Bum Scoop

If You Can X, Then You Should Y

January 27th, 2012

Just a little chest-clearing, real quick, if I may (and I may, it’s my damn blog).

I’ve noticed this meme a few times in the last couple of months; coming along with the SOPA/PIPA blackouts, and with the Ocean Marketing fiasco. In formulation, it went something like this: “Oh sure, you all can get up in arms enough to protest this kind of dick move thing, now why can’t you get all worked about my pet issues?” And, on some level, I agree, especially with the protests of the Ocean Marketing douchebag. That might have gone over the top. But, you know, there’s a point short of over the top. Probably somewhere near, you know, the top, where you achieve critical mass and inspire people to make a change. And I think the sort of person I paraphrased above would probably still think it too much fury over too small an issue.

But here’s the thing, and I wish people would understand this better: it’s not that the same number of people don’t get worked up over other issues, it’s just that so few issues are as clear cut as a marketing douchebag talking to a customer like a condescending asshole (with a poor grasp of spelling and grammar). It’s really easy to get behind that. Same with SOPA and PIPA. The only people who might have really supported those bills were those who didn’t understand them (and thus not invested enough to protest or counter-protest) and the accountants running Hollywood.

Most other issues have been a crapshoot.

And that’s okay, on some level. As much as I might like there to be greater consensus on really important things, like taxes and healthcare and war (not that SOPA wasn’t critical, actually), the lack of consensus is the result of living in a multi-cultural society. It’s part of the bargain. A maddeningly frustrating part, sometimes, especially when we do see people coming together and making that kind of concerted effort. But, part of the bargain, just the same.

Shootout

January 25th, 2012

One of the other things I got up to during the con weekend, but wasn’t properly part of the con, as such, was a trip to the shooting range.

The idea for the trip started, innocently enough, in this tweet back in December, and as discussions evolved, it quickly became apparent that the Friday morning before the con would be a good time for me, Yanni, Josh, and Bill to be available. Of course, the thing I forgot about when we discussed it was that they might have authors to cart around and entertain, so ultimately it was decided to just bring them along.

And it was a hell of a good time.

We found an indoor range not far from the hotel, and there we rented a nice selection of pistols and long guns of various calibers. My favorite, perhaps to the disgust of the gun nuts, was shooting the AR-15, a clone of the M-16 I carried for so long in the Corps. I dunno what it is about the .223 rifle, maybe just that it was the first thing I ever shot (back when I was 22 and a fresh-faced boot), but there was something about it that was both fun and strangely comforting. I took a turn on everything else but the M-1A1 (so they said) carbine we rented. (Pictured below in the capable hands of Joe Abercrombie.)

The other favorite was the .45 pistol, which was my first time firing anything like that, though at $25 for a box of 50 rounds, it seems like it could be a really expensive hobby. If I started shooting for fun, I might have to stick with a 9mm or something. Or start selling more writing. Bottom line, though, it was a great time and I had a lot of fun with my friends and a handful of unsavory author-types.

And here’s a picture of some of the participants in the shooting lanes. Obviously it would be rather tough to get more photogenic pictures from the front, so you’ll just have to trust me that, from left to right, we have Myke Cole (with a Glock 17), Yanni Kuznia (.38 revolver), Joe Abercrombie (the aforementioned M-1), and Brent Weeks (the AR-15). Brent, incidentally, was the high-shooter of the morning, so dubbed after shooting a smile (three upper and three lower teeth) into a target with the revolver. So I guess I have to be careful about who I’m calling “unsavory.”

Next time (if there is one), I’m thinking summer months, open air, and maybe with a bit longer of a range so I can remind myself how to shoot at real distances, not just the 20 meters or so we had indoors.

New Site Theme

January 25th, 2012

Just checking in this morning to see if I still like the changes I made last night.

And… yep. Yep, still good.

Epic Wrap-Up

January 24th, 2012

It’s Tuesday after the con, and I’m now mostly-decompressed.

PROTIP: Taking that day off on Monday, like my wife always does? Shouldn’t just be a good idea, but the law.

Here’s a rough sampling of con reports: Joe Abercrombie, Catherine Shaffer, John Scalzi, Tobias Buckell, Stomping on Yeti.

To say I’m proud and happy with how it turned out is a bit of an understatement; many of my friends and a lot of cool authors (groups which overlap just a bit) got to come together and have a lot of fun, and I managed to have a lot of fun with them. Things which I thought were pretty good ideas (like having a seating chart for the Mass Autograph Session on Saturday afternoon) turned out pretty well, and very little seemed to fall flat on its face. Though I do have to apologize, again and again, for scheduling anything against Friday night’s “I, Suck” panel (featuring Pat Rothfuss, Scalzi, Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, and Jim Hines). I’ll try to think that through a little better next time. Which, as it happens, will be next year, since I’ve been promoted, so to speak, from the Lit Programming guy to running all of Programming.

A bit daunting, but feels doable, especially with some of the organizational ideas we came up with over the weekend.

Otherwise, I don’t have a lot to add to the internet’s general wrap-up of the convention, other than to say I had a lot of fun. I sipped champagne with Tobias to celebrate our selection to the Year’s Best SF 29 anthology and stayed up talking to him way too late, as we usually do. I hung out with my sisters, one of my brothers, two of his friends, and my friends Merrie, Julie, Steve, and Lawrence. I met a ton of lovely authors and renewed in-person friendship with a bunch of other people, some of whom I haven’t seen in years. I also got to listen to Brent and Kristi Weeks telling the story of their looooong romance, which was absolutely adorable (as they are, as a couple).

And, of course, I spent a lot of time with my lovely wife, who has been extremely supportive and understanding through out the con-planning process (and hopefully she will be again this year as we plan for 2013) and deserved a weekend of chilling out with our friends.

Thanks to everyone who made it possible, and thanks to everyone who came out to have such a good time with us.

No Longer In ConFusion

January 22nd, 2012

So hey, I’m home from Epic ConFusion, which this year I helped plan and organize, and I could hardly be more happy with how it went. But I could also hardly be more tired, so I’ll do a proper wrap-up tomorrow-ish. In the meantime, gaze up on this and despair.

Hometown Connection

January 17th, 2012

So, hey, it turns out my family’s doctor (and mine until I moved to Grand Rapids) was aboard the Costa Concordia which ran aground and mostly-sunk off the coast of an Italian island last weekend. Here’s an interview with him and his wife, courtesy the Detroit Free Press.

Also? The name of the island (Giglio) is the same as the last name of an NCO in my platoon when I was in Iraq.

2 Down, 50 to Go

January 16th, 2012

Going to read more this year, and it starts with being a little bit behind right away, naturally. But here’s the first two books-of-the-week.

1. Snuff by Terry Pratchett

Another Vimes story from Pratchett’s Discworld universe, this one involving questions of who the law applies to and how it gets applied. I’m generally taken with Pratchett’s approach to law and crime and law enforcement, though I sometimes wonder how many different ways he can tackleit with Vimes, et al. This is a pretty decent addition to the oeuvre, though not quite as affecting, I think, as Thud!, for instance.

2. Patriot Games by Tom Clancy

I reread this periodically, mostly because I’m curious as to how Clancy did it, back in the day, before character and plot bloat took over his books. It was also kind of interesting, juxtaposed against Snuff which also tackled some of the questions of extralegal “justice” that are one of the major throughlines of Patriot Games. I’m still…bemused with how detached and analytical Clancy could be in addressing the response to terrorism from his pre-9/11 position in this book; at the end of the book he’s holding his newborn son in his hands, telling him that his father is not a murderer… and in the most recent books, that very son would grow up to be just the sort of extralegal murderer that Clancy seemed to be weighing against in Patriot Games. I think the irony would be more heartbreaking if Clancy himself seemed more conscious of it.

Either way, though, Patriot Games is a well-crafted (and, I suspect, well-edited) book that I’m continually trying to learn from.

Marines Behaving Badly

January 15th, 2012

So, my friend Matt–who was my best friend in the Marines (and is still a pretty awesome guy)–asked me for my reaction to the news that Marines were seen on video apparently urinating on the corpses of dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

As with all of these types of stories, my initial reaction is the same: What a bunch of dumbasses. Really, I think you have to be a special kind of stupid to think that this was ever a good idea, in any stage of the process, especially in shooting a video of it, and posting it online. Dumb dumb dumb. It’s completely counterproductive to the hearts-and-minds/counter-insurgency mission they’re working over there, and as I’ve pointed out before, the mission is having enough trouble over there with the clash of cultures and NATO troops being needlessly antagonistic toward the Afghan people (troops and civilians alike).

Beyond that? I think this is another good place to open the discussion of the effect of combat on people, especially in this prolonged (TEN YEARS!!) environment we’re in. The problem is that combat and its aftermath can negatively impact emotional and mental health to the point that people do some stupid stuff. It’s also a good starting point for the discussion of the lack of value in dehumanizing the human; I’ve argued with plenty of hawkish types who see nothing wrong with that particular tactic, from whatever depths of anger they’ve nurtured for the last decade. I’m not terribly interested in having those conversations right now, mostly because I’m burned out from work and con-planning, but also because I feel like I’ve had them too many times.

And, well, it comes back to what I said above. Dumbasses. There’s nothing about this that was a good idea, beginning to end. Anyone making excuses is just… making excuses. Traumatic stress sucks, but it’s not carte blanche to be a dumbass.

Best SF 29

December 6th, 2011

So, hey… must dash this off quickly because I need to head out for a school meeting for the Eldest Child, but…

“A Militant Peace” by Tobias Buckell and myself has been chosen by Gardner Dozois’ for his BEST SF 29, due out… sometime next year. I will, of course, have all the awesome details once I know more about them, but this is probably the biggest, awesomest detail. Very fortunate to have had the collaborator I did on this story.

Yeah. I’ll let you know more about this when I know it, but, for now: Woo!!