And You Wonder Why They Hate Us
So let’s picture this act of terrorism: someone kills your father with a remote car bomb, blowing his vehicle to splinters. As people rush to try to pull your father out of the burning wreckage, the terrorists deliberately fire upon the people trying to save him.
Later, weeping with grief, you attend your dad’s funeral – only to find that the terrorists are waiting outside with rocket launchers to kill the rest of your family.
Sound horrific? Too terrible for fiction?
Well, it’s exactly what we’re doing.
Yeah, recent reports have shown that the US is deliberately targeting funerals and the people who show up at the scene of an attack. Now, we’re too cool to do it with humans, we do it all remotely with missile drones, but hey! I’m sure the people in Afghanistan draw a fine distinction when they’re standing among the body parts of their beloved.
Some conservative ninny will doubtlessly point out that this is an effective strategy. After all, terrorism tends to run in families, and the folks trying to rescue known terrorists from fires are often friends and allies. And as a cold, bloodless strategy, I’m sure it does kill some extra criminals.
But we, one hesitates to remind you, are supposed to be the fucking good guys… Or at least that’s what we claim. I’m sure it is an effective tactic to blow people up at a funeral. But “effective tactics” are not the stuff upon which morality is based – in fact, quite the opposite. Morality is specifically about not taking the easy route, even when you probably could get away with shoplifting that CD or slapping your kid. Just because we can catch a few extra bad guys at a funeral by destroying their family does not mean that it’s morally defensible in any way.
Plus, you know, if the end goal is to stop terrorism, I find it hard to believe that we won’t get more recruits from those who survive and tell everyone exactly what’s going on. It’s easy for us to ignore this shit, because we don’t have to live with it, but the people over there do. There’s gossip. Gossip like “By the way, did you see how they killed those nice kids who were trying to save that guy’s life? They didn’t even know what was going on, they just saw a car on fire, and WHAM.”
Yeah, you’re sure going to convince them America is the land of the free with those tactics.
There are some lines you should not cross. This is one of them.
The Seven Words That Help Me Listen
I tend to be a good person to talk to, if you’re in trouble. A large part of the reason for that is because I don’t get personally involved.
Some people, you talk to about your problems with your Significant Other and they immediately go, “Oh, what a bastard!” – and then are poisoned for the rest of their life against this jerk. And s/he may not have even been a jerk, but you just had a bad day where you were taking things to personally, but no – your friend believes that to be a friend, they must take your side in everything. Your SO hurt you, so they’re a jerk, and they’ll remind you what a jerk they are at every opportunity from now.
(Admittedly, some people love having their every irritation completely validated to the point where they adore the friends who’ll just jump right in and take their sides every time. I do not trust any of these people. I want wise friends who will counsel and contradict me upon occasion. And besides, the friends who agree with you on everything are usually the clingy ones who are trying to remind you of what mean, useless gits all of your other friends are so that you can ditch them and spend all of your time with them, them, them.)
Anyway, when I listen, the advice I give is always predicated on the same seven words:
“If what you say is true, then…”
Because I don’t know what you say is true. I believe that you believe it, but even with your best intents you can still misread, misunderstand, and just plain goof up. What I’m hearing right now is not the truth, but rather one aspect of the truth that may turn out to be completely blinkered.
So I give advice on what people are telling me, with the caveat that what I’m saying only works if you’re on the money. If he’s really being that mean to you, then you should go. If she’s truly that disinterested in sex, then you have to decide whether it’s something you can live with. If they’re still in love with you and you think you can make it work, then you should give it another shot.
None of them are necessarily true, but you can only act on what you perceive. Maybe you’re being too thin-skinned, maybe you’re approaching her in a way that turns her off, maybe you’re being too optimistic about the love they still have for you.
I ask questions that help them zero in on reality, hopefully, but I don’t take anyone’s story completely at face value – not even my wife’s. There’s always room for error. There’s always the other person’s side, which usually has some grains of rebuttal in it.
That’s not a bad thing. But it means when I chat with someone, I’m not seeing the truth, but rather one bit of it. So when I walk away, I’ve merely collected a data point, nothing more, nothing less.
A Little Help Could Keep You Warm At Night
So my friend Shadow – she’s the one who tends to the Love Threads – finds herself in dire financial straits after her husband has been laid off. And she needs some financial assistance, but is willing to work for it.
Thankfully, she’s also a wonderful, wonderful knitter. One of the joys of having her on my friends’ list is seeing her projects go up – projects like this:
Or this:
Or even these:
Then I’d suggest hiring her as your knitter, if you can – she works fast, as far as I can tell, and obviously does some beautiful work. You’ll help her out, and get some really gorgeous craftsmanship in return – if I ever went outside, I’d be on this in a heartbeat. Details are here, or just scan her journal to see more samples of her stuff.
The Egotism of Teeth
On Friday, I asked whether it was creepier to kiss someone with dead bone tissue in his mouth (like me) or to have sex with someone who’d used irradiated flesh to improve his cock size. And one of the most common responses was, “Making your cock bigger isn’t necessary. But Ferrett, you needed teeth.”
I don’t know that I did.
Yes, having all eight of my front teeth out was devastating to my self-image and ego – but medically, it wasn’t necessary to have new teeth in. I could chew fine, with the exception of foods like spaghetti, and I’d adjusted to this now and toothless world. The only reason I would need new teeth is that it was humiliating whenever I smiled.
And it was humiliating, believe you me. The soft lisp of my toothless mouth. The noises I made when I ate. The way I had to hold my lips when I smiled so as not to reveal the gaps therein. All a constant, low-grade drain on my self-esteem.
But did I need them? No. It was pure vanity, those teeth, and to this day I feel bad about spending $8,000 to just feel good about myself.
The case could be made that that $8,000 was necessary to a better life – which is fine! But then you have to extend the same courtesy to zombie cock guy, who was paranoid about his dick size… and maybe truthfully so. Some penises are very small. I’ve heard women making fun of ex-boyfriends with small dicks, and thanked God I was not in the “notably teeny” department. And I’m not saying that I’d undergo surgery to embiggen Little Elvis here, but maybe if I’d had a different family or a different set of genetics, I might have.
As men, we’re supposed to either be radically insecure of, or ragingly confident, in the size of our shvanstucker. And any attempt to alter that size is seen as a sign of weakness, regardless of the initial state of the penis or the sexual experiences of that man with his small cock or the constant barrage of “WOMEN LOVE BIG DICKS” messages that, for right or for wrong, men are subjected to. And while I’m not mature enough to suppress my chuckles over a guy buying pills in a vain attempt to swell the worm, I am understanding enough to not actively condemn it.
I had a thing that humiliated me, once. And it was a little more out in the open, but I spent years and a significant chunk of savings trying to correct it. So if I were to sneer at all the guys who struggle for a larger penis, I’d have to do it without these teeth.
Turning The Corner
So I’ve spent the last four hours in the final revisions of the first five chapters of my novel. And there’s a strange finality to this.
I mean, don’t get me wrong; I’ve still got 90,000 words to condense, edit, and rewrite. But the first chapters of the novel are the most important – agents routinely ask for the first three chapters, and if those aren’t good, you might as well toss the rest of the novel away.
And it’s done. I’ve got a little more to do in terms of reading it aloud to check for grievous errors… But that’s a minor thing. I’m not going to change the content. I’m not going to change the prose. If the novel’s going to sell anywhere, effectively this is the part that sells it.
I’m strangely comfortable.
Look, I could make this novel a lot better if I gave another, oh, seven drafts, but I don’t have the energy for that. What I’ve got is what I think of as “That Borders feeling.”
Because back when I worked for Borders, I was in charge of the New Media department, which meant that I was trying to sell CD-ROMs in a book store. It didn’t go well. Unlike books, computer software was high theft and low profit margin and required a lot of hand-holding to sell. I poured my entire life into trying to make New Media a profitable segment of Borders, but after a year it was pretty self-evident that it was folding.
And I was okay. Because I’d done everything I could do. I’d given all there was to give – and wrung dry of anything left to chance, I’d be all right if it collapsed. Not happy, but content.
That’s where I stand tonight. This opening segment’s been rewritten probably seven times now, and if it’s not good enough, well, I don’t know how to make it better. If I can’t get the novel published, well, it’s not for lack of trying.
So here I am, on a Friday night, looking at 9,500 words and feeling – well, “proud” is not the right term. I’m satisfied. And that’s not a bad place to be.