New thoughts on Twitter use

I love Twitter.

I truly love this particular social media property. Twitter is the thing that lets me stay in contact, asynchronously, with my friends and communities. I work weekends and odd schedules, I’m busy, my friends live across the world — Twitter is how I keep in contact.

And yet, I’ve been avoiding Twitter for a few weeks now.

I think it’s clear that something has happened that I was not expecting. Something new to me. There are so many people on Twitter that I want to follow, want to stay in touch with, that I can’t keep up. I have to stop following so many folks.

I’m not particularly pleased with this. I like being up on the conversations that my intelligent friends have with their other intelligent friends, even if I am only slightly acquainted with the other party. I like getting to know people I only see once or twice a year at conventions, I like seeing the shape of their lives. And I like keeping up with local friends I never see. But as interesting as all y’all are, I can’t keep up.

So I’m trimming my follow list on Twitter.

This is kinda weird.

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Battleship. Yes, the movie Battleship.

I took M to see a movie yesterday afternoon. He wanted to see Ice Age 3, to which I said absolutely not. I wanted to see Batman, but I knew he would not enjoy it. We compromised on a second-run showing of Battleship, the which he had already seen but wanted to see again.

Spoilers for the movie Battleship follow.

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Spoilers ahead.

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Here’s your chance to bail, people reading this in an RSS aggregator!

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Okay –

1. Alexander Skarsgaard is in this! I didn’t know that! Sadly, he did not take his shirt off very much.

2. I also did not know that Jesse Plemmons is in this, as well as Taylor Kitsch! I kept wondering if they had a good working relationship after Friday Night Lights. Like, was this a happy reunion for them? Did they slip and call each other Landry and Riggins?

3. Rihanna did a perfectly nice job. Her role didn’t have a ton to it, but she didn’t ham it up, overact, underact, scene-steal, or any number of other things a superstar from another field might be inclined to do. She acted her part, fit into her role, and seemed to relish the physical stunt-work that I saw her doing.

4. I love the fact — purely love the fact — that the alien invasion would have succeeded without the vital roles played by a physical therapist and a veteran who is a double-amputee. The movie had four major roles played by people of color, plus minor speaking parts, plus walk-ons. The movie had two lead roles for women, neither of whom were walking stereotypes. The movie had a lead role for the differently abled. It had minor but key roles for the elderly.

Why the ever-loving fuck do other movies seems to find this so hard to accomplish? This is a film based on a toy. It’s a summer explosion-fest. It’s a feel-good-America mindless piece of predictable. And it still manages to have more diverse casting than the highly-touted and much-lauded The Avengers.

5. I cried when the retired crew of the battleship stepped forward to serve again. Cried. I am a sucker, an absolute unashamed sucker, for ordinary people who run towards the sound of gunfire.

6. I close my eyes when watching movies or tv shows in which skyscrapers fall. In which the girders and glass rain down and huge waves of dust and debris chase running suit-clad pedestrians up narrow urban streets.

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July 26 2012

1. My kids really, really like the anime and manga property, Sgt. Frog. As far as I can tell, this is a slightly surreal comedy about aliens trying to take over the world. Think Invader Zim crossed with Pinky and the Brain.

This does mean that M walks around the house nigh-constantly saying, “Ke-ke-ke-ke-ke!” Which, he assures me, is how Kululu laughs.

2. We finished The Graveyard Book as our read-aloud book, and are on the third Noel Streatfeild title, Traveling Shoes. (We’ve already read Ballet Shoes and White Boots.)

When we pick the read-aloud books, we try to meet a few goals. We try to read a book to the kids that is a bit beyond where they are currently at in their reading. This doesn’t always mean books with complicated sentence structure. Sometimes it means books with complicated themes or references which will require explanation. But we also try to pick a variety of books that cover different kinds of protagonists. The kids have distinct preferences in their own reading, which is all very well and good. But the read-aloud book provides a bit a of diversity.

J and I are discussing what we will read next. We’ve decided that the kids are old enough for Arrows of the Queen. This is … mildly distressing for me. We have certainly read books to the kids that are beloved childhood classic of my youth. That wasn’t a problem. I remember being a kid reading and loving those books. But Mercedes Lackey, Anne McCaffery, Stephen King, and Robert Heinlein were the books of my adolescence. My memory of reading them is not of a child’s comprehension, but the mind and personality I have now.

Ulp.

Okay, that’s not quite accurate. I can look back and remember reading the Lackey books and I see differences in how I thought and felt then, and how I think and feel now. But I recall, at the time, being an adult and responding to the books as an adult. A very, very young adult, to be sure. But. Nonetheless.

My kids are still youngish. The haven’t hit puberty yet, though its out there, right around the corner. Their response to Arrows of the Queen won’t be the same as the response I had when I was fourteen. But it’s still odd for me, distinctly odd, to be getting into the books that had such dramatic impact on my worldview for so long.

Honestly, I expect they will love Arrows.

3. I have to do a bunch of cooking today. The weather is cool enough to turn the a/c off, which is good, but not so cool that cooking will be pleasant. Hmph.

4. I have been the seriously most grumpy grumposaurus for days and days. I’m trying to mostly not talk to people on the internet as a consequence. This decision is born out by the fact that I seem to be getting into conflicts with folks when I do talk to them on Twitter. If I don’t respond to you, it’s me, not you, is what I’m saying. And if I do respond to you, it’s still me, not you.

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July 25 2012

1. Work this past week has been a lot of work.

I’m not complaining in the sense that I think it’s unwarranted to do this much work. ATC in my sectors is seasonal; we all know this. Summer is when we earn our paycheck and we save lives every day. Winter is when we sit back and complain about facility in-fighting. This work is legitimate and justified.

That doesn’t make it less hard.

After a shift my brains are tired from calculating speeds and climb and descent rates and closure and making constant shifts in priority — which of the nine things I need to do in the next seventy seconds do I need to do first? Clear the WJA? Tell the supe the VFR is overdue? Call TMU about the EWR guy? Answer YWG? Read the briefing on the military op? Give the RRT weather to Papa Lima? Answer the flight service line? Ship DAL to 22? Ship SKW to 11?

And when that’s all done, it’s two minutes later and there’s another six things.

Winter is not like this. Winter is slower, there’s time to chat. Not in summer.

I’m tired.

2. Within minutes of the announcement a few days ago of astronaut Sally Ride’s death I saw two things on Twitter: people happy that her obituary named her female partner, and people mad that everyone assumed she was therefore a lesbian and not possibly bisexual.

3. The caterpillars are eating a full tank of leaves three or four times a day. And J is busy for two days. I am going to spend a lot of time in the backyard with the loppers, cutting branches for the caterpillars.

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July 24 2012

1. At the south edge of the parking lot at work we have a wetland. Yes, and actual wetland. It’s about one square acre, maybe an acre and a half. Not very large. It’s inside the perimeter, its border patrolled by the guards.

This wetland is not, I think, a protected feature in anyway. But the air traffic control facility was built on a swamp, and this is part of what was left. In the summer the rain from the parking lots runs off into it. In the winter, the plows push the snow on top of it. It serves a purpose.

This scrap of swamp is home to extensive wildlife. In particular, it hosts a number of red-wing blackbird families. And one of these little blackbirds is a territorial bundle of feathers.

See, the path for walking laps around the parking lot is a half-mile loop, if one walks off the concrete and around the swamp. So, every day, five to twenty people walk laps around the swamp. And, every day, that blackbird dive-bombs us all.

I think about this bird. He must be the most successful, most accomplished bird in his swamp. He drives enormous predators away from his territory over and over again, every day. We enter on the west side, walk south, turn, walk across the south edge, turn, walk up the east side, and get back on the pavement heading north. Every day we leave his nest alone! What a triumph!

The fact that none of us care one whit about this bird or his nest isn’t evident to him. From his point of view, dive-bombing us every day is bringing security to him and his territory.

2. I finished what there is of the Canadian series Flashpoint of NetFlix this past weekend. Argh! I really like this show! Now I am out of new episodes to watch.

3. I read Lies of Locke Lamorra, by Scott Lynch, last week. Here’s the review I posted on Goodreads, spoiler-free:

There is a kind of geek wish fulfillment that I read sometimes. S.M. Stirling’s Islander books are a great example. In these sorts of books, the people who have been outsiders or under-regarded are revealed to be awesomesauce all along. Frequently after a catastrophe or apocalypse, when everyone who ISN’T their brand of awesomesauce is dead because, well, see the above Lack of Awesome.

I like these books. They are escapist for me. I like to pretend, for a while, that in the event of an apocalypse I would not be one of the slow, lingering dead, alive long enough to understand what is happening, long enough to hold terror for my children close to my heart. I *hate* that particular anxiety-obsessive thinking when it hits me. Stirling’s books are a balm on my soul at those times.

Sometimes I like a lie.

There is a different kind of wish fulfillment that I love, though. That I recommend to people far and wide. It’s the sort that tells the utter, no-bullshit truth, and makes that truth a banner to stand under without fear. Bujold does this in Memory, in which arrogance and insecurity and lack of self-knowledge are revealed to be double-edged weaknesses — they can drive a person into inadvertent villainy, yes. But know them, own them, and you can stop being afraid of yourself.

Stop lying to yourself and you have a place to stand.

As far as I can tell, with the *massive* presumption of a reader examining an author’s text, Lies of Locke Lamorra is that second kind of book. I am grasping at what the heart of it is, but what I can see from here, from where I’m standing, is that every character trait the characters have — all of them, heroes and villains and bystanders alike — is salvation and damnation at the same time. That is not only a truth about existence, it’s a massive fucking technical feat of writing.

Goddamn, Mr. Lynch. What a book. Crickets wept, that’s an astonishing accomplishment.

Nice work. Thank you.

Organic preferences

Here’s the thing about Food. Everything you eat is a choice you make. But there are multiple and frequently contradictory axis on which to make choices. How many pesticides are on my food? How much does it cost? How were the workers who harvested this treated? How much diesel fuel was expended to get the food to you? How does that food satiate your hunger? How many nutrients does it have? How gets the profit from the food you purchase?

There’s a lot going on, is what I’m saying. There’s not perfect choice that is the best answer for all questions. You make the decisions that work for you.

I’ve been taking advantage of the fact that it is summer here in Minnesota, and I live near a very nice co-op. Said co-op stocks a great deal of food that is either organically grown, locally cultivated, or both. In the various reading I’ve done about food, and fitness, and eating habits in the last few months there’s a lot of push for organic foods. So I’ve tried some, and here are my thoughts on what works or doesn’t work for me.

First off, it’s all bloody expensive. There is a lot of back and forth conversation in “healthy eating” circles about the cost of food. Some people argue that a secret tax on the poor is that healthy food is too expensive for working class budgets. (In the U.S., I’m discussing. I don’t know anything about the rest of the world’s food economies.) Others argue that this is not true, that anyone can eat healthy at any budget above the poverty line. A lot of this discussion hinges on what we’re counting as “eating healthy.” But everyone seems to agree that organic fruits and vegetables are, unless you are growing them in your yard, more expensive than other sorts.

So the conversation I’m having with myself is, which of these are enough better — for as-yet-specified values of better — that I want to pay the cost?

Tomatoes. Yes. Oh dear sweet crickets. Locally grown, organic tomatoes are nothing like the commercially grown and shipped things. I will happily pay more money for local, organic tomatoes.

Oranges. I do not like organic oranges. The ones I’ve tried have been woody and flavorless. This may well be because I live in MINNESOTA, not known for its lush orange groves.

Asparagus. On the other hand, organic asparagus, locally grown, is amazingly good. Sweet and tender and flavorful and I love it.

Onions, garlic, scallions, shallots. I don’t have strong opinions about these. The organic shallots were good, the onions I couldn’t tell at all. I grow scallions in the back yard. I eat too much garlic to really want to pay organic prices for it.

Stone fruits. I don’t like most stone fruits, except for cherries. But I tried a bunch of pluots and apricots to see if I liked organic more. Not really. But locally grown organic cherries are the BEST.

Apples. We grown a crapton of apples, here in Minnesota. In the fall and winter we have a lot of varietals to choose from. Organic matters a lot less when they are all local, fresh, and specialty.

Bell peppers. I can’t tell the difference between commercial and organic bell peppers. But I do like buying the weird little heirloom sweet peppers.

Cruciferous vegetables. Organic kale is AMAZING. Almost totally different from the commercial stuff. Broccoli and the rest are fine, but I don’t see too much difference between commercial and organic.

Cheese. Like the apple situation, I live in a place that is already brimming with local artisinal varieties of cheese. Some are organic, some are not, all are interesting and good.

Eggs. Organic, locally-sourced eggs are an entirely different thing from the commercial free-range organic eggs we already get. I might splurge from time to time to get the co-op’s eggs, though they are twice as expensive.

This isn’t meant to be a definitive or conclusive survey of organic foods. It’s where I’m at right now on the Food Choice and Industry situation. I expect my decisions will evolve through the year, as different things come into season.

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A return to weight training!

I have tendonitis in both elbows, have had it for the last year or so. The last six months were particularly bad as the tendonitis started to impede the use of my hands. So I quit a number of things, like shooting in my trap league, using the rowing machine at the Y, and weight training. I went to physical therapy, I monitored my ergonomics, and I did the stretches and exercises as proscribed.

Yesterday I resumed weight training!

(I say I have tendonitis rather than I had tendonitis because it’s the sort of thing that, once you get it, it lurks. Like a trick knee that you blew out playing volleyball at age nineteen, or a disc that slipped once five years ago and sends alarming twinges your way when you stoop to retrieve a shoe. I’m now at-risk for elbow and wrist pain, and will always have to be on guard.)

For those of you new to the blog, I love weight training. Or, weight lifting. I like hoisting massive hunks of iron around, and especially from the floor to above my head in one smooth motion. (The clean and press. I love it. The only weightlifting move I love more is the deadlift.) I also love the rowing machine, and I have come to love jogging. But weight training is my favorite.

Yesterday’s workout was very tentative, very cautious. I lifted for fifteen minutes only, lighter weights. No barbells. I think I have to give up barbells. My wrists and elbows just don’t approve of heavy barbell lifts. But that’s okay! I can do dumbbell and kettlebell lifts with proper wrist-elbow alignment. I can start over, basically, with lighter weights, and make sure my form is excellent.

I ran a bit yesterday, rowed for five minutes, did weights, and then did fifteen minutes of the bodyweight and mobility exercises I’ve been doing for the last three months. Watching my daughter’s summer gymnastics class (during the two months off from circus there’s a special gymanstics class for circus kids who want to stay in form) is especially inspiring on the bodyweight exercise front.

No, wait, not inspiring. The other thing. Soul-crushing.

Well, no, actually, I’m kidding about that. It is inspiring to watch them. As long as I firmly recall that I am thirty-nine years old and weight three hundred pounds, and I will never in my life be a twelve-year-old gymnast. Which is an easy thing to keep in mind.

So I do planks and supermans and hollows and leg lifts and my daughter times me and says encouraging remarks, and then she practices her contortion moves and works on her handstand push-ups while I time her and make encouraging remarks. We share the experience of working out together, while we have different goals.

But, ohhh, I am so happy to be medically cleared for weight training. I love the measurement of it all, the specificity of goals and accomplishments. I went back on Fitocracy for the first time in months, so pleased to have lifts to record. And, I just love being this fat no-longer-young woman who walks into the free weights and begins slinging a kettlebell around. It’s visible strength, visible power. I like having that.

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Mu Productions, Into the Woods

On the spur of the moment we dropped our plans for yesterday evening and joined Wired and her kids at Park Square Theater for a showing of Into the Woods.

The show was by Mu Productions, a local theater group dedicated to promoting Asian Americans in the arts. So this was an entirely race-bent casting of Into the Woods. Well, race-bent in the sense that the musical is traditionally cast as European or white or something like that, and all of these actors (with one or two possible exceptions?) were Asian American. (I have never thought of the characters as being particularly of one race or another. But if it’s not coded, it’s white by default, here in my country and culture.) The staging and costumes were Asian, well, themed? Influenced? in some lovely ways.

This was the last pre-run show, in that the production opens tonight. It was, therefore, very slightly uneven. One missed entrance, a couple flubbed lyrics, some uncertainty about where props were. But the quality was overall very good. Some excellent voices.

The most interesting thing about this production to me was the fact that it was the funniest production of the four I’ve seen. (All the stagings of Into the Woods I’ve seen have been local, small productions with varying degrees of tradition or experiment.) I mean, this was a riotously, uproariously funny rendition of the musical. I was laughing so hard I was coughing. All of us were laughing, J and N and our kids and Wired and her kids and the rest of the audience. Jack was fantastic, The Baker’s Wife was splendid, the reactions from other characters were hilarious, the Princes were side-splittingly funny.

The show was still serious, still dark, especially in the second half. It is Sondheim, after all. But the actors made certain to represent the adult layers of humor on top of the other levels. This sexuality humor, while present in the text, was on display through facial expressions and reaction takes in a more obvious way than the other shows I’ve seen. It was delightful.

Most of the bawdy moments went right over the heads of the kids, while they loved all the other humor. I really appreciate art that has layers for different audience members.

Overall, I think that my very personal preference for Into the Woods is a slightly darker take. But I in no way objected to this interpretation. It was really, really, really funny.

Really funny.

I mean, seriously funny.

If you have a chance to see Mu Productions Into the Woods at the Park Square Theater I highly recommend it.

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Mistakes were made

As I have mentioned before, I’m listening to and thoroughly enjoying The History of Rome podcast. I’m up to Constantine, and Late Antiquity.

I was talking to my son the other evening. He was expressing his desire to be Master of the Universe. I have been listening to the history of men who were, for all practical purposes, Masters of the Universe. And what I’ve learned is that the job, while it had its perks, was really kinda a ball of suck.

Don’t get me wrong; being a master of your universe is likely better than the other options. But it wasn’t, for the Roman emperors, the unfettered ball of joy that my son clearly envisions. No matter how much you got away with during the height of your power — Commodus, I’m looking at you — eventually the bill had to be paid. Likely in poison, garrote, or the blade.

But that’s not always evident from the start.

I didn’t challenge my son’s desire for power, autonomy, and control of his environment. That’s human. Everyone wants to not be at the whimsical mercy of powers beyond their control. And, frankly, childhood can be rather like that. Why is it, after all, that I insist chores be done before playing? It’s evident cruelty and nonsense, apparently. Fantasies of power are part of human nature.

Instead of challenge him, I asked him how he would work out the practical details. How would other people eat, sleep, and be kept safe? How would criminals be punished? Who would own property and profits? What recourse would everyone else have if they disagreed with The Master?

By the end of the discussion M had voluntarily modified his military dictatorial autocracy to a modified autocracy, retaining rule by fiat by with an elected body of representatives to air grievances and make requests. Allegations of crime would be investigated by robots and judgments made by the Supreme Autocrat. Work would be organized somewhat like the Soviet Collectives, with rules enforced by appointed quasi-military commanders acting on data collected by robots.

I was pleased with this discussion. With some questions from me my eight-year-old got as far as the major political mistakes of the sixteenth-through-twentieth centuries. This is excellent. This, this is why we teach history, you understand. We teach history so we stand a snowball’s chance in hell of not making the same damn mistakes over and over again. Part of what made Constantine “The Great” was the fact that he had Diocletian’s administrative successes to build on. Part of what felled the Western Roman Empire was that none of these folks understood how inflation worked. If any of them had figured it out you can bet his successors would have not erred again.

Everybody makes their own mistakes. Nothing we can teach can stop a person from just going right on ahead with a terrible idea. Moreover, you can’t make any new mistakes. Not really.

What we can do is try to learn what sort of mistakes other people have made, and avoid the obvious missteps. We can look at the array of choices available to us and make a sincere and intelligently informed decision as to which sets of predicted consequences we want.

Lie about doing chores? Grounded for a week.
Put a puppet king on the throne of Armenia again? War with Sassanid Persia. Again.
Stomping tantrum when reminded to put away clothes? An extra chore.
Debase the currency? Overthrown by the legions.

If you don’t want war with the Sassanids at this juncture, stay away from Armenia. If you want to play Minecraft later, finish your schoolwork cheerfully. It’s easy to pick the outcome you want when you understand the consequences.

I love history.

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Pretty Deadly

Pretty Deadly SDCC teaser

At SDCC this weekend, Image Comics showed this teaser art for a forthcoming comic by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Rios.

2013, it says. Mark your calendars.

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