Taking The Plunge

Briefly, then:

My apartment complex has a pool. I have written elsewhere of the Pod of elderly, obese, Speedo-wearing men that infest it, of their whuffling and spouting. I have written of the small children that never seem to be in the pool, but exist in a constant state of I-AM-ABOUT-TO-CANNONBALL-THEREFORE-I-SQUEAL. I have written of my unwillingness to expose my pasty midsection to the withering glare of my esteemed neighbors.

Today is my last day in this apartment. Tomorrow I move.

I swam today.

The pleasure of finally conquering my self-consciousness contrasted finely with the distaste I felt for Shamu, who very pointedly ceased walking laps when I entered the pool. The exhilaration of not caring how many people see my torso was tempered by the fact that six-and-a-half-foot-tall people must struggle to submerge themselves in pools whose deepest point is 5'. The overwhelming delight I felt in splashing balanced precariously against regret that I hadn't done this sooner.

Carpe diem: for one never knows if the next apartment will have a pool.

It doesn't. And my trunk will be pastier than ever.

Long live the moment!

As Far As I'm Concerned, They're Just Doing Their Job

I promised myself I wouldn't reference Reservoir Dogs, and I didn't even get past the title. Disappointing.

I work at a coffee shop. We have a tip jar. People put tips in the jar.

Some customers don't tip. They might be paying with gift cards, they might be making a small transaction, they might be out of singles. They might be trying to save money. They might be cheapskates. I don't care. I really don't care when a customer doesn't tip me.

Some customers do tip, in a sort of off-hand fashion. They tip because they feel they should. Or because they don't want to carry the change around with them. Or because they believe tipping is part of the transaction. ("Tip" is slang. "Gratuity" imposes, intimidates, legitimizes.) Some people tip as a matter of course.

Some people TIP. TIPping is where they hold up the dollar and drop it in the jar, very conspicuously. Or they put the coins in one at a time. They call attention to the fact that they're TIPping.

I am grateful for every gratuity that comes my way, but something about the TIPping, the overtness of it, rubs me the wrong way. When a customer TIPs, it's reflexive. To me, TIPping says "look at me, aren't I great? I'm giving you free money! I'm a better person because of that!"

Giving as a means of feeling better about oneself isn't giving at all. It's a transaction: I'll put a dollar in your jar, then I'll feel generous. It's buying self-esteem. When a customer TIPs, it's not altruistic--it's selfish. It's not giving anymore; it's trading.

Before I sign off, let me reiterate that I am in no way ungrateful to customers who tip, or even customers who TIP. A tipped dollar spends the same as a TIPped dollar. I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

Long live convolution. 

A Collage

UPDATE: If you're here to read A Collage, my latest nonfiction piece--well, time's up. To minimize the chance of plagiarism (or perhaps merely to soothe my own suspicious heart), I decided to leave it up for about a week.

In that time, I've gotten significant and constructive feedback from multiple and various people. To everyone who's commented, I thank you. To everyone who's given me their input through other channels, I thank you. To everyone who put up with my incessant promotion of this piece on Facebook and Twitter, I thank you.

I'll stop now. But one last point: if you really want to read A Collage, contact me on Facebook, on Twitter (@ThePontificator), or by leaving a comment here on the blog.

Long live The End!

Look Left, Look Right

Back in April, I did something pretty special right here in the Uninformed Opinion. I posted a piece of my creative writing here, in my blog, for anyone to read and critique. It was called Exit Ramp. It was a thundering success, and a powerful learning experience for me.

Now it's summer. And I'm moving. Moving means packing, and packing means I need distraction. Now, over the past 13 months I've kept a haphazard log of my life--my life in this apartment building, my life at the coffee shop, my life in Cedarburg. To call it a diary is disrespectful to diaries everywhere. It's more of a collection of experiences, of impressions, of mental snapshots written down.

I've been working for the past few weeks to wrangle these snapshots into something cohesive--a collage, if you will, a larger image of the last year of my life. It's nonfiction, which is strange; I don't often write nonfiction. It's coming together well. I'm proud of what it's becoming.

Maybe it won't matter to people who aren't me. Maybe it'll be something only I find interesting, or meaningful, or powerful. Maybe not. I don't know. I do know that when I published Exit Ramp, I grew. I like growing. I want to grow again.

So, in ten days' time, I will publish my collage here, in the Uninformed Opinion. As with Exit Ramp, it will only be available for a limited time, to minimize the chance of plagiarism. It'll be published at noon on Sunday, July 15, and it will be removed at midnight on Saturday, July 21.

Start anticipating! Eagerly!

Long live taking not-very-risky risks!

Save Sydney Hih

Every time a building is razed, a tiny chunk of history crumbles to dust. Architectural identity...cultural impact...social significance...it vanishes in a cloud of diesel fumes and rubble. Sure, the building lives on in the memories of those who experienced it. But memory is a poor substitute for reality.

In Milwaukee, there's a complex of buildings called the Sydney Hih complex. The Sydney Hih buildings have seen it all--from showcasing the Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam in the Unicorn to housing Prophet William Blackmon's Revival Center Shoe Repair and Shine Parlor. And now Sydney Hih is on death row: the bulldozers' blades gleam menacingly, the wrecking balls swing like ominous pendulums, ticking away the hours until Sydney Hih will be no more.

A group of preservationists is trying to save the complex, as it has been saved multiple times in the past. They've been fighting to get Sydney Hih designated as historic--and therefore undemolishable. The city of Milwaukee has overturned the historic designation, and unless some savior were to come forward, there will be nothing in the way of the encroaching bulldozers.

I've blogged before about America's illogical approach to political problem-solving. We seem to think that the process has two steps, when in fact it should have three. The popular approach is as follows:

• Identify the problem.
• Remove the problem.
• The third step is nothing. There is no third step.

The correct approach goes like this.

• Identify the problem.
• Remove the problem.
• Provide a positive solution.

There is a solution. John Raettig and his group Raettig Redevelopment have come forward with a positive solution, a way to remedy the concerns about safety and economic impact raised by the city. The process is complete.

There's a petition you can sign (of course there is) requesting the Milwaukee Common Council to have pity on Sydney Hih. This isn't just about history, this isn't just about cultural heritage; it's about rewarding entrepreneurship. It's about using common sense. It's about not missing opportunities.

Sign here, so Sydney Hih can be saved.

Long live citizenship!

Dynamic Exposition: Or, Whedon's Universes Annoy Me

Whenever somebody writes fiction, they create a new world, a new universe in which the events of their fiction take place. Sometimes the world is nigh-indistinguishable from ours (the novels of John Grisham spring to mind), and sometimes it's not (Discworld, I'm lookin' at you). Either way, the created universe of any work of fiction is, at some level, distinct from our own.

I recently finished The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi. It's near-future science fiction, and it won some awards. What attracted me to it was the completeness of its universe; Bacigalupi weaves together issues of race, politics, religion, industry, sexuality, substance abuse, and more, to create a whole, believable universe. There seems to be no detail left unvarnished. Air travel? Handled. Disease? Discussed. A genetically engineered breed of elephant? Megadonts.

In contrast is what I call Whedon Syndrome. Joss Whedon has a different approach to the concept of universe-creating. He seems to be more concerned about what happens in his universe rather than how it can happen. He creates his universe by discovery from the narrative.

Whedon's famously short-lived TV show Firefly provides an example. We get a glimpse into the technology the Serenity's crew uses; we even get some jargon from Kaylee; but do we ever really see the inner workings of the 'Verse? Mal uses a Moses Brothers Self-Defense Engine Frontier Model B; but Moses Brothers is nothing more than a name. In the 'Verse, there is no Moses Brothers Armaments. Whedon doesn't need it. For all Whedon cares, Mal's gun could be the only gun Moses Brothers Armaments ever produced.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer doesn't need exposition as such; whatever exposition is necessary arises organically from the narrative. We gradually come to learn more about the Buffyverse as the series progresses, but again, the information comes indirectly, at a slant. And the knowledge we gain is never because Whedon wants to fill us in on his universe. Rather, exposition serves to justify narrative hijinks.

Part of my problem with this backhanded exposition is that I feel shortchanged. I feel that the universe being created does not actually exist the same way ours does. When a creator is allowed to tack on a scientific law here, a bit of history there, racial tension over in that corner--how can I feel comfortable? How can I accept that I have comprehended this universe? Why should I care about these new rules? They might be negated or made moot in a few months because of another, larger, manufactured scientific law.

Whenever I encounter a creator who is satisfied with this organic, haphazard exposition, it raises doubts in my mind about the completeness of the universe in the mind of the creator. Does the creator have a strong mental image of the universe being created? Or is the creator doing his work of creation as he constructs the narrative?

Part of the reason The Lord of the Rings is so compelling is that J. R. R. Tolkien seems to have had a fairly concrete conception of the universe he was creating, before he created it. Middle-Earth was by no means complete in his mind, but his creation of The Hobbit and, more importantly, The Silmarillion, meant that he was writing about a place that already existed, in his mind. Rather than creating as he wrote, he created first, then set characters into that creation.

Universe-creating is a tricky business. It varies across medium and genre--I'm sure part of Whedon's aversion to flat-out exposition is necessitated by the time constraints imposed by television. And there's something to be said for the dynamic nature of indirect exposition: it's intriguing, it draws viewers in. Me, I like seeing the bones of an universe. I like taking the cover off of the watch and seeing gears and springs interacting. I like knowing how things work, not just knowing that they work.

Long live nine lives!

The Adventure of the Janeist Horror

Warning: this post might alienate some of you gender-neutral nouns.

I have a friend who recently discovered Jane Austen. I respect this friend very much, so when she began to express her heartfelt adoration for Ms. Austen's works, I grimaced mentally. I was hearing Janeist words coming out of her mouth. I don't like Janeism one bit. To my mind, my friend's enthusiasm for Ms. Austen's works was hurting her credibility.

(We talked it out. She's not a Janeist. Our friendship is intact.)

For some reason, I really don't like Fans as a demographic subset. You know--the ones who find a way to turn every literary conversation back to the Brontë sisters. The ones who can recite Timon of Athens in Klingon. The ones who can and do fill you in on the socio-evolutionary history of the Tusken Raiders. The ones who can tell you the batting average of the Mets' third baseman in 1977. The ones who hotly debate the quality of David Bowie's later material compared to his earlier years.

I have friends who are Fans. Some of my closest friends are Fans, in fact. Just because I hate Fandom doesn't mean I hate individual fans. I dislike the adjective, not the noun.

Maybe it's the Fan's narrowness of focus. I used to be a Lord of the Rings Fan. I could sort of write Khuzdul. I had firm and well-developed opinions on the spiritual-symbolic nature of the mallyrn trees in Laurelindórenan. I could recite most of the Hobbitic poetry from Fellowship.

Somewhere along the line, that went away, and I began to see myself as having more eclectic tastes. Maybe I got lazy (because being a Fan does require quite a bit of hard work and dedication), or maybe I actually did find out that there's a lot of cool stuff out there. My point is this: I began to see myself as the anti-Fan. Someone with opinions on everything, rather than on only one thing. Broad-minded, that's what I was. A man of the world. Conversant in many different arenas.

Truth is, though, I'm not. I'm still a Fan. Want proof? Look here. If that's not a Fan's post, I'll eat my hat. That's not the post of a Cinema Fan, or an Avengers Fan, or a Criticism Fan. It's...

Well, first, another example. A shorter one, this time. Again: that's not a Bond Fan talking, or a History Fan talking...it's something else.

Oh, wait, I already blogged about this. I am a Words Fan. I like them broken into codey little shards. I like them re-assembled from those shards, humming with latent potency. I like them swimming into schools of organized poetic flash. I like them making worlds and galaxies and universes and gods and sins and death, and I like them making me cry.

So I guess I can't really look down on the Janeists. I can't despise the Trekkies or the Browncoats or the Ringers, because even though their Fandom is more focused, more limited, they're still the same as me. We're all Fans. Somewhere deep in every human heart there is a spark. Something that, given the right fuel, will kindle such a blaze of devotion and dedication and Fandom that other people stop to say, "Look at that weird dude who grew his mustache specifically to look like Rollie Fingers'!"

I'm a Fan. And I'm sorry, my gender-neutral nouns, if I ever ridiculed your Fandom.

(Except for Nickelback Fans. I am entirely prepared to burn them with flamethrowers next time I see them.)

Long live restitution.