Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.

Friday January 9, 2004

Well, we’re all still obsessed with HeroClix around here, but I’m not going to bore you with details of matches. I will note that Paul’s friend Pat watched a game a few nights ago, played in a game night before last, then went out and bought a lot of his own figs yesterday, and along the way mentioned in passing to Paul’s friend (and our immediate neighbor) Jeff that HeroClix was a fun game. Jeff immediately ran out and bought some figs of his own, and we all played last night.

What’s annoying about that is the fact that Paul and I have been raving about HeroClix to Jeff for the past three weeks, and he’s been contemptuously ignoring us. But PAT says it’s a fun game, and Jeff runs right out and buys a bunch. Fucker.

Okay. And that’s all I’ll say about HeroClix (probably) other than to note that for those of you deranged enough to care, you can find Doc Nebula’s HeroClix House Rules! and Doc Nebula’s HeroClix List! on the other side of those links right there.

Now. Today I had my orientation at Accent… kind of. What do I mean by that? Well… it seems I’m an idiot. (That’s no surprise to any of you.) In this particular case, my idiocy manifested itself in the following way: I showed up for my orientation at 2:00 this afternoon, and the secretary looked at me as if I were stoned and wall-eyed, and said, “Hon, the orientation was yesterday”.

D’oh.

Fortunately, I’m not the only dolt in my training class; another girl named Stephanie also showed up for orientation today, bolstering my story that I hadn’t deliberately blown the session off (or just gotten high and forgotten it) but, rather, I was a moron who couldn’t keep one date straight from another.

Tara, the personnel rep down there, was kind enough to do the orientation over again for me and Stephanie, so that was all right. I’d had visions of having to come home to Paul and say “Well, I got fired before the job starts for a no call – no show yesterday.” That would have gone over well.

Bad news: It turns out I didn’t ask the right questions at my first interview. I asked “When do I get my first check?” The answer: two weeks after I start working, on the 23rd. I then asked, “Do you withhold a week’s pay?” No, I was told, they don’t. So, I’d been planning on getting two weeks pay on the 23rd. However, while they don’t, technically, withhold a week’s pay, they do schedule their training class to being at the end of a pay period, so I’ll only get paid for one week after working two. Those of you good at math will see that this pretty much works out to withholding one week’s pay, since if you start a week behind, you never get caught up as long as the job lasts. I won’t see that week’s pay until I leave the job.

This is bad because suddenly Paul and I have a $200 hole in our projected monthly budget… which most likely means, no more clix for us until my second check, which will come on February 6.

Ah, I mentioned clix again. Sorry.

And I’m going to do it yet again, passingly mentioning that Mike Norton sent us the biggest box of clix yet this week. We got it yesterday and it probably doubled our existing collections. The prize of the box was a Superman figurine I selfishly kept for myself, but Paul and I divided the rest of the box fairly, picking in turn, and I let him go first, so he nabbed the Batman next (bastard). I wound up with a bunch of stuff and so did he and I won’t bore you with the details. However, I will say that I still prefer the Marvel stuff, but everyone else here seems to be getting more into the DC.

Mike Norton, if none of you have quite pieced this together yet, is a gift of the Magii and a prince among men. I don’t even want to know how much the clix he’s sent us are worth monetarily, although many of them have been from discontinued sets, so we’d find it impossible to acquire them ourselves. However, he’s spent at least $15 in postage on us so far, and all of this is simply out of his own generous and noble nature… he certainly didn’t owe me a hundred or so of his extra heroclix, he just sent them off out of the goodness of his heart. So praise the Norton! PRAISE him! He’s a real cool fella.

Now, here’s an interesting email I got a few days ago:

To: docnebula01@juno.com
Subject: Your Heinlein rant
Hello, I just finished reading your Heinlein rant, and I've got to say I pretty much agree with you. Like you, I was originally the "if Heinlein said it, its true" type; I've gotten better since then.
For me, I think the defining moment of my growth out of Heinlein worship was when I realized that the man quite accurately identified one of the root causes of all human problems, overpopulation, and simultaneously refused to even attempt to solve that problem fictionally. His answer, in book after book, was that overpopulation was bad, so everyone should have huge families with lots of babies and when a planet got too populated the smart people would leave so the suckers who got left behind could kill each other over increasingly limited resources. At that point I realized that he simply didn't have the moral courage to face the problem, and started realizing that other things he said might also be wrong.
Also, his whole "man: top of the food chain" always struck me as faintly silly. Seriously, I think we've got enough technology now that competition with other species isn't really necessary.
My only disagreement with you is simply a matter of taste, I actually rather liked Stranger In A Strange Land, and liked the extended version better than the original. Which is probably simply an illustration of my bad taste :)
Your summary of what was wrong with Starship Troopers: The Bad Movie was spot on. Damnit we needed to see Denise Richard's naked!
Brad Jackson, a non-rabid Heinlein fan

Every once in a while I get an email like this that reminds me of what the Internet is really good for… reaching out to total strangers with your work.

I appreciate notes like this, and since Brad raises some interesting points, I’ll bore everyone reading this to tears by responding to a few of them:

Going from last to first: I don’t dislike Stranger In A Strange Land so much as I think it’s a poor novel. It’s simply not the kind of entertaining futuristic action-adventure I’d come to look to Heinlein’s books for. Heinlein seemed to suffer from a condition that a lot of very good writers contract at some point or another: the desire to be taken seriously and to be seen as a ‘literary’ writer. To that extent, Stranger succeeded for him wildly, as it certainly made a certain sphere of critics aware of him who wouldn’t have given Space Cadet or Tunnel In The Sky a second glance.

However, I find ‘literature’ and ‘serious fiction’ to be, for the most part, boring, and I really feel Stranger just doesn’t work as a novel itself. As a fast moving, disjointed, rather plot free and hilarious social satire, Stranger works fine, but that’s not the sort of thing I generally read, and it’s certainly not what I expect from Heinlein.

As to Heinlein’s assertion that overpopulation is essentially the root of all evil, well, that’s probably more or less true. I myself think ignorance and bad parenting are more the problem. However, overpopulation exacerbates things, because it puts more people in a smaller area, so the ignorant, badly raised folks can effectively do more hurt to more people with less effort.

As to Heinlein refusing to offer solutions, that’s not true. In Time Enough For Love Lazarus notes that in an earlier life of his, as Dr. Aaron Sheffield, he’d tried to implement a ‘sane’ social agenda on one particular planet, which apparently included rather draconian measures like the forcible sterilization of genetic ‘undesirables’. For his pains, he was run out of town on a rail (off the planet, rather) and at that point, he vowed he’d no longer “argue with the weather”, because natural laws can’t be broken.

I don’t think Heinlein proposes having big families and planet hopping when a world gets too crowded as a solution, because clearly, it’s not one, at our current technological level. I think Heinlein was more saying that being able to have a big family and live a decent, civilized life is one of the privileges earned by frontiersman when they strike out and settle an area of wilderness. Heinlein was, by and large, very libertarian, which is reflected in all his books. He felt people live best in relatively small groups and at low population density, and he seemed to have a deep innate distrust for what he (or Lazarus Long) would define as sybaritic decadence… i.e., any recreational pursuits not immediately tied to subsistence level survival.

However, none of that is a social solution, and Heinlein recognized that. Man is a social animal, and over and over again, Heinlein laments that, because it’s in the cities that human quality of life is often the lowest, and yet, people swarm to them because it’s natural for people to congregate together. Heinlein noted that often as a problem, but he had no solution for it… he merely stated that those who were willing to strike out beyond the boundaries of civilization could live better than those who were afraid to do so. And I disagree with that last point; those who strike out beyond the boundaries of civilization don’t get to watch new TV shows or movies, or read new books, or listen to new music, or make any new friends they don’t take along with them.

Still, Heinlein often said he didn’t answer questions, he just asked them. I think most of his more rabid fans simply ignore that.

Okay. This is a horribly boring entry, but I’m going to post it anyway.

* * * * *As a late breaking news flash: Well, let's see. I'm a little worried about Paul. Not to go into his personal details overly, but I was paging through what I thought was one of my old notebooks yesterday looking for a blank page, and came across a page of stuff Paul had written... very personal stuff... that was awfully grim. I'm starting to think that Paul may actually be clinically depressed and he self medicates with pot. If so, that's not a particuarly good situation... marijuana is actually a psychotropic drug that deranges how the brain processes information, which is where the 'buzz' Paul likes so much comes from (he's probably literally 'hearing' the light in the room; that's how THC works, it switches the data inputs around so you, for example, see things you'd normally smell and hear things you'd normally see, etc). But it doesn't actually do anything to directly or even indirectly treat the causes of clinical depression, although I'm sure rearranging his neurons regularly masks the symptoms nicely. But it's not really efficacious treatment.

However, Paul won't listen to me about anything related to this subject, nor will he listen to anyone else in his circle of friends or family. He has this insane but extremely convenient double standard whereby if I tell him he has a problem, well, I've never smoked pot so I should just shut up about it. And since everyone else in our family (and everyone else Paul might remotely look to as a role model) loves pot, his attitude towards any of them telling him he's smoking it too much (which he is) is, "Well, you smoke it too, so shut up".

If he is, in fact, suffering from clinical depression, that's a whole different thing, but again, I can't do anything about it. All I can do is save up my money and move out of here so I don't have to watch my baby brother steadily eroding his long term memory and cognitive processes while living in denial that he needs actual psychiatric therapy... which it seems likelier and likelier to me that he does.

Well, enough of that. Nothing I can do means there's definitely nothing any of you can do, and I know people who have far worse problems, so let's pass on to:

Yesterday, Paul started getting these stacks of his old comics he has sitting around in some order, hoping he could swap these great big piles of mostly 90s era MEN titles for enough credit to get him a few booster packs. As it turns out (and as I was afraid) his voluminous collection is a drug on the market; despite price guide quotes, the local comics shop guy Paul and Scott mostly deal with for HeroClix isn't interested in any of Paul's comics at all... he's got many issues each of everything Paul has and he can't move them.

However, while Paul was going through these things (which I have no interest in, as they're mostly New X-Men crapola) he did turn up a couple of SANDMAN collections I didn't realize he had, which I promptly rescued and moved into the back room. One of them is A Doll's House, which contains the first Sandman story I ever bought, and a couple of my favorite stories from the whole series. The other is Dream Country, a graphic collection I've always stayed away from buying, because with only four issues and an original script in it, it's the slenderest of the collections, and it's usually priced comparatively to most of them.

However, on rereading these stories in Paul's edition, I find I haven't looked at them in probably ten years, and three out of four of them are just brilliant fantasy.

Oh, I've always known, more or less, that I really liked Calliope, Dream of a Thousand Cats, and Facades the first time I read them, but as I say, it's probably been a decade since I re-read any of them, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that these are still astonishing and wonderful stories to immerse oneself in... entertaining, thoughtful, evocative, and provocative creative artifacts that should, in any sane world, win all kinds of prizes and be taught to kids in high school English classes. (Okay, Calliope has some strong sexual material in it, but still.)

So that was nice... in amidst all the worthless 90s mutant mania and broken backed Batman crapola, a couple of unsought fantasy gems. I say, good business is where you find it.

I'll probably reread Doll's House next, which is rather more somber for the most part than Dream Country, and much longer. It also has some of my favorite Sandman stories in it... the first appearance of Hob Gadling; the eerie, creepy 'Collectors', centering around a convention of serial killers; and the utterly deranged and hysterically absurd 'Playing House', in which we find out what really happened to Hawkman's son and daughter in law, and how their fates tie in with that of yet another version of the Sandman.

Ah, yes. Who says there ain't no Coupe de Ville hidin' at the bottom of a Crackerjack box?

RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, “Wow, I didn’t recognize you in men’s clothing”. According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I’m reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I’d take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here’s The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people’s blogs, you MUST NOT:

(a) seem smarter than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(b) be funnier than the person writing the blog you are posting comments to

(d) be correct when you point out some manner in which the person writing the blog you are posting comments to was wrong, and/or

(e) Upset The Wimmenfolk On The Blog.

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin’s Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron’s blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don’t really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren’t related to me by marriage, I’d most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I’ve learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don’t care if you:

(a) seem smarter than I am, I like people who are smarter than I am, as long as they’re not jerks about it;

(b) are funnier than I am, then I get to laugh at your witty remarks, and hey, that’s all good;

(c) are a better writer than I am. Although I’m in a peculiar place as regards writing skills; good enough to be better than nearly all the amateurs out there, not good or lucky enough to be a professional at it. So if you are a better writer than I am, you are probably a professional writer and therefore do not have time to post comments on other people’s blogs, so this probably doesn’t matter, as relates to this blog;

(d) correct my mistakes; unlike apparently 95% of the remainder of the human race, I am under no illusions as to my own infallibility and simply don’t care if someone points out that I am wrong about something. Being wrong about things does not strike me as either a character flaw or a shameful embarrassment; we are all wrong about a lot of things every day of our lives, and that’s just how that works;

(e) Upset My Wimmenfolk. Well, actually, I shouldn’t say I don’t care if you upset my wimmenfolk, I do, the very thought deeply offends me. However, it’s just that the wimmenfolk at this point on this blog are my mom, my cuz in law, and my sister in law, and if you do something to upset them, I strongly doubt the authorities finding what’s left of you will be able to identify you without a DNA comparison. My mom, and any woman who marries any of the males in this family and stays married to him for any length of time, are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. So offend them all you want; it’s a self correcting problem.

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I’d get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don’t Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.

A Brown Eyed Handsome Man