The Desert Mermaid

You know what's awful? I just realized I have LOST FUCKING TRACK of the details of all these assaults/murders of black people by cops.

I realize this probably isn't a DELIBERATE exploit of the way the human brain works, but damn, it's still pretty diabolical.

The thing that's weirding me out the most about this Ferguson debacle is trying to figure out the cops' endgame.

The protesters--now their goal is pretty clear. They are trying to communicate that they would like to not have to worry about whether they might get randomly killed by the police. Which is really a pretty reasonable request in a country that claims that such is already the case.

But the police themselves ... I really don't see what they're trying to accomplish.

I suspect that they don't, either. I'd like to think that they are not just straight-up bad--I always would like to think that about people doing bad things. But I do think they are making the mistake of listening uncritically to the stupid parts of their brains.

I'm talking about the brainpart that has unconsciously absorbed the stereotypes swirling around it in society, and blurts them back at your smarter brain hoping that you won't take a second look at them to say "Whoa, hold on, this is one of those prejudiced thoughts. The smarter part of me knows better than this."

The brainpart whose first impulse when you fuck up irrevocably--smash somebody's window, run over their dog, or, y'know, MURDER THEM--is to run away and hide and hope that somehow it will have NEVER REALLY HAPPENED.

The brainpart that, when confronted with the reality that it's impossible to unmurder someone, doubles down because now you're COMMITTED to your first line of action because if you change that would be admitting you were WRONG and that is showing WEAKNESS and you can't do that.

I dunno, this is all speculation. I know I have that stupid brainpart. It's a constant struggle to ignore the monkey logic it shrieks at me, and I'm not always successful. I suspect everyone has the same stupid screeching monkey brain,* a brain that is pretty good at figuring out immediate threats like, say, leopards coming at you RIGHT GODDAMN NOW, but is not so great at integrating history and conceptualizing the future, and thus can't do much with complex things like human rights issues and institutionalized prejudice. I suppose the cops just aren't overriding those. It's the best explanation I can think of for the unbelievable illogicality of the police's response.

Or maybe they're just assholes. Hell, I don't know. I'm just stuck maundering as I watch people's requests that other people not indiscriminately terrorize them met with indiscriminate terrorism. It tends to raise questions, dangit.


You can also go beyond simple maundering: check out Amnesty International's call to action on this, or even donate! Dude. Amnesty International is in the US. What the hell is up with that.


*I debated whether to use the phrase "monkey brain" in this context, because it has, uh, unfortunate other connotations. But I've consistently used it over the years to refer to the fact that all humans are a very thin neocortex away from being straight up animals, and by god we behave like it often, and the phrase is an evocative way to describe it. I hate it when one group of people refers to another as "animals" because it just obfuscates the fact that we're ALL fucking animals, and we ALL have to work to keep that animal part of our brains from destroying our civilization. And as is so often the case, here White people, who have a history of baselessly congratulating themselves for being somehow less animalistic than everyone else, seem to be having a harder time shutting up that monkey inside them. Because nobody calls them on that shit, so why should they?

I hope that's clear. I have no frame of reference for that sort of thing. Correct me if I made the wrong call.

HEY GUYS!

GUESS HOW MANY HORMONES I'VE GOT GOING RIGHT NOW!

...

DID YOU GUESS "ALL OF THEM"? BECAUSE THE CORRECT ANSWER IS "ALL OF THEM."

Yeah, so, it's not a good day. I hate the Space Place and I hate editing trip photos and I hate trying to make pizza that WON'T JUST GODDAMN SLIDE ONTO THE PIZZA STONE WITHOUT TURNING INTO A CALZONE and I hate flies and I hate humans.

I realized today that my recently-acquired monthly power drain/mood fuckery probably coincides with my pharmacy switching me from one generic Pill to a different generic Pill. They say they're all the same stuff, but they are LYING. I hate them, too.

The nice thing about bad moods like this, though, is you know they won't last. I'll take some Advil and enjoy a nice pizza calzone Margherita and avoid Tinker Bell and David Cronenberg and I will probably love all of the above things again.

Except the flies. Sorry, flies.

So Zimmerman is free, but he is looking at years of hiding and a lifetime of worrying that he might get attacked by a random vigilante stranger with a personal vendetta every time he goes out in public. While my idealistic self believes firmly that we will never improve our lot unless we all work to Be The Better Man, and that fighting fire with fire just leads to more things on fire, on a more human basis I'm having a very difficult time summoning much sympathy for his plight.

Oh, swell. Just what we need: Another journalist talking out of his ass about YA fiction.

Call me crazy, but I'd say the reason different books appeal to different people isn't the people's age, it's that they're different people. There's no dichotomy between What Kids Like and What Grownups Like, like some sad Venn diagram without even its edges touching. There's no reason to assume that something adults like is automatically Not For Kids.

Kois is right about one thing: as an adult I don't respond to The Giver. And I didn't when I was ten, either. I've enjoyed crazy fantasies and space adventures--including the ones Kois maintains are Only For Adults*--since learning how to read. I'd go into the adult fiction section at the library and grab a bunch of paperbacks, then move on to YA and juvie fiction and grab a bunch more. Still do. My taste--my sense of what makes a good story--has remained remarkably consistent over the years.

On the other hand, I know people who loved The Giver when they were kids--and still do almost twenty years later.

So maybe it's not so much about your age. Maybe it's your individual taste. And maybe it's totally possible to make a book that appeals to kids and adults, so that the Venn diagram overlaps. And maybe--just maybe--that's why the books in both circles are so darn popular.

Protip: Aside from dismissing all the kids and grownups who don't fit into your Taste Somehow Does A One-Eighty In Your Late Teens theory, maybe it's a good idea if the title of your article doesn't insult, y'know, every children's author ever. Except Lois, I guess.

Special Note To Lois Lowry: My terribly belated condolences.


*Weirdly enough, when I was a kid I used to wonder what magical point in my life would change me so I liked boring grownup books. I couldn't imagine why I'd change, but most people seemed to imply that action and adventure were For Kids. So it's doubly strange that this article relegates the kinds of books where things actually happen to the adult world. Usually it's the other way around.

I really hate it when some asshole comes along and ruins it for the rest of us.

Okay, one more maudlin thing, but only because this is, you know, kind of an important one: Apparently it occurred to law enforcement to actually investigate the murder of Trayvon Martin.

Good to know you're on top of things, fellas.

Let me tell you, internet, I may not know all the details, but at this point the details I do know are pretty damning toward George McMurderass Zimmerman. I'm glad SOMEBODY in the justice system agrees.

This is an example of getting angry as well as sad. A fellow human being dies, and it's because another fellow human being's deliberate actions, stemming from what I can only describe as REALLY faulty reasoning. Makes me want to live in a better world.

I’m beginning to suspect that the monumentally stupid things the Tea Partiers—and even the more general GOP candidates—keep saying are in fact part of a strategy. If your opponents are concerned with analyzing assumptions and relying on facts, all you have to do is make a short statement that is so mind-scramblingly, brain-torquingly wrong on so many levels that it’d take a full-on graduate thesis to address every problem within it. Congratulations: they’ll now have to spend weeks compiling and organizing facts and statistics, and by the time they have it together everyone will have the sound bite so firmly in their heads it’ll be impossible to dislodge.

And hey, if you spout out several of these in a row, they’ll NEVER catch up!

Maybe we opponents should just stick with the slightly less fact-based, but age-old, counter-strategy—simply pointing and laughing at the stupid. At least it’s less time-consuming.

Okay, two things about this clusterfuck:

1. Terry Jones is an anthropologically myopic asshole, ascribing attributes to another religion that could have an equal application, or misapplication, to his own. On the other hand,

2. I don’t fucking care what the book says; it is not more important than somebody’s life. If you have become murderously violent toward random people simply because some asshole on the other side of the world has disrespected a copy of it, you really need to reexamine your priorities.

People wonder why atheists get exasperated by religion. Sure, without it I’m sure humans would behave this stupidly over something else, and I would probaby get just as exasperated over that, too, but I hate that religion gets a free pass to do this sort of bullshit. This is just unbelievable.

Pet Peeve #472

PRETENTIOUS BUM COWORKER: You invent languages? You know what I wonder? There are plenty of languages already. Why not learn one of those?


You know, no matter how many times I’m asked this question, I never cease to be amazed by it. It is completely irrelevant, and yet it, or variations of it,* are so often the first one people ask about conlanging.

Just once I’d like to hear that about some other more mainstream form of creativity. “There are plenty of poems/movies/paintings/books/quilts already. Why not just appreciate those?”

However, the biggest bit of bullshit there was that this guy insisted he was not insulting me; he was Just Askin’. Yeah, right. If he had really been Just Askin’, he’d have listened to my answer.


*“Wouldn’t that time be better-spent resurrecting a dead language?”