpus delecti in the shower stream, all the water splashing off your body goes right out the step-in opening and soaks the bathmat.

Which makes the damned door that much harder to open.

I'm sure someone thought they were very clever when they designed this bathroom, but I have to say, the architects were idiots, as were the hotel execs who approved this design. People who design this stuff ought to be forced to use it before it can be foisted on an unsuspecting public.

That's all the ranty I got this morning.

---

Photos © 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Your Sunday moment of zen.



the_child in 2006. © 2006, 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

The current photo series is from my 'favorites' file, hence the dates jumping about



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

You don’t have to read my books — Justine Larbalestier explains this very well. I take a nearly identical position. (Snurched from Steve Buchheit.)

Absolutely worth the drive — John Booth on Friday night's open dinner in Columbus, OH.

Langweil's model of Prague — This is cool. Of course, as a writer, I know nothing whatsoever about obsessive creative behavior.

Searching for meaning in distant solar systems — Is it better for a science writer to be technically correct or understood? These questions apply to SF writers as well, albeit with a slightly different slant.

Weird deep sea creatures — Art guru James Gurney with some bizarre images. In case you needed to write about aliens today.

New Study On Manta Rays Reveals Their Hidden Life

We're all mutants now — There are a lot of us now, and most of us are a little bit off The headline is hilarious if slightly misleading.

Off the Charts: Shrinking Government — As Andrew Wheeler says, "[G]overnment spending has dropped substantially under Obama, while the private sector has surged. But you know what they say about facts' obvious liberal bias."

Many blacks shrug off Obama's new view on gays — I have always been baffled by this intersection of racial issues and gay issues.

Sen. Rand Paul: Didn't think Obama's view 'could get any gayer' — Stay classy, conservative America. It's what you do best.

An open letter to the right wing in the wake of the passage of Amendment One in North Carolina — As usual, the people who most need to read this never will, and if somehow they do, they will reject it out of hand. (Snurched from Slacktivist Fred Clark.)

Bullying and Business — Scrivener's Error with more on Romney and bullying from a business analysis perspective. Dovetails nicely with my post of yesterday [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ] on Romney and bullying.

Mean Boys — While I have real reservations about holding senior citizens to account for what they did as seniors in high school, I have no reservations about expecting presidential candidates to know how to properly address the mistakes they once made. More on Romney in the New York Times.

In address at Christian university, Romney to urge graduates to honor commitments to family — It's not like I was going to vote for Romney anyway, but lending his name to the educational and intellectual fraud that is an Evangelical institution like Liberty University does not improve my opinion of the man one whit.

Romney’s Anachronism Problem — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison remarks on how Mittens is running against a now-distant past.

?otd: How's your mother?

---

5/13/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.75 hours (Kalimpura copy edits)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.5 (solid, plus 4.0 hours of fitful airplane napping)
Weight: 244.6 (!!!)
Currently reading: Light Breaker by Mark Teppo

Yesterday, in Link Salad, I posted this:

Romney Apologizes For Bullying In Prep School, Says He Didn't Know Victim Was Gay — I can and do say a lot of negative things about Romney, but I'm not sure very many of us could stand up to being accountable as mature adults for what we did in high school. (Via my Aunt M.)

That stirred some passionate comments on both instances of my blog:

twilight2000: Sorry - but Bullshit. You can argue the average teen shit maybe, but he's being described as a bully and a terror by more than one school mate. You get to be guilty for assaulting kids and terrorizing them.

jere7my: He was also eighteen at the time, and a legal adult. There are a lot of people sitting in jail for things they did at eighteen that weren't half as bad. (Of course, most of them aren't wealthy and white.)

chessdev: Agreed. Additionally, it only took 40 years AND a Presidential campaign for him to see the light... and we should commend his coming forward (when this was going to surface anyway most likely?)

jimvanpelt: Like your other commentors here, I'm less likely to give Romney a pass on this one. As Frank Wu said in his blog today, "Would you want the bully of your sixth grade class elected President?" I'm a firm believer in character change and redemption, so it's entirely possible that he's moved a long way from those days, but, since I already don't like or trust him, I'll keep this story as another data point.

elfs: [Excerpted from a long, thoughtful comment] When people his own staff called to cover for him instead described him as "evil" and prone to "Lord of the Flies moments," no, really, you're looking at a man's character.

Stephen A. Watkins: [Excerpted from a long, thoughtful comment] As someone who was bullied for being wrongly perceived as gay when I was younger… I disagree with the idea that adults oughtn’t be held accountable for the nasty things they do when they are in high school. And his “apology” was a total non-apology.

Cora Buhlert: [Excerpted from a long, thoughtful comment] Pinning a fellow student to the ground to forcibly cut his hair goes way beyond a simply prank – that qualifies as assault IMO. Besides, Romney was 18 at the time, i.e. of an age where he should have known better, and not 12 or 14.

For whatever it's worth, let me establish my own scrap of cultural authority on this question by saying that from a very early age through about age 14, I was the target of some pretty intense and difficult bullying. I was the new kid in school almost every year, exceptionally socially awkward even by the standards of my peer group, had a big mouth, and was almost always literally the slowest, clumsiest kid in the class. I'm not talking about name calling, either. Among many other things, I was forced to drink urine, stripped and stuffed in a trash barrel, battered with school desks and then buried in a mound of them, routinely threatened and robbed of my lunch (or lunch money), and so forth.

This being the 1970s, the most common response from my parents and teachers was, "What did you do to antagonize him?" I cannot remember a single instance of accountability for any of the boys who tortured me, even when their actions were witnessed by adults. At times, I was punished at school as an instigator. Often the bullies were star athletes picking on the slow weak kid, safely cloaked in the athletic privilege that begins to pervade even in upper grade school. There was an attitude that boys will be boys, and I just needed to toughen up and build my character. And besides, I had a big mouth, so I probably had it coming.

So, yeah, bullying is an intensely emotional issue for me, with a lot of triggers.

And quite frankly, I'd be amazed of any of the kids who did that stuff to me even remember it today. The experience of the bully is very different from the experience of the victim. The intense, emotional humiliation of being on the receiving end of that treatment can scar for life. For most of the bullies, it was an amusing way to pass a lunch break or a playground recess. Their actions had no great significance to them. In the battlefields of childhood, bullying is asymmetrical warfare.

What does this story mean? That Mitt Romney is arrogant, entitled and self-involved? That he unthinkingly uses his social power for his own amusement and benefit? I can't believe anyone in America is surprised by this. And for a conservative electorate that values heteronormative masculinity above almost all other traits (c.f. George W. Bush's "flight suit" moment), I suspect this story is validating and comforting. After all, here was candidate Romney in his youth fighting for what's right and putting the wrong people in their place.

All that being said, I still hold to my original comment. How many of us could stand up to being accountable as mature adults for what we did in high school? I have many reasons to oppose Romney's candidacy, rooted in common sense, in patriotism, in my understanding and experience of what Republican governance means to this country. That he was a childhood bully is a feature of Candidate Romney, not a bug. I don't endorse or agree with that, but in the end, how different is his behavior at 18 from his behavior at Bain Capital, or even today? How different is the behavior of the GOP as measured by its platforms and legislation?

This is who he is. This is who the Republican party is, bullying the poor and the gay and women and little brown people the world over. And millions of my fellow Americans approve.

That's the depressing aspect of this story to my way of thinking.

The open dinner in Columbus, OH was fun. We met at the Northstar Cafe at Easton, which turned out to be a grievous error as the combination of the (apparently) usual Friday night crowds and some sort of outdoor festival rendered parking there pretty deeply toxic. Nonetheless, all persevered.

Scott met me at the door, and Chris (@barstoolbabe) and John (@jrbooth) appeared shortly thereafter. We enjoyed good food, and about two hours of conversation, including a number of fun stories.

I love getting out and meeting people. The folks here in Columbus are welcoming and friendly, and except for the hellish parking, quite easy to get along with.

Photographic evidence:


Scott his own self


Chris (@barstoolbabe) her own self


John (@jrbooth), slightly underexposed

Photos © 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Your Saturday moment of zen.



tillyjane and the Niece (her about age three), Portland, OR. © 2006, 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

The current photo series is from my 'favorites' file, hence the dates jumping about



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Special Needs in Strange Worlds | Jay Lake – Cancer and Writing — In which I guest blog at Bookworm Blues.

Avengers Enthuse Post — cathshaffer pins down a lot of what was so very good about The Avengers from a story critique perspective.

Why fiction is good for you — (Via daveraines.)

Evil Clown hired for stalking, threats and a pie in the face — An 'evil' clown who stalks and threatens kids is being hired by parents as a birthday treat. (Via Mike Brotherton.)

Chinese Physicists Smash Distance Record For Teleportation — The ability to teleport photons through 100 kilometres of free space opens the way for satellite-based quantum communications, say researchers. Consider the implications of that headline. Until quite recently, it would have been SFnal on several levels. Today it's just ordinary news. I love living in the future.

Mighty Moth Man — An evolutionary biologist’s posthumous publication restores the peppered moth to its iconic status as a textbook example of evolution.

Baby, 18 months old, ordered off plane at Fort Lauderdale airport — Apparently the child's name was on the TSA's no-fly list. Feel safer?

Game Over for the Climate — Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. Unless, of course, you live in the facts-optional universe of the Republican party.

Top ten reasons given to ban same-sex marriages — Hahahah.

In the battle between morality and faith, morality is winning — When asked by The Barna Group what words or phrases best describe Christianity, the top response among Americans ages 16-29 was “antihomosexual.” "Intolerant" comes to mind as well.

U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam — Feel safer now? (Via danjite.)

Fox News guest laments ‘mistake’ of letting women vote — Conservatives, classing up the joint since, well, never. And determined to remain on the wrong side of history no matter what it takes. (Via shsilver.)

Top Romney aide gleefully outed transgender woman, ending her political career — Yep.

Romney backs away from gay adoptions — Keep pandering, Mitt. The more Americans realize that the Republican party stands for an intolerant and closed society, the better chance we have of avoiding your presidency. I still remember what happened the last time we has a Republican president.

The Big Flip — Everyone agrees American politics have become completely polarized. Perhaps more remarkable is another change: over the past half-century, the two parties completely switched roles, with the G.O.P. turning into rebels and the Democrats defending the status quo.

?otd: How many time zones in the Soviet Union?

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5/12/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.25 hours (WRPA)
Body movement: n/a (airport walking to come)
Hours slept: 6.25 (solid)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: Light Breaker by Mark Teppo