Adam Oster's Blog, page 17

Book Review: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

After enjoying a short story by Doctorow included in an anthology of cyberpunk stories I reviewed on here a few weeks ago, I decided to finally give his original novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, another go.

Because of my love of weird books and Disney World, this had originally felt like a fantastic idea for a read for me, but when I first picked it up ages ago, I just couldn’t get into it. I was probably in a weird headspace about other authors finding more success than me or some other stupidity, and realizing that, I had hoped the second read would be better.

First things first, I actually finished the book this time, which says something about my mindset being a bit off back then. Secondly, I mostly enjoyed it. I mean, this book is overly complicated in its attempts to fit within the cyberpunk realm while also cramming the location of Disney World in. Not that the setting doesn’t work. It mostly does. If there was one corporation I feel most fits within the realm of the cyberpunk genre, it’s certainly Disney. It’s just that, at times, it felt as though the setting was crammed in afterward.

What I mean by that is that this book could have worked anywhere, without the Disney World references. But, Doctorow includes so many detailed references to locations at the parks that one can’t help but wonder how deeply in love with the parks this author is. Sure, he apparently thinks Sleeping Beauty Castle is in Florida, as opposed to Cinderella Castle, but his inclusion of the Utilidors, specific rooms in the Contemporary hotel, the walkways that lead from park to resorts, as well as backstage areas in places like the Hall of Presidents or Haunted Mansion showcases that this author (mostly) knows his Disney World.

But like I said, this book doesn’t need Disney World. If anything that’s just a marketing technique to bring folks like me into wanting to read the book, kind of like those Kingdom Keepers books that Disney was heavily promoting a few years back (which, if I remember correctly from my read of the first book in that series, actually takes a lot of notes from Doctorow’s novel here). However, the lack of need for this specific setting probably speaks more to Doctorow’s ability to build a world than it does for his need to shamelessly include an international icon. Within these pages which tell a tale of intrigue and murder inside the park gates, we learn a lot about this possible future for the world, where people no longer die and are, in many ways, more digital than analog.

Which is where, I think, the true beauty in this story lies. Here we see a story about people debating whether or how to update classic Disney World attractions from their classic versions into cool new things, while we also have people still struggling with the idea of becoming less people and more computer. We see a battle for humanity happen within the pages of this book, where murder doesn’t mean all that much when they can just clone a new version of you from a backup. Where doctors no longer need to know how to doctor, because it’s far easier and cheaper to simply make a new body. And we see a place where money is replaced with prestige, meaning all that really matters is what other people think about you.

While I think the book stumbles along the way of telling the story it’s trying to tell, and the Disney World addition really only served as an opportunity for some easy world building and building of an audience of people who like the idea of a book being set in a place they love, Doctorow’s writing really shines through in this amazing parallelism of a battle between keeping things the way they are, or moving forward toward the future simply because we can.

And, if you’re in to cyberpunk or even just want to see what the future of attractions like Hall of Presidents or Haunted Mansion could be, it’s totally worth a read.

New Job, Who Dis?

Amidst all of the crazy that is my life right now, I decided to switch departments at the place I work and as of this week, have started an absolutely new job. While, of course, there’s always the standard new guy leeway that I expect to be occurring here, I’ve also started up a new term of school this week and, well, things are feeling a little more hectic than usual.

That being said, there’s a lot of newness in my life right now. Obviously the new job and the new term of school, but I also completed two writing projects over the last month, meaning I’m now sitting in a situation where I have to determine which writing project to pick up next.

This is an exciting and terrifying moment for me. I have so many projects in the hopper that it tends to be difficult for me to determine which one I am willing to dedicate myself to for the next however long it takes me to complete it. Sure, I take breaks in between steps on a given project, but this decision right here will determine what the next few months of writing will look like for me.

And that’s where I’m at, folks. I’ve got a few stageplay ideas that I’ve been kicking around and have various levels of starting work completed on. I also have a couple of really epic book ideas that I’ve begun. And all of these are things that were big enough that I actually stopped while in mid progress on other projects to start the writing on. I’ve also got my kids chapter book series that I actually have most of a book written for. All this means is that I have a ton of things I want to be writing, but no clue on which one I can choose to be my favorite for right now.

Of course, I could just fool around with some flash fiction for a while as well instead and ignore all of those big projects for a while…

My Battle with Nationalism

I remember struggling early on in life with the Pledge of Allegiance. Here I was in a private Christian school which spent a great portion of its time worshipping God and we would take a moment out of every day to do something which felt incredibly similar, but for a flag.

The reverence for the flag, as a symbol for our country, felt so similar to how the school and the church revered the Bible, cross, God, etc. that even as a young one, I wondered why it was something we did at all. I mean, look, I get it, America has provided me many freedoms that I wouldn’t be allowed in some other countries, and yes, compared to some of the options available at the time our country began, America certainly sounds like it was a bastion of freedom, at least for the white man. But really, even how there are required postures to be in when claiming your undying love for the country feels a little too much like what Christians do when they pray.

I hold similar issue with the national anthem and how it is used before sporting events. The concept that any major event in our country is expected to begin by having a group stand in unison and proclaim their dedication to the country seems so weird to me. Even more so as an adult.

And then it gets ever weirder when we realize how absolutely angry people get when they see our athletes choose to be in the incorrect position during the singing of the anthem, because they aren’t revering the flag in the appropriate manner. Because they dare question the truth of what the flag promises. Because they dare blaspheme the flag by being on their knees during its moment of worship.

Yet, those who stormed the Capitol building on January 6th, they carried the flags with them as they entered. They believed their country was doing them wrong, chose to attempt a coup (I guess?), but did so by bearing the flag of the very country they were trying to overthrow.

Which brings me back to my initial question: Why?

Why do we worship the flag in such a way, and what does it actually mean when we do so?

What are we saying when we stand together and chant in unison the prayer of loyalty to the flag of the United States of America?

That we are promising to be loyal to the country and serve its best interests, I would assume. Which would mean that honestly, although I may question the acts of the January 6th insurrectionists, if they truly believed that the election was fraudulent, it makes sense they would bring the flag with them. Just like how those who kneel at the National Anthem are being loyal to the country in that they are still showing a form of reverence, but at the same time quietly speaking out regarding how our country should be better.

I struggle with Nationalism, because I think especially in America, we’ve been prone to the belief that no other country is as good as ours. This national pride has caused a severe divide between us and other countries and has historically brought us to the place where we’ve completely closed ourselves off from other countries, especially ones who would dare do anything outside of the American model.

I certainly don’t stand beside the January 6th insurrectionists or believe what they did was in any way appropriate. But, I question how I would feel if there was any sort of true evidence that the election was fraudulent. Obviously some of these people believed that to be the case. If those in power had truly moved on to the point where our democracy was only for show and we no longer had any power as the people, what is the appropriate way to act?

Obviously those who choose to kneel during the National Anthem believe in some similar ideas, that they are powerless against those in power, and seek to find a way to present their message. But if you truly have no power, what chance does kneeling truly have at making a difference?

Our country only works if we question what it is doing. That’s the very premise of a democracy, that the people should hold the power in how the country acts. But if the people feel powerless, then our democracy is broken. And I think as we look around, we see more and more people feeling powerless, see more and more people feeling exactly how broken our country is.

And so, when we pledge allegiance to a flag for a country who is leaving more and more people feeling powerless, what are we actually pledging allegiance to?

Or maybe, more importantly, if this is truly the case, that the power of our country is being taken away from us, what do we do to get it back?

Book Review: The Accusation: Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea by Bandi

We have this adorable little independent book store in town that isn’t far from our old house that every Christmas my mother-in-law awesomely gives us gift cards for. Dotters is a well-curated little shop that does a fantastic job of highlighting books that I either forgot I wanted to read or was completely unaware of altogether.

The Accusation would fall in the latter category, but when I came across it on the shelves (well, the virtual shelves, because they haven’t been open to the public since this whole mess the world is in started), I knew I needed it.

I’ll admit that I don’t know nearly as much about North Korea as I probably should, but from what I do know, it is an almost picture perfect version of every dystopian government ever put into fiction. This cult-like reverence for their leaders, or at least forced reverence, their complete closed off nature, the dichotomy of the workers and the bourgeois, all of it is just so absolutely foreign from anything in the real world that it’s often hard to realize that it does actually exist.

The Accusation is a series of fictional short stories written by an anonymous author who is still living in North Korea. The author managed to sneak his works to South Korea in a tale that is briefly recounted at the end of this book and is, to be completely honest, the best part of the whole book. Bandi’s a writer for the government of North Korea, meaning he spends his time writing official propaganda for the country. He realized how terrible the country was and began writing dissenting stories in his free time, something which was incredibly dangerous for him to do, and finally decided he needed his stories to be seen.

The stories themselves are plodding, more of an atmospheric view of what it’s like to live in North Korea than it is any form of true narrative tale. There are certainly some exciting bits throughout the book, like the guy who wanted to be at his mother’s funeral, but couldn’t get a travel pass, so he ends up teaming up with a guy who had a travel pass that was for two people, but his second suddenly couldn’t go. This gets far more exciting when they have to part ways halfway through the trip and suddenly the main character is on the train without a travel pass, trying to get through the country to get to the funeral.

It’s these little takes on how much more effort goes into things that feel naturally simple for us which give a solid view into life in North Korea. A simple train ride to a funeral isn’t necessarily that exciting, and even him having to hide under the seats to avoid needing to have his lack of ticket noticed isn’t much more than a briefly tense moment, but it’s in the fact that this character needs to hide under the seat where we see the real brilliance of this collection. He’s simply riding on a train to go to a funeral, and fears being locked up for years because he doesn’t have the right permission to travel.

I’d suggest giving this book a read just for the purpose of gaining a larger understanding of the fully dystopian world the North Koreans live in. So much of this felt like pure fiction instead of fictional takes on real life activities, and because of that, I kept expecting far more exciting things to happen. But these are simply fictional versions of real life stories of a people who live in a regime which makes their world seem incredibly far fetched from our own.

And that makes this collection an amazing read.

Reading as an Adult

As an adult who reads, I often find myself in the minority. To be fair, I also found myself in the minority as a kid who read, but that had more to do with the specifics of my tiny school than it did with the demographics of those who read. The reality is that reading is more of a kid’s game than an adult’s. And that makes sense. I mean, for myself right now, between work, school, writing, and kids, the time I have available for reading falls into that brief period between getting through the craziness of the day and when I pass out in my bed.

For many of us, the idea of going from the hectic day to trying to use the brain to imagine fictional realms is just too much extra effort and it makes a lot of sense that the normal pre-bed activity for many adults today is to simply stare at a phone or tablet screen and hope you put it down on your nightstand before you smack yourself in the face again because you fell asleep holding it.

I love reading, but I know that it takes me quite a bit after getting into the reading position to actually be able to start reading a book. If it’s a new book, or a book I’m not particularly getting excited for, I will actually find that I’ve spent the first few pages of the book reading the words, but not actually taking in what has been happening because I’ve had a part of my brain still thinking about the past day or the things I need to do tomorrow.

But, here’s the cool thing. Once I finally get myself past all that hyper-thought and am able to completely lock into the book, it’s quite easily the most relaxing part of my day. While skimming through Facebook can bring about all sorts of super-real emotions because I’ll come across a friend’s hate-filled tirade, causing me to feel all the stress of their hate in a few brief sentences, reading allows me to melt into a story that, once I actually get going, allows the real world to completely disappear. It’s even better if I’ve got my headphones going and am able to block out the sounds of the real world as well.

It’s like a virtual reality headset, where I might be aware of the real reality beyond the virtual one, but I’m so completely invested in the virtual one I’m a part of, that it’s difficult to see anything past that.

With all of that being said, I also want to note how long it took me to get back into reading as an adult. By the time I started college twenty years ago, I had been burnt on too many terribly written books, and was so overwhelmed with the newness of being a person who had to work full time while also attending college classes and doing homework, that when I actually managed to have free time, I simply wanted to hang out with friends until the sun came up. I didn’t read for nearly a decade, at least not with any sort of regularity.

It probably wasn’t until I was waiting for the birth of my first child, nearly ten years later, that I started picking up the hobby again. And even then, it was a difficult transition. I had gotten annoyed with the habit of watching TV until my eyes gave out, and had a book I had been wanting to read for a while (long since forgotten). So, I went to the library, checked out the book, brought it home, and put it on my nightstand to start reading it. It probably took me two months to get through that first book, as I couldn’t bring myself to want to effort on reading most nights.

And now, over twelve years later, I read every night, have a constantly shifting giant pile of books on my nightstand and a kindle filled with hundreds of books, that I simply can’t wait to dig into. At the start of the pandemic, I even scheduled myself a half hour during every day to just sit back and read, so as to break away from the terrifying world we live in for just a few minutes.

If life weren’t nearly so hectic, I think I could spend hours every day just sitting back and reading, probably while laying in a hammock under the sun.

And I would have never gotten back to this point if I hadn’t taken the effort to actually work to remind myself how much I absolutely love to read.

So, if you’re someone who used to have the habit, and haven’t read a book in ages, I suggest pushing yourself to get back into it. It is quite simply my favorite part of the day, even if it is just a race against my exhaustion winning out and me falling asleep.

Representation, and Family, Matters

You’ve probably heard the words representation matters being bandied about sometime in your life on this planet. It comes up a lot when we see people of color in important roles on television. Or women, or nonbinary folk, or any of the queer rainbow.

And, in case you are one of those people who don’t understand it, it’s a pretty simple concept. It’s the idea that it’s important to see characters in fiction that you can identify with, whether it’s through race, gender, sexual orientation or other. Heck, even religion counts here. I have numerous book reviews attached to my books that like to highlight whether or not there is Christian content in my books, because: representation matters.

While I agree with this in concept, I’ll admit that I’ve long struggled with pieces of it. While I love the character of Miles Morales, I remember when Marvel was first talking about introducing a black Spider-Man, and how annoyed I was by this idea. Not because I am idealistically against a black Spider-Man, but because I didn’t see a world in which this character would continue to exist past the initial point of all the little black kids (or, let’s face it, black 30-somethings) buying up the book in excitement, allowing Marvel to eat up all those sales before returning to the normal Spider-Man.

You know, like when they made female Thor, which would actually be later, and much more short-lived.

I actually found it worse that they placed Miles Morales in his own timeline, meaning that he was readily able to be trimmed from ever having existed because he didn’t exist with the rest of the Marvel comics universe. But, luckily for Miles and all those who identify with a black Spider-Man, the writers actually knocked this character out of the park and then Marvel suddenly needed to find a way to bring this character into their regular universe. Instead of having a gimmicky little quick hit with a black Spider-Man, they had a character people adored and they realized they could capitalize on it far more than initially planned.

This is huge. Black Spider-Man is here to stay. Whereas female Thor is not.

You see, my issue here was never with the idea of there being a black Spider-Man, but with the idea of capitalizing on the importance of representation. Instead of creating a new character that they would put all their energy behind, they were using an existing character’s popularity to create a gimmick they could profit off of. And if the writers hadn’t done such an amazing job with the character, they would have finished the series by basically saying, “He could be black, but he’s actually just white, like always.”

This is what happened with Thor. They actually did an amazing job with the female Thor storyline as well. The upcoming Thor movie is capitalizing on the spectacular writing done in that series. But ultimately, they didn’t have a reason to keep female Thor around, and so, they dropped her. Amusingly enough, they actually made it dangerous for female Thor’s health to be Thor any longer, thereby ultimately killing off the prospect of her at all.

I have a problem with the idea of short-lived color-washing of characters. Not because I can’t see any merit in it at all, but because they seem to me to be nothing more than cash grabs from a company realizing they have untapped markets they can manipulate. I’ll admit that I’ve been a bit more torn on the similar take they took with the Ms. Marvel rebrand, in that they brought in a new character of Kamala Khan to be the first female Muslim superhero. But she felt like a fresh character from the start, not one purely capitalizing on the Ms. Marvel name. But that might have been due to my limited experience with Ms. Marvel prior to Kamala’s arrival.

However, although I struggle with these types of things, these moments where we try to make existing characters diverse, purely from the aspect that they often feel forced and not doing justice to the real need for diverse representation, I wholeheartedly believe we need diverse representation throughout all of our fictional characters (and, you know, in government and leadership roles in general). And so, I’m going to argue with myself a little bit in telling a story about my first time being able to identify with a character on TV and how much that meant to me, and why that probably means that even if characters like Miles Morales started as a pure cash grab from people of color, it’s still hyper important that this experiment ever happened in the first place.

And it all happened because of a television show called Family Matters, which is a show that would become famous because of its capitalization on a character that was intended to be short-lived, but went on to become synonymous with the show, Steve Urkel.

Now, let’s be honest here, this character was intended to make fun of the nerdy. It was a vaudevillian act based on the absolute stereotypes of what nerds in the late 80s looked like. But, although he and I didn’t have the same skin color, he looked and acted like me. He was awkward, didn’t know how to talk to girls (or anyone), was a bit clumsy, had trouble making friends, wore huge glasses and ill-fitting clothes, and had an absolute love of cheese. He was the comedic relief, but I immediately saw myself in him.

And that meant so much to me. I fell so absolutely in love with this character that I started working on my impersonation of him, which was pretty darn solid. And by Halloween, all I wanted was to dress up like him. Now, here’s where things get a little iffy. You see, Steve Urkel was a black character. I’m white. While the late 80s in South Carolina weren’t exactly known for their compassion toward folks of different races, I’m guessing we probably still should have known that black face harkened back to terrible stereotypes cemented against people of color during vaudeville. But at the same time, I had never felt so absolutely connected to a character in my life.

I’m not saying I should in any way be forgiven for wearing black face, as there is so much more behind it than just a white kid not knowing any better. But I do want to suggest that there was something a little bit more on my end than simple ignorant racism. Because it wasn’t that I was making fun of a black person. It wasn’t that I was trying to appropriate something of some other person’s culture. I wore black face on that Halloween over 30 years ago because I found someone on television who finally reminded me of me. I colored my face not because I wanted to be black, but because I wanted to show off how much I saw myself in this character on tv.

And I only bring this up because even to this day, I have a difficult time wanting to accept how bad of a choice this was (it was, don’t get me wrong) because of how important it was to me to show how I identified with this character who was so incredibly popular with the world at that point in time. For once in my early life, I didn’t feel so nearly alone as that awkward nerdy kid who pulled his knee high socks all the way up to his knees. I felt seen.

And so, even if I cringe at the idea of a megacorporation deciding to capitalize on the news-grabbing concept of briefly changing the race or gender of a beloved character, I also can see how exciting of a moment that can be for those kids needing to see themselves in the characters they love. While I don’t think I would have appreciated a white Steve Urkel nearly as much, mostly because Steve’s character was already exactly like me in nearly every way, the character of Miles Morales has a background and a story that is far removed from that of Peter Parker. Although I know the skin tones help, I believe it’s far less about that than it is about the character himself being so much more like the kids who now identify with him.

We all want to know that we’re not alone. It’s nice being unique, but sometimes it’s nice to know that someone out there also understands what it’s like to be you. Even if that means they bring in a character with a grating voice who is crafted purely to annoy the hell out of every people he interacts with on the screen. Because sometimes those characters are the exact characters a young friendless nerdy boy in the South needs to see.

My Fate in the Stars

As a person with a history deeply set in religion, I find myself often looking at the events in my life with an eye toward trends and movements toward something. Religion likes to talk about fate a lot, even if many of them like to focus on the idea of free will. And fate is something that I think all of us think about rather often, even if we don’t actually believe in it.

As someone open to the breadth of humanity’s thoughts on things, I sometimes like to check out my horoscope. Look, they’re terribly written and generally run the gamut from as horribly vague as “expect something good to happen today” to impossibly specific “you may receive an angry phone call from someone who lives far away” (these examples are the horoscope for yesterday and today for me). I read them with a grain of salt, usually because I have something on my mind that I’m hoping to gain some sort of new perspective on.

Don’t get me wrong, I still consider horoscopes to be an incredibly hokey form of short fiction which shouldn’t be taken any more seriously than the words inside a fortune cookie, but at the same time, I find the concepts of astrology incredibly interesting. While I’m not one who likes to believe that we are stuck within any one certain fate, I’m incredibly intrigued by the idea that the very stars you are born under can tell you anything about your life.

I’m a Virgo. And nearly every description of a Virgo fits me almost perfectly. But, at the same time, I could say the same for the attributes of a Cancer or an Aries or, well, I think I could find myself in the description for many of them. That might be a portion of the brilliance of astrology in that it allows you to find yourself in the description, no matter what the description is.

But here is where I find myself most interested in things like astrology, or tarot cards, or any form of fortune telling. They often give you a framework for self reflection. I don’t want to downplay the reality that anyone lives in, so if you live under the idea that palm reading is a legitimate telling of a person’s fate, I’m cool with that for you. But what I can tell you is that if someone tells you that you are going to have a good day, and you put any level of stock into that person’s reason for telling you that, your chances for having a good day are better than they are without that message.

If someone says that there is a hard decision coming in your future that you shouldn’t be so ready to turn down, you’re going to spend the next few days looking for the hard decision while also wondering what it could be, and rethinking all of the things you’ve been avoiding thinking about.

In other words, I’m a huge fan of the psychic and astrological arts, not necessarily because I believe they hold any insight from the supernatural, but because they give you a different way of thinking about things. One of the things I like most about Tarot readings is that they give you incredibly basic prompts for how to think about something, like “oh there’s this bad thing in your past that’s been haunting you and it’s causing you to make stupid decisions today” and you’ll go, you know what, you’re right, I wonder if there’s anything I can do to stop allowing that to happen.

I own a deck of tarot cards and give myself readings somewhat frequently, especially when I’m feeling emotional but don’t actually know why I’m feeling that way. It gives me new ways to think about whatever is hiding in the background of my mind and often illuminates problems that I didn’t even realize I was having. And it allows me to actually frame my issues in completely new ways. It’s like having a set of writing prompts for your life.

Maybe these things are all based on nothing, but the way in which they are crafted means that they actually can have some of the most wonderful benefits. As long as you realize that nothing, not even fate, is set in stone.

Debating on Social Media

When I was a younger man, I really liked to argue about things. I’d pretend it was all about the art of debating, but really, I just loved the ability to absolutely defeat someone with a little bit of verbal gymnastics. It’s not that I was purely chaotic in my will to debate. I actually generally liked to give people reason to consider the other side of the coin. I liked playing devil’s advocate because people were often so set in their opinions that they couldn’t even consider another side of the discussion.

As I got older, I realized that some of the topics people were wanting to discuss (namely, politics) were ones I had no interest in. This meant I had limited information about and often the discussions involved a lot of short hand gained from watching the talking heads on tv. I often felt as though I didn’t stand a chance in these debates which people would fight with great fervor, mostly because I didn’t even know the names they were tossing about. But also, these debates often devolved to simple finger pointing and name calling, which didn’t feel all that fun and often derailed any attempts to logically work through a debate topic.

I learned that there were a lot of tricks involved in political debate that simply didn’t feel fair, things which were obviously perfected by those same talking heads. Things like berating and changing the subject and absolutely useless metaphors and anecdotal evidence. Things like focusing on belittling the competition by noting incorrect pronunciation or improper grammar or spelling. These little things that could waylay the course a person was going with their point, knocking them off guard and making the debate more about who could frustrate the other one first. People were no longer actually debating, but talking past each other to see who could confuse the other one first. This wasn’t debate, it was arguing.

Then social media came about, and people were suddenly given this platform to proclaim all of their most ridiculous of thoughts regarding politics, science, and religion, and would gladly do so in the most inflammatory of ways. The world started feeling a lot more angry, because people had this new place to declare how much they despised the people on the other side of the fence from them. I quickly determined this was a dangerous playground to play in. The kindnesses afforded in personal interaction were suddenly gone and people didn’t care about making sense. And these “debates” often became nothing more than personal attacks.

This might have been the first time in my life I actually began biting my tongue. I was rather outspoken in my youth, feeling ready to give my thoughts on most anything at any time, always ready to question the status quo. It wasn’t until I was older that I realized how little people wanted their beliefs questioned. While they would put their questionable comments out for everyone to see, they didn’t do so because they wanted someone to propose alternative viewpoints, they just wanted everyone to state how much they agreed.

I became a lot quieter in general, biting my tongue in most situations. Even outside of social media, people simply weren’t keen on thinking about things from any other angle than the one they had always believed to be true. Even at work, a place where I prided myself on enacting change through finding the truth, I simply lost the will to fight and allowed (continue to allow) all of the dumbest things to continue because I just didn’t have the will to fight it any longer. Because, more often than not, these shouldn’t have been fights. It’s incredibly disheartening to come into a meeting armed with the facts about why something is being done wrong only to have some respond with “that’s how we’ve always done it so we’re going to keep doing it that way”.

I’ll admit I still appreciate a good debate with someone. I actually got into a debate just a few days ago about who was better between Kenan Thompson and Darrell Hammond. And I ended it immediately after the discussion turned into one about how I just like to argue. I still believe Darrell Hammond is the better actor, but if the person who disagrees with me wants to make a personal attack, I simply don’t see the need to continue. Because this is what debate is now, right? One can’t have different opinions and give their reasons for the opinions. If their opinions are different, it’s a debate, an argument, and they’re just being argumentative for supporting their own point. And, of course, when we get into debate mode, we resort to the old standards of personal attacks and finger pointing.

Even biting my tongue at that point about a topic that I really don’t care much about, was difficult for me, because although I simply made a statement that was not in agreement with my conversation partner’s belief, he asked for supportive reasons, which I gave, didn’t even ask for his similar supportive reasons, and I was declared as argumentatively invalid. It wasn’t a debate I cared about enough to continue with past that point, so I stopped, but I respond similarly with debates I do care about, because I don’t see where they will proceed usefully.

Which is why I tend to take my oppositional thoughts to my writing. And I so often have these high hopes from my writing, thinking I could write something so profound that it would change the world. But the truth is, people don’t want to be changed. Even I have a hard time with this. I struggle constantly with the idea of completely cutting people I disagree with out of my life because of it. I fight it, because I think it’s important to see the other sides of the argument, to be your own devil’s advocate and to ensure, especially in this world of highly partisan political commentary, that you aren’t blinding yourself to anything.

I don’t like the idea of shutting down the other side of the debate, because I think it’s healthy to argue most topics. It’s healthy to be certain of why you believe what you hold dear. Of course, you have to argue with being open to the idea that you might be wrong, with listening to the opposing arguments, with truly trying to see what your opponent believes, holding it against the light and seeing if any of it holds true.

Debate is healthy. It’s important. But debate means listening, and that’s something that I think we all fail at. I recently got into a debate on Facebook with someone in which I disagreed with how they used a metaphor. Their response was a diatribe about their feelings on the subject they were making their metaphor about. Nothing about the metaphor itself. In fact, they presented an idea in their debate which went in complete opposition of the metaphor they originally presented, meaning their metaphor meant nothing to them. They simply wanted a place to yell about their thing of the moment.

And I’ll admit that I struggled to continue as a good listener with every change of what we were arguing about and as each new baseless statement was made, but I tried, and I researched both sides of the argument and even asked if he had the information he was claiming existed, not as a way to shut him down, but because I was truly interested, as it might be enough to change my thoughts on the matter. But that was the point things stopped. For some reason that appears to be the point in which a lot of things stop: when asking for more than just the words, but looking for the supporting facts which are claimed to exist.

And the only reason I can have for this is because we often debate today because we want other people to know our truth, not because we want to find the actual truth.

And that’s a dangerous place to be.

So, I’m here to tell you that I’m wrong often. I will very often hold things to be quite dear to me as truth only to have someone tell me something that completely changes my worldview on a topic. This happens so often that I end up second guessing every piece of knowledge I hold in my brain. And honestly, with the very entirety of human knowledge literally at our fingertips today, I think we could all do with a little second guessing.

At the very least, be open to the fact that others might have valid reasons for what they hold true.

TV Review: Great News

Although I’ve been taking the time to highlight some of the tv and films I’ve been watching lately, I don’t get a ton of spare time for watching either most days. I only bring this up, because that means I’m generally pretty picky with what I choose to watch, so I have to admit that it’s a little weird that this one actually managed to fall through the cracks and be something I’ve not only been watching, but thoroughly enjoying.

Great News is a pretty standard workplace sitcom, in which a young producer on a news show has her mother suddenly show up as an intern. It’s the kind of premise that I believe gets an automatic green light for a pilot, based on how many similar shows we have to this. Add on to it that Tina Fey is an executive producer (which certainly explains why the background music is so reminiscent of 30 Rock) and you can see why the networks were so eager to give this production money.

It only lasted for two seasons, which wouldn’t be all that surprising except for one specific item: Andrea Martin.

For most of you, if not all of you, this name might not mean anything, but for people like me who grew up watching all the SCTV they could get in their non-Canada-residing hands, you might remember her as Edith Princkley in a show that, oddly enough, was about a television network.

I loved Andrea Martin. She had this amazing awkward charm that made her a delight whenever she’d make an appearance on SCTV. And then, I’ll be honest, I forgot about her. For years. She’s even shown up in a few things I’ve watched over the years, like Hedwig and the Angry Inch or My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and I’ve somehow completely overlooked her. But she was one of the selling points for me to watch this show in the first place, and she hasn’t let me down.

Sure, they may overuse her character to Steve Urkel-levels of distraction from the rest of the characters and story, but I don’t care, because she is amazing. Her ability to play this hyper-attentive mother who is still really only focused on herself is so absolutely perfect that I am really disappointed that there’s so few episodes of the show in existence.

But in reality, this show just causes me to believe that we need to give Andrea Martin the level of comedic freedom that her cohorts Martin Short, Eugene Levy, John Candy, and Catherine O’Hara have received over the years.

Or, I guess, just let her do what she’s been doing, since it looks like she’s had a pretty fulfilling career based on her IMDB profile.

Regardless, this show is probably not for everyone, as it is very much just more of the same sitcom silt, but if you want to watch a master comedian do her work on a show that seems to refuse to rein her in, Great News just might be the show for you. As long as you’re willing to shut off your brain for a bit and allow a heavy dose of stupid to settle in.

What’s the Matter with Kids These Days?

As I write this, our household is nearing the moment in which the kids head back to school and my house is finally empty and quiet again for the first time in months. So, here I am, trying to get everything I can done before this delta variant (or any other of the variants) shuts down our schools again and we’re right back to the place it feels like we’ve been for the past 18 months where my kids are constantly in my office trying to convince me they should get more video game time.

Look, I get it. If you have more video games, you’re in my office far less, but then I have to deal with the absolute monster you become after because you apparently can’t handle more than 30 minutes of screen time before you become a little ball of rage who wants to destroy everything.

Cue the old man noises…

When I was a kid, I was allowed pretty much unfettered access to the tv for shows, video games, and then a whole lot of extra time on the computer after. And I would use it. I would sit in front of those screens for hours, letting my brain rot into a little pile of mush. But when I got done, it was usually because I was bored, and I would go off and do something else.

When my kids get done, it’s like they’ve been awoken from the worst nap of all time and they just want to go back to sleep, but refuse to do any actual sleeping, and then they just absolutely have no idea of what to do when it’s not screen time except scream and punch each other.

And I don’t know what to do about that.

Even more crazy to me is that they appear to not know what to do with themselves when the screens aren’t on.

My kids have no idea how to amuse themselves if it doesn’t involve a brightly shining LCD screen and somehow that makes me feel like I’ve failed as a parent. It’s not like I got training on self-amusement when I was a kid. I didn’t even have nearly the pile of toys these kids have. I had a bucket of action figures that I would drag around behind me and take into my sisters’ room to try and convince them to let my guys battle their Barbies. I had a bike that I would take around the neighborhood, or just ride in circles in my driveway. My kids take a whole ton of effort just to convince them that the sun is good for them, unless it’s to go across the street to the pool.

And I think that’s the part that’s most confusing to me. These kids will hang out outside for hours if I’m with them. They will happily hike through the forests, they will go fishing (with minimal whining when we’re not catching anything), and when we go camping, they will chitter away happily while we sit in the woods and wait for the fire to get hot enough to cook dinner. We have taken to trying to visit all the national parks and they will explore every inch of those places they can until we run out of time, but when we’re at home, the outdoors are some sort of evil place that will infect them with its fresh air.

So, in summation, I’ve finally reached the point in my old age where I look at these dang kids and can’t help wondering what the heck is wrong with them.

While also wishing I had the free time they had so I could just sit outside in the sun and take a nap.