Posted on August 13, 2023
Handicaps and Flaws
Generally speaking, interesting characters have to overcome obstacles. That’s why Superman bores me. It’s hard for the most powerful being around to face challenges that don’t immediately turn absurd. Something writers think about when developing those characters is whether an internal obstacle is a flaw or a handicap. Don’t confuse the two—a flaw can stem from a handicap, but a handicap itself is never a flaw. Let me explain.
Handicaps are limitations that a character has no choice in, but likely has to work around in pursuit of their goals. Examples include paralysis, mental illnesses, loss of limbs, etc. Flaws, however, are personal defects fully within the character’s ability to change. Examples here are rudeness, ignorance, pridefulness, etc. So when I say a flaw can stem from a handicap, think of Lieutenant Dan from Forrest Gump. After losing his legs, the good Lieutenant became bitter and unpleasant. The flaw was not that he lost his legs, it was his new outlook based on that event. We like him as a character because with Gump’s help, he overcame that flaw and got a new lease on life shrimping with his friend.
This subject hit closer to home for me this weekend as I considered my own minor handicap. I have relatively significant motion sickness, ranging from unpleasant to debilitating depending on the activity. This handicap has dogged me my entire life. My dad likes to tell stories about how as a child, I’d consistently vomit multiple times whenever we took extended car trips to visit family. That’s the reason I’m the primary driver in my family—my wife knows I’m still liable to get sick if I’m in the passenger seat.
It goes far beyond carsickness, of course. My motion sickness is responsible for me having to abandon my first career choice in the military as a pilot (they tend to frown on projectile vomiting at the controls). It’s also the reason I haven’t pursued a slew of activities that I love to do. That list contains the following: skydiving, jet skiing, paragliding, SCUBA, surfing, roller coasters, and literally anything involving a boat. As of this week, I can now add kiteboarding and virtual reality to that list.
It’s a hard thing to desperately want to do something while knowing your body will make you miserable if you try it. Yes, I recognize that my handicap isn’t nearly as traumatic or restricting as many others. But it is an impairment that restricts me from a host of different actions that I would otherwise do, so it has an impact on my life and those around me.
And please, no helpful suggestions of “just take Dramamine!” Believe me, I’ve tried. When you’re curled up on the floor of your hotel room on your birthday praying for the room to stop spinning hours after your latest failed boat excursion while using prescription-strength anti-nausea patches, you lose a little bit of faith in medicine’s ability to assist.
Handicaps are what they are, and usually there’s no way to fix them. Flaws, though, that we can work on. This is where my thoughts went this week as I scratched another two activities off my list of potential hobbies. Every time something like this happens, I tend to sink into a funk. Wallowing in self-pity over my inner ear issues accomplishes nothing, but I still give it a try just in case. Thus, my flaw comes to the surface.
Does the situation suck? Undoubtably. Does that mean I have to act like it does? Absolutely not. There’s a difference between acknowledging the reality of a situation and allowing it to gain control over your attitude. The former is required to regain forward momentum and plan effectively. The latter bogs you down in a morass that will restrict your every thought and movement until it becomes as crippling as the handicap itself. One enlightens and emboldens, the other restricts and consumes.
I’m done letting it consume me.
Posted on July 30, 2023
Spirit and Letter: Israel in Crisis
“Israel in Crisis” has led many headlines over the years. Rarely, though, has it been so self-inflicted. I spent a considerable amount of time in Israel across a dozen-plus trips over four years. My Israeli counterparts and I worked hand-in-hand that entire time to help prevent indiscriminate violence, work I am still proud of today. The news from Israel over the past week has been heartbreaking to me on a personal level. Because a few men have chosen to pursue power by favoring the letter of the law over the spirit of the law, one of the few functioning democracies in the region is on the verge of collapse.
For those unaware, the crisis boils down to this: the Israeli Knesset (their parliament) just passed a law saying they can ignore Israel’s supreme court. While technically there is no law saying they can’t do this, the spirit of the law clearly says otherwise. Functionally, there is now no check on the ruling coalition’s power. They could, for example, pass a law with a simple majority saying all elections are indefinitely postponed. Assuming the ruling coalition maintained that position, the only way to overturn it would be through protest or violence. Given that the last six months of protests didn’t stop Prime Minister Netanyahu from taking this step, prospects for that first path appear dark.
The opposition has already challenged the new law, and there is zero chance the supreme court will not take up the case. I would say the odds are high that they find the new law unreasonable and strike it down. Netanyahu has refused to say whether he would accept such a ruling. Thus, a crisis ensues: who is correct? Depending on where certain elements of society fall—the police, the security services, the military, etc.—one side or the other will prevail. And unfortunately, the party that better commands the state’s monopoly on force tends to triumph in situations like this.
The situation is far more complex than a few paragraphs can relay, and the situation will likely shift prior to the supreme court’s decision and Netanyahu’s reaction. While it may seem like a problem for “over there” instead of at home, any action that tilts the global attitude towards authoritarianism is one that should concern anyone who values their freedom. Time will tell if this is the final crisis of Israel as we know it.
Posted on July 17, 2023
Hawaiian Studs
Hawaii is many things. Island paradise, tourist destination, and one of the most welcoming cultures around? Without a doubt. One thing it is not, however, is a mecca for standardized construction practices.
My son—bless his heart—hasn’t met a staircase he doesn’t immediately want to fling himself off of at top speed. You’d think given he just learned to walk two months ago, that speed would be limited. You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. He’s a sprinting prodigy, especially when you look away for half a heartbeat. Enter the baby gate. With plastic and nylon, I will constrain his kamikaze runs to flat terrain. But given his proclivity toward mixing mass and inertia, a pressure gate ain’t gonna cut it. We went all in for the kind you screw into the wall, several inches of hard steel to hold the line against the rampaging toddler.
The thing about screws, though, is they need to screw into something. Not a problem, I thought. I’ve got a wooden post on one side, and the corner of a wall on the other. Surely, that corner has a stud to drill into. Surely, the builders of this 1989 home didn’t create an open cavity out of drywall paneling with no support. Surely, such madness only exists for those who have spiders in their heads.
Alas, seven drilled holes later and nothing but a dusting of drywall dandruff to show for my efforts. My head spiders are twitching.
I was so flummoxed by the situation, I called my dad—a man with significantly more experience being useful than I do. He looked at it through the video, asked a few questions, then concluded that the original builders must have been insane. While that made me feel better, it didn’t do anything to resolve the Evel Knievel toddler situation. So now I have to add a Home Depot trip this week to go grab a stud finder since my wife is out of town (heyo!).
I can’t blame the construction workers, though. With how many termites this island has, any construction out of wood is living on borrowed time anyways.
Posted on July 2, 2023
Big Trouble in Little Moscow: Wagner, Prigozhin, and Putin
In one of the more mindboggling turns of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I get to write the following sentence: a former caterer-turned-mercenary-warlord led an armed insurrection against the Russian government. His Wagner forces got within a few hundred kilometers of Moscow—with no indication that anything could stop them—before abruptly deciding he was done and accepting exile in Belarus. This was, as they say, big news.
Countless pundits and internet warriors have examined those wild hours ad nauseum to see what they might mean, and the general consensus is that it’s a bad look for Putin, but it’s too early to tell what will come of it. I agree with that sentiment, but I’m more interested in the deal that resulted in Wagner’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, calling it quits. Theoretically, Belarus’s dictator, Aleksandr Lukashenko, brokered the deal, but he’s Putin’s purse pooch, so let’s not give him too much credit. This was a deal between Putin and Prigozhin, and I would give a not-insubstantial amount of money to have a recording of that conversation. And fluency in Russian.
Prigozhin’s goal was to win his feud with Russian military leadership, primarily the Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu. Both men were part of Putin’s inner circle, but Prigozhin overestimated Putin’s commitment to him and Wagner as Putin chose to back Shoigu instead. Once that happened, Prigozhin had to find an out— preferably one that doesn’t involve him committing suicide by being thrown out of a window.
Obviously, part of that deal was driven by Prigozhin realizing he was in over his head. Sure, given the lack of any real defenses between where his forces were and Moscow, there was a solid chance he could take the Kremlin (assuming the Russian Air Force didn’t carpet bomb them). But what then? The odds of the oligarchs, Russian military, and Russian security services pledging loyalty to Prigozhin was nil, and he had to have recognized that. His goal from the deal is easy—survival. His card to play? 2,500 armed veteran mercenaries a few hours from the Kremlin.
Putin shared the same goal out of this deal. When you’re at the top of a vicious pile of knife-wielding autocrats, the goal of every day is survival. What changed here was Prigozhin bringing the contest out of the shadows into the open. That’s bad juju for any leader whose entire power base relies on fear. Putin, then, had three options. He could throw in with Prigozhin, crush the mercenary without mercy, or find a middle ground. The first option was out because it would make Putin look weaker than the insurrection already had. The second was out because he didn’t have the forces to do so in a timely manner, and he’s already losing credibility with the oligarchs, the military, and average Russians over the boondoggle of his Ukraine invasion.
Compromise remained the only viable option. Prigozhin agreed to not play his trump card of sacking the Kremlin, and Putin agreed to not kill Prigozhin. Granted, we’ll see how long that promise holds—Putin’s enemies tend to have prematurely shortened lifespans.
The interesting part of this deal is that it seems Prigozhin gets to keep his card. Belarus has announced that they’ll be playing host to Wagner going forward, and the mercenary outfit has not ceased its recruitment efforts across Russia. So unless Prigozhin mysteriously disappears or shoots himself in the back several times, he has the potential to flip the table again on Putin. I don’t know who in the writing room is putting together these outlandish storylines, but we’re only halfway through season 2023 of Humanity and it’s already gone off the rails. I don’t know if I’m dreading or excited for the season finale.
Posted on June 18, 2023
Father’s Day Round Two
Today is my second Father’s Day as an actual father. This one sinks in deeper than the first given that during the first, my son was basically a semi-sentient potato capable only of pooping and crying. Now, however, he has grown and entered toddlerhood, and wow is there a difference.
For one, he communicates now. He’s got a few words, even if they don’t sound quite like what they eventually will (he leaves the L’s off of ball, which is adorable). He also know how to indicate when he wants certain things, which is a huge improvement off the old method of everyone crying as his mother and I pushed various items into his hands until we guessed the right one.
He’s also started developing his own tastes and preferences. When we first started feeding him solid foods, he inhaled everything like the vacuum cleaner he has recently become obsessed with. Now he’s getting a touch more picky, with some items (fruits, cheesy eggs) reaching a level of transendence and others (veggies) being used primarily as ammunition for throwing practice.
But what I enjoy the most are the moments where he expresses his love for his mother and I. The burrowing of his face into my shoulder as I pick him up when he wakes from a nap. The grin that somehow appears wider than his giant head he gives when he looks up from his toys and sees me. How he cuddles into me after he hands me the book he wants me to read two pages from before scurrying off to grab another. Each one just a fleeting moment, but each one precious beyond time’s ability to measure.
There is an entire world of wonder and joy I want to show my son, and these first steps I’ve taken with him are already more amazing than I could have dreamed of. It will be an adventure of a lifetime to see where else those steps will take us.
And lest I forget, a humble thank you to my father for giving me the example of what a dad should be. You set the standard, and it’s one I strive to reach every day.
Posted on June 4, 2023
So It Begins
One of the worst parts about military service is that you can be seperated from your family for mission requirements. In this case, my lovely wife has to endure nine long, grueling, humid weeks in Alabama. This is not ideal, as one might imagine. On top of how I miss the love of my life for her joy, her kindness, and her beauty, I have come to depend quite a bit on her for ensuring I don’t backslide into the morass of bachelor aesthetics and grooming. Truly, these are dark days.
Most pressing, however, is the care of our son. If you are not a parent, I can assure you that an 11 month old child is not exactly “free range” capable. In the past week alone, he has decided a new favorite activity is to attempt to run off the stairs at full speed, trusting he will be caught. He also has decided he must eat literally everything–his cravings know no mortal bounds.
I write this not to complain, but to explain how this next part came to be. You see, my wife and I share responsibilities in our home, but there are some that lean in one direction or the other. I do the dishes and mow the lawns, she tolerates my puns and keeps the house in order. One clear area of dilineation: dressing our son. I have the fashion sense of a naked mole rat, and no one appreciates my vision for how to make colors clash just right. My wife, horrified at the first attempts of me dressing our child, firmly took that role away so he would not be traumatized. I trust you begin to see the issue now with her absence.
Luckily, I have found the perfect solution to this conundrum. Just days after she left, a casual conversation gave me an epiphany that hit with the force of thunder thunder lightning, very very frightening. Clothes are awful in general, but there is one type that transcends all others. One that is easy to use, great to see, and all around amazing.
Kilts.
Now my son is rocking his very own kilt, just like his dad before him. And due to my wife being roughly 4,367 miles away at present, there’s nothing she can do to stop this bold step into the future of toddler fashion. Let the good times roll!
Posted on May 8, 2023
If You’re Happy and You Know It…
My wife attended an out-of-state wedding this weekend, and I—being the valiant, noble soul that I am—offered to stay home with our little one so she didn’t have to worry about the logistics of bringing an infant cross-country. Away she went, and home we stayed. I thought, how hard can it be? What difference is there between doing this as a partnership versus doing it solo? A few more diapers, a couple more bottles to wash, no biggie.
What a fool I was.
At first, all was well. Ez and I had a good time playing with his stacking cups, crawling over pillows, and reading his Happy and You Know It book. Then we ate some dinner and read his Happy and You Know It book. We finished that first night off with reading his Happy and You Know It book.
It was at that point that I realized I was no longer happy reading this book, and I knew it. I turned to hand the book to my wife to get a break, but alas, the Pacific Ocean proved a gap too wide. I turned back to my child, whose eyes sparkled with fey light as he once again grabbed the book and raised it above his head as if to say with actions what his lips cannot yet form into words: Read the book, Father. Read it and despair.
And so I read. And I read. And I read. While he was Happy and Knew It enough to wag his tail and hop around, my soul cried out for relief. From time to time, I would offer another one of his books, but always to the same result. His face contorted into a grimace of pure disdain, then he would once again place his Happy and You Know It book in my lap. And then, the song would play.
You see, this book has a darker element to it. Graced upon its back cover is a button that, when pressed by the hand of a young child, plays the music of when one is Happy and Knows It. And it played. And played. And Played.
Kaylee was only gone for two days, but time lost all meaning in that short span. Gone were silly constructs like seconds, minutes, or hours. My life became a binary equation—either Ez was Happy and He Knew It, or he was not, and would insist I remedy that situation immediately.
My wife is back now, but even with her help, the book still haunts me. Ethereal creatures wag tails and hop around just out of sight. I hear its tones down the hall, beckoning me back to flip the page once more to see just what one must do when they are Happy and They Know It. Am I happy? Do I know it? I may never know.
Posted on April 24, 2023
It’s All Connected: Scams, Conspiracies, and Belief
In an interview shortly after publishing The Da Vinci Code, author Dan Brown stated unequivocally that the various secret holy orders contained within were real, that the French monarchy blood line claimed to have been wiped out in the 1000s AD had survived, and that he had the documents to prove it. While those documents did exist, they had been put in France’s Bibliotheque Nationale only a few decades prior by a scam artist hoping to scrape a few bucks off gullible tourists wanting to buy a knighthood. He, in turn, had gotten his inspiration from another grifter looking to drum up business for his combined hotel/restaurant. And even he had pulled from a local urban myth that had grown out of proportion because the truth was far too boring. It’s scams all the way down.
I got this info from an excellent podcast (The Rest Is History) that I highly recommend. While they don’t generally focus on debunking conspiracy theories, I loved this particular episode and how it showed how Dan Brown could be so confident in his assessment of the historical accuracy of his novel. He saw a tidbit of information he thought was neat, did a touch of research to validate his own notions, then pressed forward as though it were all gospel truth. This is not to fault Mr Brown, per se, but to comment on the tendency we all have to get caught up in a good story at the expense of reality.
The problem is that we like connections and patterns. Point A must lead to point Z. Unfortunately, life doesn’t always line up nicely, but instead of shrugging our shoulders and accepting that this world is often a mad place full of inconsistencies, we look to find those tantalizing letters in between—even if they’re not there. These can span from the relatively harmless like thinking Tupac is still alive to the incredibly dangerous like thinking vaccines cause autism (they don’t).
I have no answers or grand point to make here, just a curiosity as to where I’ve made leaps based on incorrect information or faulty assumptions. Even though I avoid social media like the plague, evidence like the trail of scammers that led to the Da Vinci Code’s plot devices prove conspiracies and misinformation don’t require an algorithm to propagate. What closely held beliefs do I have that are rooted in a lie some hotelier made up a hundred years ago because his business needed a boost?
More importantly, how do I tell a story on this blog that will resonate so deeply with someone that hundreds of years from now, an author can look with complete sincerity into a reporter’s eyes and say, yes, I have done the research and I can unequivocally say the descendants of the lost colony of Roanoke have controlled the world’s travel industry for centuries.
And thus, legends are born.
Posted on April 9, 2023
Easter Message ’23
Happy Easter! What a special day this is. For many, it involves egg painting, Easter baskets, and large quantities of sugar. The best part of that is how much of it revolves around doing it with family, a wonderful thing to remember during this season. I fondly look back on memories of doing our annual egg roll at my grandpa’s ranch, where us kids would dig intricate tracks for eggs to roll down complete with ramps and hairpin turns. We’d go until the eggs were shattered wrecks, then go inside for an Easter dinner together.
All wonderful memories, but as I’ve grown older my perspective on the holiday has shifted. As a Christian, Christmas and Easter are the two most significant days of the year, but one of them always seems to overshadow the other. While I recognize and appreciate celebrating the birth of Christ, I’ve come to recognize how His atoning for our sins and resurrection needs to be placed at the forefront of our thoughts.
So this Holy Week, my wife and I spent our time studying and pondering Christ’s final week of His ministry on this earth, from Palm Sunday through Easter itself and His resurrection. We meditated on His teachings, despaired over the cruelty of those who stood against Him, and marveled at His love for us all, even those who sought to take His life. The actions He took that week have eternal ramifications, and I stand amazed at the depths of His caring that He would do so for us.
If you are not a Christian, I hope that you can still find value in His teachings. The world today would be a better place if we favored humility over pride, if we strove to be peacemakers in our lives, and if we loved our neighbors as we love ourselves.
For those of you that are Christian, I hope Easter holds as special a place in your heart as it now does in mine. My thoughts today turn to John 11:25-26:
“Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?”
I believe in Christ. He lives, and those words give me a peace that I cherish and hope for all of you to experience as well. Happy Easter!
Posted on March 26, 2023
Terms and Conditions Apply
I took a big step this week and bought a new TV for the first time in ten years. I could talk to how wonderful it is to have in-depth technical reviews of almost any product imaginable available online, or to how the picture quality is so good that it borders on unrealistic. Instead, I want to talk about how I had to agree to terms and conditions. Watching stuff (stuff I own like DVDs) on this TV (which I also own) somehow comes with terms and conditions. These are the end times.
It’s both depressing and appropriate that the word ‘terms’ is often used in line with surrender. That’s what modern terms and conditions imply, after all—you are usually surrendering the rights to your information. The amalgamated advertisement behemoth we’ve created must be fed, and your sweet, sweet data is its life blood. One of the TV reviews I read had as a con that there’s no way to turn off the advertisements on that model of TV, but then went on to say it doesn’t matter since you can’t do that with most of them anyways. It’s funny that the other word in the phrase is conditions, since it appears we’ve surrendered unconditionally.
I know it’s passe to talk about this, but it’s a little odd how collectively we’ve decided on this course of action. Data scientists, journalists, crackpots, and others have shown again and again how algorithms increasingly nudge or direct our lives. The response? Largely shrugs. What do I care if my TV is feeding back everything I do on it to some server if the picture is pretty? Who cares if Amazon can predict my most intimate desires with an 87% accuracy rating if my possum in a peanut shows up with two-day shipping?
We should care, because algorithms are only getting better at predicting human behavior. Right now, it’s just recommending TV shows and marsupial-themed children’s toys. But we should still be concerned over the Cambridge Analytica canary gasping its final breaths years ago. What will the next event be?
In more uplifting news, I have completed the top level editing process for Artificial Threats and will now move into scene identification! I came up with 89 unique issues ranging from critical to minor that need fixing, and figured out how to at least attempt fixing most of them. Breaking out the scenes into identifiable chunks is the next step so I can figure out where to best slot my potential fixes. After that, the real work begins.
