Innerspace

#111

Watch "Claws for Alarm" at 2AM, in a dark house, occupied by mice and INSANE CATS CRASHING DOWNSTAIRS.

Lady MacBeth/Queen Margaret femslash. It'd be a scheming, sexy, Machiavellian, multiorgasmic sensation.

new meme, Things I'd Like to Do Every Day:

- meditate
- work out
- the Rosicrucian exercises
- the Kahne exercises
- memory exercises
- write
- sleep ~7 hours
- eat three healthy meals
- wear clean clothes
- shower
- drink a cup of wine
- drink eight cups of water
- have sex with someone I love
- have a good conversation

IT'S UP! IT'S UP! IT'S UP!

Drive.

Any one of you capable of throwing together a gallery page, a blurb-and-back-cover-photo page, a mainpage announcing our impending release, and an RSS-feed blog for the writer and artists?

Anyone meet the above criteria and owe me/want from me a favor?

Yesterday, we drove six hours, worked for five, and got to sleep at two. We woke up at six, did a fourteen-hour meeting, and are now tearing down. It'll take another three or four FIVE hours. Then we'll drive another two hours to the next shoot, show up by two, go to bed, get up at six, and work another twelve hours or more. Then we drive the six hours home. After that, three days of all-day special shoot.

We do this cycle sometimes five days in a row, rarely less than two, once a week, every week.

I made ten thousand dollars last year off this damn job.

I don't want to hear you bitch about your hours unless you're a fucking coal miner*, understand?

*or glych 

So, here comes the massive update for all three of you still reading.

The comic, Wooden Ships & Iron Women, is going forward. We're going to debut merchandise and build brand awareness at Fanime, May 22-25, and I got the first real pencil arts back yesterday. We've switched from one-a-month floppy comics to doing paperback graphic novels every six months, for several reasons:

1) Comic shops are dying *even faster* than bookstores, and graphic novels get on bookstore shelves.
2) Our audience is primarily fangirls and will spend the intervening time stewing in their own juices, if properly managed.
3) It relieves the first time artist and first time colorist of a graveyard work schedule such as is employed by Marvel.

We're working with world-famous glych to offset the cheerful naivete of publisher, editor, and artists. She has made me aware of exactly how little prepared I am for what I'm doing.

I've also been hired as head writer of a website called datesim.org. The details are kind of hush hush, but anyone who knows me knows what kind of work I usually do.  I'm trying to keep abreast of our onerous schedule (coincidentally, May 22, Fanime Con) and keep the writers moving, while doing my own writing myself. I...somewhat succeed. Somewhat.

Still employed videotaping government meetings.

I now have a new theme song.

It is "Help!"

It occurs to me that a lot of issues with American society would clear up like acne in a skin-cream commercial if the greater adult population read and understood "Field Guide to Critical Thinking" and "How to Lie Using Statistics."

I read this article as a link from the incomparable silveradept and something kept poking at my brain the whole time. High-stakes testing...teaching to the test as a mantra...schools as elimination rounds...something about all this sounded oddly familiar.

Then it hit me.

The American school system is morphing into the Chinese one. Due primarily to the same economic pressures that have formed the modern Chinese school system.

The Chinese school system starts with 小学, "little school" or elementary school, then 中学, middle/high school, and on to 大学, college. Each one is predicated on a regular series of severe exams. In first grade, you take the end-of-year tests...and if you do well, you get to go to a well-regarded school. If not, you go to a school a step down. It's a series of elimination rounds to insure only the People's Republic's best and brightest get the advantage of the best education. All students, by 中学, are segregated into classes by testing. The kids who've been doing badly on the tests for more than three rounds go into the small class at the back of the school, where they are essentially left to Rot in Hell until they are legally released to menial construction jobs and prostitution.

I can already hear the conservatives in the audience rising and applauding. Save it, it doesn't work nearly as well as you think it does.  China's No Child Left Behind gone wild results in a twofold problem: Widespread corruption and boldfaced lying, and school death spirals. Schools are judged by their test scores, and this is goddamn China, the land that starved itself to save face in the 1950s. Teachers are under enormous pressure to inflate grades. Insufficient As results in angry parents, angry administrators, and tight finances. In parts of south China, it also results in attention from the mob, because if Fat Chow's little boy fails his English class despite Fat Chow keeping three of his trusted men stationed outside his room to make sure he studies...well, that's your problem now. School death spirals are a fairly obvious extrapolation of the economics: if a school produces insufficient As and promotions to "good" schools, it loses prestige (and therefore parent revenues. Less bilk potential) and government funding. Without adequate materials, the teaching quality drops, and the school produces less A's...I've seen the results. Entire towns are economic ruins, because all of the students from the local schools tested out too early and ended up truck drivers and farmers because Beijing didn't want to waste any resources on them after they've clearly proven their unworthiness.

The impact on students is even worse. Chinese pedagogy has been based around the test since London, Paris, and Venice were mud huts by the water. Modernization has not changed it much. The idea is to memorize and regurgitate the textbook as quickly and completely as possible, thought optional and possibly suspicious. This has a number of profound effects. I've met children who can write the complete works of Shakespeare, rote, from memory, and who blushed and stammered the Chinese for "no speak English" when addressed with "hello." These students are from the A classrooms, receiving everything Beijing and the school district have to give, they did well on the last elimination round of tests.

Students, in order to study effectively, live at school from 中学 forward, in fortress-like compounds far from town, family, or any distractions. Their dorms are simple, hold four to a single dorm (I've never been able to figure out how they all *fit*), are monitored for inappropriate behavior with the opposite sex (even in 大学), and come with a washing machine, bunks, and some desks. Students go to class six days a week, usually from about six (morning exercises) to six in the evening. After that, they study in the cafeteria, the classrooms, or small, isolated cubicles without distractions. They also do this on Sunday. Memorizing the book.

The average Chinese student, at age of 22, can sew, cook, do simple repairs, and perform many other basic tasks of running a household. He or she has also never had extended contact with the opposite sex and may still believe they have cooties. In deadly earnestness. There's important things to learn, apparently, when one has time to oneself.

The students' health is visibly affected...I've seen baldings, outbreaks of eczema, and incapacitating trembling emerge from the stress related to the almighty Test. Then there's the legendary, and quite deadly, "flu" that goes around campuses all over the country, killing students who receive their test scores in the mail. Yes, it happens.

The Chinese education system has high standards and expects children to meet them. It is quite accountable, teachers' jobs are safe and reasonably paid, and is terribly efficient and using the scarce resources available to Beijing in the most effective places.

It's also, to American eyes, inhumane and a bitter, bitter joke. The best students are the students who sit down, shut up, think as told, and ask no questions, to a degree even the most imaginative hippie commentator cannot begin to imagine. They're the hypothetical "hyper-disciplined student" from this article, cranked up to eleven. The worst students are housed together and forgotten, and reminded every day that they are failures at life, fated to ignoble and underpaid work and short, nasty, brutish lives because they got a question wrong on a test in the first grade.

In this time of budget crisis, economic downturn, and focus on The Basics, we need to tighten our belts and make sure we use what scant monies we have on the things that students really need. In America, that doesn't include social studies, art, music, science, or comprehension of reading material. It barely involves math, because the best way to teach math is by (drumroll please) rote memorization. There's an anti-intellectual current running throughout our country, a side-effect of our fervent and fanatical egalitarianism. But there is hope. If you shuddered at the description I gave of Chinese education, it means you have some concept of a student asking questions, of Socratic dialogue, of experiential learning, and other inheritances of the Renaissance humanist model of education. That means that a more whole, more involved, and ultimately more effective, if less efficient, kind of education isn't dead in this country. Times are tough, nobody denies that. For schools, times have always been tough. But it's a war out there, and it will be won by skirmishes: finding extra funds to keep the music teacher on staff, pooling resources for a co-op math tutor or Spanish teacher, keeping the science curriculum focused on critical thinking and logic, rather than superstitious "theory" given equal time.

What are the Basics? Intellectual freedom. Analytical thought. The Renaissance man. Self-expression and self-discipline. Let's get back to the Basics. Fuck the Almighty Exam.

Scattered ideas for a submission to the yuri issue of Shousetsu Bang Bang...Jenny standing on the sea strand, staring into the stoney grey sky, Odysseus and Penelope and forgiveness, Tannhauser gone back to Venusberg, the midnight sun and dead-tired men fishing for the whale, and the wide eyes of a worn woman who's just seen the rose grow from ice.

I have no idea where I'm going with this.

Went running today. I read an article at ZenHabits and started with the second workout. I got...maybe three or four minutes of running before I decided the vertigo, chest-constricting, and tunnel vision were getting a wee bit too intense.

I really suck at running.

This is...oddly satisfying. She seems like a stern teacher, running, and a royal road to the Strenuous Life. I'm so bad at it, and it whips me so hard, that any improvement would be clear as day. I know I'll get better.

Especially as we, the writer's group, decided I'm going to Fanime as the half-naked druid character who's built like a young Harrison Ford.

*koff*

Calisthenics tomorrow morning, running tomorrow noon. Und so weiter. If I can manage to get the tan and calluses back, that'd be great.

My wife's name. Whoever she is, I would name a world after her.

...aaaaand she sucked a valve, and needs a complete engine rebuild.

In the words of Kane: Wah wahhh.

Might have to  blog that.

I like my women like I like my cars: Hot, hippie, and able to go for thirty years.

The VW bug that the old man, the other old man, three mechanics and I have all labored on for more than a year...she's up and running, and damn is she fun to drive! The front two thirds are a 1973 Super Beetle (one year under the smog requirements!) and the back third is a 1972 Beetle. The Old Man found her in some kid's garage and bought her on the spot for five hundred. I limped the poor girl home and she sat for a year while we redid the brakes, five times, fixed all the things the other guys did wrong, replaced parts that were installed at Wulfberg in 1973, requiring spot welds to remove, took the engine out, three times, and completely revamped the fuel system. I wanted to give up more times than I can count, first from fear, then from frustration, then from despair. The only times I kept going, some of the time, was because the old man kicked me in the rear. The stereo still doesn't work, but screw it...I like my little grey car, with her stock aircooled engine and her black leather interior and her lucky penny and her weld spots. I like her a lot.

Her name is Agatha. :D

Tell them, absolutely, and as soon as possible. Lanced wounds will weep, but they heal clean. To suffer in ignorance or silence is Hell.

"As more of the physical world comes under man's understanding, and his powers increase exponentially, he will come to shape more and more of the universe to his own liking. More and more, the most vital sciences in our lives won't be physics, or chemistry, or even genetics. They will be anthropology, sociology, and psychology. As man more perfectly can shape the universe to himself, it will become increasingly important to know exactly what that shape is."
- David Snow

"I know what you are thinking. Did he drop all the atomic bombs on Japan. Tell you the truth, I don't know. I forgot to ask my advisors. So now you got to ask yourself "Do I feel lucky?". Well, do you, punk?"
- Dirty Harry Truman to Joseph Stalin.

I've been calling this my chance to be a proper teenager.

Now I remember why being a teenager sucks.

I've been kicking around local politics since I ran a box of fixed votes at age of six. That was the election when the new mayor purged all the appointed councils, commissions, and boards and then repeopled them with his own batch of Honorable Citizens. And from those first few council meetings, and all the others that followed, it seems there's five and only five politicians in America...they just wear different bodies. They all fall on a dedication axis, how hard they stick to their guns. I split it up like this:

The first breed of homo electus is the one I call the Knight Templar. He came in riding a high horse on one issue or a bunch of them...saving the shoulder-band snail, saving our children from the ravages of the demon reefer, bringing in Law'n'Order and beating up black guys, it really doesn't matter. The Knight Templar will not bend, will not break, will not compromise his ideals...at least, not the ones he thinks are important. What he will break are all the rules of decency, he'll bend all the laws of kindness. He's not opposed to taking money from the Right sort of people, or hypocritically flying to Washington to complain about the carbon footprint, or even sabotaging another politician's campaign out of petty revenge when the other fellow voted No on their item just for the honorary minority. I've seen all three. A lot of times, these people see themselves, and can be, the voice in the wilderness or the one member on staff of the opposition. Usually, though, they're loathsome, godawful cancers tearing up the government's insides.

The second breed is what I call the White Knight. Like the Knight Templar, the White Knight's motivated by an ideological position or issue...but he's also bound by decency. He's willing to swap votes and play ball, he keeps his word whenever he can, but he never, ever loses sight of his issue...not until it's settled, and then he keeps a sharp eye to keep his gains. The lower you go, closer you get to the bottom-feeders of the pyramid of government, the more White Knights you see. You see most of them on the minor advisory councils and boards and commissions of your town, wherever you are, or your county. Don't let them filibuster, you'll die of boredom, but they're otherwise pretty good people. The biggest danger for the White Knight is that he'll take his fall and turn into the Knight Templar, corrupted by bitterness at being alone and outgunned, or by a cheap fix to a hard problem, or by a jilted love life.

The third is on the other end of the dedication scale, a man I call Captain Renault. Captain Renault is a reasonable man, following reasonable ends by reasonable means. He's trying to do best by himself and his constituency, usually but not always in that order. His operating principle is self-interest, usually enlightened. He trades votes and peddles influence, he plays the game, and he offers stability and rationality in the often hot-headed game of thrones. He's the centrist that keeps getting elected, the one who quietly raises taxes when it needs to happen and the one who loudly lowers them when that needs to happen. He's also, much like his namesake, very fond of crying that he is shocked, SHOCKED, to find gambling going on in this establishment. Don't hate him too terribly much, you need him...you know where he's coming from and you can always guess what he'll do. And besides, he's the most numerous kind.

The fourth, on the far end of the line, is the man I euphemize as being Bought For Bacon Grease. He's been bought and paid for, by some special interest, by a machine, or by anything that wanders in front of him and smells like cash. It's rare he keeps his word, and rarer that he stays bought. But he's so useful to so many people that he keeps getting kicked around, and he's got to have some base cunning in there because he manages to hide his nature from his electorate or keep them in lock-step to vote early and vote often. This is the man who asks for a five minute break before a big vote, "to consult with his advisors." He's affably corrupt and, if the Knight Templar is a cancer, this man's a bad case of herpes...incurable, painful, prone to bursting open on the surface, but treatable.

The last kind is a special creature. I call him Jefferson Smith, after Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Jeff Smith reads the staff reports, drives out to the land under discussion to have a look for himself, and votes according to his conscience. His conscience is generally simple, straightforward, almost dumb: What's the right thing to do here? Does this smell funny? The needs of the many. Don't be selfish. Everything he learned about voting, he learned in kindergarten. He's a tricky customer like that, and tends to frighten other members of homo electus. His voting goes all over the map, wherever he generally thinks the right thing to do is. He loves to pull tricks like "just one more question..." or a filibuster or the old Socrates, "I don't quite understand this, could someone explain it?" If you find one, and they're neither rare nor hard to spot, keep an eye on him...he'll be the most entertaining and most heartening. I'm proud to say that, when my father was appointed to sit in a Planning Commission chair, he was a Jefferson Smith.

Now when voting season comes around, which is when most of you are actually paying attention, any member of homo electus starts acting funny. It's their estrus cycle, their mating season, and they all go into a frenzy. They can pass themselves as another kind of politico entirely, and usually do. The more amateurish pretend to be Jefferson Smith, always a crowd pleaser...but no help at all to him if he actually makes it. And it's the same mating call all the others are making, and they're all doing it badly. More experienced or canny politicians tend to assume the guise of the White Knight of some vague ideology ("the environment," say, or "public decency," or "law and order") as the Man With A Plan. A lot of Captain Renaults don't bother to disguise themselves at all,  presenting themselves as middle-of-the-road types who're making no grand promises but can keep the ship afloat. But any good politician eventually learns to present himself as any or all of the above, depending on the occasion.

So how can you tell out one race of homo electus from another when they have this fun color-changing gimmick right around mating season? By watching the voting record and their behavior in their natural habitat, in the chambers. Jefferson Smith will vote his conscience, Captain Renault his constituency, the White Knight his ideology, the Man Bought for Bacon Grease himself, and the Knight Templar his fanaticism. White Knights and Templars would seem hard to tell apart, but the ones who are brokering deals on other issues, compromising on some votes, but still making passionate stands on the things he cares about are the White Knights. The ones who refuse to play ball on anything and won't give an inch are the Templars. As to the others, if you find yourself saying "I don't like it, but that's fair," he's Captain Renault. If you can see the strings, he's the Man Bought for Bacon Grease. And if you see Jefferson Smith, vote for him.

"Lobbyists: The sad, souless clandestine, unfuckable cheerleaders of the democratic process."
- Jon Stewart

I should really start blogging about the meetings I went to.