Talking About Stuff, with Mike and Christiana

Definitely waveform. To me, particle suggests discrete units that could, in theory, be separated from one another. Something composed of particles would therefore be exactly equal to the sum of its parts. Whereas I think people are more of an analog continuum that contains a real gestalt, where we are greater than the sum of our parts.

Applied to me specifically, I am not particularly good at compartmentalizing things, and will frequently find my attention wandering from one topic to another, moment to moment. One only needs to engage in a ten-minute conversation with me to watch me change the subject more than once within that time, frequently to apparently random things that have very little to do with the previous subject. It used to drive my dad nuts!

Yet, there is actually a mental thought process that leads from one to another. They only appear separate and distinct from one another because of the waveform interference. Viewed through two slits (two eyes,) the waves interfere with one another producing the impression of separate subjects. In fact, if you were to engage in the same conversation with me, with one eye closed, you would actually see a continuous spectrum.

I think about writing and submitting a lot more than I actually do them. Writing for me, is often like exercise, wherein I rarely feel like doing it, but I never regret having done it. What I will typically do is ruminate on an idea (often in the car, or in the shower) for weeks, even months, before ever putting fingers to keyboard, all the while telling myself repeatedly, "You know, you should really just sit down and write the damn thing." Then I would agree with myself wholeheartedly, and swear that I'll do better. Deciding in fact that as soon as I get home, I'll sit right down at the computer, put on the sound-blocking headphones and write the heck out of it. Then I'll get home, and go and get the mail and then think about dinner, and then check to see what TV shows are on that night and then I'll finally boot up the computer and decide to check my email before I start, then I'll realize that I should get dinner started so I won't have to be fixing something at 8PM, then I'll realize I don't know what to make so I'll surf the Internet for a while looking for recipes, and by the time dinner is ready, my TV shows are on, and I'll tell myself. "Okay, that's it. First thing tomorrow morning, I'll get up early and just write.

Eventually, I will actually make myself do it, and as always, I never regret it. Just lazy, I guess. (Note: I discovered that a deadline helps, as I successfully completed NaNoWriMo this year.)

Submitting is like dating. It's something I know have to do to get what I ultimately want, but the limited experience I've had so far with it has been mostly awkward and unpleasant. And even where it was fun for a while, it still ended badly. So I'm shy, but aware of it, and working on doing better.

Okay, let me first state a caveat that I have no quarrel with anyone who actually likes the below authors. I'll concede in two out of three of them that they must be doing something right, because a lot of people like them. It's just that what they do is so far from my own personal aesthetic that I deliberately avoid emulating them.

Author 1: Tom Clancy

To be fair, I've only ever tried Red Storm Rising, but after a relatively exciting, James-Bond-style opening, he proceeds to spend a good eighty pages about Russian economic history and boring politics. World-building should service of the story, not get in the way of it. I would argue that less than five percent of the information covered in that eighty pages had anything to do with the rest of the story. Now for someone who might be actually interested in that information apart from the story, it might not bother them, yet for me, looking for exciting airplane reading, I was bored stiff.

Author 2: Clive Cussler

Yet again, I may be being a bit unfair by using Mr. Cussler after only reading about one fourth of one of his books. Further, it was one of the later books in his Dirk Pitt series, so I might feel differently had I started with book one. However, given all that, what really frustrated me with the one I read, ("Valhalla Rising"), is that the main character basically had no trouble whatsoever accomplishing pretty much anything he sets out to do. In his very first sequence, he shoots two people, dives overboard into stormy seas and pulls two more people to safety, then beats three armed assassins to death with his bare hands, and kisses the girl, all in the space of about twenty pages. For me, there was no dramatic tension whatsoever, because I didn't sense any doubt or concern that he would fail. It was like watching stock footage of explosions. Kind of cool at first, but with no emotional connection to it, pretty soon it all starts feeling exactly the same. Boring. And if there is one thing that is nearly unforgivable for me, it's making explosions boring.

Author 3: Tim Lebbon

I toyed for a moment with using James Patterson, for essentially writing the same story over and over again, ridiculously short chapters, and manufacturing plot twists out of thin air, but I have actually deliberately read more than one of his books to completion, so I can't knock him too hard. Instead, I'm choosing this guy that you've probably never heard of. He wrote a horror novel called "The Nature of Balance". I picked it up in a bargain bin one day when I was short on reading material. Now, Mr. Lebbon was actually rather skilled at describing disturbing imagery, one of the staples of horror. The problem I had with this book was that I didn't feel like any of it meant anything. It felt like walking through a cheesy Halloween haunted house, one where you're occasionally startled by someone jumping out at you, and some of the effects are actually pretty good, but you come out at the end saying, "What was the point of that? The sum total of that experience is that I have fake cobwebs in my hair and that fake blood splattered my new pants."

My mom pulled me out of first grade after Christmas break and home schooled me for the rest of the year, because my teacher had no idea what to do with me. I was ahead of most of the other kids in my class and apparently, she had no plan for how to handle kids that could finish their assigned work so quickly. In fact, she seemed to actually resent it.

I was a big reader even then and after finishing an assignment early, would have been more than happy to just sit quietly at my desk reading. However, I was told I couldn't do that, and would have to just sit quietly without a book or put my head down and rest. Or even a few times where she had me stand in the back of the classroom practicing bouncing a ball and catching it, because I was physically uncoordinated. Just before Christmas break, our class had a two-week long reading contest, where whichever student read the most books in that time would win a prize. We were allowed to borrow books to practice them at home, then we would have to demonstrate reading them at school the next day. I could have done three or four a day, but when that became clear, she changed the rules, just for me, that I could only take one book home per night. I still won, but my mom decided not to send me back after the holiday break.

I remember virtually none of this. That entire story comes from my mom's description of what happened years later. What do I remember? I remember that I won the contest, and that the prize was a wonderful little knitted "bookworm" bookmark with little google-eyes and wire antenna. I still have it sitting on my bookshelf, coiled around a souvenir from my trip to Mexico.

Funny you should ask, because I just recently became Grand Champion of my own copy of Super Mario Kart: Double Dash, so I am in the zone! This one is easy. Got to go with Dopey. That was my gut reaction, and I thought hard about it, to make sure I wasn't choosing him just because he's the most well-known of the dwarves. Yet after giving it some serious consideration, I'm sticking with him, and I'll tell you why.

Sleepy runs the serious risk of falling asleep at the wheel, and even if he can maintain consciousness for the entire duration of the race, his reaction times will be severely impaired, and as any veteran Kart racer knows, hair-trigger reflexes are critical.

Sneezy has a similar problem, in that sneezing during the race is likely to send him swerving right off the road. Furthermore, he would almost certainly be susceptible to an even higher number of sneezes than normal, from the dust and exhaust in the air during any high-stakes kart race.

Happy is too good-natured to win any kind of serious competition. He's too likely to let others win just out of kindness.

Bashful does not have the reckless self-confidence necessary to take any risks. He would take all the turns wide at low speed, while the other racers would blow right by him.

Doc and Grumpy are the two most likely to provide Dopey with serious competition, but even they would fall short. Grumpy is tough enough, and under that gruff exterior, he's one of the bravest of the dwarves. In a high-stakes race, he wouldn't falter, but unfortunately, his grumpy attitude would ultimately be his undoing, as he would likely spend a lot more time sulking than practicing and learning the tracks, so while he would certainly be a tough racer on the day, he simply would not have the preparation required to be the victor.

Doc is the reverse. He's the smartest of all the dwarves, he's got charisma and leadership. He would definitely be the one that would know each and every turn of the track and exactly the timing needed to leap away from the starting line ahead of the pack. Still, he has a tendency to over-think things. As with so many physically competitive things, the key is to really feel it. To be so intent on the race that everything else falls away and you are one with the kart, relying on instinct. Doc is too much in his head for that.

Which brings us to Dopey. It's a common misconception to assume Dopey is stupid. He's not. He's just silly and doesn’t care who knows it. Right off the bat, that allows him to give the race his all with no sense of irony whatsoever, which gives him an advantage before the racers even get to the track. Further, Dopey is actually pretty clever, and he knows when to take risks and how to get what he wants. Note how he comes up with the idea to stand on another dwarf's shoulders to dance with Snow White, how he sneaks back in line for a second and a third kiss. Like I said above, he's not stupid, just silly.

However, there are two real deciding factors. The first is that the other dwarves would underestimate him, because of his silliness, not realizing their mistake until they are failing to catch up to him on the home stretch. The second is that he has an inherent luckiness to him. It may be unscientific, but it's difficult to argue that it doesn't exist.

Now, the fickle nature of Kart Racing is such that anything can happen on the day, but all of those factors, taken together, make Dopey the clear frontrunner.

Below the Win/Loss Table, the match-ups for Monday's game have the winners highlighted in blue, with the score for each team following the team name.

I do have to add that the score for our first game, showing us as having lost 22-12 is only because the umpire mixed up which team was the home team, so they made us keep playing for some time after when the game should have been over. Since we were the away team for that game, the other team batted last, so when the time ran out during their at bat, that meant that once they had more runs than we did, the game should be over.

However, because the umpire apparently thought that we had another at bat, he made us keep going even after the other team reached 13 runs. Since we were confused and bummed because we had already lost, we were not playing that well, thus allowing the other team nine more runs that technically, they should not have gotten, but I suppose the will of the ump trumps the rule-book in these matters.

Likewise, the match-up between Connolly's and Road Rash suggests that the ten-run rule does not automatically come into play. Perhaps Road Rash had another at bat after Connolly's reached ten over. However, with our game last night, we were the home team, and therefore batting second, but when we reached 10 over, (17-7), the umpire called the game, even though there were still six minutes left on the clock. In theory, if they had gotten three outs with time still left on the clock, we would have started a new inning.

So it's not altogether clear to me how these rules are enforced. I guess I'll check the official rules, but in the meantime, I'm not going to worry too much about it.