What Does It Mean To Be Human? or The Question of Sentience

What does it mean to be human?
Most humans would say that being human is something that sets us apart from the rest of... everything. Being human is something that elevates us above the animals.
Even though we are animals.
"Christians" would say it's because humans have a soul, but what even is a soul? Some bit of "secret sauce" that makes us more than just a biological machine? I don't think I can buy that anymore.

I mean, there's nothing to say that animals aren't just as soul-full as man. Just because the Bible doesn't say it, doesn't mean it's not true. The Bible doesn't mention America, either, so maybe that's just a fantasy, too.

And there's nothing to say that a "soul" is what elevates humans. "Christians" have taken a lot of liberties and made a lot of assumptions about the phrase "breathed life into" Since man was last, there is nothing to say that God didn't go around breathing life into the "nostrils" of all the animals.

Personally, I'm tired of the liberties "christians" take. It's the definition of entitled.

However, it's not just "christians" who have long said that humans are elevated above the animals. Science has long held this to be true, too. And I get it. Man has done so much stuff that other animals have not: created art, built cities, murdered for fun. Man looks so much different than every other creature, not in physicality but in... accomplishment.

But what if it all comes down to opposable thumbs and a prefrontal cortex?

When I was growing up, what was said was that man is the only sentient animal. But what is sentience? Looking up the definition, now, it's pretty loose: the ability to think or feel subjectively. Basically, the ability to have a personal perspective.

So let's talk about my dog:

My dog doesn't like tall men wearing hats. There are few things that can make her flip out like a tall man in a hat walking by, well, other than the vacuum cleaner, but the vacuum cleaner is her nemesis. Now, it is objectively not true that tall men in hats wish her harm. My father-in-law is a very tall man who sometimes wears a hat, and she loves him, though she is giving him special dispensation. Clearly, something in her past (she was a rescue) has caused her to hate tall men in hats. It is her personal perspective. It is also her personal perspective that she doesn't hold my father-in-law to the same standard as other tall men in hats.

And, yet, dogs are not generally considered to be sentient.

So let's throw in one other factor that is often applied: the concept of "I am."

Humans like to think of themselves as the only creatures with a concept of individual identity, which is something I find highly amusing considering that most people spend their time trying to do nothing more than fitting in. And, while we're not sure if dogs have a concept of individual identity, we're pretty sure some other creatures do.

Take dolphins, for instance, who have names. They have fucking names just like we do as people, making it blatantly obvious that they not only have an awareness of their own selfhood but of other's selfhood as well, and I would be willing to bet that that extends to humans. They sound a little more evolved than we do, though.

I could go on with other examples, but I'm going to skip ahead to the part where I talk about elephants.

Elephants have a complex social structure, distinct roles and personalities, value the individual, and, even, some kind of funeral observance for the dead. Their brains are of a comparable size to human brains, and they are capable of complex tasks and, yes, building. Why don't they do it in the wild? Lack of interest? I don't know. What is clear, though, is that if there is any other land animal that qualifies as sentient, the elephant would be it. And, yet...

And, yet, Trump #fakepresident recently made it legal to once again bring elephant trophies into the United States. He might as well make it legal for ICE agents collect ears and scalps. Oh, wait... I better not give him any ideas.

Look, I'm not saying I have the answers about sentience and where or what that line is, but, then, I don't think anyone has that answer yet, What I am saying, though, is that if there is the possibility -- and there is EVERY possibility where elephants are concerned -- you should not be supporting the murder of said sentient species, especially when that species is already endangered.

But, then, Trump #fakepresident has a difficult time of recognizing the humanity of fellow humans (see Puerto Rico), so I suppose it's too much to expect that he would see anything beyond his own bloated sense of self-worth. And his gut and bucket of chicken.

Licked by a Horse, among other Things

Well, this is awkward.
Sure, it's an awkward of my own choosing, but that doesn't make it any less awkward.
We're going to talk about being licked.
And I'm going to assume that everyone, at some point or other, has been licked by a dog. Yes, I'm sure there are people out there who have never been licked by a dog or who think it's gross or whatever, but it's a fairly normal thing, so we're going to go with that.

I, of course, have been licked by a dog. In fact, I am licked by a dog pretty much on a daily basis. This dog, in fact:

Isn't she the cutest.

Yes, that's a statement, not a question.

Along with the dog, however, I've been licked by quite a few other kinds of things.

There are, of course, humans. Anyone who spends any amount of time working with young children is, at some point or another, going to be licked. Usually because said kid finds it utterly hilarious. Especially if he catches you off guard and you suddenly have a smear of slime down your arm. Yeah, hilarious. Right?

But for most animals it's to show a kind of affection, not to be obnoxious. It's a "here, I care about you; I'm going to clean you," or whatever, kind of thing. Of course, some dogs love everyone. heh Or just aren't very discriminating.
Anyway...

So... other animals I've been licked by:

My cat. Being licked by a cat is not the most pleasant thing, but he means well. As well as a cat can, anyway. I've been injured more than once by the cat's tongue, though, so I've had to dissuade him from licking me when it looks like he's settling down to give me a grooming.

My rabbit. She's no longer with us, but she used to lick my hands and fingers when I would hold her. It's somewhat similar to being licked by a cat by softer and more tentatively. I did some research on the rabbit licking thing at one point because I'd never heard of that before, and it seems to be rather rare with them. They have to really like you.

A gerbil. When I was in high school, I had a pair of gerbils and the female would sometimes lick my fingers. It was a little weird, kinda of like being nosed by a fish. Sometimes, she would hold onto my fingertip while she was licking me.

A cow. When I as a kid, my grandfather had cows down on the farm, and one of the cows, a cow named Pig, would occasionally lick me. I don't know if she ever licked anyone else, but I'm sure it was all about getting food. At any rate, I don't recommend the experience. If you want to know what's like, go find a cat and get it to lick your arm, then imagine that on the magnitude of a cow's tongue, let's 100x more intense. Plus the slime and what it did to the hair on my arm. Let's just say that there's a reason a cowlick is called a cowlick.

And, now, a horse. Or a pony, as was the case. The pony's name was Lucy; I wish I had taken a picture of her, but it didn't occur to me until after the fact. We were at one of the local parks a couple of weekends ago, and they offer pony rides there. My niece and nephew wanted to ride the ponies, so I was hanging out near the fence where the waiting ponies were and one of the ponies, Lucy, started nudging at me, for scratches I guess. That's how I responded, at any rate, first up around her ears then her nose. It's not like a horse is able to scratch its own nose, right?

A surprising thing happened, then; Lucy licked my hand. Except it was more like a tongue press. She pressed her tongue against my hand. I want to say it was like being touched by a cloud, but I don't think that analogy really works. Let's just say it was soft, surprisingly so. Gentle, maybe. So I held my hand out to her like I would for a dog to smell, and she began licking my hand repeatedly. You know, pressing her tongue against my fingers over and over again.

My younger son was with me, so he held his hand over to her (he had been scratching her ears), but she turned her head away from his hand. She was definitely choosing to lick my hand, so it wasn't that I had tasty food on it or something (we had just finished eating), because my son had had the same lunch I had so would have had the same food on his hand.

After a few minutes, I had to go take care of something, but I went back over to see Lucy again a little while later, and she got all excited when she saw me walking up and greeted me by licking my hand again; she still wouldn't lick my son's hand. When they came to take her away a little while later, she got upset and didn't want to go.

I don't know how common it is for horses to lick people (and I'm not going to do any research about it, because I'm not curious enough to spend the time on it), but it's not a thing I'd ever heard of before. I seem to have a thing with animals, which, actually, is true enough.

Or, maybe, I just taste good.

Dogs and Cats Living Together... (pictures I like)

Life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of Happiness (Part 3)

What is Liberty, anyway?

Probably something to do with being free has popped into your mind at just the thought of that question but, politically speaking, liberty and freedom are not quite the same thing. Let me give you an example:

Let's say you're driving down the highway, speed limit: 65. You're a little behind schedule and, after doing some quick calculations... Wait, who am I kidding? No one does the math to figure out if speeding is actually going to save them any time. [Like the other day when some dude on a motorcycle came weaving through tight traffic at something around 80 mph only to have me pull up next to him at the exit I was taking. So yeah, he save a LOT of time by almost causing two accidents (that I saw) as he zipped between cars.] You're running late, so you step on the gas and punch your car up to 80. Are you free to do that?

Well, obviously; you just did it, right? And this is where it can be confusing, I suppose, because, while you are free to do that (anyone is free to break the law if he so chooses), you do not have the liberty to do that. It's a bit like the difference between "can" and "may." You know:

"Teacher, can I go to the bathroom?"
"Well, I assume you can, but you may not."

So, whereas you have the freedom to relieve yourself (because no one can stop you from peeing right where you stand), you do not have the liberty to go to the bathroom to do it.

Why is this important?

One of the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence is that we have the unalienable Right to Liberty. In practice, this means we have Right to a Government which does not place arbitrary restraints, especially oppressive ones, upon its citizens and takes into account the Rights of all. And it takes those Rights into account for all equally, not favoring the wealthy over the poor, for instance.

Of course, it is natural to think of this idea of Liberty from the perspective that the Government should not be making laws that disproportionately favors one group over another...

Oh, wait, so that means that all of these voter ID laws and all that shit the GOP has been doing in places like North Carolina is a restriction of Liberty of its people. It makes it difficult in a disproportionate way for certain groups of people to be able to vote.

But I was saying: It's natural that we should think of this in the sense of passing laws that restrict the liberties of particular groups of people...

Oh, wait, like laws that make it difficult for women to get the kind of healthcare they need from places like Planned Parenthood or that straight up make abortion illegal, effectively taking a religious belief and imposing it upon everyone. I mean, not only does that restrict the Liberty of women, it's a direct violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution. But, then, the GOP doesn't seem to care about those kinds of things.

But back to what I was saying: It's natural to think of restrictive laws as being the kinds of things that restrict Liberty, but it's more than that.

Like, the GOP's refusal to raise the minimum wage amount to a restriction of Liberty (and freedom) for a huge segment of the population. It makes it so that people in low wage jobs have no choices. It removes their freedoms and, effectively, makes them slaves of the system, working for the profit of others with no hope of bettering their own lives.

There was this comedian, Jerry Clower, who used to tell this story about going 'coon hunting when he was a boy. One of the men he hunted with believed that a 'coon should never be shot of a tree; he thought that wasn't fair to the 'coon. He believed that the 'coon deserved a "fightin' chance" and that the 'coon should be set loose amongst the dogs (so he would climb the tree and throw the 'coon down into the dog pack). That way, the 'coon had the option of whoopin' all those dogs and walking away. It never happened, but at least the raccoon had the freedom to do so.

I'll let you make the connection.

Also, what DeVos and the GOP want to do to education, the funneling of money from the public education system into private and charter schools, is also a removal of Liberty from the non-wealthy. What they want to do will negatively impact something like 85-95%, at least, of the population. It's another of those things that actually takes away freedom from people in the same way that restricting their pay does. You might pay lip service to their Liberty but, when you take away people's access to education, you are removing their freedom to get anything other than low wage jobs. It's just another way to keep people trapped.

All of that to say, again, as I did in part two of this series, it is time for us to remove our consent to being governed in this way. The Government only derives its Power from the consent of the People; if it does not have that consent, it has no Power. The current GOP led Form of Government has proven, and has been proving for decades, that it is destructive to the unalienable Rights Jefferson points to in the Declaration of Independence; as such, we have Right to alter or abolish that Form of Government. It's time.

Longing (pictures I like)

Clone Wars -- "A Friend in Need" (Ep. 4.14)

-- Friendship shows us who we really are.

[Remember, you can sign up to join the Clone Wars Project at any time by clicking this link.]

The return of Death Watch... and a plan to assassinate Dooku?

Having the Death Watch around is always interesting, and, hey, it's always cool to see the Darksaber, but I actually don't want to talk about what the episode is about. No, again, I want to focus on something that's off to the side of the story.

When Ahsoka, R2-D2, and Lux Bonteri arrive at the Death Watch camp, the members of the Death Watch are busy torturing... droids. For fun. Their pattern seems to be to torture the droids into inoperability then have someone fix the droids up so that they can torture them some more. And I know some of you, right now, are thinking, "So...? They're droids."

It's important to remember that in Star Wars, droids are sentient. They have self-awareness and value themselves as individuals. This isn't a subject that's ever explored in Star Wars, but it's certainly there in the background. It's actually a parallel line of thought to that of the clones.

Now, most people would probably say it would be wrong to torture clones; they're alive, right? But not everyone believed that. They were, after all, built, so doesn't that make them something like organic machines? "But they can feel pain!" Sure, but so can the droids. "It's not the same!" Why not?

Why not?

Of course, after the Clone War, the making of clones was made illegal. So was the making of droids for combat purposes, though that's barely touched on.

Did you know that science (yeah, I know, for a lot of you, I may as well have just said "magic") is showing us, right now, that dolphins and other marine mammals are self aware? They have names for each other. So, you know, when a dolphin gets caught in a fishing net and pulled out  of the water, some other dolphin out in the ocean is going off to tell the pod, "Samson got caught in a net..." Imagine how you would feel if you found out your neighbor caught and ate your dog.

And some of you are saying, "So what. It's only a dog." Or it's only a dolphin. Or... it's only a black person. Or a Mexican. Or a Muslim. Or a faggot. It's not like they're people, right?



"You don't want to make them angry; they are far from rational."

Deliberate vs...: A Post About Thinking (Part Three)

If you didn't read part one of this post series, you should really go back and do that. I don't actually say that very often, even when I do a series of posts. Generally, I try to keep the individual posts episodic in nature while being related in overall subject matter. However, this post is directly linked to the first post in this series, and, although you can read it all on its own, it won't have the same relevance. As such, I'm not repeating my disclaimer about how this is not meant to offend anyone.

Within the spectrum of how quickly people decide things (most people (80%) doing it quickly and with little to no thought), there are three categories of how people make decisions: emotionally, intellectually, and intuitively. As you may have guessed, the emotional decision makers are the ones that most quickly make decisions because they are reacting based upon how they feel about the subject. But it's not that simple...

Recent studies have shown that emotions are an essential part of the decision-making process for everyone. Yeah, it defies reason, because you'd think that making decisions is based on logic and reason and stuff, but, well, it's totally not.

"So at the point of decision, emotions are very important for choosing. In fact even with what we believe are logical decisions, the very point of choice is arguably always based on emotion." *

"Their ultimate decision is based on self-interest. That’s emotional. I want this. This is good for me and my side." * 

*link

"The brain's wiring emphatically relies on emotion over intellect in decision-making" **

**link

There's a lot more I could go into with this stuff, such as how almost all people accept the first piece of information they receive on a subject as true whether it's true or not [There was a fascinating study done where people were intentionally given false "facts" and, later, when the researchers came back and gave them the real facts, most of them (yeah, around 80%) would not look at the new information. They steadfastly held to the falsehoods even when told "we lied to you." They had already formed an "emotional attachment" to the information and no amount of counter evidence would persuade them. They believed they were being lied to in the second case rather than believe they had originally bought into a lie.], but, then, this piece would go on forever.

To give this some personal flavor, I ran into this kind of behavior for the first time around the third grade. I had learned some new fact at school, and, for some reason, it came up later with my family. My (step)father disagreed with my fact and told me I was wrong. I fell back on "my teacher said," and he told me she was wrong. I wouldn't let it go, so, later, we looked it up, and it turned out that I was correct, but my father said the resource material was also wrong. When I tried to argue with that, he told me he was right because "he said so." Then I got punished. It was a very eye opening situation.

Unfortunately, later, I would find out that most people are actually like this, refusing to accept facts in favor of what they already believe. They may not be quite as volatile about it as my dad was, but they are just the same.

The point is that very few people can break out of their emotional center when making decisions and most people (around 80%) make decisions solely based upon how they feel about whatever it is that's being decided. I like this; therefore, it is right.

The second group of people are the ones that make decisions intellectually. This is a more rational process in which the person needs information in order to make decisions. These are the list makers, those people that you know that list out all of the pros and cons of something before they can figure out what to do. Unfortunately, emotions are frequently behind the need to make the decision in this manner, such as the fear of making the wrong choice or, even, the driving desire to make the correct choice. Frequently, people also use this technique to bolster the decision they have already come to from an emotional standpoint, but they want or need for it to appear to be a rational decision. Still, all of this is slightly better than reacting from a purely emotional standpoint. These people make up most of the remaining 20%.

The last percent or two of decision makers are what's called intuitive thinkers. Science isn't really sure about these guys. Intuitive thinkers gather information, but it's not in the same way as the intellectuals. The intuitives are more likely to evoke empathy in their decision making by looking at the argument from multiple points of view. This goes beyond a mere list of pros and cons but involves taking into account how the differing sides feel about the situation. It takes the varying emotional viewpoints into consideration. After gathering all of the information, the intuitive decision-maker attempts to make the "right" decision, not necessarily the most objectively correct decision.

One thing we do know is that empathy, actual empathy, is fairly rare. Mostly, what people do is sympathy and mistake that for empathy. Sympathy is "I feel bad for you," but sympathy is also imagining how you would feel if you were in the same situation as the other person, "I'd feel really bad if I was going through that, so I feel bad for you." People often get that second one mixed up with empathy and, while it is a step toward empathy, it is not empathy. Empathy says, "You feel bed, so I feel bad with you." Or whatever the applicable emotion is. One keeps your own emotions intact; the other suppresses your own emotions in favor of the other person's.

Yeah, not even science has a good grip on empathy, what it is, how it works, or why so few people are capable of it. What we know for sure is that animals, especially dogs, are much better at it than people. Sure, many people may experience a flash of empathy once or twice in their lives, but actual empathetic people (on a sustained basis) are few and far between. What studies have shown, though, is that empathy is required in order to make decisions that go against your own emotional needs. It  takes the ability to be able to say "that other person's emotional requirements are more important than mine are, right now, so I'm going to put my own decision aside in favor of the other person's."

What all of this says is that reasoning with someone with an opposing view is rather pointless, because less than 20% of people have even a chance of being swayed by rational discourse. It doesn't matter what kind of logic is used or how much evidence you have; you can't change someone's mind that way. The only way to change someone's mind is by manipulating their emotions, and, guess what, that's exactly what commercials strive to do, get you to make an emotional connection with the product, whether that product is a thing, a person, or a position.

The other thing we know (scientifically) is that ideologies are strong emotional positions, and it's very (very) difficult to sway someone to an opposing viewpoint. In fact, unless the person only has a very shallow belief, psychology suggests that it's impossible without some sort of emotional crisis. For instance, a person that believes we have the right to own guns and own any kind of gun we want to own and that the government has no business knowing anything about it is likely to change his position if a loved one is killed in an episode of gun violence. He will suddenly "see the light" and realize how wrong he has always been and switch sides in the gun debate. As an example.

So, great, we have all of this information, but what good does it do us? Well, most of science will tell you that you are one of these ways because you were born that way and tough luck; however, there is some research that suggests that empathetic behavior models can be taught to children. The research is ongoing in that. I do know that people can learn, through (very) concerted effort, to make better decisions. To remove themselves from the emotion and approach the situation from the outside. Most people just aren't willing to do that. I also know that through (very) concerted effort people can learn to not accept every bit of information at face value.

I got kind of lucky with that. I had a great teacher at just the right time that taught me never to just accept what anyone was telling me, no matter who it was or how much I trusted that person. Even when it's people we trust, we can be mislead, not necessarily because that person may be trying to be misleading us but because that person might believe the wrong thing. Like my dad. That really became the operating basis for my life. Always confirm. Not that I always do that, because the piece of information may not be important enough to spend the time on, but I also won't give it any weight until I've seen evidence to back it up.

Let me just say that I've been in the room with preacher teaching an internet hoax as fact and leave it at that. You just don't want to be that person.

An Unsponsored Post

I don't get this whole cat thing on the Internet. What is it about cats? Seriously, what is it? More people like dogs, more people have dogs, yet it's cats that populate the web. Is it because cats are so weird? I'm sort of inclined to believe that. Cats are insane, and people want to watch it. Like a train wreck. Sure, dogs are cute, but they don't do things like this:

And, well, other things that the cat quits doing as soon as I get out my camera. He sits up and looks at me like "I don't know what you're talking about. I was just sitting here. Maybe you're insane."

And, maybe, I am. But that's beside the point.

Or, maybe, it's all a plot by cats to take over the web. A great PR campaign or something. Whatever it is, the few posts I did about our cat interloper got an inordinate amount of page views, which I just don't understand.

Those posts also lead to an offer of a sponsored post. My first. It was a lot of money. Okay, so it wasn't really a lot of money, but it was a LOT of MONEY. More money than I've made all year on e-sales of my book stuff. All because of the cat. And I have to say it was tempting. Oh so very tempting.

I mean, that's the goal, right? To make money off my writing? But there was an issue. I had to advertise for the people that would be paying me to write the post, and the post itself wasn't such a big deal; it was supposed to be about celebrities doing work to save pets or some such. That sounds good, right? But the people that wanted me to do this are from an online gambling website, and I would have had to post links to their site in the post, and I just couldn't bring myself to do that. Yeah, I'm not a supporter of organized gambling.

At any rate, it was kind of a surreal experience. On the one hand, it was, well, it was nice to get asked, to be recognized, you know? On the other hand, it had less to do with me and my actual writing than it had to do with the fact that I had put up a few posts about a cat. And, then, there was the whole gambling thing. It was kind of a bummer to have to turn them down. It was, after all, the first (and only) time I've had an offer like this, and, of course, the thought is, "If I turn them down will that mean I will never get another offer like this?"
That's kind of hard to say, but the one thing I did know, do know, is that I didn't want it to turn into an ongoing series of posts supporting some gambling website.

So... here's my unsponsored post that's not really about cats at all, although there is a cat in it, and  the cat sort of started it. I wonder what the cat would think about that. It's probably all a part of his infiltration plan anyway. Get into a new house and get the people to post pics of him on the Internet, thus spreading the control of Catkind across the world.

Personally, I think cats are still just upset about losing that whole godhood thing that the ancient Egyptians gave them. They're still trying to get it back...

Guns and Adverbs: Part 1

I'm not a big fan of guns. I never have been. Well, that may not exactly be true. I suppose, when I was a kid, I liked guns. I do know that I wanted to go hunting. Everyone in my family hunted. Well, all the men did, at any rate (along with one aunt), which included my cousin who was three years older than me and my childhood idol. As far as I can remember, he always hunted, and, for all I know, that may have been true (knowing my uncle (because it was his wife that was the hunting aunt)). What I do know is that my cousin was hunting by the age of seven, because he got a deer that year. So I wanted to hunt, too.

For whatever reason, my mom really just blocked the whole thing, like she did with me playing any kind of sports when I was a kid (my brother both hunted and played sports). I got this whole thing about how I couldn't hunt until I had my own gun, but I couldn't have a gun until I learned how to handle one, but I didn't have a gun, so I couldn't learn how to handle one. It was all very frustrating to me as a kid. By the time my grandfather decided to just take me out hunting despite the fact that I had never held anything more powerful than a BB gun, I had really lost interest. That was middle school, probably 8th grade, in fact. I took a comic book with me, an edition of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe

which was nice and thick so that it would keep me busy for a while, and we sat in the deer stand. We didn't see anything. I sat and read until it got too dark to see, then we walked back to the farm. I never went hunting again. I never learned how to use a gun.

Because I don't know how to use a gun, I don't own one. Of course, I have no intention of using one, so it would be rather superfluous to bother to have one in my house. That would just be asking for trouble.

I'm pretty sure most people don't approach the whole gun thing that way, though. After all, they look pretty simple to use, right? TV and movies make them look easy to use. Just point and shoot. Of course, the truth is  they are not easy to use, and they are certainly not easy to use responsibly. This leads to all sorts of problems too numerous to mention, but, if you're reading this, you're probably aware of gun issues whether you approve of them or not.

And that's the catch, because there are so many issues with guns, people are tempted to call the gun itself bad or wrong. The gun, though, is just a thing. As long as no one's holding it, it just sits on the table doing nothing.

But! But, to keep people from using them inappropriately, what we want to do is to say "no one should use guns." Forget being educated on proper usage and safety, just don't do it! And you know what, I get it. I understand that temptation. It's oh so much easier to prohibit than to teach.

Of course, there are legitimate uses for guns, not the least of which is protection against other people misusing them, not that I'm advocating owning a gun "for protection;" I'm just saying. The truth is that if I ever needed to use a gun, I mean needed to use one, I would be unprepared, and that would not be a good thing. That makes me think that gun safety courses should possibly be mandatory just like drivers education is mandatory.

Of course, it might not do much good; look at the number of automobile accidents we have every year.

At any rate, the point is that a gun is a tool. It's the user that determines what happens with it, which is the same for any tool. The problem with guns is that they are so powerful. Like pit bulls. [Pit bulls have not been shown to be any more violent than other breeds of dogs; however, when there is an incident with a pit bull, the victim tends to fare much worse than in other dog attacks because the jaws of a pit bull are so much more powerful than those of other dogs.] Because gun usage can end up being an all or nothing affair, people tend to react with an all or nothing attitude.

What we end up with is a bunch of people running around saying, "Don't use guns! Don't use adverbs!"

"Guns are bad! Adverbs are bad!"

Yeah, I just threw adverbs into the mix, because adverbs are just like that gun lying on the table. A thing. Neither bad nor good but very effective when used properly and very damaging when used improperly. But adverbs are so very easy to misuse and can destroy a manuscript, so what you get are people saying, "Don't use adverbs! Bad! Wrong! No!"

However, the correct position on adverbs is not abstinence but education.

Peanut Butter and Peppermint

It was a rare summer morning that my great-grandmother did not cook a huge breakfast. Often, there would be a dozen or so of us packed around the table covered with bacon, eggs, biscuits, gravy, sausage, sometimes pancakes. I formed a lifelong love of biscuits and gravy at that table. But that morning, there was no breakfast.

My cousins, Becky and Sam, and I didn't really mind, as much as we loved those breakfasts, because that meant we got to have cereal. Cereal was something of a treat down at my great-grandmother's, because there wasn't often an occasion to have it. My aunt kept it around, though, just in case. I'm sure I was having something with those fake marshmallows in it, because my mom would never buy those kinds of cereals for home. Probably Boo-berry. The adults were all gone off somewhere, so it was just the three of us.

"I wonder if cereal would be good with ketchup on it," said Sam as we were sitting down. To put this statement in context, Sam ate everything with ketchup on it. Well, everything except cereal, evidently. Ketchup on his mashed potatoes. Ketchup on his eggs. He would literally trail the ketchup over everything on his plate for things like Thanksgiving dinner. It was kind of gross.

Not that it was entirely his fault. As a baby, in order to get him to eat baby food, my aunt would mix ketchup into it, so it was a flavor he couldn't separate from the idea of food, and, at not yet 10 (he was three years older than me), he certainly didn't have the willpower on his own to try. Heck, he was still eating everything like that when he graduated from high school.

Becky gave him an immediate response, "It would be gross."

"I'm going to try it."

"No, you're not."

"Who put you in charge?"

"I'm the oldest." And, indeed, she was. By a few months.

"So. You're not the boss of me."

"That's gross. You can't put ketchup on your cereal."

Sam turned to me, "Do you want to try ketchup on your cereal?"

"No way!"

"Well, I'm going to."

Becky was getting mad, "No, you're not!"

"You can't stop me!" And Sam got up from the table to fetch the ketchup bottle from the kitchen.

"If you put ketchup on your cereal, you're going to eat it!"

"Of course, I'm going to eat it. It's going to be great!"

Sam sat down at his bowl. I stopped eating to watch him. This was before the days of squeeze bottles, so he had to wait to for the ketchup to slowly make its way to the lip of the bottle. The three of us sat there watching, waiting, until finally a blob of ketchup fell onto the cereal. He slowly circled around the bowl, making a red ring. By the time he returned from putting the ketchup away, his milk had turned pink.

Becky and I were finishing up our bowls of cereal as Sam spooned up his first bite.

"You're going to eat all of that!"

"I already said I am!" and he popped the bite of cereal into his mouth.

But he didn't swallow it. He did that thing that people do when they put something too hot in their mouths but don't want to spit the food out. Trying to hold it in their teeth so that their tongues don't get more burned. But it was cereal, and that didn't work. He couldn't get his tongue away from it. Or the pink milk he'd created.

"Swallow it," Becky commanded.

But Sam's face came down over his bowl, and the glob of cereal fell out of his mouth into his bowl.

"I told you it was going to be gross," Becky smiled. "Now, you have to eat it."

"I'm not eating that!"

"Yes, you are! You agreed!"

"I'm not eating that! It's disgusting!"

"Well, you're not leaving this table until you eat it!"

"Says who?"

"Says me!"

"You can't make me!"

Becky squinted her eyes at Sam and gave him a hard look, "Yes, I can."

And she could, too. Sam and I both knew it. There had been an... altercation... proving it not all that long before. But Sam was my idol. Not that I didn't also look up to Becky. After all, she'd beaten Sam up in my defense, but I spent the whole summer with Becky every year and saw her on holidays and other times besides. Sam, I only saw a few times a year, so he automatically went up in esteem due to the limited time I had with him. Not to mention that he was also a boy. But I was backing Becky all the way on this one.

After all, the conditions had been clearly set at the outset, and Sam had agreed to them. It was only right that he eat the cereal.

So we sat there, the three of us. A battle of wills between my cousins, and me growing more and more bored by the minute. I wasn't good at bored. But, then, what 6ish year old is?

In the end, Becky and I left Sam sitting there at the table with the admonishment not to leave until he'd eaten that cereal. Under threat of "telling." But I no longer cared; I just wanted to go play.

I'm not sure how long he sat there at the table staring at that bowl of pink milk and the soggy substance within, but he did eventually join us. That meant a trek back to the house so that Becky could verify the truth of his statement that he'd eaten the cereal. There was no sign of it, and a search couldn't turn it up. She even looked under the table. Ironically, Sam had actually hidden the bowl under the table as he told me later, but in the time it had taken Sam to find us, someone else had found the cereal and dumped it into the tray for the dogs outside.

Let me just be clear about this: the dogs would eat anything. They got all of the table scraps all the time, and they always ate everything. Including boiled okra. But they didn't eat that cereal. Much later in the day, Becky and I found it in the dog tray. Hours and hours later. Stinking in the heart of a summer day in East  Texas. Flies buzzing all around.

Sam was lucky that day. He'd had to leave for some reason that I don't remember, which is why he wasn't with us when we found the cereal. Becky would have pounded him if he had been. She wanted to remember to beat him up later, but, by the time we saw him again, she'd forgotten.


My oldest son and I were at  the grocery store recently when we were both overcome with a desire for peppermint bark. I love peppermint bark. Actually, I just love peppermint, especially with chocolate. Most mornings, I have peppermint cocoa or a peppermint mocha as my morning beverage. However, buying peppermint bark wasn't really an option as we have a fairly firm prohibition in our household about buying candy. Especially when the kids still have buckets of the stuff from Halloween and more coming at Christmas. But! The conversation about how we both wanted peppermint bark lead my son to decide that he needs to invent peppermint and peanut butter as a "thing."

I had an immediate flashback to the above story about the cereal and ketchup which I then related to my son. He was unimpressed and maintains that his idea is going to be "Epic!" "Awesome!" and, even, "Epically awesome!" I remain skeptical.

Which is not to say that I don't think he should try it. After all, I imagine that there were people who were skeptical about the first mixture of peppermint with chocolate or peanut butter with chocolate. Which is his whole rationale behind this madness. If both of those items, peppermint and peanut butter, are good with chocolate, it must be true that they will be good together. My taste buds are already recoiling at the thought. (But we don't have any peppermints in the house, at the moment, so he hasn't been able to try this atrocity. Yet.)

Still, how often do we find that things we don't think will go together actually meld quite well. Like the accidental discovery of a friend in high school that french fries are really good in vanilla ice cream (seriously, he was just playing with his food, and trying to gross everyone out at the table when that discovery was made). That became a thing with us at McDonald's after that. And I had a friend in college who loved thousand island dressing on pepperoni pizza (I couldn't get behind that one, but he loved it). Or, you know, science fiction and fantasy. Who'd a thought, you know, before it was actually done the first time.

So... even though I foresee a disaster approaching of the magnitude of "Don't leave that table until you eat every last bite of that," part of me wants it to be good. Because it's trying things that don't seem to go together that makes life interesting.

[It's Thursday again. Man, these things just keep happening, don't they? The new Tib chapter is posted up there in the Tiberius tab (or you can just click here). This one is called "The Cop." Next week will be the first appearance of the man with no eyes in the chapter that will be called "The Police Car."

Also, I only have a few copies left on hand of The House on the Corner, so, if you want a signed copy in time for Christmas, order now! I'll be ordering more copies soon, but I'm not sure if they will get here in time to be sent out before Christmas.]