Poem on Your Blog Day

I like to think of myself as a very well-rounded, multi-talented person. That self-affirming belief is sometimes the only thing that gets me through the day. I take pride in the fact that every intellectual activity I've tried to do, I've been fairly good at. I can write essays, I can draw, I can code, I can speak Spanish, I can discuss philosophy, I can write fiction, I can fix (or at least troubleshoot) equipment, I can decode legalese...

But I can't do poetry.

On the handful of occasions when I've tried to write a poem, the result has been abysmal. I hated the process. I hated the result.

I can read poetry. Sort of. Shakespeare's plays, verse translations of Dante or Homer, Dr. Seuss, song lyrics, bawdy limericks, maybe a haiku or three. But when I try to read actual I-mean-this-to-be-a-poem poetry by a serious poet, it just doesn't work for me. My mind tries to process it as if it were prose, and it's usually pretty bad prose. I just don't grasp the... poetry of it.

"Poem on Your Blog Day" is supposed to be an event for people to write about a poem or a poet. And with my apoetic brain, I'm at a bit of a loss. The best I can come up with is to recall hearing a recording of Maya Angelou reciting "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings". She brought out the poetry of the verse with her reading of it, and I got an inkling of what readers often find so moving in a poem.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

One of my coworkers (the one with a life-size cardboard stand-up of Mr. Bush in his office) e-mailed to everyone in the department one of the latest jokes about Bush's fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "This is hilarious," he commented, demonstrating that he's not just a humorless kneejerk partisan.

But he continued, "Of course we already found many stockpiles of WMD in Iraq so it's a mute [sic] point, but it's very funny nonetheless." I overheard him later elaborating on this topic to another coworker. Apparently they've found huge stockpiles of uranium, pesticides stored next to missiles, and all sorts of other proof that Saddam was an imminent threat to the world. But the government can't talk about any of it. For national security reasons. Gosh!

I didn't interrupt to ask how he'd come to know about this, but I suspect it was very credible news source like Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, or one of the current crop of right-wing talk show hosts. Or maybe some web site somewhere. Just another example of how eager people can be to believe anything they want to believe.

Graduation... Again

It's that time of life again. Time to graduate. To matriculate. Commence.

The term "commencement" has always seemed a bit ironic. Everybody thinks of graduation as the end of something, not the beginning. But as guidance counselors and parents correctly point out, commencement usually is a beginning, the start of a new era in that thing called Life. But not always. Sometimes it just feels like an end.

When I graduated from high school, I definitely felt that "ending". As a kid with good grades and poor social skills, I'd always been a loner, but in high school I finally had a small bunch of friends that I was pretty comfortable with. I even felt safe peeking out of the closet a little bit. I didn't fully grasp just how good - and transitory - it was, but I had an inkling. We were all heading to different colleges, and I knew that without seeing each other five days a week, we'd lose touch.

What got me through that was knowing that the adventure of college lay just ahead. I had to start from scratch making friends, but living in a dorm with a bunch of guys your own age is a bit like high school on steroids. To be honest, the crowd I fell in with included a lot of jerks I don't miss, but there were some gems in there as well. And I really got into the "student activities" scene, which I knew even then was something that wouldn't be available to me after graduation. The whole "peer group" social setting would be gone.

But just out of college I still had my whole adult life ahead of me, and the excitement of knowing that just about anything could still happen. Careers, relationships, activities... it was all a blank slate waiting for me to write on. That softened the blow of again having to graduate and leave something really good behind. After all, it was the late 80's and I had a degree in computer science, my health, and a drive to change the world.

After several years of being a reasonably successful, fairly happy computer geek, I decided to go back to college to study graphic design and illustration part-time. It was the late 90's and internet media looked like a good opportunity to have fun making money. But I wanted the academic grounding to do it right, even if it meant putting my "real" career in a holding pattern. I had some unrealistic expectations about how college would be similar to the previous time, but for the most part it met my expectations. I enjoyed the stuff I was learning, I enjoyed the casual social atmosphere of the classroom (even if my age placed me above and off to the side of it). Being the nearly as old as my teachers (and in a few cases, older) I got to know a few of them and stayed in touch with them even after I was done with their classes, by chatting with them in the halls.

But now comes another graduation, and I can see all that slipping away. Again. And this time, I don't have any real "commencement" to look forward to, to add some sweetness to the bitter. Sure, I'll get some free time back. But other than that, it'll be nothing new. Since the tech industry bombed and the job market overall sucks, all my years in college give me this time is several years of not "moving up" in my profession (actually back-sliding a bit). So I'll probably just continue with my current low-end tech job and the rest of my life as it is now. What little "networking" I've been able to do the past few years will disappear along with those hallway chats.

My last classes are this week. Next week I'll be at school putting up a display of some of my classwork as part of the college's "senior exhibition"... my first - and probably last - gallery show. That Saturday, I'll walk across the stage in my cap and gown, a slide of one of my illustrations will be projected for my peers and their families to admire, I'll get some good-luck handshakes from some former instructors, and that will be the end of that.

On Monday... back to work.

Not I, Robot

I'll probably go see the upcoming I, Robot movie. I might even enjoy it, as it looks like a well-made action-packed hardware-filled special-effects film... a dick flick. But to enjoy it, I'm going to have to close my eyes for the brief bit during the opening credits where it says that it's based on the book by Isaac Asimov. It's not.

OK, technically it's based on Asimov's "Robot" stories, as it uses some of the world created by him for them. In particular, it refers to his legendary Three Laws of Robotics, which require any robot to (in order of descending priority): protect humans, obey orders, and preserve themselves. The cast credits indicate that Dr. Susan Calvin (the narrator of the book) is in it. And based on the previews, it looks like they've lifted a plot point or two from the original book. But the revolution-of-the-robots action-fest at the end of the preview clearly tosses the Three Laws out the window.

Asimov - who was not just a writer, but a scientist - crafted the Three Laws first as a kind of intellectual exercise, mapping out what sort of rules we'd have to program robots with for them to function in human society. From there he used them as the premise for a series of stories that tested the limits of these rules. Some of the best of these were of the "locked room murder mystery" sort, wherein we're faced with a seemingly impossible situation (instead of a man stabbed to death alone in a room locked from the inside, we'd have a robot who appeared to have violated the Second Law by refusing to carry out an order) and one of the characters - and the reader - has to figure out what really happened.

The difference is that Asimov stuck to those Three Laws. Even in one instance (in a later novel) where a robot clearly and willfully did kill a human, Asimov managed to find a way to get that to fit into the Three Laws paradigm. But there's no way that even Asimov himself (aided by Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawking) could manage that with the robots-on-the-rampage mayhem already shown in the movie trailers.

When Asimov called them "laws" he was thinking in the scientific sense of "laws of physics". You might find odd circumstances where they don't apply like you'd expect, and you may even have to expand on them when new situations arise. But you can't simply "break" them. The screenwriter of this film seems to be thinking of "laws" in the political sense of "laws and regulations"... and wouldn't it be scary if suddenly robots no longer followed those rules?

That's an interesting question to explore, and it could certainly qualify as good science fiction, of the "cautionary tale" sort. But it's not what I, Robot the book is about. It's a cautionary tale of sorts itself, but a completely different one, in which robots don't take over by force or deception, but take over (in a manner of speaking) by our own abdication of independence. It's really more of a fascinating historical puzzle... which admittedly probably wouldn't put as many butts in the seats over the summer.

Like I said, I'll probably see the movie. But first I've pulled out my old paperback copy of the book, and I'm going to give it another read through. I recommend it highly. It's a fairly short book, and it's broken up into chapters which you can easily read one at a time (each one is actually a short story that fits into a larger framework). The chapters were written in the 1940's, so some of the projected dates and details are off (an early "nursemaid" robot in 1996), but it should hold up pretty well regardless, on the strength of its ideas. I, Robot also served as a springboard for a handful of full-length novels. They take longer to digest than a flick of Will Smith battling CGI 'bots, but they're worth it.

Hunting in Secret

One of the things that bugs me most about applying for jobs is the lying. I'm not talking about the lies you might tell a prospective employer in order to get the job. I'm talking about having to lie to your current employer.

Of course not everyone has a current employer, and believe me I know first hand how badly that sucks. But at least you don't have to lie to anyone about what you're up to. You tell everyone you know that you're in the market for a job. You put on your best coat and tie and walk with head held high into whatever interviews you get invited to.

But if you're looking for a job at the same time you have a job, you better start thinking in terms of espionage. Maybe you can surf eBay or Slashdot or Yahoo Games during your breaks at the office, but you better not go anywhere near HotJobs or Monster.com. If you get an interview scheduled during business hours, you better practise your "I'm too sick to come to work today" voice, because you'll need a lie such as that to get the time off. Better to skip the whole day without notice than to request the afternoon off a week ahead of time... because the latter would expose your secret!

You can't ask co-workers for leads. And be careful whom else you confide in, because they might mention it to someone they know who knows your boss, and you'll suddenly find yourself in trouble. You'll be branded as "disloyal", your chances of promotion will likely deteriorate because they figure you're just going to jump ship soon, etc. I've even heard of people being disciplined or fired for job hunting (though I think that'd give you grounds for a wrongful termination suit if that happens).

Job references get particularly dodgy. You can't list anybody you currently work with, for all the above reasons. When the job application form asks if they have permission to contact your previous employers, you have to say "NO" for the current one. On the other hand, it's probably OK to say "YES" for the ones before that (assuming you didn't get fired) because they can't fire you. When I got laid off last year, people who were previously at the top of my "hide this from them at all costs" list were suddenly prime reference material.

It's all so incredibly petty and ridiculous. If I'm unhappy in my job I shouldn't have to hide that from my employer. And if I haven't hid it from my employer (and I think mine's smart enough to have picked up on that) why bother pretending? Why can't I just admit to my boss and coworkers that I'd prefer a job with better hours and more responsibility (which I'm not going to get here unless someone else quits)? It's nothing personal. It's professional. So why is it considered unprofessional to be open about it?

Kill Bill vol.2 - It's Done

my rating: Nathan's rating:

There were a couple other movies to choose from this weekend, but I knew that Nathan - eliminating those he's already seen and those he'd refuse to - would narrow it down to: the one with a chick killing a bunch of people, and the one with a dude killing a bunch of people. I suggested Kill Bill vol.2 rather than The Punisher.

In my review of vol.1, I said I'd wait until I'd seen the rest of the movie to decide whether it was any good or not. And my verdict: It's got some really nice style to it, but the story and characters are a bore.

The references to the old movie genres of Tarantino's youth are fascinating, and totter skillfully between irony and parody. Marvel at the deco black and white opening credits! Thrill to the spaghetti-western background music! Cheer for the kung-fu sound effects and camera tricks! Be amazed at the zombiesque grave scene! Or not. OK, Quentin does it with more intelligence and sophistication than the Wayanses, but that just makes it more pretentious than funny, because there's no real depth behind it.

The one thing that I will say in praise of the story is that, after 3-4 hours of Beatrice telling us that she's going to Kill Bill, the climax of the film is not simply her finding Bill and killing him. There's a little surprise that derails her from that agenda just long enough to provide some actual suspense to the climax (will she go through with it or not?), rather than just another martial arts demo. In addition we get a little monolog about the nature of identity, as exemplified by Superman and his alter ego Clark Kent. Not exactly a great revelation to anyone who's thought about the subject (and further undermined by a heretical comment about the art on Superman comics - he's talking about the era in which they were illustrated by the legendary Curt Swan - not being very good) but it impressed Nathan.

The whole movie seems like an exercise in cinematic sadism, as well. People are killed in deliberately gruesome ways, and even when they're not actually killed (such as Uma Thurman's character being shot in the head, but surviving) they're badly abused. And the viewer has to sit and watch it.

Like I said, Tarantino's got style. But much like a Saturday Night Live skit that just can't be sustained for a 90-minute feature film, that's not enough to support the two-part future-multi-DVD indulgence which is Kill Bill.

Public Squeaking

I am not a great public speaker. Never have been and never will be.

I do OK when I know ahead of time exactly what I'm going to say, or when people are asking me simple questions about something I know really well. But I'm definitely a writer, not an orator.

To some extent I blame this on my parents, who gently but very persistently corrected my grammar when I was a kid. "May I have a cookie." "Give it to me quickly." It was good for me because it taught me how to use language carefully and correctly. But I now spend so much time trying to proofread myself before I talk, that people sometimes think I have a speech impediment. It's darn close to stuttering sometimes.

I'm also a very shy and private person. I do not like to be the center of attention, whether it's in a group of two or two million. My social skills are also kinda shaky, and it makes me fucking nervous to have people watching them. So I tend to say the wrong thing, which can get me into trouble.

But you know what?

George W. Bush makes me come across like the bastard love child of Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King Jr. in comparison.

A Cure for Business Cancer

I wrote last month about what I called business cancer, which is what happens when corporations grow out of control, to the detriment of the entire body around them. The best solution I could think of was to break companies apart when they get too big (as many pundits have suggested doing with Microsoft).

Longtime technology columnist Robert X. Cringley has just published an article in which he repeats an idea sent to him by a reader:

The smartest reader of all suggested that companies be taxed on their market share so that a company like Microsoft with 90 percent share would pay a 90 percent tax rate. The nice part about this idea is that it actually would encourage competition as well as industry alliances. The naive part is that it assumes legislative resolve that does not exist and also assumes Microsoft actually pays taxes which, for the most part, it doesn't. Still, the idea is clever.

Ol' Cringe is definitely right that the legislative will to do this doesn't exist. Hell, probably the majority of Congresscritters would vote against it on principle. (Yes, politicians do have principles; they just tend to be closely aligned with those of the businessmonsters they hang out with.) And perhaps the scale is too severe. Maybe set the rate at half of their market share? I don't know... I don't have the necessary economic models or numbers to crunch. But it's the kind of creative thinking needed to solve this problem.

And if you could pull off the necessary revolution to implement it, I think it could actually work. At least well enough to promote the wholesome goodness of small businesses and fair competition. Not only would it "punish" companies for getting too big, but it'd be a great tax break for small businesses, the kind that actually create most jobs in our economy. Sure the rewards for success wouldn't be as great, but maybe that would finally encourage some of these Type A drones with an addiction to "success" seminars to instead focus some of that energy on things that really matter, like family, friends, society, maybe even faith.