Saalon Muyo

Dear God am I about to get busy.

I apparently lack the ability to see past a certain point when I’m queueing up stuff, ’cause I’ve got like, 4 major projects that all start racing downhill in October.  That’s a really, terribly not good thing.  I saw this coming about a week ago and started getting scared.  I’ve done this to myself before, and it rarely ends well.

And I made this decision I’m going to regret.  I’m going to get through it.  All of it.  Even if it leaves me with fatigue fueled pnuemonia.  A couple of years ago I decided I would write a novel length thing for the web, on a three-time-a-week deadline.  I got through it and came out with the ability to write a novel and have it not suck.  Now I need a new skill.  I need to come home every day and get through a part of the pile of crap waiting for me.

Procrastination is my most familliar personal demon.  I doubt I’ll ever stake the jerk through the heart, but perhaps I can learn to evade him a little better.  We’ll see.

I go on vacation Saturday.  When I get back, it begins.  We’ll see if I can make it through.

Conventions - any conventions - are strange affairs.  They’re little bubbles of groupthink, bringing out the most extreme tendencies of whatever niche has found hotels and rooms  to hold them.  No one convention is weirder than the other.  It’s all just a matter of perspective.  I watched a bunch of Texas delegates do this awkward, phony hat raising thing at the Republican National Convention and thought “Freaks,” even though, two days before, I watched a bunch of people dress as Harry Potter puppets and sing that Mysterious Ticking Noise song and was totally into it.

What I’m getting at is that I spent the weekend at DragonCon, and it was a heck of a thing.  I’ve been to cons before, most notably Otakon, but they all seem to have their own vibe.  Otakon is much more of an Organized Convention, while DragonCon seemed like a big, fan-run party.  There were a lot more people hanging around the hotels, drinking and smoking and hanging out in their outlandish costumes.  It was pretty cool, actually.  In the way that is not cool to the majority of the outside world.  Of course.

There were too many Boba Fetts.  Too many Jack Sparrows.  Too many Stormtroopers.  Too many whoeevers from Assasin’s Creed.  Too many Darth Vaders.  And, in purely technical terms, too many Leia Slave Bikinis; though from my perspective this was not a problem in the least.

None of this killed the fun.  If anything, it just led to lots of “We should challenge every Boba Fett here to a fight!” sorts of conversations.  This is what you do when you’re walking around a bunch of people in geek costumes.  You compensate by acting like a bigger geek.

Some thoughts.  Michael Rosenbaum from Smallville was hilarious.  I’ve never watched the show, and may never do so, but I can’t deny it.  The guy was a blast.  Nathan Fillion from Firefly was also awesome, but that was less of a surprise.  I’ve seen him on behind the scenes stuff and I knew he was a Christmas ham.  He didn’t disappoint.

I hopped on an elevator with James Callis from Battlestar Galactica and about lost my damn mind.  Good to know my star struck geek nerves are still so sensitive to simply standing next to someone from a show I watch.  Not embarrassing at all.

It may seem counter intuitive if you have a geek stereotype in your head, but there are lots of attractive people in very little clothing running around for much of the con.  I was more interested in the women, but there was, for instance, an extremely ripped dude dressed as God of War which, I’m sure, made some people very happy.  For me, though, it came down to girls dressed as, say,  Aeon Flux.  I’ve got my buttons, what I can say?

I also did some role playing, which was as hit-or-miss as you’d expect if you thought through what sitting down with 6 random people at one of these conventions might be like.  The first table was a complete disaster, ruined by a host of drunken thirty year olds cosplaying as twenty year old frat boys.  Only the DM, who wisely turned it into a drinking game for them, kept things amusing.

Finally, there was karaoke.  We went to get a drink in the hotel bar on Saturday night to discover the Atlanta Hilton’s geek hoard had descended on the karaoke machine, with the apparent intent of giving normal karaoke enthusiasts a reason to feel better about themselves.  I walked in, first, to see someone singing Styx’s “Mr. Roboto” while half the room awkwardly did the robot.  My thought: Ha!  Then, somehow, the thing turned around on me.  I watched a room full of disparate fanboys and fangirls, dressed in their own wacky costume of choice, supporting each other and cheering and dancing no matter how awful the song was.  Trekkies next to girls in gypsy/belly dancing costumes next to people in latex singlets all on the same page.  It made my heart swell a bit.  It was kind of awesome.

Still.  Next year we’re totally taking down the guy dressed in that Sauron costume, just so we can shout “Rule that, bitch!”

I love debate, and so I hate debating.

In theory, the idea of debate is beautiful.  Fencing for people who are weak, uncoordinated pansies.  Carefully dancing around defenses, looking for openings.  Occasionally goading your opponent into making a poorly considered attack.  Emotions come into play, but the point is not to get infuriated.  Winning isn’t the point.  The form is the point.  Debate is a whetstone for your beliefs.  You may not change the other person’s mind, but both of you will have honed your opinions.

In practice, people suck at debating.  I think this is largely because people think the point of a debate is to win it, or to convince the other person they are wrong.  And so as soon as an attack comes in that challenges one of their preciously held beliefs, they start responding with a mixture of stupidity and maliciousness that ruins the fun for everyone.

The Internet has codified poor debate strategy in the minds of millions.  The first real forum of conversation online was Usenet, and a cursory glance through any long thread will show you what I’m talking about.  They start with a half dozen interesting, reasoned posts that go back and forth on a subject.  And then someone comes in and kicks the damn table over and lights it on fire.

I’m discounting the truly odious trolls here, the ones who say insulting things about your mother’s anus or the lack of limits in your relationship with your dog.  It’s simple to ignore the violently abusive posters, since their only desire is to get some attention.  People like this are why all modern social networks come with a “block” button.  Use them.

No, the people of which I speak are the ones who wade into the center of a debate and derail the proceedings out of sheer obstinace.  They begin with slightly logical sounding points that are in direct contention with whatever the most popular view is, but mix in a few poison pills in the process.

It might be taking someone’s argument and expanding it well beyond the point they intended to make.  If someone says they disagree with the idea of using DRM in media, the stealth troll will respond as if you had said there is never, ever a point for DRM and those who wish to use it are cretins.  If you suggest you prefer OS X over Linux, they will paint it as if you are saying Linux is a bug ridden, trash heap of an operating system and then take you to task for your lack of knowledge.

They might “correct” you endlessly, nitpicking minute details of what you said to force you into a position of defending things sentence by sentence instead of addressing the larger point.  This is a tactic perfected online, made simple by allowing people to quote you verbatim while editing out pieces that don’t support their point.  All it takes is a “>” followed by some of your text and they’re off to the races.  Once this starts, it’s almost impossible to stop.  Your first desire is to correct them, because you loath to see your words taken out of context.  But even if you don’t take the bait, you’ll never get things back on track again.

Or perhaps they’ll demonstrate their knowledge of Latin words describing logical fallacies.  Not of the actual fallacies, mind you.  Just the words.  Sometimes they won’t even know the words themselves, but they’ll have a grasp on a handful of the words that make up the definition.  Instead of addressing the topic at hand, they simply start crying foul, citing poorly understood rules that sound important.  You could call this the “plea for sanity” defense, used when an argument has gone outside of their ability to easily control.  You could also call this “whining.”

They may also use half-truths, or simply lie.  Often, they’ll mix the two to confuse you.  This tactic has unfortunately become very common of late due, I think, to the fact that this form of discourse is now accepted on national television.  If you can stomach it, watch a television news talk show.  See if anyone is ever challenged on any data they provide, even when you and everyone involved know it’s not true.  This makes debate impossible.

The very nature of debate relies on there being some kind of standard for factual information.  Debate is, in my mind, about the rhetorical manipulation of facts to make some kind of point. Once you start mixing in untruth to make your case, and when challenged simply cite more imaginary facts, you’ve done your job.  You’ve killed it.

Congratulations.

Not that formal debate is any better at this point.  Yikes.

It’s a terrible thing to waste your time in this life, yet we are all programmed at the deepest of levels to live as if we are immortal.  We do this, I’m sure, because the prospect of death is too frightening to stare in the face.  Spending unconcerned hours Twittering or watching television or just straight up staring into space is our way of telling ourselves that death is something that happens to other people.  We’ve got time to waste, baby.

I have a deep, unmanageable fear of death.  It may be a product of my rather vivid imagination, but any thought of possible demises is usually enough to get me to play the entire thing out.  From there comes a brief but powerful depression, followed by forced ignorance of the entire issue via this blog, or whatever I’ve got handy with which to kill some time.

Most of us have things that, at some point in our lives, we decided would define us.  It might have been raising a family, or writing great American novels, or playing hockey with the Detroit Red Wings, or whatever would be today’s medical equivalent to discovering Radium.  Few of us get anywhere near our ideals.

For some, this isn’t a problem.  Their future self-concepts were either incorrect or were a product of the moment they were imagined in.  A baby comes, and then another, and you find that the family thing was potentially what you wanted all alone.

Many - most, in fact - don’t reach any ideal at all.  For the vast majority of people in the world, this is through no fault of their own.  Living in the comfortable boundaries of the United States of America, we forget just how little choice most people in the world are given as to the direction of their lives.  If you are one of the thousands of babies born with the HIV virus, existential questions about which vocation will define you are irrelevant.  If the shop you own, your very livelihood, is burnt down in a war you did not start, your first concern is not going to be finding a therapist to work you through the oncoming mid-life crisis.

Here’s an uncomfortable fact: we have no control over our own lives.  No amount of planning, self-improving or hard work will improve our chances against catastrophic collapse.  I can already hear arguments forming against this.  Wait.  Think about this for a second.  Most of what will happen in your life is based on a series of lucky or unlucky draws in which you had no part.  If you have a natural inclination towards music or law, you got lucky and were born with it.  If, one day, you find that you have contracted Alzheimer’s in your 50’s, you’ve been struck with bad fortune and not the consequences of a lack of judgment.  Most of the things that happen to you in your life are completely outside of your control.

That includes those sometimes short, sometimes long periods where things are in your control.

Contradiction?  No, and that’s why I wanted you to stay with me before getting too pugnacious.  There are absolutely periods in our lives that are safe from the cruel ravages of the world.  Some of us may spend our entire lives in those harbors, unaffected by the awful things that blindly claw at us.  When I talk about wasting time, it’s people like me in a time like this to which I refer.

We, those who have been blessed with a reprieve from the utter crap that life can be, have perfected the art of squandering that gift.

In watching the Olympics, I’ve been struck by the dedication the best of them have.  Please understand I don’t mean “winner” necessarily when I say “best,” but winning is often the result.  These are people who have spent every day in devotion to their goal.  To their ideal.  They want to be the best at what they do, and they focused.  They didn’t get to choose to have flipper-like hands or the eternal build of a 12 year old, but they sure didn’t waste the opportunity.

I’m lucky if, after I get home form my cushy desk job, I spend even an hour on my writing.  That’s my ideal.  My goal.  I do it when it’s convenient.  But I have to be honest, I’m worrying more and more.  How much longer is convenience going to be a possibility?  Have I wasted my time in the harbor without realizing it?  Or are fears glimpses of a storm at sea, warning me to move while I still have time?

Portfolio.com recently posted an interesting article about the resurgence of really bad for you food, focusing on the strategy CKE (the parent company of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr.) has adopted over the past half decade. Go read it, but if you want to read this first, let me discuss the article in short.

Fast food took a bunch of hard knocks when things like Super Size Me and Fast Food Nation tore down the facade that the industry had built around its dietary offerings. The line had always been that their food was absolutely nutritionally sound, even if it wasn’t health food. Now people were realizing that junk food was bad for you (shock!) and wanted to get something healthy at the same price they were getting crap.

While chains like McDonald’s began phasing out things like Supersize options, CKE looked at the market and decided people didn’t really want health food, they just wanted to know it was available. Rather than follow the pack and start offering wraps, they did the exact opposite and wheeled out some truly monstrous burgers with a caloric content over the recommended daily amount for the entire day.

CKE’s thesis, which the article doesn’t challenge, is that the fast food chains bowing to market pressure made the wrong decision. People want to eat, as they call them “decadent burgers.” The only reason you’d put a salad or yogurt thing on your menu is so you, the hungry alpha male, can bring your wife without her complaining too much. This is thesis the other fast food chains have come to accept, leading to competing death-burgers like Wendy’s Baconator and Burger King’s Triple Whopper. People don’t want to be told what to eat, the line goes, and thus will rally to the cry of morbity on a bun and support it with their wallets.

This thesis is supported with evidence of CKE’s increasing same store sales, and it’s a compelling argument. In fact, I think there is a lot of truth there: a certain group of people do want to eat crap. They enjoy it, and are offended by the idea of a group of dietary elitists supported by the media taking away their right to murder themselves. To these people, an ad campaign that tells people that the worst food for you is right here is a breath of fresh air. At McDonalds in the 90’s, they were living in denial, pretending their Supersized Big Mac was good for them so they could fit in with a culture controlled by a health-conscious bourgeois. Now they were enabled - nay, encouraged - to purchase items called Thickburger or Baconator with pride.

I’d like to offer a counterargument. Not to the entire idea, because - as I said - it’s not entirely wrong. Where I suspect the CKE gluttony-as-a-strategy case doesn’t hold is in its suggestion that people who say they want health food don’t actually want it. CKE offers as evidence their poor salad sales, and steps right up to the line of mocking people who think health food sells.

All this proves is that the people already interested in buying from fast food places like Carl’s Jr. aren’t buying vegetables. I doubt this is evidence of anything other than that people don’t come to Carl’s Jr. for anything other than meat, cheese and fried potatoes. A more thorough analysis would probably prove two things.

First, the people who are conscious of what they put into their bodies simply do not eat at fast food joints regularly - if at all. Second, that even when people who do take care to eat healthy things go to a fast food joint, they are either not interested in healthy food at that moment, or take a look at the sickly salad being offered at too high a price and decide to indulge themselves.

I’m speaking from some experience here. I eat oatmeal or healthy cereal for breakfast most mornings. I try to get the right amount of fiber in my diet every day. I’ve cut down on meat and I keep an eye on my sodium intake. If possible, I eat one meal comprised entirely (or mostly) of vegetables a day.

When I step into a McDonald’s, that’s out the window. I get one of the most unhealthy things on the menu: McNuggets. I add in a big thing of fries, too, because I like to dip them in that Hot Mustard concoction they careful parcel out. I don’t step into a place like McDonald’s unless full-on crap is what I’m craving. That’s supremely anecdotal, I realize, but my attitude is rare. I’ll concede that a lot of people talk the talk without walking the walk when it comes to health food. We’re a fairly hypocritical culture.

Still, I’m willing to bet that of the people who say they want health food, more of them mean it than CKE’s gloating tone would lead you to believe. I’m also willing to bet some of those people, when going into Hardee’s or Carl’s Jr., purchase the Monster Thickburger with glee, not because the presence of a salad on the menu makes them feel better, but because that Thickburger is the only reason they went to the place at all. They had their salad, but now they want an unhealthy, heart-stopping treat.

(As a side note, there’s another significant factor at work here: price. I’ll need to talk about that in a separate article, but suffice to say the food to price ratio has a lot to do with fast food’s popularity, and shouldn’t be ignored.)

Which, in a lot of ways, validates CKE’s marketing strategy. They’re right, even if they overstate their case: The people who would be interested in eating at Hardy’s aren’t going to go ga-ga over a turkey wrap. They want meat, and if possible, they want it topped with something fried. McDonald’s marketing themselves as a health food chain is absurd. Their food sucks, whether it’s healthy or not. Take away the junk fried part and all you’ve got left is tasteless crap.

Running an advertisement where a girl in a bikini eats a huge hamburger is delivering your potential customers their favorite lie: Eating nothing but 5,000 calorie meals will make more - and hotter - girls want to sleep with them.

When Detective Kima Greggs is learning the ropes as a murder police in HBO’s The Wire, her mentor advises her to look at the scene with soft eyes. Hard eyes will focus on the wrong things and miss the big picture. Soft eyes will tell you the most about a crime scene.

A lot about the world is that way. A lot has been said about the problem of our media misrepresenting issues and politicians misleading us on the nature of problems on their own gain. A lot of it is true, too, but the real problem is how it all changes our own way of seeing our own world.

When we discuss poverty, we start talking about Welfare to Work programs and jobless rates and what you should be able to spend food stamps on. When we talk drugs, we debate policing strategies and mandatory minimums and race. When we worry about schools we do so in terms of class size, standardized testing and school taxes.

We look at our world with hard eyes, scrutinizing the details of dauntingly large pictures. We find the details most pleasing or upsetting, set up camps and draw knives to defend our understanding of them. Why? Because it’s easier to demonize the specific application of a specific welfare system by pointing out potential abuses than it is to address the more general problem of increasing poverty among families. That’s how we roll.

There’s no way to solve the endemic problems of the manner in which we live with hard eyes. It takes soft eyes to understand that our worst demons cannot be thought of as a collection of symptoms and anecdotes, to see our issues as the complicated beasts they are. Poverty can’t be addressed through a debate on how many months someone should collect welfare. Frankly, poverty may never be addressed at all. The same goes for education, crime, health and global politics. But if we’re going to do battle at all, we must do so with a clearer understanding of what we’re fighting.

Details matter. They do. At some point, you’ve got to address them, and if you get it wrong, you’ll screw up the big picture. It’s the distraction from the fact that there even is a bigger picture that destroys us. It’s the petty arguments over meaningless minutia that divides us and allows us to be conquered.

Hard eyes will notice the bullet casing on the ground next to a victim’s head. Soft eyes will see that the shot could never have come from the same side of the body as where the casing now lies, the subtle drag marks in the dirt and a bullet hole and some blood on the wall thirty feet away. Hard eyes may catch a shoplifter, but soft eyes catch a murderer. Which crime would you rather solve?

I’m currently reading Giving by Bill Clinton, which is an excellent book on the many ways you can share your own good fortune (be that fortune great or small) with those in need. One of the most difficult things about giving time or money is finding an organization you both respond to and trust. One of the nice things about Giving is that it offers some excellent suggestions.

One of those suggestions I need to pass along immediately. An organization called Kiva.org is doing something a little different than your average non-profit. Rather than work as a typical charity organization, Kiva gives you the opportunity to take a more personal role in sharing our relative wealth with the rest of the world. Kiva isn’t built on donations, but is instead a microcredit organization, allowing you to loan small amounts of money to entrepreneurs in the developing world. You can lend anywhere from $25 or more to any number of pre-screened candidates on Kiva’s website. Kiva works with microcredit lending partners in other countries, who use your investments to lend to businessmen and women in their communities.

You don’t get any interest on your loan at this time (though the field partner does), but when the loan is paid back, you can either withdraw the money or reloan it. Kiva keeps statistics on all of their partners to better enable you to make a smart choice in your investment.

Nothing helps a community more than the ability of its members to better their standing in life, and Kiva gives you the opportunity to give them that chance in a personal and meaningful way. I lent $25 to two different people on Friday, and intend to continue lending as candidates catch my attention.

Take a look. A great deal of the comfort and happiness in our lives is a result of luck: the parents we had, the country we lived in and the education available to us. Helping those without those benefits gives meaning to a world that often looks chaotic and cruel.

Even if Kiva is not for you, I’m sure something else is.