Angry

I have anger problems. When I tell people this, most of the time they don't believe me. I often hear, "You seem okay," or "You smile an awful lot," as responses. There's an expectation that there will be some sort of cartoonish outward sign, like I should be constantly throwing Donald Duck-style tantrums, or screaming at people. It's not like that at all.

Imagine carrying a balloon in your chest. Sometimes it's small, and light, and you don't really notice it's there. At any moment, the balloon could expand and then you can't breathe, can't see because that's all there is in your world.

But it's not a balloon in your chest. It's a scream, made of rage and hatred. Maybe you could call it a battle cry if you want to, but even that seems too civilized. It's primal and terrible and it never goes away.

#

I'm in junior high. It's between classes and the halls are jammed full of students, to the point that we can't move. There's a girl behind me that I've never met before. She calls me a fat bitch and stabs me in the back with her pencil, once, twice... seven times total.

This is normal. This is how I am treated all the time. I get called a fat [insert expletive of choice here] and shoved around because no matter what I do, I'm always in the way. It's always that I'm fat and smelly and a cunt, like my very existence is an insult to anyone with an even marginal level of popularity.

I want to scream at her, hit her, because it's not my fault I can't get out of her way. But I also don't want to get in trouble. I know what my parents expect of me, and can only guess what might happen to me if I actually start a fight. So I let her do it, I swallow and swallow against that lump in my throat until I can't breathe, and I let her shove me against the lockers so she can squeeze a scant few inches ahead of me.

#

I used to have the Donald Duck-style tantrums. I still do occasionally, though they're few and far between. I lose my temper and throw books, or punch walls, or scream. I hate myself for it when I'm done, because I know it's the definition of immature. But there's always that knot of anger in my chest, and sometimes I can't swallow it down any more.

I've scared my cats, and my husband, and my friends occasionally. When that happens I hate myself for that too.

I've gotten better lately because I've gotten in to exercise. Most of the time, when I can feel that endless scream trying to break free, I have the presence of mind to go for a run, or ride my bike, or do kung fu exercises until I'm dripping with sweat and my muscles are just burning.

When all that anger is too big for my heart, I put it in my hands and feet.

#

I'm at a football game in high school. I'm tall enough and big enough now that I don't get casually shoved around any more, and I've stopped trying to pretend I'm smaller than I am. Shrinking in on myself has never gotten the insults to stop, and if I stand up straight and square my shoulders, if I glare and go at everything with aggressive sarcasm, people usually leave me alone.

This method doesn't work on everyone. There's a boy a grade or two ahead of me in marching band, and he hates me. I don't know why. Maybe it's the sarcasm. Whatever the reason, at this football game he slaps me across the face, three times.

But it's even more insulting and confusing then that. He makes it a game, where he says, "Watch my hand, watch my hand," snaps his fingers, and slaps me with the other hand. No one's ever hit me before like that, and at first I don't know how to react. It really doesn't hurt that much - it's just humiliating. And that's how it's supposed to be. He laughs at me while he does it, because I'm obviously too stupid to understand what's happening. Then I grab him by the coat and grind my heel down on his instep. My best friend drags me away before I can do anything else.

This is the only fight I've ever been in, and it wasn't much of a fight.

But I hit things all the time. I hit walls until my knuckles bleed, or slam them with the flat of my hand until the pain is so intense I have to stop. I bruise my feet and toes by kicking bleachers, and trash cans, and more walls, because I don't know the right way to kick yet and I just don't care. I pretend that it's the walls laughing instead of the people around me.

Maybe that's fair, since it's the walls trapping me in this place, filled with people who hate me because I'm weird, and nerdy, and fat, and queer, and different. Because I hate makeup and I don't care about clothes and just want to be left alone to read my Xanth novels in peace.

I don't know why they just won't leave me alone.

#

If you're angry and a woman, you're a bitch, or a joke. You get called shrill or accused of being hysterical. They ask you if you're PMSing, because obviously there's no real reason a woman could ever have to feel angry.

If you get really angry, the kind of anger that's so overwhelming that your eyes fill with tears (because that's all crying is, the reaction to any emotion that's too strong to process, happy or sad or mad) you get smirks, or that thing where they step back and hold their hands off as if jokingly fending off an attack.

Guess they're afraid I'll use my girly, pink fingernails to scratch the word unfair into their scalps.

#

I'm already sitting at the lunch table; the pretty girls come sit next to me. I'm hunched over a fried chicken sandwich. I'm wearing flannel and my hair is cut short. Maybe that's why they feel the need to point out that I'm fat and gross, and why they call me a dyke, a lesbo, a queer bitch.

I don't actually know what some of those words mean, at this point. Only that they're obviously bad.

But there is something else I've started figuring out. They're not calling me those things because they're true. They'd find something else nasty to say if I was skinny and wore makeup and had parents who could afford designer clothes.

They're calling me those things because they like being mean, and I look like an easy target.

That makes me angry too.

#

Things that make me angry:

Bullies

The phrase "dependence on foreign oil"

Liars

Bullies

Feeling trapped

Charlatans

Humiliation

People who hurt animals (bullies)

People who hurt other people (bullies)

Injustice

Getting tailgated

Feeling stupid

Being patronized

Misogynists/racists/homophobes

Bullies

#

I finally find a sport I'm good at, in my junior year of high school - power lifting. I get trophies, and it's the most amazing feeling in my life. The women's team is small, but we all at least respect each other, even if I haven't really made any friends.

At this point, I've given up on making friends. I just want to survive.

We're training together in the weight room after school. The other heavyweight is doing bench press. The blond girls (they're not on the team) that are doing bicep curls with the lightest possible weights whisper to each other about how she's fat, and hairy, and is probably a man. They giggle.

I hate that sound.

I already know that other girls say things like that about me. I tell myself that I don't care. I've finally found something I'm good at, something I like, and I won't let them ruin it for me.

But it's so goddamn unfair that they're trying to shit all over it anyway.

#

The anger that lives inside me isn't some sort of holdover from high school. Fourteen years would be a long time to hold on to slights received from people whose names I no longer even remember. Rather, that was where I learned to be angry, like an emotional immune response.

That's why it's never left me. Because I still see and experience things that make me angry, every day. When you grow up, the bullies don't disappear. They just get slicker, and smarter, and more subtle.

I talked about this with my mom one day. We were shopping for pants I could take off one-handed, since I'd just had surgery on my shoulder. In the car, I admitted to her that I still have anger problems, that I know it isn't a healthy response.

She told me: "If you're angry maybe that means they didn't win, because in the end, they couldn't make you hate yourself."

No matter how much name calling and shoving and bullying I received, I never really bought into the lie that it was somehow my fault those things were happening. I knew that it was stupid and unfair for other people to expect me to transform into someone else entirely to please them. And I also knew that even if I could somehow make that happen, it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference, that I didn't want to be one of those people anyway.

Maybe this is what winning feels like.

That doesn't make it easier, when I'm struggling to remain calm, when some jackass is pantomiming that he's afraid I'll explode because I want to hit him so badly there are tears in my eyes. But I won. I don't hate myself. I know the people who wasted a lot of their time and energy trying to make me miserable were the ones in the wrong.

I not only know that it wasn't my fault, I feel it. 

#

I never really liked the Hulk as a character. I always thought his super power was kind of dumb, and that the idea he was some sort of intergalactic trump card (oh yeah? We have the Hulk!) was poor writing.

But there's an amazing running joke in the Avengers movie, where people keep asking Bruce Banner how he stays calm, making the assumption that his apparent cool is the opposite of being angry. Then at the end of the movie, Captain America tells Bruce Banner, "Now would be a good time to get angry."

Bruce replies: "That's my secret. I'm always angry."

That, I loved. I still may not like the Hulk, but I love Bruce Banner because I know that feeling. I am that feeling.

#

There was something else I said in that conversation with my mom. That sometimes I felt like I don't have a right to be angry, because these things happen all the time to so many kids, and often worse. It's not as if I'm some kind of special case that suffered more abuse than my fellows.

She said: "Maybe that's why you should be angry."

She's right. That we accept it as a matter of course that people constantly try to destroy each other is base injustice. I should be angry.

And so should you.

It's that time again!

The Clarion Write-a-Thon is now accepting writer sign-ups! So as you've no doubt already guessed, I've signed up.

Last year I wrote the rough draft for Fire in the Belly and even met that goal a bit early. However, I know I can churn out large walls of text on command, so long as I have a compelling story to write. I've done NaNo enough to know that, and the fact Clarion gives you six weeks instead of 30 days actually makes it a little more relaxed as far as pace goes. So I've set myself a goal that feels much more challenging - I'm going to write a short story a week, for six weeks.

As far as word count goes, this seems laughable compared to pounding out over 100k words in six weeks. But to me it sounds pretty intimidating because I have a hard time keeping it short, coherent, and interesting. I need more practice with short stories, so this will be my chance to do just that.

Oh yeah. And I'll keep working on the current novel draft during that time too. Not sure if it'll still be King's Hand or if I'll have moved that one to the percolating pot and gotten started on the next thing, but we'll see.

Of course, the write-a-thon doesn't actually get moving until June 24, so I can always change my mind and crank my writing goal up a notch. We'll see. Maybe if you all heckle me enough, I'll do it.

Either way, please consider supporting me in the write-a-thon!

Fitness for Fat Nerds: Running Quick Start Guide (2)

We're going to get ever so slightly more advanced here, so if you haven't read part 1 take a look now.

Sorry it took me so long to get back to this, my fellow fat nerds. I'm now settled in Houston for the summer (yay, internship) but it's playing hell with my ability to run because good god have you seen what they call air here? It's like a gelatinous solid dropped straight from the Devil's microwave. I'm more likely to concentrate on biking and weightlifting this summer (once I'm cleared by my physical therapist, that is, argh!) so is there any interest in reading about those, too? Let me know.

Anyway, let's dive in.

So you're starting to run. You're shuffling and doing intervals and maybe pushing yourself up to 20-30 minutes as a stretch, but it's rough. What other tricks might a fat nerd have to make getting up to speed less torturous?

Well, to start with...

It's not a race.
Really. We get this horrible thing in our brains because of PE in school, I think, where we believe that if it ain't fast, it ain't running. And there are quite possibly going to be jocks lapping us at any moment, ready to yank our pants down and laugh mockingly as they go flying by.

Let it go. Just let it go. This isn't a race. Slow down.

If you're running in an area where there are a lot of other people, it's okay if they pass you. Don't feel bad. Unless they're assholes, they're just cruising on and minding their own business and giving no shits about how fast you're running. Do them and yourself a favor and give no shits about their speed either.

You need to learn the difference between pushing yourself an pushing yourself too hard. If you push yourself too hard for speed, you're more likely to end up with an injury, which is a very frustrating thing that'll stop you from running for a while. Sometimes you're going to want to challenge yourself with your pacing, which is awesome, but don't kill yourself. And you know what? Sometimes it's awesome to just cruise along, take your time, and feel good.

You'll be able to relax and have a lot more fun if you're not worrying about your speed. Once you're over the initial weeks of soreness that tend to haunt the first few weeks of new exercise, running should leave you feeling good, not exhausted and full of existential and muscular anguish. Find yourself a comfortable pace and stick with it.

Which brings us to the next point:

Keep it light and quick.
Pacing-wise, this has really worked well for me. First off, you want to keep your steps light. It's a lot easier on your joints, trust me, and you have no reason to be pounding the ground if you're not being chased by a ravening zombie horde. Until you've got a good handle on how a light impact feels, it helps to leave off the ear buds for a while and just listen to your own footsteps. Concentrate on making as little noise as possible while still trotting along. Sometimes it takes a while to figure out, and that's okay.

The other thing that helps is that you make your steps quick. Which means by necessity taking smaller steps. There's an excellent description of this technique at No Meat Athlete (thanks Chelsea for turning me on to that) and I encourage you to give it a read. This also helps you run more lightly.

Now, over at NMA they've got you shooting for 180 steps per minute. I don't think I've ever done anything that fast in my life. I feel good and relaxed at around 160 (I use Carmalldansen (speedy cake remix) as my pacing song, of all silly things) but I'll work my way up eventually.

Because while you want to shoot for a fast pace, this is another thing where it's not a race. Work up to it. You're not going to jump off your couch and immediately hit the ground running at 180 beats per minute. (Or if you do, let it be know that I hate you. A lot.)

Once I get my pace set, I tend to run independently of whatever music I've got going. However, if you want a little pacing help, check out Podrunner. There's a really nice selection of mixes at different bpm.

Don't look down.
Another army guy trick: keep your chin up. You know what the ground at your feet looks like - you saw it a few seconds ago when it was farther away. You don't need to look at it again, it hasn't changed in that short amount of time.

This is a thing that will help you with breathing. If you look down, you tend to hunch, plus your airway's kinked and you can't suck wind as effectively. So just keep looking ahead and trust in your feet. You do it all the time when you're walking.

This also, I note, helps keep you from running into tree branches.

Not that I'd know anything about that.

The only exception I'd make to this rule is if you've hit an extremely rough patch on a trail, or if you're negotiating the sloppy remnants of snow in the late winter, things like that. If the terrain is actually dangerous, pay it as much attention as is necessary. You should only have to look down for a few seconds. If you need to stare at the ground any longer than that, you might want to reconsider the location you've chosen.

While you're at it, don't hunch your shoulders. Really, just relax. 
This is a thing that happens to me sometimes when I'm really tired. I tend to hunch my shoulders and try to pull myself along with my arms, since my legs obviously aren't doing their job. If you feel your shoulders creeping up toward your ears, if you're not standing up straight, fix the posture issue. That'll help you breathe too.

I always had a problem not being sure what to do with my arms when running, since everything feels fairly weird at first. The key really seems to be that you want to (a) be relaxed but (b) not so relaxed you're flailing. Don't clench your hands, keep your elbows bent comfortably, keep your shoulders relaxed and swing comfortably from there.

Which has proved problematic for me recently, since I've had such issues with my right shoulder. Thankfully, those seem to have been resolved by the surgery and everything appears okay now that I'm allowed to run again. But when you can't move one of your arms properly, you start to realize just how much your arms are involved in the entire process...

But anyway. Don't tense up. Every bit of energy you use to be tense is energy you're wasting on fighting yourself instead of running. Relax. And if you're tensing up because you're that tired or in pain then STOP. You have my permission.

Cheat Codes
Still none. Sorry.

In which Loki moves to Houston (with Rachael): a tale told (mostly) in pictures

Loki, for reasons entirely his own but no doubt both devilish and nefarious, decided to move to Houston on the backs of his two hapless mortal minions, Mike and Rachael.

They departed Denver bright an early on Sunday morning.

The scenery quickly became less interesting.

And then Kansas.

Which both claimed I-70 was its main street (Loki scoffed) and had more than its fair share of road construction. "Tiresome," Loki commented.

As prairie dogs were so numerous as to warrant their own towns, and apparently came in varieties that grew up to 50 feet tall, Loki considered their merits as a secondary army.

Even gods require food.

Perhaps the most curious variant of corn available in Kansas.

The proximity to a gas pump let Loki feel even more evil and powerful, though he wasn't quite certain why.

"Kneel before me, mortals of Oklahoma," was Loki's only comment. Being that there were no people in sight, but quite a few cows, and all the cows were in various states of prostration, he found that acceptable for the time being.

Though even he grew weary after a time.

Loki noted a distinct lack of both the wind sweeping down the plains, or the waving wheat smelling at all sweet.

Camp was made and Mythbusters was watched.

On the morrow, Loki kept close watch on the mortal hotel clerk.

Oklahoma's finest were suitably intimidated by his presence.

The God of Mischief may be temporarily appeased by a cherry limeade. But only temporarily.

"We shall see who is truly alarmed, pitiful mortal device!"

At last, the apartment was reached, and Loki's minions set to carrying his many belongings inside and arranging them to his satisfaction.

While for his part, Loki defeated a sandwich in a most epic battle of wits and strength.

And rewarded himself with a sugary confection after.

"I shall have my internet, mortal cable technician, or I shall know the reason why!"

At last, things temporarily arranged to his satisfaction, Loki rested. 

Goodnight, Loki.

I Give a Homeopathic Fuck About Your Entitled Whining

Dear Sir and/or Madam:

Thank you very much for bringing to my attention the important issue of (circle one):
a) white people losing their privileged position/racial majority in this country
b) your deep feelings that gay people getting married somehow renders your marriage less special
c) your barely concealed rage that we no longer live in a fictionalized version of the 1950s
d) your horror that Christianity is no longer the accepted default religious position and those damn Muslims/Humanists/Atheists/Sikhs/etc insist on existing
e) the basic unfairness of a universe that refuses to allow you to scientifically support your religious/crackpot ideas
f) your deep philosophical point that I am fat/a chick/a chick that doesn't wear make-up/obviously some kind of lesbo/a hippy pinko feminazi/etc therefore am incapable of being right
g) [write-in space here for issues not covered]

Your opinion is not actually important to me at all. In light of that, please allow me a moment to explain just how little I actually care.

Imagine, if you would, that in the deep recesses of the past my blackened, shriveled excuse for a heart was capable of giving a fuck about you. Not because I thought that you might actually have had a point, but rather because I could recognize your basic humanity and thus stir myself to the level of empathy necessary to give a single, lonely fuck about what you had to say.

This single, sad little fuck ran up against the crushing behemoth of your entitlement. I attempted to engage in reasonable conversation on the misapprehension that such a thing is actually possible in the comments sections of most websites. But then the jaw-dropping assertion that, say, pointing out that straight white men have it kind of easy is somehow racist hit my poor little fuck like a rocket sled crashing into a block of ice. That fuck I gave was easily shattered into at least one hundred pieces, one or two of which I was able to recover for later use.

I would have tried to recover more of my poor, pulverized fuck but you burnt my fingers with your incoherent inability to spell or use even the sophisticated grammar of a second grader and I retreated rather than suffer further.

And then that just kept happening. 

Over and over again, I attempted to give you what remained of that original fuck, and you continued to crush it under the weight of your certitude that life is spectacularly unfair to you because there are people who, shockingly, want the same opportunities you were born with.

Thanks to the internet and the free range of jaw-droppingly stupid opinion available for instant consumption, the fuck I once gave has now been divided and diluted to the point that you could search through every molecule that has ever existed in the universe and find no trace of it.

So at this point, the best I can manage for you is a homeopathic fuck at a dilution somewhere past 400C. Which, if you believed in magic, might actually have some kind of meaning. But given that I'm a woman of reason, it means I literally have no fucks to give you at all. In the entire universe, not one single fuck exists of mine that can be yours in regards to your entitled whining. Ever.

Have a nice day.

Fifty Shades of Pissed Off

I'm probably not going to rant about what you expect. It's pretty standard these days for struggling writers who haven't scored their first novel publication yet to go off on bitter, venomous screeds about, for example, Stephanie Meyer or E.L. James and how damn unfair it is that obviously I can string words together in a superior way so where are my millions and by the way I've figured out that stalking isn't love and ARGH.

Whatever. Whether it's true or not when someone complains about quality of writing and cringe-worthy plot elements, it all comes out sounding like sour grapes anyway, just waiting to be crafted into the finest whine. (See what I did there?)

Actually, I've got a much more specific problem with Fifty Shades of Grey that has nothing to do with writing quality. In all honesty I don't know what the writing is like in that book and I have no intention of ever finding out, because dental surgery sounds more appetizing to me than vampire BDSM erotica. But you know. Whatever floats your boat.

My problem begins and ends with the fact that Fifty Shades of Grey started as fanfiction.

I wrote fanfiction for years before I ever started writing my own original work in any kind of serious way. Hell, I still write fanfiction today in the rare moments I have spare time. (This is me, side-eyeing that unfinished Avengers fanfic that's staring at me accusingly from the internet.) I still meet people online who remember me from my days of writing Gundam Wing fanfic where Duo murders the shit out of vampires with a narrative flair lovingly borrowed from Laurel K. Hamilton.

This is the thing about fanfiction. You do it because you love someone else's story. It's a way for fans to have a conversation with someone else's art, and for that art to answer back. Fanfiction did amazing things for me. It taught me how to write dialog and how to put together a plot that could span 80K words and still keep people interested.  It's awesome and fun and a magical way to waste time that you really ought to be using to, say, study for your oceanic geochemistry final because your brain has just melted.

But always, always, always you are in communication with someone else's art.

Someone else already did the hard work for you. They created the story, the world, and characters that, rightly or wrongly, people like and give a shit about. They worked their ass off to create a base of fans who are now predisposed to seek out and like what you write because they loved the original. Even if you're writing a complete alternate universe, you are still dipping your toe in a pool that some other person built for you.

At its most basic, it isn't yours.

And that right there is the thing that just pisses me off about Fifty Shades of Grey. Changing the character names and doctoring the details so that they're no longer a match doesn't do anything to alter the fact that the story involved borrowing someone else's ideas and playing 'what if?' with them. And at the point you're making money off of those ideas, you're no longer borrowing them - you're stealing them.

Back in my Gundam Wing days, I actually had a couple of people who really liked my stories suggest that I either just throw them on Lulu (uh, no, I don't want to get sued if someone notices) or alter them a bit for plausible deniability and self-publish. I never took those suggestions seriously, even though I probably could have done it fairly easily. Hey, that's what a global find and replace is for, isn't it? But it wasn't right. The characters weren't mine. The concepts weren't mine. And I knew that tarting them up a bit wouldn't change anything because what was in my head when I wrote the stories wasn't from me.

But Rachael, you ask, what about things like Laurie R King's Mary Russell novels? Or you would if you were some kind of creepy stalker who had broken into my house and observed my bookshelves for a few minutes. Obviously, I'm okay with what is basically fanfiction of Sherlock Holmes being published for profit. I'm okay with things like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

This is the difference, and I think it's an important one. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is dead. Jane Austen is dead. They've both been gone for a long time, and are obviously no longer capable of creating their own stories with their own characters, let alone be financially hurt by someone grabbing their coattails and going for a ride. Frankly, it's been long enough since those works were created that there's even an interesting question if modern writers can even add to work because perspectives have changed significantly. And of course, those issues are entirely separate from works that are still under copyright, but are used with permission of the author or estate.

As someone who hopes to have novel credits to her name some day in the near future, the commercial success of Fifty Shades of Grey both infuriates and scares the shit out of me. The success of someone else wouldn't necessarily diminish my own (in this case purely hypothetical) success, but it's still, to put it bluntly, unfair.

But really, that pales in comparison to my utter fury as someone who writes fanfiction. As fans, the contract we make with creators is that if they're nice and let us play with their toys, we'll give them back in good condition. We admit and revel in the fact that we are playing in someone else's sandbox. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, Fifty Shades of Grey is a betrayal of what writing fanfic is supposed to be about.

Legal technicalities aside, arguments about just how much resemblance to Twilight is too much aside, that is the issue. There's plenty of fanfiction out there that bears only a passing resemblance to the work upon which it is based. But normally, the writers have the integrity to admit that their jumping off point wasn't something that came from within them, and thus it's not right to try to capitalize on it. It's cheating.

With how successful Fifty Shades of Grey has been, I won't be surprised if we see more people taking fanfiction and trying to rewrite it into something with at least a veneer of originality. I've never been good at guessing the future, so I'm not going to make any sweeping predictions about how this could change things for fanfiction in general. The communities of fans who share their enthusiasm and stories are so enormous that global or fast change seems highly unlikely. But it does make me sad regardless, because the entire endeavor feels so much less innocent now.

...which I suppose is only fitting since we're talking something that was originally BDSM porn fanfiction.

Distrust That Particular Flavor

I spent my entire day taking samples of rock out of one plastic bag and transferring them into other plastic bags. For seven hours. I went through over 200 ziplock freezer bags and killed a sharpie. My brain has been reduced to pudding.

So you'd think that wouldn't be a good mental state for finishing up Distrust That Particular Flavor, the collection of William Gibson's essays and lectures. Actually, I found it quite refreshing.

If you don't know who William Gibson is, I suggest you use the Google. And then hang your head in shame as you trudge to the bookstore to purchase a copy of Neuromancer. Also, let me know if that happens so I can melodramatically cut you from my Christmas card list, only I haven't sent out Christmas cards in years because I don't hate myself enough to want to address ten thousand envelopes during finals.

There are 25 pieces in the book, plus an introduction. The essays aren't presented in chronological order. I found this occasionally jarring - skipping between the modern internet and VHS tapes between pages is a little weird even if you grew up with it - but there is also a feeling of forward motion through the pieces that makes the chronological hiccups worth it.

Not every essay is a winner, and the ones you might like will probably be very different from the ones that I like. Each speaks to a very different part of the imagination and experience. But all are written with Gibson's characteristic rich yet concise prose, and are a pleasure to read even if the topic isn't one that gets at you on a deeper level.

I actually found the introduction very interesting from the standpoint of a writer. Gibson talks about his fiction and nonfiction coming from two very different places. It's not something I've really thought about, but it's something that I feel. Whence, when I'm beating myself up with the need to just write something I'm bullshitting my way through essays or even blogs posts because my brain can't function on a high enough level to write fiction. I'm not egotistical enough to claim some kind of elevated kinship with William Gibson (ha, my wildest dreams) but it made me think. In that case, about my relationship with this particular art.

So many of these essays make you think about your relationship with what is outside yourself. Physical places, technology, history, time.


Dead Man Sings is a short little thing, barely two pages long, but it left me feeling dizzy from its start of "Time moves in one direction, memory in another."

Disneyland With the Death Penalty, My Own Private Tokyo,  and Shiny Balls of Mud: Hikaru Dorodango and Tokyu Hands are all about place and people rolled together. Particularly the latter two I found fascinating because I did a major in Japanese Language and Culture, and am well acquainted with the feeling of something being both alien and familiar at the same time.

What I love (and simultaneously sometimes don't love, because it makes me squirm and that is a good thing) about Gibson's writing, fiction or non, is that it never allows me to feel fully comfortable. There's always something nibbling at the edges of my brain, a verbal rock in my shoe that I can't seem to remove. I re-read and mull, sometimes to savor and sometimes just to refine my understanding, sometimes even to drive what I think the point might be home.

From Will We Have Computer Chips in Our Heads? - "Our hardware is evolving at the speed of light, while we are still the product, for the most part, of unskilled labor." Let that wash back and forth in your brain a bit and see what it dislodges.

I've named just a few of the essays, my absolute favorites. They're all worth reading. And then reading again. Find your own favorites and tell me what they are.

(Also, I finished the book and wrote this somewhat disjointed post while listening to Tron Legacy Reconfigured. If you like electronica at all, find a copy. You can thank me later.)

Shame on you, Rep. McNulty

Well, I got absolutely nothing done after trivia tonight. Rather, I spent the last 100 minutes watching the #coleg tag on Twitter with a growing sense of horror.

It was already a shit night, thanks to voters in North Carolina.

But somehow, the disaster in the Colorado legislature is even worse than that. We had a civil unions bill. There were enough votes for it to pass, because a few Republicans were willing to cross the aisle. But in a move of supreme, mean-spirited cowardice the rest of the Republicans stopped the bill from even going to vote. Representative McNulty deserves extra shame. As Speaker of the House, this anti-democratic move hangs squarely on him.

Apparently when the announcement was made that the civil unions bill was dead - as well as more than thirty pieces of legislation waiting in line behind it - the gallery in the House erupted with chants of "Shame on you!"

Shame indeed. The civil unions bill should have passed. It wasn't perfect, but it was a step in the right direction. And there were a lot of other things that needed a vote, which are dead now as well. All because the group of Republicans in the state house in Colorado couldn't face losing fair and square on a vote.

I'm beyond angry and frustrated. I'm tired. I'm tired of the selfish, judgmental bullshit that rules the petty fearmongers who continually attack my lgbt brothers and sisters. I'm tired of assholes claiming that they're protecting my marriage because by dumb luck I met a man I loved enough to marry before I met a woman I loved enough to marry. I'm tired of people being so blinded by their own smug self-righteousness that they can't seem to understand that life is damn short, and damn lonely, and if you love someone good for you and it's no one else's goddamn business.

I do my best to have faith in humanity. I have faith that fear and hatred will not always rule us. No matter how tired I feel, I will never be so tired I'll stop fighting. Next year and the year after, no matter how long it takes, I know we'll all keep fighting. This isn't over.

Welcome to Silent Hill, PA

It's May 3, 2012. Ten hours to go until the US premiere of Avengers and I'm in central Pennsylvania with a group of friends specifically to see that movie. How to pass the time?

Well, the native of Pennsylvania (my dear friend Rynn) mentions that we're maybe an hour away from Centralia.

If you're not a fan of horror videogames or somewhat obscure but recent east coast history, Centralia probably doesn't ring any bells. It's the town that was devastated by an underground coal fire. It's a haunting place where white smoke stinking of sulfur billows from the ground itself and the roads collapse as the fire continues to eat its way through the coal veins. Trees in the area are bleached and blasted by the fumes.

Centralia was the inspiration for the fictional town of Silent Hill, which spawned a successful franchise of survival horror videogames as well as a somewhat less impressive movie. In the original game (Silent Hill) and the movie, it was clear that the billowing white fog engulfing the town was actually smoke and ash from the underground fires. In later games, the fog was left to be more traditional water vapor and the mining town history fell by the wayside.

Needless to say, as a fan of the games, I leap at the chance to see Centralia.

If you're expecting someplace as haunting and creepy as the video game setting, I can't guarantee that Centralia will deliver. On the day we go, the fires aren't burning with particular ferocity - the air is almost entirely clear. It's sunny and more than a little muggy, the surrounding hills bursting with plant life in a way I'm still not used to as a resident of Colorado. But the trip is perhaps more interesting because it's nothing like what I expect.

There are two halves to a look at Centralia. There's the town itself - or what's left of it - and a closed-off portion of road that used to be part of Route 61.

The actual Route 61 now circumvents this section, swinging wide between two hills to avoid the slowly extending fire damage that undermines the landscape. But if you follow the road north out of Ashland, you'll come to a cemetery at the top of a hill before you hit the next town. Park nearby and the old section of Route 61 isn't hard to find.

It's utterly deserted, but you can still hear the sounds of traffic from the nearby reroute. The road itself is covered with graffiti. Apparently when you're a teenager in rural central Pennsylvania, this is what you do for a good time on a Friday night. Most of the graffiti is penis-based, or names and dates from visitors. There are a disturbing number of swastikas that have been drawn on the asphalt. And here and there are nerd shout-outs to the other reason people come here, the one that doesn't involve drinking and drawing cartoonish genitalia - Welcome to Silent Hill, PA and There was a hole here. Now it's gone. The road surface buckles, wavers, and cracks, broken-up graffiti showing that the surface destruction is recent and continuing as the subterranean fires march ever onward.

I think in the future, I'm going to have a hard time seeing how clean the roads look in post-apocalyptic future visions. Because if there is even one remaining teenager in the world, and one remaining can of spray paint, it seems almost inevitable that things will end up covered in dicks.

Getting into the remains of the town itself requires backtracking and going around the side of the hill. Rynn's GPS unit still shows the ghost of streets that no longer exist. At the base of the hill, a few houses still stand, and are obviously occupied. The rest are empty lots surrounded by low stone walls, showing where houses once existed.

Further up the hill, the destruction of Centralia is total, and largely man-made. If the streets were ever paved, they aren't any more. It's dirt and gray gravel now, slices of thinly-laminated black shale showing through where runoff has carried away the surface soil. The black shale crawls with tiny, bright pink mites that look like they should belong to a 1980s Atari game.

There were obviously once houses up and down this hill, but nothing remains, just flattened lots that have plainly been bulldozed.

Broken up bricks and concrete are still visible, the remains of walls and foundations that haven't been completely removed. The ground is littered with broken glass and shotgun shells; I guess since unpaved tracks don't provide the same graffiti opportunities, this part of the disaster is used as a shooting range. Strange little bits of civilization still peep out of the surrounding trees, like this wooden utility pole.

This is where it finally begins to feel eerie, seeing these ghostly remains of what was once a town. There are a lot of reasons for the government to have seen to the destruction of the unoccupied houses. With toxic fumes rising from the ground, allowing abandoned buildings to stand and invite squatters is a potentially lethal proposition. They'd be fire hazards. And it's a way to discourage gawkers like myself from picking over the bones of Centralia.

But all the same, it's disquieting to see there was once life and it has been so plainly removed.

And even on this clear, beautiful day, there is a reminder of the fires that still rage through the coal seams. Smoke isn't billowing, but the air smells faintly and pervasively of sulfur. There are holes in the ground from which wispy smoke drifts. Like a ghost, it doesn't photograph, but it's there to see with your own eyes.

Seeing smoke come out of the ground is something that disturbs a deep, primal portion of your brain. The smoke stinks like matches, and you know that's bad and you really should just get the hell away. Even worse, when the breeze shifts and the smoke washes over you, it's notably hotter than the muggy air. You feel it like breath on your face.

And you let yourself imagine that this might just be a little hint of hell. Because an endlessly burning, unquenchable fire that burns slowly underground, eatings its way through the bones of old trees certainly fits the bill. In that moment, sunny day or no, you're still waiting to hear the old air-raid sirens.

Epilogue

There's something else you can see from the ruins of Centralia, which sums up so much of the way the region feels to an outsider like myself.

Throughout the region, there are enormous, flat topped tailings piles, the remains of open-pit mines where machinery has chewed up all the coal and spat out the pieces we didn't want to burn. They are ugly sores on the landscape, though you do see places where plants have begun to move back in. From Centralia, standing in the bulldozed shadow of a house, you can see one of these flat-topped monstrosities lined with the graceful white forms of enormous windmills, blades turning slowly in the breeze.

With the stink of sulfurous coal smoke permeating the air, the windmills really do feel like a distant promise, one that you might be able to reach if you can just stretch your arms far enough.

For a little more about the history of Centralia and its underground fire here is one site.
For the rest of my pictures from Centralia you can look through my online album.