I’ve been displaying all the APDA Summer 2011 tournament rounds as they get uploaded, so I might as well include our semifinal loss, a monstrosity which included 6 minutes of points of clarification, pervasive ad hominem attacks (mostly directed at me), and the scattershottiest opp I may have ever witnessed. Nevertheless, you can judge it for yourself below:

APDA Summer 2011: Semifinals from Storey Clayton on Vimeo.

If you liked it when I argued we should profit off of hapless students instead of offering them non-profit education, you’ll love this.

This was the case Dave & Kyle were going to run in Nats Finals had they gotten there. Instead, Dave & I had fun with the sisters Sanders in this round that is not precisely an exemplar of full decorum. Enjoy:

APDA Summer 2011: Round 1 from Storey Clayton on Vimeo.

I hereby resolve to write some posts this trip, because I herein read a post, and it’s pretty funny, and there’s something about writing that captures a concision and a worldview I have yet to replicate with on-the-fly videos:

I have another TH’HEAT video in the wings, but the uploading seems to be going slowly because it’s really long and something about the lighting of it makes it extra-colorful and thus takes a lot of byte space and bandwidth. At least, I think that’s contributing to the issues. In any event, David Yin uploaded our fourth round from last Saturday’s fun tournament at Columbia and I wanted to share it since it was by far the highest quality round of the five we debated. We also got to defend something I believe in, more or less, even though I was accused of being an atheist during the round. It was after giving this LOR that I really felt I was on my game again and had shaken off all the rust from my time not debating.

Debate: “Would You Get Rid of Religion?” from David on Vimeo.

One of the most fun aspects of debate, as well as its most educational and most challenging, is that it mandates one frequently argue persuasively for things diametric to what one actually believes. Here’s a key example, where Dave and I, debating as “Red Dawn” as a nod to our personally socio-communist leanings, argue things like the market solving, the ethos of American opportunity, and even the accrual of debt:

APDA Summer 2011: Round 2 from Storey Clayton on Vimeo.

The first of a few rounds from Saturday’s tournament that Dave and I filmed. This is probably the second-best – our fourth round was awfully awesome and hopefully the other team, who recorded that, will get it online soon. This is among the crazier cases I’ve ever run, but it made for a pretty great round:

APDA Summer 2011: Round 3 from Storey Clayton on Vimeo.

I haven’t had a lot to say the last couple days, but it’s not for lack of activity. Friends have been in New York and I went to see them, other friends came to New York and I went to see them. So much of me wants to just scrabble up the current life plan and return to a previous one, but I also know that fails to recognize the incredible blessings incumbent in the current one. People still get this wide-eyed look when I talk about the opportunities I’ve got with the debate team right now and I have visions of all the things that I think we can accomplish and I’ve already become really reliant on this community of people. I just so so so wish it were somewhere in the West, or at least not in New Jersey. I have people nearby, everywhere around, but not here, and efforts to get people here seem to be stymied by the fact that it’s New Jersey and everyone else recognizes that too. Next life, I think I want a planet that’s 500 miles around or maybe to be born into one of those feudal villages where a trip to the city walls is a big adventure.

In any case, on this particular planet, I’m staring down an epic roadtrip in less than a fortnight that’s got some event changes possible at the front-end that I’ll update as soon as I know what those are. In the meantime, I wanted to share a tour video from another roadtripper, the herein over-discussed Allison Weiss, who just released a recording of one of the new songs as she played it at the Princeton show I attended! This song, like so many of hers, captures exactly how I’m feeling, but this day in particular. And it’s a rerun of something I already saw. The world is like that all the time, kids. Just open your eyes and your mind.

This letter will be part of my outgoing mail today:

“Today, I take you into my arms and into my heart and promise to hold you there forever. Through whatever we encounter, I promise you my unfailing love and my unflinching honesty. I know that my life can never be the same without you. It can never be complete without your love, your understanding, and your support. I love you in a way that I’ve never loved another person and I never will be able to again. You are my soulmate. This is why today is the happiest day of my life, as I stand here before you, and our family, and our friends, and all of God’s creation and I commit myself to you and to our lives together. I love you.”
-Emily Garin, as she became Emily Clayton, 13 July 2003

So a funny thing happened last night. Some of my debate friends posted on Facebook. And then they kept posting. Facebook has posts and comments on posts as the main framework for its operation, each attributed specifically to an identity. And the genius of Facebook, as I’ve long said and doesn’t seem to get talked about as much as it should, is that everyone uses their real identity on their because the incentives in place reward/require that and there are few rewards for being anonymous (at least undiscernibly so) or having multiple identities. Anyway, before too long (3-4 hours), there were over 1,600 comments on this one post.

We naively thought for a while that we would hit some sort of cap or be in for some sort of record, but a tiny bit of quick research proved both of those notions were absurd – there’s apparently a Facebook post with over 305,000 comments and counting out there. Never question the ability of humanity to push an envelope. It was in that spirit, and the spiraling reflection of what a strange, somewhat magical, and overall confounding phenomenon this post was, that I wrote this stream-of-consciousness evaluation, in what ultimately proved to be two comments with a Postscript, this morning. I present it here unedited, typos and all, as it was written:

One thousand, six-hundred, and seventy-two comments. Why is it standard procedure to put hyphens before “hundred” and the last two numbers of a large number, but not thousand or more? That seems odd. I am also breaking the longest silence in this thread’s history, of about 3 hours. It looks like the longest gap prior to this was about 15 minutes or so, but it may have been less. It’s strange that Facebook conceals precise times for things until over a day after they’ve happened. It seems strangely revisionist, even though it’s clear that their reason for approximating things in proximity to the current time is to make things seem somehow more “live” and exciting. Not that this phenomenon could possibly have anything to do with spawning threads of over 1600 comments in 7 hours. Of course, we also have to recognize that while Facebook may not have anticipated this usage of comment-threads, they certainly seem to deem it a form of “working as intended,” since they’ve done nothing to stop or alter it. And some of the publicity around the 305,000+ thread must indeed make them pretty pleased with themselves. As though an entity like Facebook could have a monolithic opinion like that. Perhaps they have endless boardroom debates about whether or not they should cap the number of comments. Which raises another interesting question I’ve always wondered about, which is why there is no limit on comment length when there’s a rather draconian limit on status lengths, one that I routinely (about 1/5 times I try to post a status) trip over. And then they prompt you to write a note, which basically, formatted the way they are in Facebook, has a big sign on it that says “Irrelevant!”. In any event, it seems bizarre that they would cap that and pretty much nothing else. Do they fear some massive escalation prompted by 850-word status updates that prolongs everything else. But why wouldn’t they want that? Of course, I don’t know for a fact there’s no cap on comment characters, though I’m likely to find out at this rate. It could be that what I’m writing right now is not actually being published and has to be broken into a (heaven forbid!) second comment. It’s like a Schrodinger’s cat problem (oh God, I mentioned cats in this thread), whether the cat’s in the box or not. Is this sentence in the original comment as intended or not? I won’t know until I press enter. But I guess you could say “I’m doing it wrong” with this comment, if the point is to extend the number of comments to our ultimate, if dubious, glory. Of course it’s tremendously silly to start doing things like Adam did last night, posting one letter at a time, but mostly because that limits or eliminates discourse altogether. Which prompts the ultimate question, the one that most of you must be asking yourself right now (as though you’ve actually read this mono-paragraph all the way through, though I suppose you might have, and I maybe suggest you copy/paste into Word and insert line-breaks at sentences for added clarity, because this is a lousy way to read), which is, of course, what was it about this post and this series of early comments last night that was able to produce the maelstrom when most of these threads die out after a (relatively!) merciful 30-50 comments? There was a thread about Waffle House a few weeks ago that crossed triple-digits and I recall thinking a comment-thread about WikiLeaks on Reid’s wall hitting 65 comments or so was a sign of great discourse, but of course that actually had predominantly meaningful commentary and debate. It occurs to me at this point that I will be surprised if it actually accepts a comment this long. Insert sexual joke here. Ditto. But seriously. Also, naming Adam and Reid and getting the brief suggestion of tagging them from Facebook reminds me that there is a limit on number of tags in a comment or post. Which makes me wonder how they arrived at the number 6. Five seems so obvious, but 6 actually more convenient (and not just for the trivial reason that it’s +1). It makes me wonder how many things are done in pairs besides debate teams, because that’s what I find it most useful to call out, for example when Rutgers broke 3 teams at UVa. Not that I’m just gratuitously bringing that up. Or am I? In any event, I’m now torn between maxing out my six tags or leaving this as an untagged monument to “doing it wrong” in this thread. Although of course part of the magic of this thread is its lack of gratuity (hear me out) because, unlike just posting single letters repeatedly or even starting to read out of a random Dickens book like some bloated filibuster, the mysterious alchemy that can spawn a 1600+-post thread derives from its ability to entertain a large number of people for a long period of time. Which I would probably levy as a response to any people coming to harshly critique the alleged gratuity of this endeavor. After all, can you really say this thread is less valuable than time spent watching a TV show or, indeed (to reference my own activity last night), a baseball game? Certainly it’s interactive and lively. There was a palpable excitement in most, if not all, participants. A small injection of a sense of wonder. A spawning of micro-communities as people discussed entirely different things but, while they faced periodic criticism, no one was excluded from one main thread. Making it very different than forums or chatrooms designated for specific purposes to the exclusion of others. It almost gave me renewed hope for some sort of small utopian socialist community someday. At the same time, I realize that in analyzing it this deeply, one starts to kill part of the magic, as in overexplaining why a joke is funny. If people fully understood why this thread was so enthralling, it would detract from the magical nature of finding it so and thus take the sheen off the entire experience, to the extent that there is one. I recognize that some people are merely truly pained or annoyed by this, and at least a few people liked particular comments but wisely (?) restrained themselves from actually posting, lest they be besieged by notifications. It also occurs to me to wonder what the relative word-count of this comment is (gee, I sure hope they let it be just one comment and that it loads properly and stuff) to the entire thread before it. Even I, on a morning where I eventually have to go to work, don’t aspire to write a piece longer than the original work which I am appending, though it would be an incredibly commentary to do so. I will have to settle for merely having at least one word for every comment made prior, although I have no idea where I am relative to such a goal. This comment now takes up over six full lines when pasted into Notepad, which forces line-breaks after only a very long time. I know this because I have dealt with computers frequently and pasting into Notepad and periodically saving is a necessary adaptation (take note, kids!) to a world where certain web applications can crash at any moment and working this long on something to find it go up in smoke is one of the most heartbreaking experiences one can have short of, y’know, real heartbreak. Although there is something similar in each, of course, in the idea of working so hard on something or spending so much time with something/someone, only to have it come to nothing in the end, only to have loss. In both cases, there is memory, but the memory of how great something was only serves to enhance the pain of the loss. Wow, this is really similar. And I’m painting myself into a sad, sad corner. And at the beginning of the day too. I went a really long time without doing that in this comment. Although, frankly, and you can probably tell, this actually hasn’t taken that much time to write, which ought be a lesson to all of you paper-writers out there, that something of length doesn’t necessarily take much time to write as long as you feel really comfortable with your material. Although most debaters know that, I would suspect, since debating makes you a faster writer by making you think on your feet in complete and persuasive sentences. Microsoft Word has me at 1,439 words prior to the beginning of this sentence here, which actually surprises me as being a little shorter than I would’ve expected, but so it goes. Guys, I had dreams about this comment thread last night and awoke to think they were more surreal than most of the dreams I have about things which are not actually things. At this point, my computer is really laboring through the process of processing this comment and I’ve probably said most of what I want to say, but I’ve pretty much set an explicit bar for myself of exceeding the number of comments prior with words herein, so it’s pretty much you and me and my recognition that I have to get there at this point, if you are still reading, which I would have doubted prior to the comment thread which inspired this post here, but of course the rules seem somehow changed by this whole thing and in the context of this whole thing. Which says something, at the least, about human adaptability. I almost feel as though I could challenge someone to do anything or virtually anything in this comment thread and people would pool resources and unite in order to rise to the occasion. Possibly ironic use of the word “rise” there, though it calls to mind pole-vaulting or similar, wherein even if what you’re doing is sort of needless and silly, it still has meteoric value as a testament to human endeavor and triumph. I mean, what skill could pole vaulting possibly demonstrate other than sheer human ability to do mind-boggling stuff? And do you ever think about what we recognize as tremendous and what we don’t have a way of recognizing and how trivial the differences are between those things? I know this is going to bother those of you still clinging to capitalism and arguments that the market solve, but there really is no correlation (or little, I would definitely posit) between work and reward, between impressiveness of a feat and structures to recognize that feat. How someone out there is the most talented person at a sport not yet invented (let’s say Calvinball for the sake of argument/illustration), but they will never get to rise above janitor or truck-driver (no offense, Ashley) because no structures are in place to acknowledge their skill, and so they will struggle their whole life with drugs and depression and loneliness because society has arbitrarily deemed them to be unsuccessful. Whereas, on the other hand, a great success in football or basketball in baseball can thrive in a sport invented and earn almost unfathomable amounts of money, power, prestige, and notoriety, living as a veritable modern king in our society. Yes, a certain athletic prowess is certainly translatable from one sport to another, but let me at least tell you a story about this to illustrate my argument. I used to live in Oregon and they are quite big on their recycling there and were a forerunner of recycling/deposit incentives and one day I went with my Dad to a recycling center in a grocery store and we had bags and bags of cans and bottles and jumbled recyclables and we handed them over for our deposit and the kid there (he was maybe 17 or 19 or something) took the bag and sorted it like some dervishing Hindu god, just all arms flying and spinning and never placing a can or bottle or green bottle or plastic bottle wrong, boom, boom, boom, boom, the whole thing was over in a matter of seconds and I was floored by the sheer talent this kid had for seamlessly, efficiently, instantly sorting recyclable items. And then something occurred to me almost immediately, it being obvious in front of me, and I said to my Dad that this was an impressive skill which our society was not in any way designed to appropriately recognize or compensate. For, almost paradoxically, if it were, this kid could not be here in a lowly rural part of Oregon sorting 5-cent recyclables. So walk not from this comment thinking that we are at the terminal point of our understanding of anything, be it radiation and cell-phones or how to structure a society. Or, indeed, how to prolong a Facebook thread. There is much to be learned in the future and I am excited to see what happens next with all of you alongside.

Postscript: Apparently the cap is 8,000 characters for a comment. Where they came up with that, I have no idea, but I doubt they expected someone to test it that often. It does also renew my wonder at the fact that they haven’t capped threads themselves, but that discussion remains for another time (or perhaps for all-time).

Part of the problem with a worldview devoted to science and the belief that everything is completely random and coincidental is that it can blind us to the pattern-seeking wisdom innate to our species. Thus people can see events transpire that, in combination, send a clear message and patently refuse to acknowledge the message under the guise of their faith in a random universe. Setting aside the inconsistency of a “random universe” having ordered and explicable laws which these people seek to define, refine, and demonstrate the consistency of, it’s just not a good use of the human brain to assume there’s nothing to be gleaned from stringing patterns together and trying to discern a communication. We are pattern-seekers for a reason and that reason is probably not to help keep us from surviving.

The pattern clearly being expressed of late is that lousy methods of power-generation are going to kill us. No, really, they are. And probably a good bit faster than the relatively glacial pace of the alleged global warming/climate change/neo ice-age/buy fluorescent bulbs movement. I’ve long considered the above to be sort of a noble lie, a bit of a fudging of things in order to get us to move away from patterns of global organization and behavior that are clearly problematic for other reasons. Basically, if Al Gore’s theology is the only reason you’re going to cut down on your waste and lobby for better energy sources, it’s better than not taking those steps at all. Except, you know, when you believe that individuals instead of corporations move the bar on these things, or when you believe that buying new things to replace old functional things is somehow the solution. But hey.

Getting back to the point. Oil will kill us. Nuclear power will kill us. Coal will kill us. Not slowly, not over time, but quickly and fiercely and with the power of a dark, choking asphyxiation. And you can sit there and say “Gee, isn’t it funny that we went through a massive phase where coal-mining cave-ins were the biggest news story on the planet, and that was almost immediately followed by a massive phase where the biggest, most devastating oil spill was the biggest news story on the planet, and that was almost immediately followed by the emerging reality of sequential nuclear meltdowns triggered by a highly predictable and common event being the biggest news story on the planet – wow that must be random.” You can say that to yourself if you want to. But if you do, with that conclusion, then, respectfully, you are an idiot. And you should think about what is making you an idiot and how you can fix that.

I’ve posted a bit (mostly on Facebook, which is starting, even for me, to steal time away from this page) about Zeitgeist lately and the accompanying movement and the three movies and all that. And while I find their dismissiveness about deeper meaning and accompanying faith in science to be in line with what I criticize above, I do at least value the movement’s general sense of urgency about the problems facing our planet and the obvious unacceptability of what so many people unthinkingly put up with on a daily basis. One of the most frustrating things about being alive on Earth at this stage of history is having to feel crazy all the time for finding the problems apparent in almost every aspect of human structures to be so obvious while everyone else thinks they’re more or less fine (or at least intractable). I’m not saying it would be easy to create Utopia tomorrow, but it does seem clear that major steps we could take in that direction are relatively simple and apparent. And they all just require that internal recognition of what’s distracting us and how to get away from it.

Of course, I can also see the extreme effectiveness of capitalism as a general system in distracting us from what’s important. Surely capitalism isn’t the only structure in place keeping us from realizing the potential we really have to improve our lot and our planet’s lot, but it’s by far the biggest and most effective at present. Discussion of creating actually sustainable forms of power that lack the ability to go awry and destroy ecosystems or small swaths of civilization (or perhaps the entire planet’s ecosystem and civilization) is waved down by the shrugging declaration that the market will somehow solve for calamity, that the invisible hand is smart enough to anticipate short- and long-term consequences that don’t involve money. It’s relatively obvious to the thoughtful that corporations will not start investing with any seriousness in sustainable forms of energy until unsustainable ones have become unprofitable. And it should be relatively obvious now that the risks associated with those more traditional forms of energy are overriding any profit gained from their use. Unfortunately, the profit motive has no slot for accounting for human welfare.

When a government is found to be oppressive, people are lauded and cheered for rebelling against that system. Why not with an economic mode of oppression as well? Here is a clear and stark demonstration of the fact that corporations, capitalism, and the system that keeps them in place as the dominant ways of conducting human affairs are going to kill us. Quickly and painfully. They will kill our animals, they will kill our people, they will kill our way of life. You know, all those things terrorists are allegedly about to do because they “hate” us. Except that capitalists are indifferent to such things, something that can prove far more devastating than hate. Hate at least acknowledges the need for value structures, emotions, prioritization of values. Indifference is lethal, is swift in its disregard. Yeah, that’s right. I said it. I fear capitalists far more than terrorists. The capitalists are actually killing us in high volume numbers, and with far less self-awareness.

So what’s the prescription? What’s the answer to watching every form of popular energy generation go haywire and cause increasing levels of disaster? What’s the answer to watching economic riots generate massive instability and upheaval that also offers the opportunity for change? It’s to embrace the change, to push it further, to take advantage of the power of examination that comes from things being difficult, to start advocating stringently and ardently for an end to the status quo. For something, anything, to replace the currently accepted standards of resource distribution and the currently accepted resources themselves. For the process by which we change these things and which we ultimately decide on to account for things like human meaning and the importance of human values and lives, not merely faith in that system itself. Devoted faith in any system, be it the scientific method, the invisible hand, the concept of randomness, or even the concept of democracy, can blind us to the flaws and failings of such systems. And as we are seeing all over the world, this yields disastrous consequences.

I pray for the people of Japan, just as I did for those on the Gulf Coast and those trapped in mines and will continue to for all the victims of our idiocy. It is not kind that this world requires death as the only antidote to stupidity, that until people start keeling over in large numbers, no one pays attention. It is perhaps the natural consequence of an overpopulated planet in a rudimentary stage of development. It will not always need to be so. But I do hope that these people and those like them can be spared to the greatest extent possible, while we still manage to learn from their suffering.

Which reminds me, before I close, about one of the last major earthquakes in Japan and what hypocrisy and myopia that one reminded me of. Since nothing really became of this poem I wrote in 1995, I might as well attach it here as another addendum about the nature of humanity and how the answers should be clear, or at least clearer. This was written on January 21, 1995, four days after the major Kobe earthquake of that year, amidst Japan initially refusing aid from the West and getting massive criticism for this decision.

SHAKEN EARTH
by Storey Clayton

but all Tied to the World.

Most of my descriptions of the past are remembered and recollected, which gives me the opportunity to discuss them in the style of my current writing, to couch them in the perspective of my present vantage point. And while that has a lot of advantages, since I’m a better writer than I used to be and have more experience, it comes with drawbacks as well. The past is tinged in a different way in light of my current standing. Things that used to work out or seem good or be for the best may be more complicated now. Truth is vision without perspective, yet we can never really transcend our own perspective in the moment of looking from it. The best we can do is to suspend or question the trappings of that viewpoint in the moment we are peering out its filtered windows.

But one of the advantages of copious record keeping, of not having a bonfire of all my worldly goods and papers (yet), and of living so publicly, is that I can offer unedited perspectives of the past to describe the past. And in collecting the evolution of these perspectives and sources, and periodically revisiting them, I can arrive at something closer to objectivity about a wider swath of time. Which is not to say that objectivity is necessarily ideal, since there is much to be gained, as in debate, from simply having a perspective. But at least some of the biases of the moment can be strained and teased out, or juxtaposed with biases of other moments.

There are two significant anniversaries this weekend, one that most are contemplating, and one that only debate people would have cause to observe. The first is the twenty-five year anniversary of the Challenger explosion, a seminal moment in my own childhood, the Kennedy assassination or 9/11 of its era. The second is the ten-year anniversary (this debate-scheduled weekend, if not this precise calendar date) of Zirkin and I winning the North American Championship for Brandeis.

I could describe these key moments in my life in poetic detail, could frame them in light of what I’ve learned or experienced since then. But given my ability to present vivid first-hand accounts, I will favor those instead. Actually, the first is already a reframing – it’s my college essay written at seventeen about being five. The second is the direct first-hand reporting of my life from Ithaca, New York, that fateful weekend just shy of a decade past.

Obviously the second anniversary is more directly significant to my current existence than the first – I am not about to board a spaceship at this moment, but I am about to head to New York for a North American Championship. It will be my first as a coach – we lacked the money to attend last year. The snowfall, just flurries tacking on to the nearly-two-foot total already achieved in Jersey and NYC, is doing its best to make the world into a little impression of Ithaca. To say I would have high hopes for this weekend would put far too much pressure on the situation. But, as ten years ago, I am at home with the presence of possibility. Like every pre-debate morning, the air is pregnant with the promise of unpredictability. If there is one take-home message from my life that I can draw today, it’s that anything – anything – can happen.

College Application Personal Essay
Storey Clayton – circa December 1997

The crisp winter air was never too cold in that part of California. Fog, the closest we ever got to snow in California’s Central Valley, hovered just a few feet off the ground, blanketing vision with a soft, gray thickness of sky. In Visalia, a fairly small town that virtually no one had ever heard of, I was growing up. Like all five-year-olds, I had hopes and dreams for the oh-so-far-away future. I was almost six, after all, and that birthday would bring me another step closer to the great adulthood that somehow loomed, though inconceivably, in my mind.

When I went home that afternoon, I hadn’t cried much. But my dream had died with the seven astronauts aboard the Challenger. It was over for me. I picked up my plastic stegosaurus and stepped out the back door. I could see the back fence all too well. The fog had evaporated.

Introspection, My Worst Friend
Storey Clayton – 2-4 February 2001

2 February 2001
-Ben Harper was solid, but in comparison to a lot of my more recent concerts, not quite fantastic. Glad I went though. The first encore (all acoustic) made it all worthwhile. I’ll post a setlist sometime when it’s not 2 & a half hours before I have to pack & leave for Cornell for the weekend. Woohoo NorthAms.

4 February 2001
[from Ithaca, New York]
-So I was sitting there, the whole time, telling myself “prepare to hear ‘Yale A’ so as not to be disappointed, prepare to hear ‘Yale A’ so as not to be disappointed…”… the second I heard “Brand–”, I went nuts. & I felt good about going nuts. We have been on fire all weekend.
-Overwhelmed.
-North American Champions. That will take getting used to.
-I expect this to sink in by Wednesday at the earliest. The thing is, I’m still just overwhelmed by the crowd reaction, by the fact that people cried in our round from being moved, that the Weisenthal case exceeded expectations, that Zirk & I got everything we could’ve wanted outta this tournament & so much more, that this was utterly transcendant in every way that a debate round can be transcendant. & Harry & Jeffie really gave the case a just opp. & I just don’t know what else to say. I am blown away.
-4 & a half days is still plenty of time to miss someone.
-Team.

I am doing my dishes
for the first time
taking care not to nick, chip, scratch
the shiny new colors
as they turn in my yellow-gloved hands

The sink is smaller now
the light harsher, more grim
but my hands are just the same
holding the plates and bowls with care
that you seemed to disregard

It is stormy outside
like that day in the Badlands
the picture you chose to define it all
your new paradigm, status, independence
a day with me, and we were happy

I can see your reflection
in the plate’s concentric circles
glinting light off the o’erhead fluorescent
like the cloudbent sun on your glasses
that tumultuous day

I hope you’re happy now
but you’re not, and I’m not sure I mean it
it’s something people say
when they mean it and don’t
and I understand, oh I understand

I love you and hate you
like these dishes
you helped me buy

Your parting gift
as you turned your head, walked away
toward a future you long pictured
but never bothered
to truly see

A sequel to For the Last Time.

I am doing your dishes
for the last time
trying not to drop tears
or nasal runoff
into the too-hot soapy water

It’s not too late

A prevailing theory behind the recent series of events to befall my life is that I am actually the living incarnation of the Biblical figure Job. Suffice it to say that this theory just got a big boost from recent events up north in Jersey:

Public Safety and the Department of Facilities assisted residents of the Butler Apartments who were affected by the severe thunderstorms that generated high winds and dumped rain shortly before 5 p.m. by establishing a shelter in the Frist Multipurpose Room.

Cots and toiletries were available, and Dining Services made food and beverages available to Butler residents who were not allowed to return to their homes. Because of the downed trees and power lines, homeward bound residents of Butler Apartments were instructed at 6:45 p.m. to go instead to Frist Campus Center. Residents at home were informed that they should not go outside, as those who left their homes in some instances were not being allowed by municipal emergency responders to return. These displaced residents also were being asked to seek shelter at Frist. University shuttles were sent to Butler to transport residents.

Early estimates were that fallen trees damaged at least four homes at Butler, among trees that fell in more than a dozen locations across campus. There were no injuries.

Given Emily’s and my calamitous history with insurance claims in the past year, including an overturned moving truck, a direct three-car collision while we were stopped at a red light, and Emily tripping in a crosswalk and landing on her nose, it would only be fitting that our house was one of the four in the direct line of a falling tree. I won’t know for sure until we get some all-clear updates from Princeton and I wander back up that way anyway, which will probably be Wednesday at the earliest.

In light of the way things have been going, it would only make sense if the house that hosted the best year of our marriage decided to literally fall apart under some disastrous series of events. I am not trying to tempt fate or egg on disaster, but I am at that point of existence where I feel utterly incapable of being surprised. If my return drive to Jersey involves being chased by a localized hurricane that is exactly the size of a car footprint, it will hardly faze me. We are at the stage where more ridiculousness only enhances the eventual story to be told some day when, incomprehensibly, the pain might not be quite so acute.

Consider this an addendum to my earlier post today. Go read that, because I think it’s more interesting than this one will be. But this one has videos! Feeling strangely prolific today, like all my energy from traveling has been stored up and is ready to be unleashed.

In hell, you can watch all the baseball games you want, but every single commercial break between innings or for pitching changes carries the exact same sequence of commercials. And in the ninth circle, the commercial sequence in question leads off with a horrifically over-masculine aggressive commercial for a new planned-obsolescence rollout of conventional shaving apparatus. You know, like this:

Unfortunately, I live in hell, masquerading as a place called “New Jersey”. As Robin Williams said in one of the twenty greatest films of all time, “I found you in Hell – don’t you think I can find you in Jersey?” So this is my experience with MLBTV. It makes me a lot more likely to exit early from a game the M’s are already losing 8-3, but might also make me cut bait on a game where the score is reversed. I have never moved so fast for a mute button so many times. Ugh.

I really need to update my favorite films list. It may include this:

Yes, I am telling you all about seventeen times to see this movie. You need to listen.

Seriously. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube in twelve parts. Do it already.

Also, this:

That one’s available on Vimeo. In one take. People are just giving away thought-provoking cinema, people. Take advantage.

Finally, I’ve used the appellation “Tiny House” so many times lately that I realize I may never have explained the origin of same. It’s not just because the house is small; it’s also a reference. To this:

I have to agree with the YouTube commenter who expressed anger when he realized that this was just a spoof commercial and not an upcoming reality series. That is, I felt that way until Em & I began our own personal reality series last August when we got here.

If you missed it in the last post, please let me know if you want to read The Best of All Possible Worlds and you haven’t done so in some way already. Eight people signed up on Facebook already. Don’t risk being the thirtieth person on your block to read this book or something. And by “your block,” I mean “planet Earth.”

Please note that, despite the timing and the strange headline, this post is not in fact related to April Fool’s Day.

Also, please note that I discuss reviews of the first 5,000 words of American Dream On below. I try to avoid spoilers, but tread a little lightly if you want to read it and haven’t yet.

Just got done reading my feedback from ABNA and I couldn’t be much happier. No, they didn’t make some mistake and fail to put through my submission despite its glowing reviews. But the feedback was so positive on what I need it to be positive on and the negativity was either (A) innate to the contest or (B) innate to the fact that American Dream On is hard-hitting and bleak.

So I thought the excerpt would be judged largely on hook and, when it didn’t advance, I was concerned about this. Needn’t have been:

The flow of the story is easy to follow and to connect with. The words fly off the pages impacting the reader. American Dream On tugs at the reader’s heart and conscience. The characters’ pain and determination to get their message or action across is experienced by the person reading. The things that once mattered now seem almost as though it was a wasted thought.

How about character development?

The strongest aspect of “American Dream On” is the author’s ability to create a character. This excerpt has great character development.

Whew. So why didn’t it go through?

The tone of the story needs to be worked on. The negative aspect of American Dream On is overbearing. When writing a sequence of bad, unfortunate, or even dismal beginnings, there has to be some sort of light to take away the effects of the darkness.

While some people (my own mother, for example) agree with this assessment, I think this is largely a problem with the contest. Number one, I don’t think Amazon Vine Reviewers are largely comprised of people who read dystopian works or critiques of their society. But more to the point, they probably assumed that they were reading the first 10% of the novel, not the first 3.7%. My work was one of the longer ones submitted, and very few seemed to be over 100k words, with ADO weighing in at 135k words. Indeed, one of the two reviewers went on to say:

I would like to note that I strongly suspect that the excerpt is from a short story collection rather than a novel. If that is the case, then “American Dream On” violates the submission rules for the ABNA contest. However, to be on the safe side, I am reviewing this excerpt as though it is a novel consisting of three independent stories interwoven together.

This makes one of the most damning aspects of the contest the failure to provide the pitches with the excerpts. I simply cannot comprehend the failure to do this, but for three years, they’ve done it the same way and it seems to be a deliberate choice. They wouldn’t print a book without a back jacket flap, so it befuddles me why they insist on making readers judge excerpts without any context. Of course, there are 5 threads in this novel and only 3 are introduced in the excerpt, so it’s no wonder people came away from the experience confused. If only they could’ve grasped the breadth of this work.

They didn’t fail to grasp its bleakness, though:

“American Dream On” is the type of novel you wouldn’t want to read if you are already suffering from depression. It may drive you to attempt suicide. Written in a morbid style that varies in degree from one character to another, this novel may turn your American dreams into American nightmares.

Wow. Talk about impact. This is actually the kind of comment that makes me elated, not because I’m sick or morbid or want people to be suicidal, but because I can see that I’m really affecting people. Two total strangers read this work and both came away distressed. The paragraph above the one just posted above called it “provocative”. Bingo. This is what it’s all about.

I wonder how many times Orwell got comments like this:

The writing style creates a depressing mood that never relinquishes. The reader can’t help but wonder if the entire novel is an emotional downer. Isn’t there enough sadness already in the world to create more?

Clearly, this contest was not a match for this novel. But I’m really energized by the nature of the critique of the excerpt. No one thought the writing was bad or failed to be engaging. People reacted to the characters, drawn in by their pain and even driven in one case to “hatred”. The work is emotionally vibrant and jumps off the page, grabbing people. A lot of them don’t like the experience, don’t want to go there. That’s fair enough. But there’s serious writing and then there’re feel-good stories. One of these prompts people to change their life and one of them makes them go to bed assuming everything’s just hunky-dory.

Now if only I can find a publisher who isn’t looking for the feel-good story of the year…

Russ and I worked all night to bring you this stunning awards show:

Enjoy. Tell your friends. Book your tickets on a dirigible!

The latest viral meme to hit Facebook has taken off faster than most anything. I’ve been trying to figure out the vibrant appeal in the simplicity of “say 25 things about yourself”. I think it comes down to just listing a bunch of facts requiring that it elicits some depth after a while. Sure, some people are posting 25 popcorny tidbits of trivia, but most folks get into some really personal stuff pretty fast. Or maybe I did it wrong….

1. I wear a hair-tie on my right wrist at all times (except in the shower). But when I have to remember something, I consciously move it to my left wrist. I say what I have to remember under my breath and remember where I am so it will quickly recall the act of saying this so I can remember it later. I remember reading comics when I was young about people (usually Dagwood Bumstead, for some reason) tying a string around their finger to remember something. And it never made sense to me, mostly because I thought a written note would have to be attached for the remembering to really work. Apparently, this is something one can only understand as an adult – I’ve only been doing this the last couple years.

2. I deliberately failed a class in college as a way of proving to myself that I was no longer interested in grades (which I’d been rather focused on in high school) or future schooling. I got an 8% by skipping the final exam.

3. I have kissed 10 girls in my life. The first 9 were eldest children. The 10th – my wife, Emily – is the 4th of 5 children.

4. I proposed to Emily in front of about 300 people, almost none of them strangers.

5. Emily and I have absolutely identical wedding rings. We regularly exchange them as a party trick and/or at sentimental moments.

6. I have been actively growing my hair out since I was 18. I have been a vegetarian since I was 17. The night before I left for college, my Dad informed me for the first time that he had been a vegetarian and grown his hair out when he was just older than I was. I asked him why he never told me and he said, without a trace of irony, “I didn’t want to be too big an influence on you.”

7. When I was five, I wanted to be a paleontologist or an astronaut. Then Challenger happened and I dropped the latter. Which is why I’m now a paleontologist.

8. I hated my junior year of high school History and English teachers. They were ruining my two favorite subjects. I thought they were simply stupid people. I wrote an essay to test each of them for their stupidity. I submitted a massive term paper to the History professor on why European states, including the Netherlands, would have reconquered America had the Erie Canal not been built. I wrote a personal essay proving that I don’t exist to my English teacher. Both of these papers received A+’s.

9. I was a catcher for years in Little League and up through 8th grade, despite my lanky frame. My first speech-and-debate like activity ever was giving a presentation at the County Fair on how to be a catcher.

10. I did debate for 9 consecutive years, spending many of them thinking that I was burnt out of the activity. There is nothing in this world that I miss more or would go back to faster, if the opportunity arose.

11. When I was midway through 4th grade, I skipped four grades and enrolled in 8th grade at the local middle school. I got great grades and felt academically challenged for the first time in my life, but was subjected to massive abuse from my classmates, especially bullies who had been held back. It did not end well and remains the single most formative event in my life.

12. The next year, I skipped four more grades and enrolled in three classes at the local community college. There were these little signs all over the school that said children under 12 had to be accompanied by an adult and the administration actually enforced this, drafting my Dad to accompany his enrolled 11-year-old son to the door of my classes. The administration was similarly supportive of my efforts in other ways and I ended up withdrawing with a B average.

13. The above events contributed to me attending 13 schools before high school, plus two separate stints at being homeschooled. They have also relegated me to a life of wondering how my life would’ve turned out on a Doogie Howserish path that had been allowed fulfillment. Mostly, it makes me sad, especially when my life is ordinary in any way. And things like the Super Bowl’s cars.com ad just kill me.

14. After the second stint of homeschooling, I enrolled in the local Catholic school in (age-level) 7th grade. The year was almost a complete bust, but I made a good friend who I went on to exchange about seventy letters each way with over the course of the next five years.

15. I wrote my first novel in two and a half months in Summer 2001. I have spent the subsequent eight years failing to write my second. I have concluded from this experience that I cannot simultaneously hold a day job and write novels.

16. I hate day jobs. Conceptually and experientially. I tend to be very good at them, usually through sheer force of will, but I hate them. This tends to lead to a lot of anger, especially when I’m away from the jobs where I can really express it.

17. I am really into the number 17. So predictably so that, during college, my phone code was 1717. And Mesco and Lisha guessed this and recorded over my phone message with an inside joke reference they found hilarious. I didn’t realize they had done this for months.

18. I have survived a suicide attempt.

19. I feel an incredibly powerful and deep connection to my paternal grandmother. She is my only grandparent I never met.

20. When I was little, my favorite animals were turtles, lobsters, elephants, penguins, and rabbits. I would engage adults in detailed discussions of my five favorite animals and why it was perfectly reasonable to have five favorite animals. Later, we got ducks and another cat and it became a whole pantheon of favoritism.

21. I have never owned a credit card nor ever been in official debt of any kind (to one’s friends over a few days doesn’t count, right?). I attribute my passionate dedication to this principle to watching my parents cut up and melt their credit cards in the fireplace during the late 1980’s.

22. When most people doodle, I make up extended long division problems and work them out to relax and distract myself.

23. During most of high school and all of college, I had to play 2-10 games of Tetris before starting work on a paper.

24. I am possibly the most deadline-motivated person of my generation.

25. One of my favorite exercises as a kid was to sit quietly and think about what the concept “forever” really entailed, and especially the idea of living forever. The idea of going on and on and on was at first inaccessible, then completely terrifying, and ultimately quite peaceful and reassuring. No matter how many times I did this exercise (thousands), it always felt the exact same way, in that progression. The effects are dulled now, but I still do it sometimes.

Groundbreaking research out of the University of Iowa today has confirmed what many have long suspected: most babies are clinically depressed.

A shocking 83% of babies have been found to have the hallmark symptoms of a newly identified strain of depression. The numbers may be even higher among infants.

“When you think about it, it makes sense,” noted Steven Bernard, MD, part of a team that led the study. “Most people are able to cope with the struggles of life without breaking down crying multiple times a day. Babies are notorious for being unable to demonstrate these coping skills.”

In the study, to be published in the February issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Bernard and his team explain that most parents miss the critical warnings that their baby is depressed. “Parents assume their baby is simply crying, when it may actually be a cry for help. Crying more than once a day is a sign of a serious inability to integrate with the expectations of normal, healthy life in society.”

While the causes of the disorder are unclear, the symptoms are not. Crying, incontinence, and low attention span are hallmarks of extreme and chronic depression. One theory about the causes of the disorder prompted researchers to tentatively dub this strain of depression Womb Exit Trauma Disorder, or WET-D.

The solution? Medication.

“Babies are notoriously undercommunicative about their feelings,” Bernard says. “They are unlikely to respond to talk therapy as they tend to have underdeveloped language skills.” Resistance to the development of language skills may, itself, be a further complication of depressive disorder. “When people don’t want to talk about their feelings, that’s a warning sign. Having to act out on emotions instead of using words is a red flag.”

Tragically, many parents may not get many warnings before it’s too late. New research is attempting to link this disorder to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). “Babies may actually be exhibiting a form of suicide,” Bernard warns. “Further study is needed to demonstrate a causal link between WET-D and SIDS, but it looks promising.”

In the meantime, parents can watch for the warning signs and request a battery of new drugs just approved by the FDA. Bernard and his team urge parents to be patient when trying medication. “Babies may not always react right away. That’s not a sign that medication doesn’t work, but that the dosage may have to be increased.

“The worst thing you can do for your baby is let the symptoms of WET-D go unchecked. If your baby continues to cry repeatedly, it’s a sign that more medication is required.”

Transcript of a conversation between a Homeless Guy (HG) and myself (SC) on a sidewalk in Berkeley this morning, between 24-Hour Fitness and the Downtown Berkeley BART station entrance at Shattuck & Addison. Given that I was rushing to BART to head to work, the conversation was sort of shouted over shoulders and at no point was either participant at rest. He started walking ahead of me and I ended up well ahead of him because of our relative natural paces.

HG: What they all working out for? We’re all gonna die!
SC: Maybe some later than others!
HG: Maybe so. We’re all gonna die soon, though!
SC: You think so?
HG: That Obama. He’s gonna ruin everything!
SC: You think so?
HG: He’s a crook!
SC: They’re all crooks!
HG: Yeah, but he’s the worst! He’s the Antichrist!
SC: I don’t agree with you there!
HG: You’ll see!
SC: We’ll all see soon enough!
HG: You got that right!

It is probably worth noting, though I do so cringing, that “Homeless Guy” quoted above is African-American/Black. Though I think that such observations make me slightly racist, they at least reassure the reader that his raving about Obama as Antichrist is not racism. Or at least not simple outsider-based racism with which such overt opposition to Obama is generally associated.