Turning Tough Into Tame

hard-work.jpgLast time I started a new job, as a copy editor at a newspaper, after a number of years as a senior editor at magazines, I was faced with a lot of new experiences. New software, new workflows, even new ways of writing headlines.

For instance, whereas the magazines all used story headlines referred to as “label heads,” such as “The Joy of Skiing Cross Country,” newspapers use “sentence heads” or “subject-verb heads,” like “Skiers Find Joy in Cross Country Skiing.”

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Xen Living 4: The Little Voice

shoulderangel.jpgI’m experimenting with something internal, and some interesting stuff is coming out of it.

You know that “little voice” we all have? Or maybe it’s little voices, plural, since the thing is characterized in cartoons as an angel and devil on opposite shoulders, both telling you to do different things.

I may have said this in the past here, but I think of us humans as having “humany” and “beasty” parts. (That second one is correct as spelled; it’s not “beastly.” And yeah, I make up my own words sometimes. Hey, I’m a writer.)

The beasty part is the part that deals with innate drives – sex, hunger, love, anger, allegiance, etc. The humany part is the part that deals with reason and … well, wisdom.

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Xen Living 3: Harnessed Habits

key-to-success.jpgI came across an article a few days ago, entitled “What Would You Do If You Knew You Could Not Fail?”

That set me to thinking about the changing of habits, as it applies specifically to losing weight.

Typically, when you think of something like losing weight, you see it as requiring a very large effort of will, an ongoing tooth-gritting, fist-clenching determination.

You prepare yourself for losing weight. You set a date. You build up to it. You plan strategies. The herculean task looms, and you fear another failure. Then you get into it. You hold yourself back. You deny yourself. You agonize over how badly you want to eat, how badly you want to just give in and rest from this awful, horrible chore.

And yet …

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Letters to the Future: 1

lttf.jpgHello to the year 3008!

I was thinking about my life a few days ago, the things I’ve lived through, and I’m writing to tell you some of what I was thinking.

In my time, we have the musical scores of greats such as Ludwig von Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – I do hope you still remember them – but we don’t have any actual recordings of their own original performances.

On the other hand, musicians such as Elvis Presley, The Beatles and Bob Dylan were all alive in my lifetime, and I can listen to their actual performances any day.

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Letter to a Dying Grandmother

old-hands.jpgIf you’ve been an unbeliever for any length of time at all, you’ve probably heard this one: “If your grandmother was on her deathbed, would you tell her there’s no Heaven?”

It’s a nasty dilemma for an atheist.

On the one hand, you want to be true to your own principles, which probably includes a great deal of honesty. (I don’t think you can become an independent-minded atheist if you aren’t immensely honest. If you find lies easy and are willing to toss out glib, convenient fibs at a moment’s notice, the path simply isn’t there for you.)

But on the other hand, this is your grandmother, dying, and she has this comforting fairy tale foremost in her mind about the eternal life she has to look forward to. How could you dash her hopes in her final moments? Sure, if she was 50 and healthy, it might be worth it. If she was somebody else’s grandmother-to-be, and only 30, or 22, or 15, that might be a good time to intervene with the no-gods, no-heaven message.

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Invasion of the Buddy Snatchers

crab.jpgThere’s a parasite that eats crabs from the inside. (I read about it in a book called Parasite Rex, by Carl Zimmer.)

It enters the crab by penetrating a weak spot, then spreads long rootlike tendrils through the crab’s interior. The crab’s immune system fails completely to recognize it, and it soon takes over the hapless crustacean, body and brain. The crab continues to eat, to feed the thing, but it can no longer molt and grow, regrow severed claws, or mate and produce offspring. In time, the parasite produces eggs, and the crab nurtures and spreads them as if they were its own.

It looks like a crab. It moves like a crab. For all I know, it tastes like a crab. But it isn’t a crab anymore. It’s no more a crab than if a toymaker were to snatch one out of the ocean, core out its shell and throw the guts and brain away, and replace it all with a battery-driven mechanism that simulated crab motions.

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Hello, Clarice.

hopkins.jpgI realized some years back that the reason we have heroes in movies is really that there are so few of them. We truly do want unbending honesty, and heroic defenders, and powerful people who fight for truth and justice.

But they’re next to impossible to get in real life. Instead we get … George W. Bush. Jesse Jackson. Britney Spears. People who can’t even aspire to be flawed heroes, because though they possess flaws in abundance, they don’t have the required heroism. They’re just people — famous ones, but not very good ones.

The other side of the thing holds true, though, too. Some of the bad people we see in movies are there because there are so few of them.

For instance, when’s the last time you heard of a real Mad Scientist? I’m guessing pretty close to never. They make it into the movies because they almost don’t exist in real life, and so filmmakers feel free to use them as convenient boogeymen.

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Davey & Goliath

davey.jpgRemember Davey and Goliath?

Wikipedia says:

Davey and Goliath was the title of a 1960s stop-motion animated television series. The programs, produced by the Lutheran Church in America […], were produced by Art Clokey after the success of his Gumby series. / Each 15-minute episode features the adventures of Davey Hansen and his “talking” dog Goliath […] as they learn the love of God through everyday occurrences.”

I just came across a mildly annoying review of the series at Amazon.com, where Prairie Cajun says “Unfortunately, a series such as this would find it hard to be placed on television these days for the simple fact that our society has become so caught up in not offending anyone. How dare you teach Christian morals and values to children! ”

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Letter to An Administrator

letter-writer.jpgYou may be aware that PZ Myers has come to the attention of the Catholic League (“For Religious and Civil Rights”), for lightheartedly offering to “desecrate” a communion wafer, if someone would send him one.

The shriekers are out in force, apparently, and Dr. Myers has asked for a pushback from the secular community. I encourage every good-hearted person of intelligence to pitch in.

Here’s my effort, a letter to the President of the University of Minnesota: 

President Robert H. Bruininks

202 Morrill Hall

100 Church Street S.E.

University of Minnesota

Minneapolis, MN 55455

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Sauron II: Cheated Dogs

Once more onto the soapbox, dear friends:

sauron-2.jpgI had a friend who had 40 sled dogs. And oh boy, did they ever LOVE pulling those sleds! You could see it in how eager they were to get in harness. They leaped, they wriggled, they screamed to get into harness and start pulling.

I took my own two dogs out for hikes – off leash – in true wilds twice a day, in the woods, along mountain trails, along creeks, and on remote dirt roads.

One summer I started taking one of his sled dogs, my favorite, with us. At first, Walter was afraid of everything on the walks. He shied away from a creek barely a foot wide, and finally crossed it by jumping over it about four feet in the air. He didn’t even know it was water – it was several days before I could get him to drink from the creek. When he finally dipped his muzzle into it, then put a foot into it, he splashed and ran in it like it was the most exciting thing he’d ever seen.

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