Day 17 (a future history)

Monday, February 5, 2018

Christ on a cracker! They made us watch stupid Trump and his stupid special TV broadcast at school today! We had to do it as a big assembly in the auditorium on a big projection screen. AND WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO DO IT EVERY SINGLE DAY! EVERY DAY!

No, I mean it. Every day. Even on the weekends. It’s mandatory for everyone so they can tell us how the war is going. Or something.

Is this what a war is? I want to say that it doesn’t feel like a war, but how would I know what a war feels like? Whatever it is, it certainly doesn’t feel normal. Life feels weird now. All of it.

We eat almost the same thing every day now.

There’s no TV.

There’s no Internet.

People are disappearing from school.

Everyone is going to be issued a special ID status card.

Oh, yeah, the cards. They’re going to make us carry ID cards that we have to use to check into the daily broadcasts. And we won’t be able to buy anything without them. Or go anywhere very far. They’re going to check the stupid cards for everything!

Maybe it does feel like a war. Just without any fighting. At least any fighting here. Trump said there is fighting in New York. With the Chinese. And THAT doesn’t make any sense. Why would the Chinese be in New York? Wouldn’t they be in California or something? But he said we’re fighting the Chinese in the streets of New York.

He also said there are a lot of traitors in the military who are refusing to fight against their own people, and that doesn’t make any sense either. If it’s the Chinese and they invaded New York, why would the Army be refusing to fight? People at school are whispering about it really being a civil war, but no one is saying it out loud. The teachers won’t talk about it. My parents won’t talk about it other than that my dad says that’s crazy talk then goes off on a rant about the Chinese and their horrible commie propaganda.

But that’s the only thing that makes sense to me, and that’s the scariest thing of all.

Except for the Russians, because Trump has asked the Russians to help take and hold New York.

He just went on and on about how great our friends the Russians are especially after they helped us take over Syria. Or we helped them take over Syria, because Russia got Syria.

And now they’re gonna get New York. Because that’s what happens. Syria. Korea. Afghanistan. Russia “helps” us, then they get to have the country. I don’t want to be the United States of Russia!

If it is a civil war, then I understand the thing about going to California, now.  Or any of those places. They must be the places fighting against Trump.

I don’t understand why no one is talking about what’s going on and why none of the adults will talk about it. Except my dad. HE believes Trump. The idiot. He's made at Trump about the TV, but he still believes every word that comes out of his mouth.

But my mom just shushes me when I try to ask questions, and none of the teachers will talk about anything that’s happening.

Oh, the principal said they’re going to be bringing in special counsellors for any students who need to ask questions or have someone to talk to. I don’t know why they think I would want to go talk to someone I don’t even know, though.

If this is what war feels like, being scared all the time, I don’t like it.

Day Five

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

There’s no school today. Not now, anyway.

We were actually on the way to school when there were a bunch of explosions. I couldn’t tell where they were coming from at first, but then smoke clouds rose up in the direction of the air force base. There were sirens almost immediately and that loud air raid siren thing they always use in movies. I didn’t know that was a real thing. I stuck my head out of the window of the car so I could look for airplanes, but Mom yelled at me and started pulling on me and swerved all over the road. She didn’t like it when I yelled at her for trying to kill me.

Mom took me back home even though I didn’t want to go back home. Home is so boring, now, with no internet or TV that I WANTED to go to school! But it turned out that they closed school, anyway. Everyone thought we were under attack.

I think the radio is stupid. I mean the news on the radio is stupid. So, of course, Mom had to listen to the news all morning, not that she wasn’t already doing that, but she was more insistent about it because of the explosions and wouldn’t even let me talk. At all! She just kept shushing me!

But the radio is stupid because they just speculate all the time. It’s dumb! No one knew what had happened at the air force base, and it took a long time for anyone to find out. Hours. So they spent those hours talking about what might have happened. Were we being attacked? Should people go to bomb shelters? Was it the Chinese? If it was the Chinese, how did they get here?

Lots of people went to bomb shelters. The radio said they were all filling up. Mom wanted to go to a bomb shelter, but she wouldn’t go without Dad, and she couldn’t get through to Dad. All of the phones were jammed up with people using them. As it turned out, Dad was in a bomb shelter.

Mom was SO mad even though he didn’t have a choice. Everyone from Dad’s work was sent to the bomb shelter because everyone thought there was an attack. There was no way for him to call Mom about it, but she didn’t care. She was just mad at him and didn’t talk to him all night. Not after telling him that SHE COULD HAVE DIED while he was all safe and stuff and she was never going to wait for him again.

He said “good” and “fine” and, after a little while, once he figured out that she wasn’t going to talk to him anymore, he went off to… I don’t really know. I went to my room and stayed and am still here. Mom is still listening to the radio. I’ve been reading a little bit.

Oh, yeah, I got a book at school yesterday, Slaughterhouse-Five. I wanted Hunger Games, but she didn’t have any copies left, so I wanted Animal Farm, but she didn’t have any of those left, either. Slaughterhouse sounded like a cool title, though, and there wasn’t a lot to choose from, so I picked it.

I don’t understand it, though. I think it might be good, but I can’t figure out what it’s about. It’s the only book I have right now, though, since I couldn’t trade it for something different today. If I can’t figure out what it’s about by tomorrow, I’ll try to get a different book since reading is the only thing to do, right now. IF there’s even school tomorrow.

There will probably be school tomorrow since we weren’t under attack. Maybe. The radio said the base was sabotaged. It said they were going to send out planes to bomb somewhere on some secret mission but, as soon as the planes started getting ready to take off, they all blew up.

It wasn’t just here, either. It happened at bases all over the US. All the planes that were going to go on this secret mission all blew up. Well, not all of them, but a lot of them. Or most of them. Hundreds of them. I don’t know. They don’t give a lot of details on the radio, just a lot of talking about nothing.

And then they had Trump on talking about nothing, too, because he said it was a great attack on the sovereignty of the US by horrible, terrible enemies and terrorists and about all of the brave brave men who had died except they had already said on the radio, at least at our base, that no one had died. The explosions just crippled the planes and made them no good, but the explosions hadn’t killed anyone.

Trump also said they had a glorious success on the mission. It was beautiful. But he didn’t say what the mission was, only that there was a mission and that it was a success.

I don’t believe him.

Dad said it sounded like Yemen and Jalalabad and Mosul, but he wouldn’t tell me what he meant. Probably because Mom was mad at him. Nothing good, though.

So I think there will be school tomorrow, because, so far, everyone is trying to pretend that everything is okay. Everything is normal. But everything is NOT normal. I wish it was normal and that there was still the internet and I wasn’t stuck reading a book I don’t understand.

A Note from the author:
I hope you are enjoying this piece of FREE! serialized fiction. At least so far as it is fiction. For the moment. Who's to say what could be happening a year from now considering where we are at this moment in time.
Speaking of FREE!, because this is FREE!, it would be great, if are enjoying this story, if you could support the author by purchasing one of his other stories. Look, there are links all of the page and many different types of stories available.

It's always great to feel supported.
Thanks!

The Children Will Pay

You can think of the photo as a metaphor.

So far, in talking about Trump I have focused on the overt racism (and sexism!) his campaign and presidency represent. This is like a piece of cheese covered in mold, and I mean covered. Something that looks like a chunk of green and white fuzz rather, and you only know that there was cheese there because of the packaging. It's disgusting and vile and you probably don't want to smell it, much less take a bite of it. However, it's possible that you could be tempted to want to try to cut the mold off to get down to the good cheese, and, based on the number of people who voted for Trump, a lot of you out there think the overt racism (and sexism!) is just some surface thing that can be cut away.

What I'm saying is that the surface mold was more than reason enough to throw away that (previously) orange piece of cheese. But, you know, since we didn't do that, let's look at what's under that horrible growth of mold.

Actually, wait a minute, let's stop and look at that mold again for just a moment:

Because it's not us, the adults, who will pay for the fungal racist bloom growing in America right now. It will be our children and our children's children. They will be the ones who will have to spend decades repairing the damage to race relations after a Trump presidency.

But that, at least, will be repairable. As bad as that could be, it will be repairable.

There are other things that are not repairable that we may be consigning our children and their children and their children to live with forever. And let's just skip the potential for nuclear war that's wrapped up in Trump's tiny little tyrannosaurus hands (along with his tiny little dinosaur brain).

As bad as everything else will be with Trump as President (and you're living with your head up your ass if you don't believe it will be bad) -- it's going to be a disaster, worst deal ever -- the absolute worst thing is going to be what Trump does to the environment.

And I get that a lot of you out there don't believe the science, don't believe the world isn't flat, but what the data shows is beyond scary. 2016 is the hottest year on record in something like 130 years of record keeping, and that's following nine other hottest years on record in the last 15 or 20 years. The science says we're at a tipping point, and Trump and his new buddy Scott Pruitt are going to do everything they can to push us over the edge. Or, to put it more directly, they are going to do everything they can to keep the people holding us back from a whole Earth climate disaster from being able to do that anymore.

This is what is reprehensible:
Trump, and others like him, have no vision and no long term plan. Their only concern is how much money they can make NOW, and the way to do that is to rape the Earth. Destroying the environment for profit has been the way of man for a long time, now, but we are at the end of what we can destroy and still retain the world as it is. Men like Trump and Pruitt DO NOT CARE. They don't care if what they leave behind is a desiccated husk as long as they get what they want.

And, sure, maybe Trump really just doesn't believe in climate change; maybe, he really does believe it's a Chinese hoax, but that just makes him a special kind of stupid, and we shouldn't have someone like that running the country.

Honestly, I don't care what you think about anything else about Trump: If you can't see and understand this threat that Trump represents then you, also, only care about your own immediate self-gratification without regard for the damage that you're doing (listening to Trump voters, I think this represents the vast majority of them) or you, also, are a dumbass who doesn't believe in science and should go back to living in a cave and hunting your food with a pointy stick. Or you could be some combination of the two.

Seriously, there are SO MANY individual reasons that should have been enough for people to avoid Trump like the moldy cheeseball that he is, but this, what he will allow to be done to the environment, is the greatest. This is the one that we won't be able to come back from. Trump voters, you've all just driven us off the edge of a cliff. I hope you're satisfied with yourselves.

Dream of the Red Chamber (an opera review post)

Dream of the Red Chamber is a new opera. As in brand new. In fact, this was the world premiere. Not that we saw the first showing of it during its run. It's more like seeing a movie on opening night but seeing the 3:00am showing because the earlier showings were sold out. It's still opening night.

The opera is based on the book of the same name, or usually the same name, depending on the translation. The book is considered the book of Chinese literature and even has its own branch of scholarship, redology.

It is, however, a very long book (evidently, Martin has nothing on this guy), so the opera is based on this very particular plot arc of the book, one which involves a love triangle.

In a general sense, this is not a problem; however, the opera spends the first half (until the intermission) setting up the triangle, and it does a poor job of it. Let me explain:

The lead male, Bao Yu (all of the names are symbolic, but I'm not going to go into all of that), has grown up in the women's house, the red chamber, something not normally allowed. During his time there, he has fallen in love with Dai Yu and she with him. They have a lot in common, though she is a "plain" girl and an orphan, making her a "poor match" for Bao Yu, at least according to Bao Yu's mother.

They spend a good portion of the first half of the opera setting up the love between Bao Yu and Dai Yu, then Bao Chai is introduced. She is supposed to be exotic and beautiful, and we are supposed to believe that the presence of Bao Chai creates a romantic conflict for Bao Yu, but, other than an erotic dream he has about both women, there is nothing to support Bao Yu's supposed passion for Bao Chai. It's never quite believable.

Especially since, in the opera, it is almost immediate that Bao Yu's mother begins to push Bao Yu and Bao Chai together (as does Bao Chai's mother). Bao Yu is never torn between the two women. He wants to marry Dai Yu. But it's Bao Chai who is the "good match" and, thus, the conflict. This conflict, which is heightened by a visit from Bao Yu's sister, is not introduced until the very end of act one, leaving most of act one to be various songs about people's intentions with singers standing in place telling of their love or whatever.

Basically, there was little action, leaving act one to be fairly dull.

Act two was a complete turn around, though, as all the court intrigue around the marriage kicked in. The family is trying to force Bao Yu to marry Bao Chai, but he is taking a stand against that. Unfortunately for him, the Emperor himself wants the marriage to happen... because he has a plot underway against the two families. Needless to say, act two is quite a bit more exciting. Enough so that it makes the opera worth watching.

Actually, it's all pretty interesting. Enough so that I'm exploring the idea of reading the book. It's twice as long as War and Peace, which I haven't read yet, so that's saying a lot. I've said for a while that the quality of an adaptation can be told by whether it makes the "viewer" want to explore the source material. Based on that, I would have to say that this is a successful opera. It's certainly not bad, just a bit slow and boring through the first half.

Abandoned Places: Shi Cheng, the Sunken City

Shi Cheng, or Lion City, was founded nearly 1500 years ago and was once the probable center of commerce and politics for its district. Information about Lion City, beyond that, is somewhat sketchy (and here's a sketch of what the city may have once looked like):

In 1959, the valley in which Shi Cheng was located was flooded for the Xin'an River Dam Project, creating Qiandao Lake. As far as I can tell, the abandoned city was not discovered until after it was flooded and submerged during the creation of the lake. Or, maybe, the Chinese government knew it was there and just didn't care. They did dislocate about 300,000 people for the project. At any rate, the once prosperous city now lies at the bottom of the lake.

As an added bonus, here some pictures of the Sutro Baths, built in San Francisco in the 1890s as the world's largest indoor swimming pool complex. The baths operated through the 1960s when they were finally closed for financial reasons. Shortly after closing, a fired destroyed the building.

Vampires: Day 3 -- How To Be... a Vampire

Back in April, as part of the A to Z challenge, I did a post on how to be a werewolf; that post has gone on to be my most viewed post ever. The post was almost about how to be a vampire, but I figured that was just too done and, then, there's the whole thing where I'm not such a huge vampire fan and all, so I decided on werewolves. However, now, six months later, as a follow up to A to Z, here's how to be... a vampire!

Vampires and werewolves have a lot of associated legends and mythologies. In fact, in some places the name for the two things used to be the same. This is not as odd as it sounds as one of the best ways to become a vampire is to start out being a werewolf. Wait, what? No, seriously. According to many legends, if you die as a werewolf (which can be more difficult than it sounds, since it's relatively easy (in some legends) to change someone back to human (sometimes accomplished just by saying the person's name (see the post))) and are not disposed of properly, you will come back as an undead that needs blood to survive, so a vampire. However, you would retain your ability to change into a wolf, which is related to so many of the legends dealing with the associations between wolves and vampires.

Interestingly enough, all of the vampire legends begin with blood-drinking demons. These go back thousands of years, and, sorry, but I don't think there's anything you can do to become a demon. The earliest vampire legends, which don't even go back 1000 years, all have to do with demonic possession, usually after you were dead. For instance, if you had a wound that was not cleansed with boiling water and you died, you could come back as a vampire. In fact, for a while, people thought just about anything could cause your corpse to become possessed by a blood-drinking demonic spirit and come back and ravage the local village. Corpses were often buried face down because of this. That way, when they tried to dig to the surface, they'd go the wrong way. Crafty, huh?

And, as an aside, many (unrelated) cultures believed these undead had a thing for counting. The Chinese would bury the dead with a bag of rice so that when the vampire awoke, it would compulsively count the grains before attempting to rise. Other cultures used sand. That whole Count von Count thing?

Totally true.
Anyway...

Most of our modern views of vampires didn't come about until the 19th century. And most of those grew out of one book: Dracula by Bram Stoker.

The conversion to a vampire, as soon by Stoker, happened by being fed upon over time. Dracula feeds on Lucy over a sustained period until she dies and, then, comes back as a vampire. The same was happening to Mina and, even, Harker. The idea of needing to share the vampire's blood was not actually part of the transformation process; however, it did allow the vampire telepathic control over the victim. We've incorporated both of those ideas into our modern view of vampires.

The sustained feeding idea has also given rise to the idea of it being a pathology. A disease that you catch. So we have three basic views on vampirism: spiritual, mystical, and physical, which give rise to different variations on how to become a vampire based upon which view you hold.

In short, you have three options:
1. You have no control. Your dead body becomes possessed by a blood-sucking demon. Possibly, you can help that to happen by having uncleaned wounds that you die of, but it's no guarantee.
2. You have some control. Become a werewolf. Try to make sure that you die while still a werewolf and hope that no one disposes of your body in a way as to keep you from returning as the undead.
3. You might have some control. First, you have to meet a vampire. This could be difficult as they don't go around handing out business cards. If you find a vampire, convince him/her to turn you into one, too. Mostly, this is going to involve the vampire biting you. You will just have to trust the vampire to do whatever needs to be done to make you into one.

Also, you could learn the special math formula from Briane Pagel's excellent novelette, "Augurs of Distant Shadow," currently found exclusively in "Shadow Spinner: Collection 2: The Man with No Eyes (Parts 6 - 12)."

Oh, no, wait; I deleted the formulas so that no one else could become a vampire, but you should still read the story! And Shadow Spinner, too!

The Religion of Writing: Part Three -- Speaking in Tongues

The debate over speaking in tongues, or glossolalia, is not a new thing. Sure, we look at some of the "Charismatic" and Pentecostal churches and the spouting of gibberish from their mouths while they writhe around on the floor and think, "Man, if that's what I need to do to get into Heaven, then leave me out." [And don't ask me why they're called "charismatic" or why it's the "Charismatic Movement," because I don't see any good reason for the usage of the term (and didn't feel like spending more than the 10 minutes I wasted not finding an adequate answer).] Trust me, I'm with you. Well, I'm with those of you that feel the way I do about it. [Because what I can say is that we don't have examples of that kind of behavior in the Bible. Paul never "sizzled like bacon" while letting nonsense drip out of his mouth.] I am not flopping around like a fish out of water or roaring like a lion or any of that other nonsense that goes on when those people are all being "slain in the Spirit."

Which is the heart of the controversy, actually, because "those people" say  they're not doing it by choice. They're being possessed by the Holy Spirit, and they just can't help it. However, it is what gets you into Heaven (according to them), so, well, it's in your best interest to get in there with them and lose control of your bodily functions.

Now, here's the interesting part (isn't there always an interesting part?):
There has been a lot of research done into glossolalia. Which makes sense, because, if it's real, if people are spontaneously speaking some kind of language they didn't previously know, it would be a mighty strong proof of God or, at the very least, some kind of supernatural phenomenon. Before I go on, there are two types of glossolalia:
1. The kind everyone thinks of when they think of speaking in tongues: speaking an unknown language which no one understands. This is usually thought of as speaking in the tongues (languages) of Angels.
2. Xenoglossy: speaking an actual language that the speaker didn't previously know. Like breaking out into fluent Mandarin without ever even having had chow mein or orange chicken.
Here's the first interesting part: Nearly all of the actual instances of glossolalia in the Bible are xenoglossy. During Pentecost, it was xenoglossy that was happening. Or, perhaps, reverse xenoglossy since it was the listeners that actually heard the speakers in their own language.
If you look in the Bible for an example of what we think of when we talk about "speaking in tongues," we get exactly what goes on these days: a bunch of people (in Corinth) speaking in tongues and boasting about it, "Ha ha, we're better than all of you." Paul had to send a letter telling them to cut it out.

Modern xenoglossy is completely unverified. There are sporadic claims that it has happened, but there are never ever any witnesses or proof or anything of the nature. Usually, it's something along the lines of someone coming back from China and proclaiming to have broken out in Chinese while he was there, but there's no way to know if it happened, since there's never anyone available to say, "Oh, yeah, that guy totally spoke Chinese to me." The few case studies have pretty much shown that xenoglossy was not taking place.

Which leaves us with the gibberish form of speaking in tongues. Study after study after study (after study after study) by both linguists and psychologists have shown that no actual languages are being spoken during these episodes. [I'm not going to get into the technical aspect of how they know that.] There is also considerable psychological evidence that these bursts of "tongue speaking" are psychologically triggered in order to conform to expectations. Like peer pressure. What this means is that neither God nor "the Universe" is talking to any of these people. It's all coming out of their own minds.

Not that you can convince them of that.

And, also, that is not to say that there are not or have not been actual cases of speaking in tongues. I believe that some form of xenoglossy happened at Pentecost. There were potentially thousands of witnesses, and the event is recorded in some extra-Biblical texts. And, sure, there is the potential of the other form of speaking in tongues being real, too, just not in big groups of people the way it is commonly claimed today. So I'll admit the possibility of these things but not the current actuality of them.

Which brings me to the writing part of all of this.

So many, many writers claim to get their stories from "the Universe," or some muse, or some source of inspiration that is outside of themselves. "It was as if the story was just given to me, channeled through me, whispered into my ear," or whatever other nonsense. I'm sure there's no more validity to this than there is in the whole speaking in tongues thing. The human mind is a wondrous thing. Infinitely creative. The idea that we are incapable of coming up with remarkable stories is... well, it's just ludicrous.

It's why it bothers me so much that there are people out there trying to disprove that Shakespeare wrote the plays he's credited with. The idea being that no one can be that creative. What? Did the plays just materialize? Spring forth from the aether fully written? Beamed down by aliens? As with a rose, why does it matter what we call the guy who wrote those plays? Someone wrote them, but, instead of just saying, "Wow, what a creative mind," we have people out there trying to prove that, what amounts to, no one having written them. It's kind of insane.

What I say is this:
If you wrote something, own it. I mean, really own it. Don't try to blame it on some outside force or influence. Take responsibility for it, good or bad. And, if it's bad, keep working on it and make it better. If it's good, say, "I did this! Me!" I don't see why it is that we have to always discredit ourselves and our achievements, like we're not good enough. And that's what you're doing when you try to blame your art on the "the Universe": discrediting yourself.

So, yeah, I will admit to the possibility that "the Universe" or the Force or God or, even, aliens may have influenced someone at some time to write something. Or paint something. Or make music. But, just like with speaking in tongues, I'm pretty sure it's not happening on any kind of regular basis. People are just scared to own their creations, because, like in mass "tongue events," society says pretty consistently, "You can't say that you yourself did a good job." But, not only that, society says that when someone comes along and tells us we did, we have to brush it off and say "it was nothing" or "I was inspired." It wasn't me.
What hogwash.

Don't be scared. Take credit for your work. If aliens want to send us books, let them send us the books. They don't need to whisper them in anyone's ear.