The thing is, I do not usually come up with STORIES, I come up with story IDEAS. I have think of premises for stories, not the story itself. A premise asks a question: “What would happen if…?” The story is the answer: It tells what would happen.

For example, many years ago I had an idea for a story called Holiday Ten. The idea was this: There are ten* federal holidays in the United States. Yet take, for example, Columbus Day. I realize that some people do take all the holidays seriously, and that around that particular holiday, certain types of people want to argue over whether Columbus really should be honored. Yet aside from that, and perhaps store promotions and such, I expect that most people do not give more than a passing thought to Christopher Columbus. They just take their three day weekend. In the UK, they actually have what are called Bank Holidays. It is just a day where the banks are closed and most people have the day off. Not in honor of anything, just because.

So imagine that a hundred years or so in the future, no one cares what anymore about what ANY of the holidays were intended to celebrate, they just welcome the extra day off. Having lost all original meaning, the holidays are simply referred to by number.

I further noted that, rather than our current calender, the 365 day year could be divided into 13 months of 28 days (4 weeks) with one day left over. That day would not belong to any month and would mark the start of a new year. Holiday One, if you will. Though I came up with this entirely on my own, I recognize that it is basically a lunar calendar, but I never bothered to research how it compares to the lunar calendars that other cultures have used for millennia. I also did not have a specific plan for leap years.

In any case, as indicated, my story would take place on Holiday Ten, previously known as Christmas. And when I say “take place”… I am pretty much out. What takes place? I have no idea. No plot, no characters, nothing. I actually came up with the idea several years before I ever started going to church, so it is not as though I even intended it to be preachy about the “true meaning of Christmas” or anything like that, although it is hard to imagine where else one might go with it.

So if any aspiring authors out there want to run with that, be my guest. Let me know what you come up with, and if you happen to write a multinational bestseller, please mention my blog on your book tour.

I did get a little bit further than that on this more recent story that I mentioned last week. I had an idea that I found intriguing. It felt like it would work best as a movie or graphic novel. Perhaps as webcomic since I enjoy those so much. I would like to do webcomic** sometime, however, I have had several ideas in that vein already, and if I ever did decide to formally begin one, this particular story would not be first in line. No, the best thing for this would be to just write it out, post it online somewhere and move on.

So I had this idea, but needed some characters and plot. I came up with a murder mystery sort of thing. But after several days thinking about it and getting the story all worked out in my head, I realized that I what I had was basically a murder mystery with a gimmick. As a consumer of entertainment, I absolutely hate it when I see something that wastes a good premise on a mediocre story. I certainly did not want to be guilty of that myself. Especially since the more I thought about it, the more I realized there was a certain richness and depth to my original idea and I kept asking myself, are you going to explore THIS aspect? And the answer kept being, “Not really.” I wanted to include little hints to some of these things for the audience to think about and discuss, although I find it hard to believe that people are going to set up a forum to discuss my work.

Another problem is that there is a certain supernatural element for which I really need to work out the rules. Not so much explain how it might scientifically possible, because it obviously is not. Rather, if we simply accept that this does happen, under what circumstances does it occur? Who can do it? Whom does it effect? I was not being consistent about these things. Of course, one can always just say, “Ha ha, magic!” but that is sloppy.

So after an overall evaluation, I realized that with the red herrings, hints to things outside the scope of the story, intentional ambiguities, and straight-up plot holes, I had quite a mess on my hands. Off to the back burner with that.

*It turns out that there are actually eleven federal holidays. I did not realize that Inauguration Day is an actual holiday as it only happens once every four years, and even then it is only observed in Washington D.C. and surrounding areas. Ignore that one.

**The lack of any drawing ability is not as much of a hindrance to webcomic authorship as you might think. While many do have quite excellent artwork, in the case of two of my favorites, one is draw with stick figures and the other has identical artwork every day – literally the only thing that changes is the dialog. Other options for the non-artist include: photos (either taken yourself or found online), Lego or other posed toys, crude MSPaint drawings, 3D computer graphics, and if all else fails, partner with someone who CAN draw.

So I started with evil, because I assume it would be easier, and I am a path-of-least-resistance kind of guy. The quintessential evil plan, obviously, is to take over the world. I do not want to do that, that sounds really stressful. So, a lesser evil scheme then. For that I need a better definition of what exactly is evil.

After some thought, I decided that evil is based on power. But did not Jesus say that “the love of money is the root of all evil”? Yet, when the Devil was cast out of Heaven, it had nothing to do with money and everything to do with power, much as I hate to contradict Jesus. It turns out that A) it was NOT Jesus, but rather Paul who made that statement in 1 Timothy 6:10, and B) newer translations add in “… all kinds of evil,” which in a strictly literal reading is the same thing, but really has a more general connotation of “a lot of evil” and not, in fact, ALL evil.  I do not disagree with the sentiment of modified statement, however, after doing a [very] little research with a Greek concordance, I am not convinced that the addition is justified.

It is not my place to say what Paul did or did not mean. Regardless, money is not power, however money does represent power (among other things). Therefore, I feel justified in saying that the love of power is the root of all evil.

Thus, for my evil scheme, I would need to exert power. Unfortunately (or not, depending on your perspective) I could not think of anyone over whom I actually wanted power. So it seems that evil is just not my thing.

Then I thought, if I could be doing good, but choose not to, is that not also evil? That suggests somehow that not using power that I already have is evil. That contradicts everything which I have said so far.

Also, I do really like to win at board games.

One of my FB friends posted an article about the latest round of changes to that site and, of course, the privacy concerns that always accompany that. One of their friends then expressed a lack of concern because their life is “BORING!” [emphasis original].

This is not the first time that I have encountered this attitude, and I never know how to respond. Yet this particular example was so concise in wording that it made me realize something. The fact is that NOT everyone leads such a boring life, and no one should have to worry about choosing between a life that is boring or a life that is scrutinized. It does not matter who is doing the monitoring; be it Facebook, Google, Apple, the U.S. government, the Chinese government… The complacency of people who do not think that they are “interesting” enough to have a problem ruins it for everyone.

According to Merriam-Webster, hypocrisy is: a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially : the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion.

This is actually a little bit different from my working definition. I think of hypocrisy as saying one thing but doing the opposite; specifically, condemning others for things that you also do yourself. The difference between the dictionary definition and mine is that theirs seems to mean an intentional deceit, whereas my definition could in some cases be interpreted as arrogant yet not dishonest. “It is O.K. for me to do that, but you can’t.”

If I criticize the actions and traits of others that I also despise about myself, should that be considered hypocritical? To me it just seems consistent, even if not particularly helpful. Or a situation that seems to come up often with political and public figures: if someone criticizes or condemns something with which they are (or have been) involved, is that hypocritical? Their opponents are always quick to claim so, but consider it like this: a smoker who tells others not to smoke might seem hypocritical, yet the very fact that they do it, they know that it is wrong, but they can not stop, actually makes their opinion more valuable.

If I do something and it turns out badly, then it seems reasonable for me to advise, possibly even demand, that others not do that. However, it is not always so clear cut. A particular decision yields some benefits and some disadvantages. Maybe you even readily admit that the disadvantages outweigh the benefits, yet you can not fully bring yourself to give up those benefits, so you find yourself trapped in that particular course of action. Weak… yes; lazy… perhaps. But is it hypocritical?

I happened upon a video online a few weeks ago on “ring species.” One definition of “species” is a classification of organisms that can successfully interbreed. Horses and donkeys are separate species, for example, because while they can in fact mate, the resulting mule is almost always infertile. Also, ligers and tiglons which I found out just now* are actually NOT infertile, so bad example. [*Via the internet. I was not personally attempting to breed them immediately prior to writing this post.] Still, ligers and tiglons, everybody!

A “ring species” is, to my understanding, when a “species” becomes geographically separated into a number of distinct populations. Population A can successfully interbreed with population B; population B with population C; C with D; and D with E; however, population A is NOT able to interbreed with population E. The question then arises, are populations A and E the same species? The video that I saw was actually presented as a challenge to creationists. Many creationists accept “micro-evolution” within a single species (i.e. breeds), but “macro-evolution” (one species evolving from another) is right out.

If any creationists out there would like to address this then be my guest, but as I said before, it is not my concern. I do not give a crap about birds or salamanders or even dogs. Yet I idly wonder: does this happen with people? Can, say, an Australian Aborigine and a Scandinavian produce viable offspring? Probably… but when you get right down to it, I am not really sure.

Switching gears slightly, the movie Idiocracy postulates that natural selection favors stupid, irresponsible people and that in the future, there will be no intelligent people left. While I did not care for the movie itself, I always felt that the underlying premise was extremely plausible. However, at some point in the recent political-economic climate, I began to wonder if this was inaccurate. What if natural selection does not, strictly speaking, favor the unintelligent, but rather the underprivileged? Furthermore, what if the opposite group (the “haves” as opposed to the “have-nots”, if you will) did not actually become extinct, merely a smaller and more isolated population? That would result in a situation much more like the one presented in The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. It has been a great many years since I read that book, but the gist is that the time traveler discovers in the very distant future that humans have evolved (or devolved) into two separate species: the Eloi, who live a carefree lifestyle on the surface of the earth, and the aggressive Morlocks, who live underground, tending to and feeding off of the Eloi. It should also be noted that both the Eloi and the Morlocks are significantly less intelligent than modern humans. No one is disputing that.

Now, while I am sure that many conservatives do happen to be racist (the “birther movement” comes to mind), but that is hardly a defining characteristic of the whole. Here is what I think happened: Obama’s election was an enormous symbolic victory. Many people probably voted for him specifically because he is Black; I would not be surprised if many people voted for the first and only time in their lives simply because he is Black. Even people who supported his policies, or those would have automatically voted for the Democratic candidate regardless, no doubt felt a little extra proud about their choice. Like Jackie Robinson, who was not necessarily the greatest baseball player even in his own time, the fact that Obama was the first Black president will most likely be historically more significant than anything else he does as president. I also think that many people were fully expecting the same sort of backlash against Obama that Jackie Robinson faced.

Therefore, if one believes either openly or subconsciously that the most important thing about Obama is that he is Black, then obviously an attack of any kind must be for that reason. Yet I think you have to objectively ask: exactly who is the racist in that scenario?

The last Democratic president prior to Obama was Clinton, whom the Republicans
tried to run out of office. Yet Clinton was (that particular issue aside) in many areas more conservative than Obama. The Democrat before that was Carter, whom I have frequently heard refered to by conservatives as “The Useless One” or something similar. However, both Carter and Clinton were not only white, Southern Baptists, so the objection to them was obviously not fueled by racism. It turns out that Republicans just really dislike liberals.

In fact, returning to the “birther” idea, while that particular accusation would never have worked against a white president, I suspect that at least some people supported it simply as any excuse to get rid of a liberal president. I believe that most intelligent, respected conservatives tried to distance themselves from the idea as an embarrassing distraction from the real issues. One might even argue that the liberally biased media gave the issue more attention than it deserved for exactly the same reason.

Republicans do not want to see Obama fail. Even conservatives who may or may not have respect for the man or his policies can still be proud at least that the racial barrier to the presidency has been broken. I have never heard this point argued before, but to me it seems that the fact that right now, in America as it is today, a Black man born in obscurity is capable of rising to the highest office in the land is actually more in line with conservative ideology than liberal. (Though I admit that it is entirely possible that I am missing part of the story there.)

Republicans want Obama to succeed. The catch is that they will judge Obama’s success or failure based upon how well he conforms to conservative policies and principles. Under such criteria, he is most certain to fail.

Quickly tiring of my noncommittal answers, he began a more direct line of questioning to determine my “type”. At some point in this line of inquiry, he asked my opinion of Black girls, and being annoyed at every aspect of the conversation thus far, I exasperatedly replied, “I’ve never met a Black girl that I wanted to date.”

Now that is the kind of statement that you really wish you had not said the very instant it leaves your mouth. My companion was momentarily shocked, but undeterred, he began to name some African American celebrities and do I not find them attractive? Sure, whatever.

As if it was not obvious enough before, we were at this point clearly not on the same page. For I specifically said “date”, while he was (at least for the purpose of this exercise) not remotely interested in dating.

Regardless, that statement of mine has been troubling me ever since. The most obvious defense is that it was merely a statement of fact, in the same sense that “I have never been to Brazil” is a statement of fact. Or perhaps a better analogy in this case would be, “I have never wanted to go to Brazil.” What do I have against Brazil? Absolutely nothing. It is not that I refuse to go to Brazil. It is simply that, although technically I could get on a plane at any time, at no point in my life thus far has “Go to Brazil” seemed like the thing to do at that moment. If the opportunity should arise that I had a compelling reason to go, then I probably would. But as it stands, there are a lot of places to which I have never been, and that is merely one of them.

I am not opposed to the idea of dating a Black woman. I have met some wonderful ones that I have gotten along well with over the years, it just so happens that I have thus far not have felt that sort of chemistry with any of them. I almost feel like I should now go out and date a Black woman just to prove that I am not racist, although realistically, I fail to see how that is in anyone’s best interest. If we are really going for brutally honest T.M.I. here, I actually have a preference for Asians, yet I have never dated one of them either. The truth is, it has been years since I have met anyone at all that I have wanted to date, although that is a rather separate issue.

Maybe I would have let this whole thing pass, but some time later, a coworker was telling me about a time that he went to a strip club, and that a Black stripper was wanting to give him a lap-dance, but he had never been attracted to Black girls. This conversation also was rather outside my comfort zone, yet I felt a certain guilty relief in being able to agree with him on this point.

More recently still, I found two videos online (independent of each other, and I do not recall now how I came across either one.) The first is from a comedy series. The second is heartbreaking. So I see that this is much more than one poorly phrased, frustrated comment. This is a deep cultural problem.

I drove on thinking about what an unusual occurrence this was, and at some point I realized that this coincidence did not effect my belief in God in any way. Because I know that we live in a complex and chaotic world with uncountable variables, and sometimes coincidences just happen.

I was talking with my dad earlier this week and mentioned that this concert series was starting up again, and then I happened to remember that it was while setting up for one of these shows a couple of summers ago that I heard the news that Michael Jackson had died. I do not know why that is important to anything at all, it was just some random detail that I remember for some reason.

So anyway, when I arrived at the shop yesterday, one of the secretaries was on the phone. Toward the end of the conversation it became apparent that she had received bad news. After hanging up she asked me if I remembered [a girl I used to know], and that she had died that morning.

WTF? Now this is just bullsh

In 2007, the Colorado Rockies made it to the World Series for the first time since the team’s formation in 1993. (They lost.) Around this time, and likely inspired by this, I researched and discovered that there were still four teams that had never been to the World Series. This number was reduced to three when the Tampa Bay Rays reached the World Series the very next year. The Rays were an even younger team, established in 1998. The oldest team that had not yet been to the World Series was the Texas Rangers, established in 1961.

Being the fan of the underdog that I am, I decided that the Texas Rangers were my team. This was probably sometime between the 2007 and 2008 seasons. As it happened, the President of the United States at this time had previously been a managing partner for the Rangers, so I felt a little extra sympathetic for them because of that.

It is now 2010, today the Texas Rangers are playing game 1 of their first ever World Series and I could not be prouder.

Yet, ever the skeptic, I try to look at it objectively. There are thirty teams in Major League Baseball, two of whom face off in the World Series every year, so the odds a team chosen totally at random being in the World Series in any given year is 1/15 or about 6.67%. However, MLB is split into two leagues, with sixteen teams in the National League and only fourteen in the American League. The Rangers happen to be in the smaller league and the odds of a particular team winning that league at any point in the last three years, if I did the calculation correctly, is about 20%. Not particularly good odds to bet on, but far from mind-blowing that I happen to have been correct.

However, baseball teams are not random numbers. Certain teams are objectively better than others, and though there are considerable factors involved, I think that generally speaking, a team’s record is not expected to change dramatically from one season to the next. In 2007, the Texas Rangers finished last in their division. In fact, they had only had one winning season (in which they won more games than they lost) by that point in the decade. Three years ago, no one would have thought they were a championship team. No one but me, that is. I willed it to happen.

In the interest of full disclosure, I actually predicted a Rangers-Cubs World Series, and I wanted it in 2009. I was off by a year on the Rangers. That is not too bad, really. I was completely wrong about the Cubs. Momentarily going back to random guesses again, the odds of correctly predicting a World Series match-up is about 0.45%. (Or put the opposite way, if one announces such a match-up, there is a 99.5% chance of it being wrong.)

But again, I did not choose the Cubs at random. As I said, I love a good underdog, and the Cubs famously have not won a World Series since 1908, and have not played in the World Series since 1945, when a gentlemen showed up to one of the games with two box tickets, one for himself and one for his goat. When the goat was removed from the stadium for, well, being a goat, the man claimed, “The Cubs, they ain’t gonna win no more.” And they haven’t.

Clearly that man was more powerful than I. But it does not trouble me, because I did not really care about the Cubs. As I said, the Rangers were my team. There is a picture of me taken on my birthday last year that I find amusing for a number of reasons, one of which being that I am wearing an my Official MLB Texas Rangers hat along with my typical t-shirt and jeans ensemble, and I suspect that the hat cost more than everything else that I was wearing combined. I am generally neither a “hat-wearing” nor a “spending-money” type of guy, but here I was in my expensive hat, to show solidarity with a forgettable baseball team, apparently as part of some elaborate joke.

An elaborate joke that paid off, of course. Because I am powerful. This is hardly the first time that something like this has happened either. Many years ago, I was reflecting on my life and realized that I had a very effective method of obtaining things:

1. Want it. Want it so much that I can hardly think of anything else.

2. Stop wanting it. Move on.

3. [Somewhat optional] Decide that I was better off without it anyway.

And then whatever it was would come to me. This method has been known to work on everything from toys to specific girls. I had not put this into practice in a number of years, though. Perhaps because I somehow became convinced that I needed to rely on an external god. This baseball thing does not fit the pattern though. Which brings me to the weighty question:

How do I seemingly have such power over such inconsequential things that logically would seem completely beyond my control, yet I remain paralyzed when it comes to taking even simple actions that effect the course my day to day life?

The first was last year, when for a brief period, I was regularly interacting with an ex-girlfriend again. In conversation with a third party, she mentioned an opportunity years prior which, according to her, I had dismissed with a moping, “I dunno… I dun wanna.” Which even at the time, I had to admit, I could see that happening. Yet I was troubled. I can see now how my non-confrontational nature, coupled with my general tendency toward vagueness and privacy could easily result in poorly articulated reasons for declining something, but that does not mean that I do not have them. Realizing of course that one should always take criticism from an ex with a grain of salt, I was still saddened that she should think me so shallow all this time.

I have also become reacquainted with one of my junior high math teachers, in a different context, later in life. He was recently relating his impression of me as a student as, “I know I’m the smartest guy in the room, and I’ve got the system figured out so that I can get by with the least amount of work.” I admit that I am a path-of-least-resistance kind of guy, and his interpretation might have accurately described my behavior, but nothing like those thoughts ever crossed my mind. For one thing, a good friend of my who is way smarter than me was also in that class. More importantly, I did not then, nor have I since had any “system” specifically figured out; I am really just lazy.

Another friend has repeatedly suggested that I possess a photographic memory, and recently gone so far as to accuse me of “pretending NOT to have a photographic memory, when [I] really do.” I do not quite understand why. I occasionally remember details quite clearly. There are other details that I routinely can not remember at all: names, where I parked, the location of my cell phone or my glasses case, the current day of the week… Perhaps I am just not understanding what a “photographic memory” is, and those things that I can never remember are simply not “visual” enough for me. Yet, my understanding of a photographic memory is that you can recall details in your head as vividly as if you were actually seeing them at that moment. I definitely do not have that. Some things happen to stick in my mind more clearly than others. Is that not how everyone’s memory works? Or do we want to consider the connection between memory and autism? No, we do not.

Finally, last week a friend declared that my philosophy toward life had become “defeatist”, and how that was “not like [me].” Really? Because I feel that I know myself fairly well, and I think it sounds a whole lot like me.