The Mallet of Loving Correction Part 9

17.

2010.

In 1998, Krissy decided that we should have a dog. This precipitated a philosophical discussion between the two of us as to what const.i.tuted a "dog." Krissy, whose family had had a number of smaller dogs over the years, was inclined toward something in the s.h.i.+h Tzu or Maltese direction of things. I, however, steadfastly maintained that if one is going to own a dog, then one should get a dog-a large animal, identifiably related to the wolves whose DNA they shared, who could, if required, drag one's unconscious a.s.s out of a fire. More practically, there was the fact that at the time I owned a 30-pound cat named Rex, whose default disposition was such that a dog smaller than he would be in very serious danger of being either eaten or being sat on and smothered in the night. It wouldn't be fair to bring a small dog into our home.

And thus, it was decided that, indeed, we would probably get a big dog. And as it happens, when this decision was made, our good friend Stephen Bennett mentioned to us that, as we were looking for a dog, he knew of a puppy that was available. A friend of his had put down a deposit on an Akita puppy from a local breeder, but then moved somewhere pets weren't allowed. So an Akita pup was up for sale, at a substantially discounted price. Normally the phrase "discount puppy" is one fraught with danger, but Stephen had heard good things about the breeder, so we gave her a call.

It turned out that actually two puppies were still available, one a boy and one a girl, so we went over to the look at them. Krissy had originally wanted the boy puppy, but he seemed distant and diffident and didn't seem to want to have much to do with us. The girl puppy, on the other hand, went right up to Krissy and seemed to be just plain delighted to see her. Five minutes later, it was decided that the girl puppy was our puppy. As it happened, it was indeed the pup Stephen's friend had planned to buy, and in antic.i.p.ation of that, the breeders had already started calling her the name that not-actually-former owner had planned to call her: Kodi.

Having bought the dog, I then went home and researched Akitas, and just about had a heart attack, because it turns out that Akitas are a dog that can go one of two ways: They can be an utterly delightful dog, clean and intelligent and devoted to family, or they can be twitchy neurotic creatures who were originally bred to hunt bears and will be happy to challenge you for alpha-hood in the family if you give them the chance. What made the difference between the one and the other? Basically, how much time you spent socializing them. Spend enough time and attention to socialize them well, you get the good Akita. You don't, and you don't.

Fortunately, if you want to call it that, something happened that allowed me to spend all sorts of time with my new puppy: I got laid off from AOL. Thus, during Kodi's entire puppyhood, I had nothing better to do with my time than to spend it with our new pet. Partially as a result of this, and partially out of her own good nature, Kodi became the best of all possible dogs, or at the very least the best of all possible dogs for for me and for Krissy. Athena came along, almost exactly a year younger than Kodi, and our dog took to her immediately, sensing a younger sister rather than compet.i.tion for affection.

Kodi was a good dog for all of us, but it's fair to say that while she loved me and Athena, she adored Krissy. I like to tell the story of how I went away on my book tour in 2007, and I was gone for three weeks, and the day I came back, Krissy went to the airport to pick me up. When we got out of the car and opened the door to the house, Kodi came out and greeted me in a way that translated into oh, hey, you're back. Nice to see you. Then she went over to Krissy and greeted her in a way that translated into OH MY G.o.d I THOUGHT I WOULD NEVER SEE YOU EVER AGAIN AND NOW YOU'RE BACK AND I LOVE YOU SO VERY MUCH. And she had been gone for maybe two hours. I once told Krissy that the very best day for Kodi would be one in which Krissy came back home every ten minutes. Krissy was Kodi's world, her sun and her moon, her waking thought and her dream.

Krissy never took that for granted, as one being given unconditional love might. She returned that love. She delighted in the fact that Kodi was her dog, even in its most exasperating moments, such as when the dog couldn't stand to be more than five feet from her and was simultaneously having deep and abiding intestinal issues. You take the bad with the good, the cat litter breath with the soft, happy puppy sighs, the dog farts with the unalloyed happiness that a dog who really loves you provides. Krissy loved her dog, and loved everything that went with the dog, from start to finish.

Kodi's love for my wife amused me and I would occasionally feign jealousy, but I never doubted that Kodi loved me too, and cared for me as well. To explain how I know this I have to tell you about two separate events. The first happened the night of the day my daughter was born. The second was a few days after my wife miscarried what would have been our second child. In each case I was home while Krissy was somewhere else-in the hospital recuperating from giving birth for the first, and at her work for the second-and in both cases I was suddenly and extraordinarily overcome by my emotions. For the first, the indescribable joy that comes in meeting your child for the first time. For the second, the grief that comes from knowing you will not meet the child who could have been yours. And each time, I was frozen, unable to process what was happening to me, or what I was feeling.

Both times, Kodi did the same thing. She came into the room, saw me, walked over to the chair in which I was sitting and put her head in my lap. And both times I did the same thing. I petted her head, slid out of the chair and on to the floor, and held my dog while I cried, letting her be the one to share both my joy and pain, so I could go on to what I had to do next. Both times she was patient with me and sat there for as long as I needed. Both times my dog knew I needed her. Both times she was right.

I haven't written or spoken of either of these before, even to my wife. They were something I kept for myself. But I want you to know about them now, so that you know that when I say my dog loved me and I loved her, you have some idea of what that actually means.

Akitas are large dogs and live, on average, for nine or ten years. Kodi lived for almost thirteen, and twelve of those were very good years. In the last year, however, age caught up with her. She slowed, and she panted, and finally it had become clear that she had begun to hurt. While Krissy and I were in Boston this last week, we got a call from the kennel where we boarded our dog when we traveled. Kodi had had to be taken to the vet because she was listless and she wasn't eating. X-rays at the vet showed she had a tumor in her abdomen, which was likely causing internal bleeding. There was some question whether Kodi would make it until we got home. We asked the vet to do what she could. She did, and yesterday afternoon we drove straight from the airport to see our dog.

In the end it was simple. We walked Kodi into the sunlight and then Krissy laid down in the gra.s.s with her and held her dog close and let her dog go, both at the same time, bringing to an end a journey that began with Kodi walking up to Krissy and into her life, and our lives, twelve years before. I'm thankful our dog waited for us so we could be with her. But I'm even more thankful my wife could hold her dog one last time, feel the happiness Kodi felt in her presence and she in hers, and to have her arms be the last thing her dog felt in this life as she pa.s.sed into the next.

Now she is gone and we miss her. We are glad of the time she was with us. She was loved, by my wife, by our child and by me. I wanted to share a little of her with you, so you might remember her too. She was a good dog.

Lie to Me Sep

15.

2008.

One of the more depressing articles of this political cycle popped up on Slate today, asking not why McCain's campaign is outright lying about so many things in its political ads and messaging, but why Obama isn't. Sure, it says, Obama's stretching the truth here and there, but when someone notes facts, the Obama campaign amends the message. When the McCain people get caught in a lie, on the other hand, they more or less shrug and continue the lie, on the grounds that it's working. And well, it is, as anyone who can read a poll can see. Therefore, since outright lying and distortion seems to be what people want, one has to wonder why Obama isn't doing more of it.

As fantastically depressing as the thesis of the piece is, it points to a fact that is alas well in evidence, which is that the McCain campaign is the reductio ad absurdum of the GOP strategy that "facts are stupid things"-and that from the simple realpolitik point of view that winning isn't just the important thing, it's the only thing, it might be onto something. It's a campaign that will lie and continue to lie when called on its lies because as far as it can tell it's being rewarded for doing so. As the article notes, the GOP has spent the last several presidential cycles inculcating the idea to its partisans and to the public that truth is a relative thing and that an actual, verifiable fact can and should be discounted if it is presented by someone whose politics are not your own-and indeed the very act of pointing out facts is a suspicious activity in itself.

It's entirely possible that the McCain campaign will benefit from a critical ma.s.s of people-and not just dyed-in-the-wool, will-vote-Satan-into-office-if-he-wears-a-flag-pin Republicans-who have been primed by years of intentional and structural undermining of the legitimacy of fact, to accept bald-faced lying as just another tactic; people, in other words, who know that they are being lied to, know the lies are being repeated in the face of factual evidence, and know the campaign knows it is lying and plans to continue to do so all the way to the White House...and see that sort of stance as admirable. Can you blame McCain for taking advantage of this dynamic? Well, quite obviously, you can, and should. It's one thing to imagine one's self a "maverick" for speaking truth to power; it's quite another thing to be a "maverick" by deciding to lie one's way into power. However, it's also amply clear that many who should blame him, or would be outraged by Obama lying in such a transparent and recurrent fas.h.i.+on, won't.

And this is the interesting thing about this particular election cycle. I'm not suggesting that distortion and lying are new to this presidential election cycle (it goes back to at least the 1800 election, when Adams and Jefferson teed off on each other), and I'm not suggesting the Obama campaign is comprised of innocent does who would (gasp!) never stretch a truth for political gain. I am suggesting the McCain campaign is the first campaign, certainly in modern political history, that has decided that truth is entirely optional, and isn't afraid to come right out and say it. And it's working-and might well work all the way to the steps of the White House.

If it does, that will be an interesting political lesson for the GOP. It will be confirmation of the actual "Bush Doctrine" of "do and say whatever the h.e.l.l you want, because no one has the will to stop you." When there is no real-world penalty for lying, distorting and demonizing, then the only thing to stop you is your own moral compunctions. However, if McCain actually had any moral compunctions on this point, he wouldn't be running the campaign he's running now. And I would suggest that a man who shows no moral compunction in pursuit of power is not a man who will suddenly find those compunctions once he has power. An election is a job interview, people. If someone lies to you during a job interview, and says to you "yes, I'm lying, what of it?" when you catch them in the lie, and you hire them anyway, well. You shouldn't be surprised at what comes next.

To go back to Obama and whether he should embrace the philosophy of flat-out lying, perhaps it makes sense for him to do so, but I certainly hope he doesn't. Not because I think it's better to have honor than power (although I don't think it's a bad thing to have honor rather than power) but because I believe that someone should be making the argument that one can win an election by something other than a willful determination to lie in people's faces, and to encourage them to cheer those lies.

The fact of the matter is that at this point in the election, it's not just about what positions the candidates hold on various political subjects. It's also about how the candidates, and the parties behind, choose to see the people they intend to lead. The GOP and the McCain campaign, irrespective of its political positions, sees the American voter as deserving lies, lots of lies, repeated as often as necessary to win. And maybe they're right about it. We'll know soon enough.

Living Like Fitzgerald Oct

22.

2009.

With a hat tip to the estimable writer Walter Jon Williams, I came upon an article which examines the tax returns of one F. Scott Fitzgerald, of whom you may have heard, over the length of his writing career from 1919 through 1940. It turns out that during those years, Fitzgerald more or less consistently clocked $24,000 in writing income, which the author of the article, employing a 20:1 ratio of money values then to money values now, offers as the equivalent of making $500,000 a year in today's dollars. This is a nice income if you can get it, and Fitzgerald got it in an era in which his tax rate was something on the order of 8%.

What's interesting for modern writers, however, are the little tidbits that let you know how much things have changed-and how much, alas, things have stayed the same.

For example, here's one fun fact: The engine of Fitzgerald's income (at least until he went to Hollywood) was not his novels but his short stories. He considered them his "day job," a thing to be endured because writing them would allow him the financial wherewithal to write the novels he preferred to do. And how much did he make for these short stories? Well, in 1920, he sold eleven of them to various magazines for $3,975. This averages to about $360 per story, and (a.s.suming an average length of about 6,000 words) roughly six cents a word.

To flag my own genre here, "Six cents a word," should sound vaguely familiar to science fiction and fantasy writers, as that's the current going rate at the "Big Three" science fiction magazines here in the US: a.n.a.log (which pays six to eight cents a word), Asimov's (six cents a word "for beginners") and Fantasy & Science Fiction (six to nine cents a word). So, sf/f writers, in one sense you can truly say you're getting paid just as well as F. Scott Fitzgerald did; but in another, more relevant, "adjusted for inflation" sense, you're making five cents to every one of Fitzy's dollars. Which basically sucks. This is just one reason why making a living writing short fiction is not something you should be counting on these days.

(Mind you, science fiction writers of the 1920s weren't making what Fitzgerald did, either-indeed, if they were writing for Amazing Stories (the first SF magazine, which debuted in 1926), it was an open question as to whether they'd get paid at all; publisher Hugo Gernsback loved his "scientifiction" but he had liquidity problems, which is why he lost control of the magazine in 1929.) In 1920, Fitzgerald also had his first novel published: This Side of Paradise. He made $6,200 on it for the year, from a royalty rate of 10% (later b.u.mped up to 15%), on a cover price of $1.75. Using the 20:1 multiplier, we can say hardcovers in the US, at least, have gotten a lot cheaper, but that royalty rates for authors are essentially unchanged 90 years later; I myself make a 10%15% royalty on my books.

It's also interesting to note that Paradise was Fitzgerald's bestselling book while he was still alive, and that it sold less than 50,000 copies at the time. This would be similar to someone selling 150,000 copies of their book today: A solid seller, to be sure (I wouldn't turn down sales like that) but no Twilight, or even The Secret History. It's also a reminder that the main portion of Fitzgerald's literary fame had to wait until he was dead and unable to appreciate it-The Great Gatsby regularly sells in excess of 200,000 copies a year these days (h.e.l.lo, high school reading lists!), but sold only 25,000 copies while Fitzgerald was alive. I'm sure Fitzgerald would be happy being considered a writer for the ages-he was somewhat embittered at the end of his life that his literary star had fallen so dramatically-but I also suspect he wouldn't have minded all those yearly sales happening today occurring while he was still alive and having use of the money. He certainly could have used it.

Which is of course the other thing; in this era or the 1920s, a half million dollars (or its real money equivalent) is not an inconsiderable sum-and yet Fitzgerald had a hard time keeping it. Much of that was due the cost of tending to Zelda, his increasingly mentally erratic wife, who was frequently in psychiatric hospitals-yes! Health care was expensive then, too!-but some of it was just money just leaking out all over the place, as money seems to do around those creative types. And then there was Fitzgerald's desire to live well, with servants and nice houses and such, and his wee problem with alcohol. Eventually Fitzgerald's financial issues became significant enough that he felt obliged to work in Hollywood-Hollywood! of all places-which he found remunerative but degrading.

The lessons here: Do keep track of your money, try to live within your means, avoid debilitating addictions if at all possible and, for the nonce at least, try to have decent health insurance. That'll help you keep your cash as a writer, whether you're making $24,000 a year from your writing, or $500,000.

On my end of things, while I wouldn't mind getting paid like Fitzgerald (in the "half a million" sense, not the "$24,000" sense), I don't think I'd want to live like him. Aside from the fact that I'd have less than four years left on my life, he doesn't seem to have been very happy in his life while he lived it, and that wasn't something that having a significant income was going to fix. I might have wished for him a little less money (and the need to acquire it), and a little more peace of mind.

The Lost Art of the Pretentious Video Jun

14.

2009.

As much as I am a child of the 1980s, I will not say that the music of the time is better than the music of today or any other era, for reasons I have noted before. However, I will maintain that there was one thing the 80s did better than any other era before or since, and that is make truly spectacularly pretentious music videos.

Take, as a representative sample, the video for "Alive and Kicking," by Simple Minds, which I should note is a song I like, and available for your viewing on YouTube.

Our pretentious ingredients: 1.Initial G.o.d-eye view of band with lead singer Jim Kerr in messianic/crucified position; 2.Rock band performing in the Rousseauian splendor of nature with full kit, far from maddening crowds or electrical outlets; 3.Band dramatically posed, staring into the far distance, photographed from below for extra iconographical goodness; 4.Lots of shots of Jim Kerr emoting like a latter day Byron; 5.Gospel singer inserted for musical credibility.

Just a simple glance at this video tells us: "This is a video made in a time when no one thought anything about the cost involved in hauling a Scottish band out to the Catskills and putting them in the middle of a bunch of arty crane shots." Why do it? Why not? We're going for mythology here, son. This isn't just a band, these are masters of emotional grandeur. And if it takes posing them precariously on a cliff next to a waterfall without regard to the safety and well-being of the ba.s.sist to get that through your MTV-addled head, that's just what we'll do. Ba.s.sists are cheap and plentiful anyway (except for Sting, that posh b.a.s.t.a.r.d). This is a gorgeously pretentious video.

Now, sadly, it's also a gorgeously pretentious video that fails miserably, for the following reasons: 1.The "crucified messiah" pose worked only for Bono, and even then only in 1987, and it certainly doesn't work for a dude who looks like a leprechaun wearing his dad's sport jacket; 2.If you put a rock band in nature, it should look like it might survive a night or two without access to hair gels; 3.Any mythological iconography inherent in dramatic posing is undercut by 80s clothing and hairstyles; 4.In every closeup Jim Kerr appears dazed, as if he was clubbed in the temple just before cameras rolled, and his dancing style looks like what would happen if someone attached electrodes to his spine and zapped him at random; 5.The gospel singer in fact highlights the staggering inauthen-ticity (or at least, total goofiness) of the rest of the band.

But hey, pretty countryside.

They don't make videos like this any more, not because musicians have run out of pretension-that's really not ever going to happen-but because who can afford to anymore? The music industry has cratered and MTV doesn't run videos anymore, and the idea that a band might spend a quarter of a million dollars on film crew transportation and crane shots for a video that's going to be seen in a three-inch YouTube window is, shall we say, an idea whose time is past. It's easier and cheaper to record something ironic using a $200 Flip video recorder. This video is as unlikely now as OK Go's treadmill video would have been in 1987. This is not a bad thing-I prefer the OK Go video, personally-but it is a reminder that times change.

So reflect a moment on the great pretentious videos of the 1980s. There were some before, there were some after. But never as many, and rarely as pretentious in sum. Of course we didn't know it at the time. You never know what you've got-and how ridiculously pretentious it is-until it's gone.

Lord of the Tweets Nov

27.

2011.

Last night both my wife and child were out for the evening and I was alone with a Lord of the Rings movie marathon on Encore, and access to Twitter. What happened next will now be revealed.

Oh, hey, a Lord of the Rings movie marathon. Suddenly all my plans for industry fall to the wayside. #TheBloodOfMenIsSpent "The Mimes of Moria" is the name of my next band.

Wife is at a rock concert tonight. I'm watching cable TV at home. Thus are ill.u.s.trated the differences between us.

OSHA clearly has no jurisdiction in Moria.

Thanks to the Lord of the Rings, I always think of Kazakhstan as having Balrogs.

"You shall not pa.s.s!"-The Balrog's algebra teacher.

I just realized that if you wanted to be a rebel in Lothlorien, you would wear bangs.

I'm imagining a Ken Burns' doc.u.mentary of the events in The Lord of the Rings.

Cue the long pan of the Alan Lee artwork.

It is odd to think it's actually been ten years since "Fellows.h.i.+p of the Ring" came out.

The Two Towers is now on. I hold the minority view that it is the best film of the trilogy.

That said, I'd've trimmed back the ent scenes pretty severely.

I SWEAR I did not realize I was making a tree pun in that last tweet.

I am suddenly aware of just how little difference there is between Orlando Bloom's Legolas and certain sparkly vampires one could name.

Orcs vs. Stormtroopers. GO. On second thought, never mind. Neither side aims well enough for it to be interesting.

And now for no good reason the image of Legolas with a Justin Bieber haircut just popped into my head. I'm sorry.

A name like Grima Wormtongue should have been a tipoff.

Little known fact: Theoden's previous advisor was named Pervert McTraitorpants.

On the other hand, the name "Rasputin" meant "Debauched one," and that didn't stop Nicholas II. Conclusion: Kings are dumb.

Fun fact: Shadowfax, the horse Gandalf rides, had a younger, hipper sibling named "Darktweet."

I wonder what dentists think when they look at Orcs. I suspect "that's a sailboat right there."

They could have just distracted the Wargs by throwing a bunch of red bouncy b.a.l.l.s and yelling "fetch."

The orcs would be awesome in a Road Warrior movie. The orcs probably WERE in a Road Warrior movie.

If the co-star of The Hangover made a p.o.r.n film, they could call it "Helms Deep." #ImSorryAgain Specifically one thing that bothered me about the Ent scenes is the the green screen is qualitatively less good than elsewhere.

Now we're at the "We paid Cate Banchett to be in this film so we might as well use her for exposition" scene.

Everyone in Middle Earth writes in the same font. THAT'S JUST NOT REALISTIC.

Dear world: I am deeply disappointed there is not a dubstep version of the Smeagol Fish Battering Song.

Frodo just admitted to being in a same s.e.x relations.h.i.+p with Gollum. Sam will kill him!!

"Tricksy Master" is the name of my BDSM bar band.

Dear Aragorn: go right ahead and pose heroically on a mountain top. No rush to get to Helm's Deep. It's not like an Uruk army is coming.

Every time an ent is on the screen I think Robert Plant gets a tingle.

Related: the dude outfitting Theoden looks like David Gilmour. I want him to break out the solo to Comfortably Numb.

Now Aragorn is trying to cheer up the boy who has been chosen for the Hunger Games.

The men of Helm's Deep are saved! The League of Bowie Impersonators has arrived!

All the elves look like they really could use a low-tar cigarette right about now.