Another Ghost Walks These Halls

The traumatic thing I alluded to the other day (10/17), well, the person who had triggered that died. I found out late yesterday. So, she died two days after I saw her. Out of respect for the person's privacy, I won't go into details, but I definitely can say that having been in the same room with that person two days ago, death was very clearly in the room. And a bad death it was. My stepdad would always say that death was either the fulfillment of your dreams (assuming paradise and afterlife) or, if nothing else, the cessation of pain and suffering. In the case of this person, I can only assume the latter, but it sucks, because that person was suffering pain for months before her end, and the collective failure of her significant other and her family to take care of her in that time hangs like a shadow over her last days. She was semi-friends with Exene, and had called Exene for help the other day, and Exene had done so, but had needed my help, too, because she wasn't strong enough to move the dying woman, so I helped. I ran into her significant other the day before yesterday, and he'd thanked me for helping out in an "Aw, shucks" kind of way, and I just choked out "Yes, it's a terrible scene." I wanted to ask him why he wasn't there, but didn't. The whole situation was bad, and I can't talk about it without going into a lot of context and back story, but I couldn't help but feel like the building had gotten itself another ghost with the passing of this woman. I don't believe in ghosts, but the pain and suffering of that woman haunts the hallways, all the same. I walk by their apartment and I grimace, because I can feel that. And since they have a child who is a year older than B1, who used to be a playmate of his, it compounds the suffering -- I can only imagine what that kid is feeling, how much emotional damage she's suffered from her father's criminal neglect (or, at best grotesque bungling) of the welfare of her mother, and how that all shakes out. The woman is dead, and I imagine they'll move out of there; I can't imagine them staying in that tiny apartment, now, in the wake of this.

I'm a compassionate soul, and my heart bleeds. I freely admit that. I feel every emotion keenly; I think it's part of my own artistic temperament. It informs my work, the ability to feel things keenly. But in matters of suffering and anguish, it's a double-edged blade, because I feel agony as much as the rest of the emotional palette. And to see what I saw the other day, to know that a person was in such dire straits, and with only so much I could do, it's haunting. Like I said, a ghost. Ghosts haunt that way.

Howling

I think we're going to get hammered, winterwise, this year.

At least here in Chicago. It's been nasty all day, big-time howling winds, rain. A late fall monsoon, practically. Fierce. Seems like it's a herald of imminent winter! I was walking downtown and the wind gusts were nearly strong enough to stop me, which usually means the gust are at least 60 mph. People's umbrellas were pulsating, hyperextending and snapping back into shape, and then back again. Raincoats are a must in Chicago; umbrellas are always dicey.

Splashy

Wow, it's getting kinda yucky tonight. I saw this weather bulletin, too...

Lakeshore Flood Warning issued October 18 at 1:58PM CDT expiring October 18 at 10:00PM CDT by NWS Chicago ...LAKESHORE FLOOD WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 3 PM WEDNESDAY TO 4 PM CDT THURSDAY... THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN CHICAGO HAS ISSUED A LAKESHORE FLOOD WARNING...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 3 PM WEDNESDAY TO 4 PM CDT THURSDAY. * WAVES...WAVES WILL BUILD TO 12 TO 16 FEET WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON...BUILDING FURTHER TO 17 TO 22 FEET WEDNESDAY NIGHT. WAVES WILL GRADUALLY SUBSIDE TO LESS THAN 15 FEET BY LATE THURSDAY AFTERNOON. * IMPACTS...LARGE AND BATTERING WAVES WILL RESULT IN FLOODING OF AREAS NEAR THE LAKE...LIKELY WORSE THAN WHAT WAS SEEN WITH THE LATE SEPTEMBER STORM A FEW WEEKS AGO. WAVES COULD RESULT IN FLOODING ALONG THE MORE SUSCEPTIBLE PORTIONS OF LAKE SHORE DRIVE IN CHICAGO.

For sure, after getting creamed by those waves the other week, I'm going to stay the hell off the lakeshore path. Those waves in September were bad, so if this is worse, NFW am I going there. I mean, 17 to 22 foot waves?? Whoa!

I'm making a hodge-podge soup tonight -- using up various components I had around, like a big onion, some oyster mushrooms, fresh baby spinach, spices, and so forth. It's making my place smell so good right now. Must be patient, let it simmer. I love soup in the fall, and I love not wasting food, so soup is win-win!

Wakeup Call

Some drunken Chad woke me up. Thump thump thump on door across the hall. I went to the peephole to check. The guy was drunkenly trying to key into neighbor's apartment. When his key wouldn't work, he tried to get into my place, threw a shoulder on the door. I opened the door and the guy stepped back, startled, muttered "Oh, shit." I said "Wrong floor. What floor are you looking for?" and he said "MY floor." The guy's pants were half-off, and he'd pissed himself, clearly. I said "Well, it's not this floor." Then he tried my neighbor's door a couple more times before he lurched down the hallway.

Laundryman

Doing laundry this morning. Woo hoo! I put it off long enough. I don't honestly mind laundry; but I do tend to put it off, just because it's always a joust over getting to the machines at the right time and not having to contend with other tenants. Fortunately, as an early riser, I'm able to get down there in the morning, when it is (usually) clear.

Yesterday was traumatizing. I'm tempted to write about it, but shouldn't. Just end-of-life issues stuff, a dying person, and how one deals with that, or doesn't, and the boundaries of one's moral responsibility. I can't really write about it, it's far too fresh in my mind, too haunting. But I was definitely traumatized. I looked at the abyss, and the abyss looked right back at me. I'm not even being dramatic; I am calling it exactly as I saw it.

(taking a deliberate emotional step back)

B2's birthday is this week. Little man slowly becoming big boy. I'm going to have to punt his birthday present until the weekend, though, because of schedules and what-not. That'll be okay; he'll get extra birthday.

Fridave

I have the boys tonight. They are very happy to have a Daddy Night for Friday. They're watching "Wall*E" at the moment, all snuggled in with blankets and what-not, keeping warm.

Autumn chill is definitely here. I'm in a sweater and some flannel jammies, keeping warm. Brrr!

I may catch "The Thing" prequel tomorrow at a matinee. Will let you know how it is.

Fall always gets me in Writing Mode in earnest. I get antsy if I don't work on something. So, obviously, I will!

B2 likes to mix and match Lego Minifigures. Love to see what he comes up with.

Left Out

It's ironic that the Republican most-hated by the right-wingdings among the GOP's Brimstone Base, Mitt Romney, is easily the biggest threat to Obama. Because a mere conservative like Romney can stand just a whisker to Obama's right, which might confuse enough voters to thinking that there's little difference between them. In truth, yeah, there really is little to separate Romney from Obama, and that's largely Obama's fault, by his absolute refusal to tack anywhere near the left. What's worse is that HR Clinton was even more conservative than Obama, so the Democratic voters had a choice between somewhat conservative (Obama) and conservative (HR Clinton). And, if Romney wins the GOP nomination, the "choice" again will be between somewhat conservative and conservative. Lovely. Bringing yesterday's solutions to today's problems. What a mess.

Cannot believe B2's 6th birthday is next week. Oh, man. Little man will be SIX. Good lord. Am amazed that Halloween is right around the bend, too. That all feels so unreal to me.

Pezidential

Next year's presidential election is going to be a debacle. What our country actually needs is a New Deal-style massive, Keynesian spending spree to get the millions of unemployed Americans working, get our demand-driven economy surging again (keep in mind: 70% of our economy is driven by consumer spending). This is what it needs. Those folks need jobs. Tax rates on the top 1% must go up. This is what will get our economy rolling again.

However, this is not going to happen. Instead, both parties will offer non-solutions to real problems. The Democrats will ape Republican economic thinking, leashed to supposed deficit hawks (which really translates into folks who don't like social spending -- since deficit hawks never balk at Pentagon spending and bank bailouts). And the Republicans will continue their "more of the same" stuff -- lowering taxes on the top 1%, eliminating regulation of industry, and outright subversion and suppression of non-Republican voters through intimidation and actual disenfranchisement.

Anyway, neither party actually will offer a way out of this mess. Our country absolutely needs new thinking. You know we're in trouble when actual moderate/centrist thinking qualifies as "left-wing radicalism" in DC. That's how skewed our country's become. Here's a little graphic:

[Left]=======================[Center]=====["Left"]=====["Center"]=====[Right]

Our system has an ideological ratchet in place -- we are allowed to hew ever rightward, but when anybody tries to tack left, the ratchet locks. It's impermissible. Anyway, the false centrists are really conservatives, the false leftists are really right-moderates. And everybody to the left of those right-moderates (Obama's one of those, btw -- and he gets called a "socialist"), anybody to the left of Obama (and that's a lot of people) is completely left out of the political system.

That's a reality not lost on those Occupy Wall Street (OWS) folks. They get it. They understand that they've been left behind. It's not like the astroturf, reactionary billionaire-financed false populism of the Tea Party (who are really just the shock troops for the GOP). Rather, OWS is something very different. It is a movement that actually doesn't have a place within the "Beltway Consensus" diagrammed above.

Sure, the Democrats will pay lip service to them. Hell, they have to, in order to feign some kind of credibility with these folks. But today's Democratic Party is completely captive to Wall Street and the banking industry; they will have exactly nothing to offer OWS except empty words of support.

And the Republicans can't even pretend to have anything to say to them, because it's so clear that they are hostile to actual, practicing democracy. They are marching along with "War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength." as their political maxims, not even understanding just how Orwellian they are. Maybe some of their elite opinion leaders get it, but they have their own rank-and-file completely snowed.

So, going into 2012, we have a country on cruise control while driving toward a cliff. Barring a sweeping voting out of the Republicans and a massive change of heart on the part of the Democrats, neither party will offer a thing to improve things for the majority of Americans. And that is going to create armies of pissed-off, desolate, desperate people. Each election after 2012 is going to get messier and messier, until there is a proper political sea change and new thinking is brought in (or old thinking that has been disregarded because it challenges economic wrongthink).

Mulling

Now, I'd already complained about the random and hard-to-believe Dualla suicide, and about the shitty ending to "Galactica." But then I realized that what they should've done to end the series would be to do a fade-out with Dualla killing herself.

That would've ended the series on a perfect note. It would've completely outraged their fans, but it would've been so worth it. "Earth" is a disappointment, everybody's sad, Dualla shoots herself, fade to black. Break for commercial. And the commercial with the above is pretty unintentionally funny. The end.

I concur

Worst Ending in SF TV, Ever.

I agree with this, too...

Renowned fantasy author George R.R. Martin expressed his extreme disgust with the series' writers for producing this ending, saying on his livejournal: "Battlestar Galactica ends with 'God Did It.' Looks like somebody skipped Writing 101, when you learn that a deus ex machina is a crappy way to end a story...Yeah, yeah, sometimes the journey is its own reward. I certainly enjoyed much of the journey with BSG...but damn it, doesn't anybody know how to write an ending any more? Writing 101, kids. Adam and Eve, God Did It, It Was All a Dream? I've seen Clarion students left stunned and bleeding for turning in stories with those endings."

I think the "Danger, Will Robinson" moment to the show really came with some mix of the Final Five and, worst of all, when Ellen Tigh was revealed at the Final Fifth. Ellen "What the Fuck?" Tigh? She's the Fifth Cylon? Who could possibly give a shit about that? When that happened, I was like "Oh, no...." and it spoke volumes of what was coming down the pike. And really, the whole Final Five (hate that term for them, btw -- makes them sound like a playoff in basketball) plotline was a whole lot of nothing -- none of those Final Fivers really did a hell of a lot to justify the buildup surrounding them. Especially since all but two of them basically continue on being what they already were beforehand, more or less. Weak. The story got hijacked by the God(tm) shit and it gutted and filleted the story. And what's Starbuck? Is she a goddamned ghost? Or another of those fucking "angels" that get touted? Whatever. Lame. Weak. Bad.

Nothing worse than a bad case of Writer's Hand intruding on a story. I always avoid this in my stories, because it's annoying to have something happen because the Writer wants it to, or is at wit's end and cops out with "Because I said so." Lame. Some serious writer's fatigue must have set in on some level, or else the writers wrote themselves into a corner and decided to pull the ripcord and hope the cop-out wasn't caught by the majority of viewers/fans.

Seeing that ending made me very glad I didn't watch the show real-time, or I'd have been hugely pissed and would've felt cheated. Even when they were pimping out God(tm) in the story, I kept hoping that we'd see the  robot God(tm) as some grand AI (and, let's be honest, the closest we'd ever come to a god in this world is an AI -- the combination of omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence that equals "God" would be a singular quality of a powerful AI).

But, instead, it's kept all mystical and behind the curtain, subsuming the entire storyline and all of the characters, scuttling "Galactica." Whatever. Big disappointment. The first two seasons are solid. Third season is entertaining, before Hell's Bells being sounding and drowning everything out.

Galactica

So, I'm nearly at the end of the remake of "Battlestar Galactica," and have mostly enjoyed the series, even when the heavy hand of the writers intrudes here and there. In fact, when the characters talk about this great force manipulating lives and events, I half expect one of them to invoke this concept of "The Writer" -- this unseen entity who can make anything happen in their universe.

One thing I didn't like was the suicide of Dualla. I didn't particularly like that character -- she was just sort of there, didn't really do that much, but was part of the character scenery, for the most part. All the same, her suicide just came out of nowhere, which, on the face of things, was, of course, shocking. As intended. Like somebody lobbing a firecracker at you for no good reason. But that was part of the problem with that -- no good reason. Dualla had always been a stoic character, had always done her duty by the group, through thick and thin. And, of course, when the grand disappointment hits the fleet near the end, everybody is hit strongly by it. Just the same, her reaction to it felt contrived and I didn't buy the motivation for it. Was she really THAT disappointed that she'd take her own life? We don't get to see it in her characterization. No hint of the disappointment. In fact, she goes on a date with her estranged husband, Apollo, just 45 minutes before she commits suicide. And, at least there, she gives no indication of her intentions. She seems to be happy and at peace.

So, in light of the plot vacuum that claimed Dualla (maybe the actress had another gig coming up, and asked to be written out of the story?) I'm going to believe that her date with Apollo shattered her faith in humanity, and in a just universe. It wasn't the disappointment of Earth that hit her; no, it was Apollo's staggering lameness that made her realize that her life was no longer worth living. Of course, this is a darkly comic counter-read of what actually happened, but it at least offers some satisfying cause-and-effect for me.

I mean, everything Apollo touches, he destroys:

1. Blackbird stealth Viper prototype
2. Battlestar Pegasus
3. Lieutenant Dualla
4. The Quorum (just because his machinations with them ultimately led to their liquidation by Tom Zarek -- who, ironically enough, is played by Richard Hatch, the ORIGINAL Apollo)

I'm sure I can add to this list on a second viewing, watching for it.

Running, Man

I had funky dreams last night, but fortunately for you, Gentle Reader, I've forgotten them (since there's nothing less meaningful than recounting one's dreams to a stranger). But at the time, it was at least entertaining, and I'd remembered them when I first woke up, but have since forgotten them, naturally.

This is Chicago Marathon weekend, so Exene is focused on that, of course. She asked if I could cover with the boys, and I was only too happy to oblige with that, since I love any time with the boys, and they were stoked, too, psyched about "Daddy Weekend." I just told Exene that I wanted to be sure to get equivalent weekend day swappage at some point. Have to keep a keen eye on that, because she's more inclined to take than give, and if I don't keep tabs on that, I end up getting screwed over. But she's been reasonably good about reciprocity on that stuff, and she knows I'm doing her a big favor by minding the boys so she can indulge her hobby heedlessly, so there you have it. Hopefully the weather'll be good this weekend, so I can get the boys out and about.

Found a dollar coin yesterday on my bike ride to work. Woo hoo!

Up and At'em

My brain likes to get me up nice and early. Always has. Doesn't matter how little sleep I might've had the night before (and really, I had about 7 hours of sleep, so I can't complain). But I just always wake up early.

I'm out of sorts lately. Bleah. Hard to put words to it, exactly. Just a bit off the mark of late, not in the sweet spot. Might need to whip out the dreaded List(tm) and start doing that, just to tick things off my list and get'em done. I hate doing that, but feel like I might need to, just in order to get the stuff done, to know it's done, all of that. I'm already in the "My Lord, it's almost Christmas" frame of mind, and we're in early October. Argh! This year was surreal. Not as dire as past years, but still a trippy kind of year. I got a lot of stuff done, but it's still kind of wild to think of that.

I've been craving biscotti lately, may make some in the next few weeks. I used to have some great recipes for them, but have lost them to the sands of time. So, I grabbed three other recipes I found online that looked good, may make those.

Had this weird, unsettled feeling about the country, too -- like is this how the country felt decades before the Civil War? Like irreconcilable differences of national opinion? Thankfully, Americans are likely far, far too lazy to actually engage in another civil war -- can you imagine that? I keep getting my brain around the notion of evil as "militant ignorance." That just feels so spot-on to me. Militant ignorance -- "Don't know, don't wanna know. And I'll shoot anybody for asking. Love it or leave it. Zero tolerance." And so on. Ugly, empty sentiments. That's what we're up against as a society. America's seen itself toppled from the pinnacle of power -- our generation (Gen X) is entering middle age in the age of America's decline. I read the other day that 40 million Americans are illiterate, and something like 50 million more are functionally illiterate -- ~90 million Americans are illiterate? Holy fucking SHIT. This is a national disgrace, a cultural failure of staggering magnitude. We have over 40 million uninsured, 14 million unemployed (and another 8-10 million marginally employed). And the political class is completely captive to the status quo. Those Occupy Wall Street folks are at least drawing attention to this reality. Our nation is in dire need of forward progress, but is being held hostage by hidebound dullards who keep us spinning in circles because they refuse to actually face reality. I saw that the average American who can read reads at the 7th grade level. That conjures up images of people moving their lips as they read. Our political class is representing people who read at the 7th grade level? That is who they are appealing to? It makes it very clear why things like evolution aren't well-understood by Americans. Or the need for energy policy. Or why we can't cut taxes and fight three wars and have a social safety net and raise revenue at the same time. And so on. Lordy. We dumb. I mean, really, it was only Sputnik scaring the shit out of the American political class that spurred the teaching of science in this country. Look at where we were before Sputnik, and you'll see that ignorance is really the steady state in American culture. The push for high-tech in the latter 20th Century may, in retrospect, have been just a hiccup. Just like the middle class (which was made possible by the GI Bill, that swelling of soldiers coming back from wars and taking advantage of that to educate themselves). The American middle class is gone. Whether people realize it or not, it's true. It eroded over the past 30 years, and it's gone today. That's the economic reality of it. The political reality of it is only now sinking in, I think. A lot of people with 7th grade reading comprehension are gonna be pissed off. Pitchforks and torches. Meanwhile, I try to equip my boys with knowledge and the emotional tools they need to thrive -- to help them face challenges without fear, to feel hope and promise in the future -- even as I think at some point they'll leave this country one day, because the opportunities will be elsewhere. In a globalized economy, allegiance to nation-state is a quaint relic -- so very 20th century.