Busted

I've been attending to other matters but out of the corner of my eye I'm minding the table.

A blond girl with a beach bag of a purse approaches the table from the wrong angle to be coming off the table where you assemble a burger. She takes her soda from the table, then throws it in the bag, then a second. Emboldened by her success she grabs another one in each hand and begins moving them to her bag.

"What are you doing?"

The girl is cool as she keeps pocketing more sodas, "Our hotel doesn't have a soda machine, I'm stocking up. You know what I mean..."

"No, I don't."

The girl turns red and keeps taking the sodas "I'm just taking a few." She's probably taken at least 8.

"Stop."

"I'm just getting them for my team!" The girl is shouting now, "I don't know why you care!"

I stare at her for a moment. She takes one last defiant soda and stalks off in the opposite direction. Honestly if I cared about the girl I would have made her give them back, but I honestly was too pissed to care if she learned a lesson or not from all this. I have enough kids of my own that want to be taught for me to take on more that don't even want to change their ways.

Looking back on it though, I probably did that kid a disservice. Success only makes you bolder.

The next few kids try to take two sodas just to prove they can. I roll my eyes and give them a hearty "You're pathetic" look. Kids rarely respond to adult's rage, but anybody who ever survived middle school should know that people drop dead if you can combine disdain with any inner source of their guilt.

"Don't be such pigs."

One kid who already has two sodas in his hand takes them to prove he's not scared of me, but the line goes back to one a person after that.

I guess that's the latest and greatest in the American way. If you get busted, pretend you're right, and if pressed, its the messenger's fault. After all, we're all delicate and unique snowflakes right? Being wrong might hurt somebody's ego.

What I find most impressive was that these kids were also jacking what I personally thought to be some pretty nasty soda. When was the last time you saw high schoolers buy fruit seltzer?

***

Once when I was in Hong Kong I was on the subway with about 20 non-native kids from my university when in walks a little girl and her mother. The child is holding her mother's hand by the thumb. I smile and wave at her. The little girl looks at me for a long moment and then says to her mother in Cantonese, "Look mommy, there's a devil here."

Chinese body language is so subtle compared to ours, but I don't see any visible reaction from the mother. She instead walks to a hand loop and puts her arm in as she guides her daughter to a cherry red pole to hold on to so she can weather the movement of the train.

"Mommy," she continues still in Cantonese, "There are so many devils here."

There's not hatred in this little girl's voice. The sentence wouldn't have sounded a whole lot different if it had read "There are so many chairs here." She continues her ramble, but her speech is becoming progressively more complicated and I have trouble following it.

"Mommy, I have never seen so many devils together here."

I feel bad calling out a little girl, so I sit quiet and turn to smile at her.

"Devil's looking at me!"

By this time we're all looking at each other, and a few of us are chuckling nervously. We had read how in Hong Kong the language barrier meant that racial slurs had just become part of the language. If somebody started calling me names in America I might fear for my physical safety but here there was supposedly no need to fear. We had all read that this wasn't culturally meant as a serious insult, and that it carried no threat of harm, but we all felt a little awkward being cursed out and not knowing what the socially acceptable thing to do about it would be.

"Devil's are laughing!"

I remember looking around the train for any sort of social cue at all but everybody on the train, including the kids from Hong Kong University who were helping us learn our way around, were avoiding our eyes. For a brief few seconds I could hear every clatter of every wheel on the train track. The little girl turned away from us and was quiet.

I remember being very impressed that the mother seemed to share in the shame she thought her daughter should feel rather than ignoring its existence or handing it all back to her kid. What I found more bizarre was that everybody on the train seemed to share the kid's shame, like one bizarre cold shoulder of an apology. Oddly enough, the shared guilt which created this neat little line between "us" and "them" was more alienating than being called names in some sense.

Half in defiance, and half from not knowing what else to do with ourselves, being called out as "ghosts" after that became a sick little game. I would wait until somebody went on a reasonable rant calling me a ghost and a devil, and then turn and respond in my politest Cantonese, "yes."

The response was always the same. The speaker would always look away in shame, and sometimes even apologize in Cantonese a few times. Apparently most white people didn't learn to speak any Cantonese there, so they were not use to being caught. I was amazed though that none of them ever got in my face about it, they just acted embarrassed.

Where did our society lose that skill of admitting we are wrong when we are?

***

"And," the officer leans in close to Py, "Do they let you do this at home?"

Its dark outside and we're standing on a rural bystreet not too far from the university. I'm facing one cop car, and I can tell there is another behind me from my shadow. There's a third one on my left and behind the one I am facing I can see two more. Ginger, Gilby and Py aren't doing a whole ton better.

"My dad...we lit these off when I was little...I thought fireworks were a fine-able offense in this state officer...not an arrest-able one..."

The officer leans over close to Py's face and raises his flashlight, "Oh?"

"Look," I interrupt, "Officer, we're sorry and we have given you everything. Please let us go."

The officers tried hard to rattle us after that and we pretended to be appropriately terrified of jail time or not graduating or whatever they were theatening at that moment (for portions of it, I'll admit, I did not have to pretend). Then they took our fireworks and left. I remember being thunderstruck. All they wanted to see was a little fear in us, scare us into saying sorry and hopefully into not doing it again.

***

"So what happened then?" I asked.

"Not a whole lot," Magpie shrugged, "The kid who ratted got suspended for a year, the kid he ratted on just went on academic probation."

"But I though that was part of his plea...he turns in his cohort and..."

"Guess the campus hearing board didn't feel that way for very long. Ratter didn't apologize in his closing statements, CoLo did."

"And that made..."

"All the difference I guess."

Warrior

"Pikachu (yeah my boss actually calls me Pikachu, even in real life) can have the bed and, Gadget, there is a couch for you in the corner," my boss Crash said. He stood for a moment at the doorway of the 10 by 13 foot single room cabin, short range radio in hand. I could see the top of the semi-auto, which was across his back, over his shoulder. A flash light was secured to the top via a large quantity of unceremously wrapped electrical tape. Odds are he was going to go sit on the roof of his own cabin for a few hours sipping a beer and thinking before climbing back down to ground level, going in his cabin, and calling it a night. After the fight that weekend he had been strangely quiet and contemplative.

I remember riding down to town earlier that day in Crash's truck. Crash drove, Wafflulz rode shotgun, and I was nominated to sit in the middle due to my short stature. Jack-of-all-trades (Joat) and his girlfriend were in another truck behind us.

Joat's girlfriend had come along on this trip to the middle of nowhere, although I am not entirely sure why. The outdoors seemed a little overwhelming to her at the best of times. However, she had reached a full-fledged breaking point after falling from a raft earlier that day and being dragged under the boat by the current.

Wafflulz got out from the car to do something and I was left there sitting with Crash.

"What's she getting so upset about," I asked. The words from my mouth were more snide and condescending than actually seeking an answer, "Falling out of a raft..."

"She thought she was going to die, and she was afraid."

"Well she didn't die, and that was hours ago! What is her problem?"

"That feeling of 'I will not live through this' probably never happened to her before"

I put my feet up on the dashboard of Crash's truck and stared at my knees flippantly. "Pffft"

I'd like to be able to offer a reasonable explanation of why I talk and act like a seven year old when nobody but Crash can hear me but I don't have one. I suspect it is mostly just because I can, and because I know he will not judge me for it. It is a rare luxury.

"Not everybody's like you and me, Pikachu."

I made another moronic and immature condescending noise, "I'm not afraid to die!"

I'd never thought about it before, and it probably wasn't true, but somehow I wanted Crash to believe it.

Crash sighed, "Yes you are."

"No I'm not! I've almost died a ton of times!"

My boss smiled a little, "I use to say that too, Pikachu."

The conversation had been cut short by Wafflulz reentering the car and muttering, "They don't have it." Crash threw the truck in reverse and shortly after we arrived at a weathered brown wooden building with the words "General Store" tacked overhead. Inside they sold pretty nearly everything you would need except clothing or alcohol. The alcohol situation was taken care of next door where a tired bar stood, constructed of the same weathered planks.

We all piled out and wandered into the General Store, including the car following us which contained Joat and his girlfriend.

Some asshole slammed the door of the shop on Joat's girlfriend. Crash asked him pretty nicely (in my opinion) to be kind to her, and said she had a rough day. The kid had turned and, without warning, slugged him.

Fights almost always start over stupid things anyway...because fights are rarely about whatever happened directly before the fight. Fights are normally about at least one person wanting to start a fight.

Crash had gone easy on the 20 something kid. My boss had not tried to hurt him, but the kid had drawn a good amount of Crash's blood via the rings he wore on his hands. Head wounds bleed like nothing you would believe and the blood had obscured Crash's vision, hampering him.

"Hah!" the kid had screamed every time he used a ring to gouge another line in my boss' forehead, "Fuck you old man!"

I remember being enraged not only that this kid was cheap enough to sucker punch Crash, who was more than twice his age, but that he was so cheap that he had done it with a fist full of rings. I wanted the whole thing to stop... or slow down, anything for a second to think. Every time I've been in a fight I've been to busy saving my skin to really be scared, but I was scared now. I wanted to run in and save Crash, but I did not do it. Crash had been a national champion once. To enter the fight and "attempt to help" him would injure his pride in ways I could never hope to repair. Additionally, to be frank, I never believed for a second that Crash could possibly lose. Crash is very much like a father to me and I suppose I had been struck by some bizarre impulse to believe him invincible and immortal.

I remember feeling very torn. The flip side of me thinking of Crash like a father was that I knew he regarded me as almost a daughter. If this unbalanced brat managed to draw a drop of my blood Crash would probably lose it and start snapping the kid's bones or worse instead of trying to just pin him down and make him stop. Then again, if I won, I could make the kid stop hurting Crash so much faster.

I can't ever remember feeling like my brain worked so slowly. All I could do was watch the fight. I never thought Crash could lose, but simply watching somebody I care about being physically beaten was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I had never permitted anybody to do this to my brother. Now I just stood and watched, telling myself that this is what Crash would want me to do, telling myself that this was his fight, telling myself that he had it handled.

I remember looking over at Wafflulz, who was standing next to me on the porch of the general store. I remember being horribly jealous of him for being male and a good foot taller than me. The kid wasn't ripped, but he was built enough to do some damage if he wanted to. Crash didn't regard him as a son. He could have walked up and trounced the kid and not feared putting Crash into such a rage should he suffer a scrape. With his size and a little training he could have beaten the shit out of that kid. At that very moment I would have given anything to be Wafflulz.

I had this terrible lurking feeling that my hesitance to assist Crash was not out of consideration of his pride but a disguise for my own cowardice, and my strong desire at that moment to be Wafflulz did nothing but reinforce that fear. If I was wishing for strength, did that mean I doubted my own? Did it mean I did not fight because I was afraid?

Wafflulz stood there expressionless and watched motionlessly except to put one arm in front of me. The gesture was clear, "Stay here." Was his judgement better than mine? Should I do as he said?

This is one of those situations where indecision is a decision to do nothing. I never really decided that it was ok to leave my friend, but my failure to decide quickly meant the fight was over before I had really concluded anything.

Our faith in Crash's did not disappoint us. Despite what it felt like, in reality it wasn't too long until the kid was sauntering back to his truck. He reminded me of a frightened cat, walking at the briskest pace possible without flat out running. His head was held high, still pretending it was going this way just because he felt like it, not because he happened to want to get the hell away from Crash. He was trying to show that he wasn't scared, that he hadn't lost.

Joat had happened in on the fight half way and not immediately recognized Crash was one of the participants. I could tell he was flustered and as guilt-ridden as I was by this entire experience. His girlfriend had progressed beyond borderline hysterical into a full-fledged meltdown. Crash coolly cleaned the blood from his face and went over to comfort her, but the cuts were still bleeding and looking at him I swear you could watch the black eye forming, causing her to cry harder.

I had tried to convince Crash to tell his story to the police but his interesting childhood had helped him develop a strong distaste for for them, and I could see he was upset. Instead he left his business card and his story with a local sheriff who arrived shortly after.

We drove a small way before Crash realized his shirt was soaked in his own blood. He stopped at another town's general store, gave Wafflulz some money, and told him to buy a shirt. He did not want to arrive back at base camp covered in blood and alarm our other coworkers.

I stared at Crash's reflection in the windshield. I couldn't help but look at the fresh black eye and the cuts. I did not want to look directly at him because I knew it was important to Crash that I act like this was no big deal, and that seeing his blood soaked face and clothes did not upset me. I have never seen him so sad. It does not matter what actually happened, Crash thinks he lost.

"You totally had him!"

I blurted these words out of nowhere as if I was already in mid argument with him.

"It's too bad that coward ran away!" I finished

Crash sighed. His voice sounded distant, "I'm getting old..."

"No! You were just in it for the longer fight! Didn't you tell me how your team always won by endurance rather than brute strength? That is how you were trained!"

Crash's response was pretty half-hearted, "Yeah."

There was a long pause.

"You did the right thing Pikachu," he said at last. "A third person has no place in a fight."

I remember staring at his face in the windshield reflection wondering if he was just saying that to make me feel better.

Crash turned his face to look out the driver's side mirror, and away from me.

***

"Pikachu can have the bed and, Gadget, there is a couch for you in the corner,"

There was a definite advantage's in Crash's simple instructions. In one sentence he had completely eliminated my dilemma of whether the me claiming the better spot to sleep (I had shown up first) was me abusing my privileges as Gadget's boss or just me calling dibs.

It was just the three of us up there in the wilderness that evening. Wafflulz, Joat, his girlfriend, and everybody else had gone home a few hours ago. Gadget and I had a presentation to prepare which we had planned to spend pretty much all of Monday doing anyway, so Crash invited us to do it out in the wilderness instead of in my lab.

I picked up the box with the gun and ammo in it and moved it right up next to the cabin door, which I locked. If Crash wanted to come check on us he would radio over before hiking up here anyway. Walking over to the twin bed in the corner I tossed my sleeping bag on top of it and sprung up to sit on the side of the mattress, legs swinging in the air over the edge, just above the floor.

"Hey," I called to Gadget, "you tired yet?"

"Nah."

"Me either."

It's amazing when you find yourself repeating conversations from second-grade slumber parties in "real life." I guess it is one of my reasons for wondering if most people ever grow up at all.

So, like so many girly slumber parties from eons past, we sat up and talked with one another for hours. We talked about all manner of things which I have no right to repeat here. It isn't that the events were dirty or shameful, far from it, I just have no right to try to tell you the story of somebody else's life.

Discussions ranged from life stories and eventually into just raw philosophy.

"I think," Gadget mused, "That people can be divided up into two groups pretty easily: politicians and warriors."

I was intrigued. I knew exactly which of those things I wanted to be considered. The image of Crash covered in his own blood was still very vivid in my mind. I wanted more than anything to be told I was brave enough and strong enough to protect those important to me no matter the personal or reputation cost. Gadget had not heard of the fight yet, so in this moment of weakness, it very important to me for him to say, without any prompting from me, what I wanted to hear.

Gadget laughed a little at my sudden attentiveness.

"Pika, that's easy, you're a warrior."

I remember laying in bed that night thinking. I remember wishing that Wafflulz had held me back and stopped me from fighting. It would have removed the responsibility of making that choice from me, and the feeling of cowerdance watching a friend bleed from each punch while I forced myself to stand still. Its harder to regret your choices when you can convince yourself you didn't have any.

"You're a warrior," the words echoed in my head.

Dear God, I thought, I hope he is right.

Feminism doesn't delete "womanly" responsibilities

Oh man. How many comments will be made before anybody reads anything other than that headline? How many people will accuse me of being a chauvinist? How many others will never notice their missue of the word? (For the record people look that fucking word up. Yes, the french one, right there. Go look it up)

Screw it you're too lazy and I know it. Here we go (courtesey of the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary):

chauvinist

Main Entry:
chau·vin·ism
Pronunciation:
\ˈshō-və-ˌni-zəm\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
French chauvinisme, from Nicolas Chauvin, character noted for his excessive patriotism and devotion to Napoleon in Théodore and Hippolyte Cogniard's play La Cocarde tricolore (1831)
Date:
1851

1: excessive or blind patriotism — compare jingoism
2: undue partiality or attachment to a group or place to which one belongs or has belonged
3: an attitude of superiority toward members of the opposite sex ; also : behavior expressive of such an attitude
— chau·vin·ist \-və-nist\ noun or adjective
— chau·vin·is·tic \ˌshō-və-ˈnis-tik\ adjective
— chau·vin·is·ti·cal·ly \-ti-k(ə-)lē\ adverb

(Hrm, talk about a word our society has twisted about...)

But let's get back to the point. Feminism was originally, essentially, the idea that women should be free to pursue a life and a career outside the home as equals to their male counterparts. That's a great thing. God knows I wouldn't have been able to set foot in my field without this concept being firmly rooted in our society.

Trust me, the last thing I am asking for is for people to jam women unwillingly back in the kitchen so they can proceed to do nothing but pop out a few more babies and cook a few dinners. There was just one little problem with randomly deciding women could simply drop everything and go out and have a career, or a life, or whatever you want to call it.

Women were already doing something. They were raising kids.

Instead of seeking to redistribute "womanly responsibilities" we just abolished them. Now both Mom AND Dad can become nothing more than a paycheck and a pat on the head every evening. That's equality isn't it? That's the American dream?

So who raises your children? Their school teachers, their summer camp councilors, the endless parade of team sports coaches you systematically have them shipped between as after-school activities so they don't get home before you get off work. No? Maybe it is the television, or that bubble-gum chewing brainless high school girl you hire to babysit them. Maybe you both work enough to afford to hire a nanny or a maid.

There is one problem with this: none of those people have the kind of vested interest in your children that a person raising them probably ought to have. I'm pretty damn sure your television for one doesn't. Additionally, your children are unlikely to spend enough time with any one strong potentially parental figure to develop a significant bond. Hell, you think a soccer coach is likely to be able to tell when a kid is having a bad day? He probably only sees the kid twice a week for an hour and a half, the other days being filled with other activities. Even if he does, to have the time to take to try to make the kid feel better when there are 20 other kids on the field? Even if he can, is it appropriate? Does he know the kid well enough to know how?

Now I understand that sometimes life is hard, money is tight, and both parents must work to make ends meet. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a pair of married grown children who essentially treat their own children like accessories while both simultaneously vying for high-power fast-paced careers simply because they enjoy it or because they enjoy the lavish lifestyle that comes with it. That's not equality! That's both of you being immature assholes. Don't have kids if you can't work out time between the two of you to raise them.

It gets better though!

Now stay at home moms are opting for having their children be raised by coaches and teachers. They don't want their child to be left out of all the social fun their peers are having so they just buy in and ship their kids off too. Then they use their free time to enjoy themselves, free from motherly responsibilities. That's not feminism. That's you being lazy and self-absorbed. Never mind it is probably well outside the family's means to try to spend on their children for all these time-consuming activities at a rate which rivals the dual income families. Your kid obviously would rather rather go to years of summer camp, sports teams, private lessons on instruments they don't even like, and whatever else you fill their lives out with "for enrichment" than go to a good college. And that's pretending you don't spend a dime on yourself in your new-found freedom and spare time. Oh, what's that? You expect a generous scholarship for Junior and are not very worried about saving for college? Let me tell you something: if a college is begging your child to attend by throwing piles of money at his feet it had better be at his dream school. Otherwise it means he probably could have gotten in and attended someplace better or that he liked more if only he could pay for it. You sold Junior short for a daily latte and monthly manicure. Congrats.

The other horrible effect of this is that parents are getting upset that their cheap parental replacements are being bad parents. You shouldn't expect your child's summer camp counselor to teach your little brat to share. It is not your child's school's responsibility to teach your child sex-ed. Your child is not suppose to learn morals form a television set, nor that disputes can be settled non-violently from a video game. Your child is not suppose to learn how to care for himself from a maid. These are lessons you as a parent are suppose to teach your kid. Some things are important enough, and parents fail often enough that other groups have stepped up to the plate to try to do your child some good such as the sex ed talks, (agree with them or not you have to admit the presenters mean well.) That doesn't really let you off the hook though.

I don't care if the man raises the kids, the woman does, or if they both shave a few hours off their work day and they take turns. The grandparents could raise the kids for all I care. All my point is that somebody has to. All I want to say is that just because our society decided that these burdens were "keeping women down" does not mean they suddenly disappeared just because we determined them inconvenient.

English Teachers Detained in South Korea

This place is getting absolutely depressing. Lets try a little change of pace shall we?

Py told me to post a recipe I cooked last night, but I think that would bore you all to tears. Nobody wants to read recipes instead of content. Ok, so its the internet, and someplace there is probably somebody who does, but that's still not a good reason to do it. Maybe when I make a proper blog I'll throw a little section where you can all read in great detail about what culinary forms of trauma I make my friends suffer through, but that's not really something for today.

This might not particularly be on a lighter note to the rest of the blog but I'm positively fascinated with http://underquarantine.tumblr.com/ It tells the story of one of over 50 detainees in South Korea. They are American English teachers, and the story is unfolding right now.

I haven't got any idea if its true or not but it is for some reason incredibly interesting. I'm pretty sure most news stations don't know they are there yet or if anybody has verified that this is true.

Anyway, check it out, and I'll give you guys a real post tomorrow.

Firing Squad Society

"You don't have any complicated ethical issues with working on military projects do you?"

"No," I lied, adjusting the hem of my blue interview dress shirt. Somebody in my position doesn't have the privilege to throw interviews. I figured I would make the best pitch I could and then untangle my ethics privately if somebody handed me an offer letter later.

My interviewer stretched out in his chair. He was in his mid-thirties with a wide face and a nice smile. He had bravely served his country for 9 years of active duty before leaving the army to become an engineer.

"I don't have any issue with it myself, I'm a military man, but I know some people do, so I just wanted to ask."

I nodded. There didn't seem to be much else to say.

"If it makes you feel any better," he continued, "a lot of people here say they sleep better when they realize that we don't actually make the bombs, we just make the auto-targeting and delivery systems for them. The actual explosives are manufactured elsewhere."

There was a pause.

"You see, you're not actually killing anybody at this job."

***

Firing squads are a detail of normally five shooters with guns. They are selected to execute a criminal by shooting this criminal at approximately 20 feet away. To help them hit their target a doctor locates the heart of the person being executed and pinning a target on the shirt just above it. The person being executed is normally tied down to a chair.

It is a tradition that one of the shooters be secretly given a gun with a blank in it instead of a gun with a live round. The shooters are aware that one of the rounds is a blank but nobody knows who has been given the blank.

Obviously the odds are incredibly bad of you having the blank bullet. However, the tradition purportedly exists for the purpose to help the conscious of the people who are charged with the task of the execution.

It is also worth noting that the firing squad as a method of execution in criminal cases has all but been outlawed entirely in America. This is, allegedly, because of the number of cases where being shot by four men with 30-30s aiming at a target pinned over your heart from 20 feet away was proving to be not immediately fatal.

I find that pretty impressive personally. Even if you don't quite hit the heart there are still a number of important organs near the heart which dislike hot lead in them enough to kill a person immediately. Modern firearms are more than sufficiently accurate even in rather amateur hands to hit a target 20 feet away.

I am never one to underestimate the stupidity or incompetence of humanity but I am pretty sure in this particular case it is because people have issues killing a person point-blank like that and flinch when they pull the trigger. If you look at the entire setup it is designed around easing the conscious of the executioners (the blank, the fact that in most cases the criminal's face is obscured). It is also designed to make it difficult for a single person to not shoot and feel like they make a difference. When all of the executioners fire at once the last person is left with an overwhelming feeling that the group is firing anyway and that their single choice to fire or to not fire is insignificant.

Essentially, people are dragged into doing things they do not want to do by two illusions: one is the inevitability of the outcome, and secondly is the concept that they, against all odds, are the ones holding the blank, that their efforts are not what did the killing.

***

Same shirt, different day. God knows I'm too broke to have in my possession much of a repertoire of interview clothing.

"You specialize in embedded systems?" the interviewer asked.

"Robotics in particular."

"That's wonderful, we're in need of an engineer for an embedded system for one of our projects."

"Oh?"

"Yes, we need an auto-pilot system to bring pilots to and from their battlefields in the dark."

"And they can't use radar?"

"They are very tired."

"I see."

We chat idly for a few minutes before I pretend to take a re-emerging interest in the project I'd be assigned to.

"About how many g's of force can this system handle?"

"Hrm," my interviewer said, "I think 15 or 20...not sure."

I was floored. I have never heard of a fighter jet pulling more than 9. If wikipedia is to be believed 16gs for a full minute can be fatal.

I looked at the man who I was speaking to and remembered thinking that this man had to be the most willfully ignorant man alive to possibly believe there was any sort of human cargo aboard this vessel. It seemed horribly obvious to me that they were simply designing auto-pilot software which somebody later would integrate into a missile.

My interviewer looked at me quizzically. "What's wrong?"

***

Vex Victim walked along the booths at the conference admiring various creations lined up along the tables. The TALON table naturally drew a crowd.

Vex was in a sense representing the school and so somewhat on his best behavior. He started up an average conversation at the TALON table which eventually turned to

"So does this...military stuff ever bother you?"

"Well," the engineer said, "When you think about it, we just make the robots. What people choose to do with it is their issue."

Vex was speechless for a long second.

"You built a gun on the front!"

***

I'm not here to tell anybody what is or is not an ethical way to live their lives. There are many noble aspects to military work and I have nothing but respect for the selfless sacrifices made of soldiers. Seems a shame that we live in a world where the only people selfless enough to live for anything more than being wrapped up in themselves are statistically the most likely to die. Guess it explains a lot about our society.

Military work has brought us many achievements in science which were pushed through the government funding which was made available to the military. Our road systems, the Internet, and many other things are thanks to the military. If you want to advertise to me that this is why you are doing it I may not partake but I am wholly unlikely to get in your face about it.

But you can go to hell if you're going to look me in the eye and tell me that's not what you're doing. That's an insult to your intelligence, an insult to my intelligence, an insult to the people you will kill, and a slap in the face to whatever God you believe in that you are intentionally doing something you believe is wrong and justifying it by telling yourself it isn't happening. How can you claim to have any sense of morals at all if you simply throw out all the facts which you personally find inconvienent to your life?

***

"Hung over pancakes" are a proud tradition in my house. We don't let anybody drive drunk so we just lay out sleeping bags and pillows on the floor and by the end we have a slumber party. Then the next morning either Magpie or I, depending on who gets up first, makes pancakes.

I stumble in and sit myself down in Magpie's desk chair which has been rolled into the kitchen to make up for our insufficient seating.

Krill takes one look at my face, laughs, and passes me a plate of pancakes. "Morning sunshine."

Somebody pours me a glass of orange juice and I drink it slowly. I'm not really a morning person.

"You alright?" Magpie asks.

"Just thinking..."

"'Bout what?"

"Firing squads."

I guess its a testament to how early it was in the morning or the tolerance of my friends that everybody just accepted this fact and quietly enjoyed their pancakes for a moment.

"Has anybody here ever fired blanks from a gun?"

"Yeah," Hammertime replies as she passes me the maple syrup.

I take the bottle and begin pouring syrup on my food, "Does it kick differently than a live round?"

"Yeah."

"Really differently? Like you can tell the difference?"

She nodded, "You'd really have to want to believe you were firing the other to confuse the two."

Re: I'm sorry you feel that way

I have been meaning to start this blog for a while now, but I previously was waiting for the time to make a nice proper blog with my internet skills, so I just wrote some posts and stashed them away. Turns out I have yet to have time to make a nice blog, but I do feel like digging out these old posts and seeing what I can make of them. Here's one.

This blog was inspired a lot by the work of Violent Acres. This particular post was written in response to this item of her work. For those of you a little too lazy to click, its a rant about how the words "I am sorry you feel that way" are a cover for people to feel good about themselves while still being assholes.

I'm going to disagree with her. I'm not going to say that phrase doesn't mean exactly what she says it does or that it isn't insulting or degrading.

However, it is still sometimes highly appropriate for the situation at hand.

Mentoring and teaching were my formal sources of employment from ages 16 to 19. The age gap between me and my students was often as small as six months. To compound this I look very young. Tomorrow I will be 22 but even today people still ask me from time to time what high school I am attending.

I never had problems earning and keeping the respect of my students. You may say this shouldn't be something to brag about as all humans naturally deserve respect but reality doesn't work that way. As it was, I worked hard to earn my student's respect (not friendship) and to keep my classes and teams organized and well-functioning. My success in this was a source of great pride.

I had tremendous problems earning the respect of these children's parents. This was not as much so for the parents of the poor high school children. These parents spoke broken English more often than not and frequently worked two jobs. They saw the extra-curricular semi-academic club I mentored as their daughter's opportunity to make something of herself.

No, it was the suburban, white, middle-class-who-lived-like-upper-class, SUV driving, soccer mom banshees who glare at you from behind movie-star sunglasses even while indoors with a cell phone surgically grafted to the palm of one hand who gave me trouble. I taught their precious darlings in an expensive semi-academic summer camp, which many parents of this type more closely equated to babysitting they did not have to feel guilty about constantly leaving their child in. It was academic wasn't it? Surely throwing money into what might be considered their child's future was an adequate replacement for an actual bond with their child, wasn't it? Besides, they had golf games to get to or a nail appointment. Junior could cope.

I took the job because I was poor, in college, and tuition is steep. I only worked there one summer.

I was easily the youngest councilor there. Worse than that, I still equated myself to being somewhat of a child, above my students, but deferring to the power of "actual adults." I called them "Mr." or "Mrs." while still permitting them to use my first name. When they complained I would apologize that I had caused their child unhappiness and ask for their input on how to improve the situation. These self-absorbed child-parents sensed this as a weakness and fell upon it in a manner which strongly reminded me of those wildlife documentaries where a lion chases and brings down the slowest gazelle in the pack.

They complained about some fairly ridiculous things. They called and said they didn't think their child should have to share class materials, couldn't I make one team of five and leave their child with their own kit instead of using the same resources to make two teams of three? They called and claimed that the reason their child wasn't doing well was because their child was bored by my lesson plans and had not signed up to learn what I was teaching. Couldn't the child just use class time and materials to explore their own interests? The winning line was a livid call to my boss, Big Mike, from one particularly proud mother who claimed "Pika doesn't understand the unique challenge and privilege she had teaching somebody as gifted my son."

It was evident their children heard these calls, quite possibly on speaker phone as they were made. The next morning they would talk back or act out for a few hours before the normal order could be reestablished. The other students might not have noticed but I found it stressful and frankly a waste of my time.

My boss had chosen long ago to set up his office in the corner of the room I used as my classroom. He had witnessed all of this, fielding the better part of these confrontations via the phone himself. One day I found myself in a conversation with him about how he handles confrontation with irrational customers. I do not remember how it started but I will probably never forget this line:

"I stopped saying sorry. I found this afforded me a great deal of power in these conversations."

I remember sitting there not totally convinced, and I not-so-subtly hinted as much. I'm incredibly lucky I had such nice bosses early in my career who pseudo-parented me or God knows where I would be.

He persisted, making it slowly quite evident that this was intended to be a lesson for me and that he did not have some bizarre desire to recount tales of his past to me arbitrarily. "When this happens to me, I apologize that the unfortunate situation has arisen, but when I apologize for my actions I am revealing what some people consider to be a weakness." He explained how certain people cling to these perceived weaknesses and how sometimes it was unwise to expose such an opportunity to people who were essentially complete assholes. He said it all much more subtly and much less condescendingly than that. Big Mike was a very gifted communicator. I know that compliment sounds like bullshit and the skill of communication has been ramshacked by talentless dolts who believe it an appropriate major to compliment their participation in college sports but this man was the real deal.

I listened politely to his wisdom and then promptly ignored him.

Another crop of students came and went with another crop of zealous parents.

Big Mike took pity on me and at this point just asked that I forward all storming parents directly to him. Not only did he dislike watching them skewer me but he also was finding it troublesome to derail the momentum of righteous indignation these people had built up by the time they got to him.

At some point during the batch after that I was caught by an unhappy parent in person in the hallway. She was a platinum blond piece of work. I have never been much into fashion but everything about the way she walked reeked of the fact that she had paid too much for her clothing and that she was proud of it. She had the obligatory cell phone and in one hand and she would from time to time pull her overly large oakley sunglasses down the bridge of her nose to glare at me over the top of them. It was during one of these brief moments of condescending eye contact that she paused to draw breath.

"I'm sorry" I interrupted.

The woman's eyes were lit up and I watched a thin line of a smile draw across her face. Creepy barely describes the situation. I felt like a deer in headlights.

"...that you feel that way."

The smile stopped short and suddenly the woman did not seem nearly as tall anymore. As a matter of fact I felt like I could nearly watch her crumple up like a piece of paper. I had just demanded that she respect my authority instead of constantly deferring to hers. The glasses rapidly snapped up to obscure her eyes. She was talking again but instead of seeming intimidating she reminded me more of a small dog that barks too loudly. The reality was that she probably had not changed much at all, but my mind perceived all these differences because, for the first time, I was in control of this conversation.

"Do you want...to speak to my manager?"

"I'll call him later. I'm too busy right now," she announced swinging her purse and flouncing down the hallway as the cell phone snapped back up to her ear.

Big Mike says she never did.

Hype

"So what are you doing next year?"

I do my very best to never have favourites among the students I mentor, but I'm looking at the kid who I could probably reasonably call a backbone of the team. He's bright, he's humble, and he works as hard as anybody. He's also personally a sizable percentage of the manpower on the team despite the fact that he is only one of many students. He's blinking back tears.

"I...didn't get in."

"What?"

In the shop back in January I'm running lengths of wood through a table saw. High schoolers can't run this machinery themselves due to liability reasons so I do the cutting. The student is handing me marked pieces to cut and I'm flicking him the good portions I cut off.

"Is it hard to get into your school?" he asks me quietly.

"Not at all. They really haven't got any standards anymore, they're letting everybody in."

The kid visibly brightens, "Do you think I'll get in?"

"Oh absolutely."

I remember the topic coming up at nearly every practice for the next two weeks. Apparently this kid dreamed of my university and thought of it pretty constantly. I told him it would get it for sure, and even at times encouraged him to apply to another school or two that was more difficult than my own, just so he could push himself and maybe luck out at a place with a better endowment and thus better financial aid. I acted like it was inconceivable that he wouldn't be admitted. I remember giving a few seniors as a group the "These things are all done by humans and you must always do your best, but sometimes after that its just luck what happens" speech but I did not think to impress on the kid that my school was like that too and even though he should get in easily accidents do happen. The honest-to-God reason for this is that it was simply inconceivable in my mind that I had ever been admitted to this place and that he wouldn't be. His GPA blew mine out of the water, his SAT scores were comparable (converted back of course, when I was in high school we had no written third portion), and over the span of three years, according to his story, he had taught himself all of his English after immigrating from a chunk of the ex USSR. He speaks beautifully now. He came from a poor neighborhood in a bad part of the city and went to a rough school. He had a perfectly clean disciplinary record, and I don't see how an admissions director wouldn't just love him in an interview. This kid was the living embodiment in my mind of the American Dream. I'm more proud of him than I can tell you.

Its May again. The kid's looking at the brick walkway we're standing on because he doesn't want to be seen crying. I don't blame him. I pretend to not notice the intermittent sniffles because that's what he wants.

The campus is beautiful this time of year. The whole of it is green and alive, and the flower buds haven't quite dropped from the trees yet but the leaves have grown. The have a light green vibrancy to them not yet baked off by the constant days of sunshine into a darker green. Behind him some college kids play frisbee barefoot. The sky overhead is blue and the air is warm. Its days like today they really ought to put on the postcards and admission brochures.

"This place is pretty nice," he says.

I nod. When a kid wants to change a topic at a time like this you don't press it. There is an uncomfortable silence for a few minutes before an adult who works at his school asks "so where are you going?"

The kid names a school that's basically a community college. No, he hasn't applied there yet. I remind him that the consortium permits him to take as many classes as he wants from my school for no extra charge if he attends that school. Am I being foolish acting like he could transfer over no problem? I still don't see why he couldn't, but I also don't see how he didn't get in in the first place.

"I have been bad," he says. "I haven't always given this my 100 percent. I deserve this."

He says he slacked, but his GPA is good. Maybe they knock it down a few more rungs because of the school he attended? Still, I do not get it. I bring him to one of my professors and ask him to explain the transfer in program.

"And he can still do it in four years right?" I ask after introducing them.

"Yes," my professor says, "If he works hard."

"Can I double major?"

The prof looks at him somewhat incredulously. "That's a lot of work son."

My blood boiled. Of course he could double major. This kid is very talented, and if he had just been admitted with the rest of the spoiled bratty freshman class he could do it no problem. Now he faces two years of condescension as he tries to transfer in here, only to probably be ultimately robbed of his chance to double major.

I remember sitting in a lecture hall of a large university as a junior in high school.

"Are you need blind?" a mother asks.

The presenter looks nervous, "No school is really 100% need blind, we have limited scholarship funds."

I'm poor, but on paper my family doesn't look as poor as this kid's, not by a long shot. This kid would need nearly a full ride, he would have to commute all four years because he couldn't afford dorm space. A white male commuter student at a school which is trying to increase its school spirit and the cohesiveness of the freshmen body, and they probably had a high number of drop-outs of kids in this kid's profile.

I don't even want to write that here. I don't want to believe that could possibly be what held this kid back. Its completely disgusting. This kid is a self-made-man, he knows what he wants to do with his life, and he needs this degree to do it legally speaking. He knows the meaning of hard work, and he's dedicated to his cause. That alone blows 95% of freshmen out of the water.

The adult who works at this kid's school keeps pressing for information. "How many other schools did you apply to?"

Apparently only one. He got rejected from that too.

"How did your interview here go? Did you remember to dress up for it?"

The kid looked surprised, "They have interviews?"

She's frustrated now. "Who helped you with your admission applications?"

The kid seemed uneasy, "nobody helped me, I figured it out..."

"These things have a lot of unwritten rules to them," I said, "we would have helped you. You realize that's why I'm here right? I want to help you guys."

"And now that we know, we're going to do everything we can to help you," the other mentor said.

The kid looked up from the bricks and grinned. Those are the smiles you live for, when a kid finally gets that somebody in the world gives a fuck.

The soda can girl and I were sitting out at dusk for a moment taking a small break. The other kid was inside.

"He didn't seriously get rejected from here did he? I thought you said he would get in for sure."

I wince, embarrassed that his peers caught wind of my completely unwaivering confidence in this kid and how it hadn't quite panned out.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm not sure what happened. He must have mailed his application in late or something."

"You should ask him," she said.

"I don't think that will make his situation better right now."

I'm still so proud of this kid. I hope some day he believes me about that. I still believe he'll do great things someday, he just has a much harder road than most. I haven't got any way to say that to him without shouldering him with further expectations, but I wish I did. I wish I could give him the confidence to try again and to move forward. I wish I'd known nobody was overseeing his applications. I wish a lot of things, but mostly I just want him to know that we're not disappointed in him at all. He's still the same talented kid in my eyes, regardless of what some dumbass admission department says.

Also, I'm totally making college admissions of my students my business next year.

We're All Adults Here

[So...big pause...I'm working on a large-thought post...hope to finish it later this week. Not that it will be especially profound, those posts are just a lot more time consuming.]

My brother, Isaac, has come to visit today.

He's going to community college next year. He keeps asking me what I think of that, and I keep saying "whatever makes you happy man." It kills me a little that he's talking about considering going to community college for English. If you're going to piss away four years of your life on a useless degree at least do it in a pretty location with some good drinking pals...get the full experience. God knows Mom would spring for it.

"He's not ready to go so far afield." Mom says.

Far afield? The school in question is right next to my high school...and not more than an exit from the middle school he attended at the time. He went that far every morning then...why not now?

"Well, I'm going to take Mom's advice," he says.

Ugh.

Its several hours later now, he's standing in my kitchen. Gilby is wandering around making dinner. We have come to a truce in some sense, I think everybody has calmed down since his move-in and found a little common ground. I'm cooking a vat of plain pasta for my brother, who is strolling around the kitchen venting his excitement by fluttering his arms and hands as he walks, grinning to himself.

"You want some sauce for your pasta?" Gilby asks him.

I find myself answering on my brother's behalf before he does, "No, he doesn't like that, he likes it plain."

"Maybe...some pasta sauce from a jar then if he doesn't like mine?"

"No, he eats things plain, he's like Hannalore."

Gilby grins a little, "There are more people like Hannalore?"

"Yup."

We share a few minutes of comfortable silence as the grease bubbles on the stove and my brother paces. I can't help but compare my brother and Gilby. Gilby may be immature and stupid but I still think of him as my peer in some sense, which is probably why I give him such a rough time on all his flaws.

"When's your birthday Gilby?"

Gilby looks up from a pan of hot greese and steak bits to tell me.

"Huh," I said, "Hey Isaac, you're twins with Gilby, what do you think of that?"

Gilby smiled, "Yeah, but not the same year."

"Guess again."

Isaac is pretty excited by this. "What time of day?" he asks. Gilby doesn't know, and this frustrates Isaac. I drain his pasta and begin serving him a portion.

"I can do it myself," Isaac informs me and takes the tongs and plate for himself.

Oh...yes...of course. I stutter mentally. I can't treat him like this, after all, would I ever serve Gilby his pasta? I'd tell him to get his lazy ass up to the stove and do it himself.

I watch Isaac, quietly marveling how much his coordination has improved. He use to be unable to throw and catch a ball. A physical therapist would throw and catch with him for hours. First she would roll a ball to him on the ground which he would capture and return. It was ages before he could catch it in the air himself. He found it infuriating. My parents would bribe him with candy and anything his heart desired to get him to keep trying. I remember running in front of him and catching the ball instead, hoping to get the same amount of praise. It didn't quite work like that.

I've never regarded my brother as disabled. I have, since a very young age, always known he was different, but it had been ages since I had compared him to anybody. I avoid it normally, try to take him as he comes.

I find that he is older than the high school kids I coach, and yet requires more care and supervision. I find that my middle school sister is beginning to overtake him in many ways, and that it is growing far easier to bond to her than to him.

You can't treat him like a normal person. If a normal person talked to me with the same ignorant narrow-minded black-and-white view of the world I wouldn't hang out with them. Depending on my mood I'd probably also tell that person off too. Personal beliefs aside, its pretty difficult to hold conversations with somebody who has, medically speaking, pretty much no sense of subtlety.

Yet, to not take my brother's words and thoughts seriously, to shrug it off as simply as an artifact of a medical condition, is to not take him seriously as a peer who requires my respect as a fellow human being. He can sense when I do this, and it infuriates him. After all, what right do I have to treat somebody only three years younger than myself as a child?

I'm almost positive both of us have expressed at some point in our lives, although never directly to each other, that we wish he simply needed a wheelchair instead. It would be so much easier on so many levels.

I'm telling Gilby and Isaac the story of the bar fight in the pancake house by this point.

"So we're in this pancake place...nice middle aged lady is our waitress...kinda heavset...wears a red checkered apron, big smile, calls you dear, asks you if you want gravy on your gravy..."

"Gravy on your gravy?" Isaac asks. "What about your food?"

"Its..." I pause, "you know the sort of place I mean. The place where everything comes with gravy."

"Ice cream?"

"Well...uh...not everything."

"She's evoking an archetype," Gilby said. He paused for a second. "How do you prounounce that?"

"Ar-keh-type," I responded.

My brother grinned. We were now discussing true and false statements, which is a favourite topic of his, "Yup! That's right!"

I nodded and continued my story, "So, there we are...and one of my friends...this kid is probably the whitest guy I know..."

Gilby grins and nods his head to my brother, not putting down his food, "Whiter than him?"

"I'm actually really pleased with my tan this summer," Isaac chirps excidedly.

Gilby starts cracking up.

"That's not quite what I meant," I said, looking at my food.

Isaac is puzzled, "What then?"

I put a chunk of meat in my mouth to chew to buy myself some time. We can make jokes at our own expense...I mean...we're all adults here...right?

Gilby, for once in his life, seems to be catching on. "Its another archetype."

We finished our meal and cleared the plates. My brother is thrilled. I can tell this meant a lot to him, and that he had a really good time. I walk him downstairs and let him out, then come back upstairs to help Gilby clear.

"Hey, thanks for..."

Gilby cuts me off with a laugh, "No, thank you for not being like your brother."

I feel like a total asshole but I laugh anyway. It definately is a relief when people acknowledge that we're not alike.

"Your brother has white-person syndrome...doesn't he?"

"What?"

"He's Asperger's."

I start cracking up again. It isn't even that funny, I'm just massively relieved.

"He's gone right?" Magpie pokes his head out the door of his room.

"Yeah," I said.

Magpie shakes his head, "You two are so mean."

"Aww come on," Gilby smiles, "We're all adults here..."

Making Captain Planet Proud

I was eating dinner with some of my kids. When I say "my kids" I refer to students who I mentor, not as in legal dependents. Normally the kids I mentor are in either high school or middle school. Its a rare circumstance that I have a single group with both ages in it.

I'm not sure why they are called "my kids." My mentor when I was in high school called us his kids, and my peers now who volunteer their time to other teams do the same. I think its just an idiosyncrasy of the league we all compete in.

Anyway, so I was with my kids. We were at a BBQ with easily 400 people at it which was hosted at my university. They had mostly finished their food and so I brought out the bags of candy I had purchased for them and opened them. One of the girls sat down next to me with her candy

"I don't want to put my soda can in the trash," she said.

"If you're willing to walk a bit I know where you can recycle it."

"They are throwing out a lot of soda cans."

"Yes"

"Do you think if I got another shirt from the car and put it on so nobody knew I was from our team...and maybe was really sneaky...that I could pull all the cans out of the trash and put them in a bag to be recycled?"

"I don't see why you would need to hide the fact that you're doing a good thing."

"I've always wanted to do it but I'm too nervous to do it alone. I'm afraid people will think I'm weird if I do it all alone." She looked contemplative for a moment and then turned to me as her face brightened up. "Will you help me?"

"What?"

I was at this point pretty stuck. I'm not altruistic enough to want to go digging through the trash just to make mother nature smile, but this seemed like it was a pretty big deal to the kid. Acting like her idea was childish seemed somehow emotionally the equivalent of stomping on her face. Besides, how many high schoolers do you know who give a flying fuck about anything that isn't themselves? How could you possibly discourage the one kid who does in front of all of her peers, and in doing so potentially even embarrass her for it?

"Yeah," I said, "sure I'll help you."

Two more kids followed us around and assisted with holding the trash bag and various other things while the first girl and I started pulling cans from the trash. It was absolutely nasty.

The kid seemed absolutely thrilled though, and seeing how happy she was doing this pretty much made up for how nasty it was to go through bins of Styrofoam plates and half-eaten burgers. Thankfully they had only been there about...half an hour tops. I'd also like to take this moment to announce that people who jam their napkins and the rest of their meals into the tops of their sodas are dickwads. I was kinda amazed though how much food was in that trash can. It seemed a crying shame that they had taken that food in the first place and not just left it for somebody else if they did not want to eat it.

We filled the better part of an industrial trash bag with cans. One girl stopped and mentioned she had been considering doing the same thing, and by the time we were wrapping up a reasonable number of high schoolers had showed up from various teams and begun asking if they could help us too. The student who originated the idea was pretty much beaming.

"Hah," one of the mentors laughed, "this your new team fund-raiser plan?" The girl waved the bag proudly about for a moment and the mentor laughed. "We can be team 'can do', one can at a time." I rolled my eyes because I loath puns but not an hour later I found somebody had written the new slogan on the back of our team's robot in black sharpie. The students were thrilled about it. They toted their trash bag of cans around with glee. If I had thought I could have gotten a picture of it without wrecking their moment I would have.

So today I either taught some kids a valuable life lesson about doing the right thing when you think you know what it is, or possibly simply exposed them and myself to a variety of communicable diseases. Perhaps both. Whatever, I'd do it again. The look on the kid's face was pretty worth it.

Broccoli

"But, Anne" my uncle asked looking quizzically at my mother across the dinner table as we ate, "you hate broccoli."

My mother was strangely upset by this. She pointed at me and said with a raised voice, "I've been eating broccoli all her life to set a good example for her, and telling her that I like it, and smiling through the whole thing."

I remember being approximately 10 at the time and thinking that that was a silly way to go about things. If my mom really wanted to teach me a lesson about healthy eating she should have told me that she hated broccoli but ate it anyway because she knew it was good for her. I thought that would have been a lot more relevant a lesson for me, given my mother's cooking. The whole of it wasn't a very big deal to me though.

At this point I remember being woken from my thoughts by a significant shouting match between my mother and my uncle. Looking over across the table I saw my two cousins who were present, my brother Isaac, and my infant sister, all of them younger than me. I was thinking that this was somewhat of a silly thing to get so upset about, and that this probably constituted a far worse example than having a personal distaste for vegetables. I guess it takes a hell of a bratty 10 year old to be mentally condescending to adults, but I've never been a particularly nice or polite person anyway.

The next day we had the bane of my existence: freeze dried peas with carrot cubes, corn, and lima beans. I suppose none of those items would be so terrible of themselves, it was more they had been frozen together in one bag and the soupy water which emerged from the microwave reheating process and coated everything. It always tasted to me just like too many colors of paint mixed together looked: not unlike puke. I was careful not to protest, seeing as my mother had apparently suffered for 10 years with broccoli and was quite bitter about it, I figured my requests would fall on deaf ears.

The day after that was broccoli again but my mother had a bowl of the leftover frozen vegetable mishmash. I remember getting caught glancing at it.

"I don't have to eat broccoli because I don't like it," my mother snapped defensively.

My grin must have given me away as I eyed her bowl eager to file away that logic for the next meal I didn't like. She puffed up like a cat or a bird trying to look bigger than it is and glared at me a little.

"I can do that because I'm an adult."

That is, for the record, one of my least favourite excuses ever.

My mother is still very bitter that my uncle ever let on that she doesn't like broccoli. So bitter in fact that I have, on numerous occasions, forgotten that this incident ever happened only to later be reminded of it when my mother complains about it. I'm probably not going to ever understand that.

I cook with broccoli from time to time now, but it is always in something. Stir fry is the usual candidate for this. My mother always served the broccoli plain and soggy from steaming, not even with butter. This is another thing I'll never understand. Almost all vegetables can be dressed up and made tolerable if you put the effort in and can stand spices. Perhaps the fact that we ate everything plain in my house growing up has something to do with my brother, or perhaps mom never really learned to cook. Maybe its a little of both.

The steamed broccoli on the stove looked odd today at first and I stood there for a moment staring at the chunks, almost not recognizing what they were, before adding a portion to my bowl.

"I don't think I have had broccoli in years," I said, "like I think last time I had it was high school."

Magpie looked up from his bowl, "You don't like it?"

"Nah, its alright. It probably just says something odd about my eating habits."

"Pretty sure I've had dishes where you cooked it."

"Guess I haven't eaten it plain in some time."

Oddly enough the broccoli was probably the highlight of the meal. Its not to say Magpie can't cook: far from it, it is simply that I have been eating almost exclusively sandwiches and things which can be ordered via phone for delivery to my lab for the last week. At some point the grease just gets to you. You miss fresh fruit and vegetables. Sometimes you don't even know you miss them until you have them again. Apparently I missed supposedly boring, flavorless, steamed broccoli enough to go back for seconds on it.

Everybody always says that as you get older you grow more like your parents. This is a concept I'm uncomfortable with on many levels. Somehow, in that sense, I find eating plain broccoli, (which I find a bit boring and slightly unpleasant but quite tolerable) very comforting. Its purely symbolic and has no real bearing on anything. However, its one of those pleasant reminders that we are all individuals with wills of our own to be what we choose to be, and not necessarily victims to the same shortcomings as our parents, or mindless automations crafted by our circumstances.

< ego >

So the manufacturers of a certain robotics company were on campus today repairing a beta unit which is being tested with out student body as a target market.

I walked up...asked a little about the machine...just hoping to see the inside. Turns out the company had sent a legitimate engineer to debug the beta unit instead of some tech. We talked for a while, he showed me some stuff, he started talking about how things worked. He seemed kinda uncomfortable talking to me and preferred to discuss things mostly with Vex Victim who also showed up to see the robot.

The other guy who came with him found me pretty interesting though and we talked for some time. The first guy was pretty upset with the machine and after Vex Victim left he ranted a bit, half at me half at the machine.

"The log files stopped working...the logs...why do the logs take up this much space?"

I waited patiently watching him. He turned to me and grinned, "What, genius girl going to fix my machine for me?"

So I did.

I'm now holding a business card with the email of the company's CTO on it.

Now all I have to do is survive the formal interview.

PS: For anybody who cares what was wrong with the machine...they were running a full windows system on the robot. It was throwing a lot of "send error report" requests and generally locking up. Eventually when it started up again it loaded all the names of the tabs but not the designated content. I confirmed that the contents of the tabs were indeed stored in separate files from the GUI structure. Then it I remembered that the other guy was complaining about the size of the log files. My guess was that the log files had grown so large that windows didn't have any more HD space to swap out data in and so it was unable to load the file which contained the tabs content. Guess I was right!

Party in the ECE building

Its 3:30 AM.

I wonder if the couches in the first floor IEEE lounge are actually this comfortable in reality or if I have only ever sat down in them when thoroughly exhausted.

There is no reason I suppose they should not be this comfortable, they certainly are of excellent quality. The pair are matching black leather and comfortably seat three people each. There are not even food stains, scuff marks, or rips in the fabric. How did we get such nice quality couches in a student lounge? We are so spoiled.

Someday if I am rich I would love to have couches half as comfortable as these.

"Its like a bread product scanner," a voice pipes up.

I turn and laugh as Ginger stares at the lightly unorthodox toaster he found in the lounge and plugged in. It has a pair of heating elements at the top. As the toaster works the slice of bread product designated to be toasted moves slowly past the heating elements into a transparent plastic chamber and out again. At first I want to belittle him for being so easily amused but only realize that I too seem to be transfixed by this simple kitchen appliance.

Ginger and I sit down with our now-toasted bagels and spread apricot honey cream cheese on them. We sit them and eat in pretty much silence.

That is one of the things I sincerely enjoy about Ginger. He doesn't feel like he has to be talking to be enjoying something. I think the fine art of shutting the hell up and simply taking things in has mostly been lost in this day and age. Instead we have to make small talk about everything. I have to wonder how much of moments you miss if you are too busy explaining to everybody that they are happening.

We were joined shortly later by a friend Purple's and my lab partner from another class. We were joined shortly later by Purple herself who had a bagel and then invited us into the Women in Electrical and Computer Engineering lounge (which is open to all, just controlled by that particular club.) This offered us the opportunity for caffeinated tea and candy. The couches are not as comfortable but it has a poster on the door with a picture of Captain Picard holding a mug of tea always makes me smile.

Tea, Early Grey, Hot

After that we back to work for another few hours.

It was 6AM. I needed to stretch my legs again.

Wandering upstairs I chatted briefly with the Vex Victim and my friend Playlist. After that I wandered downstairs. The women's lounge was open in it, and Purple and her friend were still there working.

"Hey," Purple said, "you having issues logging into the CS department network from here?"

"Haven't been trying."

"I can't get in."

I was going to go toast myself another bagel but the lights were off in the IEEE lounge and two other friends of mine were passed out cold on the couches. Instead I told my lab partner I was going home for a quick nap.

I appreciate that I can wander a random building at 6AM in the morning and still find many people to talk to, that we can share food and swap stories. They say misery loves company, but truth be told I'm not really miserable working like this: mostly just tired. The work we are assigned is quite enjoyable, its just a lot of work to do. That's how we wind up here I guess. A sad part of me knows I will miss this sort of thing when I graduate.

Perhaps if I do not find a real job instead of opening a place which delivers cookies and milk I'll make a homework cafe. It would be open from maybe 5PM until 8AM and serve dinner, breakfast, and snacks. It would have lab benches on the side so people could do lab work, and internet so people could shell into whatever machines they needed. As a matter of fact it would be designed to be just like working in a lab, except that you can eat there.

Surprise! You've Got a New Housemate!

"Oh, and Gilby moving in tomorrow," Hannalore added yesterday afternoon as she walked past my room.

"Uh...who is Gilby?"

"He's replacing you on the lease."

"I'm paid up until June..."

"Oh, well he is going to live in our living room during May, then he is going to live in your room."

"Uh...were you going to tell me?"

Hannalore looked at me fairly quizzically, "I just did."

You may think Hannalore is the resounding jackass of the century but the reality is she is not. She has a fascinating cocktail of neurological issues, a few of which overlap with my brother's, but she is not nearly as severe. This helps me understand her a little and sometimes translate her issues to the other housemates.

The bottom line is she lives in a totally different world than the rest of us. There are many things about her we will simply never be able to sympathize with: for example, she can not stand physical contact with other human beings in any form. It bothers her deeply. She is one of the most absurdly picky eaters I have ever met. I can probably count all of the food items she will eat on my fingers. These things are just how she was wired when she was born.

Just like we find her bizarre and alien, she finds us bizarre. Everything she does makes perfect sense to her. If you ask her she can even explain it to you in ways that make sense if you can accept her base premises. In her world we are the irrational and bizarre ones. I suppose if you didn't have a sex drive sex would sound pretty bizarre to you too wouldn't it?

The name I use for her here, Hannalore, comes from the Questionable Content character. Its a humorous (and hopefully not considered mean) reference to the fact that another part of her "abnormal wiring" is the fact that she is clincally OCD.

Our common method of communication is logic. Basically we both assert the premises by which we live our lives and then explain the logic which makes us feel the way we feel about things. In this way we can resolve disagreements.

This has its ups and downs. One of the major benefits of this is as long as I can explain to her just why something she didn't like happened, and why it won't happen again, she's pretty much ok with it no matter what it is. For example, the first time she met Magpie, our other current housemate, he had accidentally woken her up by drunkenly stumbling into her room (thinking it was the bathroom) and accidentally ripping the doorknob off the door. I'm a pretty tolerant person but Magpie is a pretty big guy and looks rather intimidating until you learn he wouldn't hurt a fly. But if I didn't know him and he had wandered into my room very drunk? I would have punched him and then run. Hannalore was pretty ok with this situation under the condition that I promised to show everybody where the bathroom was previous to bringing out the alcohol at parties.

The downside of her being like this is from time to time she does things which upset me greatly without having the faintest idea of why I am upset.

When she had found Gilby off some department mailing list and announced he would be replacing me when I left...I thought little of it. After all, I would never live with him right? If my current housemates wanted to live with some total stranger from the internet, they were adults, that was their choice, and I wasn't going to question it. Now, however, Gilby was my problem too. A quick call to Magpie (who was on a camping trip/picking up more crap to put in his room trip I had to skip due to finals) confirmed that he was also not expecting Gilby.

"He can't live here," I said, coming back out of my room and finding Hannalore.

"Why not?"

"He hasn't signed papers. The landlords wil be angry."

"Can he put his things here?"

"No"

"Why?"

"Where would he put them?"

Hannalore paused a moment. "I hadn't thought of that."

Bright and early the next morning the doorbell rang and I rolled over and rolled my eyes. Of course. I had explained my issue to Hannalore as "the landlords won't like it" and "we don't have space." She had, like always, taken me completely literally and probably resolved both those issues herself. She was not going to be able to read the meaning behind my words of "I don't want him here."

Wandering down the stairs I pulled the door open and found a tall dark-haired young man holding a printer in a box.

"So, you're moving in now?"
"Yeah."

"Uh..." I stammered, feeling like all of this was getting a bit out of hand and also struggling to remember what the kid's name was, "How is that going to work?"

Hannalore was standing over my shoulder, "I took care of everything. He's going to store his belongings in my room, I cleared a space. He's also going to live in my room during May as soon as finals are done. I'll be leaving as soon as finals are done so I won't need the space. When June comes and you leave he can move into your room.

"...and...you're going to pay?" I asked. Both of them nodded.

A part of me just wanted to scream and stamp "No," but I am quite short on cash right now due to being both a college student and employment impaired. Additionally, if I upset him too badly I would be screwing my current housemates out of a lot of money next year while they paid for my empty room. Besides, he didn't seem too overly creepy.

We cleared him a space in a storage area and he put his printer in it. We also gave him some keys.

"Do you guys drink?" he asked.

"Yeah, sometimes."

"Do you have a bucket?"

"What?"

"In my dorm, we had a bucket. His name was Mr. Bucket."

There didn't seem to be anything good to say in response to that.

Gilby wandered our house for a little while after that, belittled the sanitation of our kitchen, and left. We saw him again at about 6PM. He said he would be back at about 7 with a friend or two who was helping him move in. At about 8:15 he and the better chunk of a freshman floor arrived and situated themselves in my living room. They commented on how small my home was, and how ideal the back porch was for smoking weed. They then left with the living room mostly unnavigatible due to his stuff.

Gilby returned shortly later and sat himself down on the couch. I asked him to please put his stuff in the storage space he gave him so we could walk around the living room. He made fun of how I keep my room. I gave him wifi access. He complained about the bathroom being dirty. He then started eying the alcohol in the refrigerator.

"Can I have some?"

Normally I answer "yes" automatically but he seemed a little too excited about it and his perpetual whining was beginning to eat at me. "Um, if you pay me back for it."

Gilby wandered the house for a moment and retrieved a shotglass with the school insignia on it. "How much of it can I have of the Smirnoff for five dollars?"

"Um...well...a whole bottle is about 20...so you can have a quarter of it."

"Great" he said, emptying the five dollars from his wallet in my hands. He then removed the vodka from the fridge and sat down at the kitchen table to pour himself a shot. I watched silently.

"Man, this stuff is QUALITY, you can see how much better is is than Gilby's just in the glass."

I remained quiet, trying to be expressionless.

"Gilby's," he announced, "Is like State vodka, but its cheaper. You don't want to try it I think."

I nodded and then returned to my room to study for finals. At least he had a nickname now. About 10 minutes later he wandered into my room still holding the bottle of Smirnoff. "Have I had my quarter?" he asked.

"Uh," I said trying to be perfectly fair, "you probably have one shot left."

"Awesome!" he grinned.

Nothing Says "Merry Christmas" like a Dead Fish in a Jar

When I lived in Hong Kong our work there related to removing as many workers as possible from a designated market. Seeing as there isn't exactly a worker's shortage in China we had to find a place to move all these people into ourselves.

We heard tell of a group of fishermen who had turned their former livelihoods into a tourist concept. Because of tax laws in Hong Kong and the fact that their tour location was out on the ocean they hardly had to pay taxes. It seemed pretty ideal, and as foreigners we were pretty well situated to evaluate whether this would likely become successful or a larger market which we could put our market sector into.

A large flat floating dock formed a "town square" and fishing boats were parked continuously along the perimeter.

What fascinated me most about this place was the gift shop, and what fascinated me most about the gift shop was a rack of small bird-like objects with a slick plastic coating on the outside which hung from fishing line and a key chain loop. They had small googly eyes and a straw hat glued on to them. The small beaks on them made them look nothing short of alien but obviously somebody had found them endearing to dress them and market them like this.

Picking one up I shook it. It made a bizarre rattling noise but seemed to have a significant amount of internal structure to it. Why would somebody put so much internal structure into a cheap little keychain? It could have been solid with a single plastic mold around the outside and it would have held up just fine.

"What is this?" I asked. The translator who we had access to (since this was during work hours) turned to one of the shop owners.

"They are keychains," the translator reported, "They are made from sun-dried baby puffer fish."

I thought about Americans and what those who feel a need to compulsively buy things out of gift shops expect out of gift shops. These were not shot glasses with "I love ex-fishermen" on them nor T-shirts not coffee mugs printed with the same.

They also could not pass as some traditional art form which makes white tourists feel culturally aware and superior by the fact that it hangs prominently on their living room wall at home where passers by might politely ask about it.

Visitor who has come over for dinner: oh, what is that?
Smug host: that's a hand-made Incan blanket from our trip through South America. Its made out of real Alpaca wool and dyed with natural pigments just like the native persons there have done for thousands of years.

Alternative scenario
Smug host: that's a key chain from Hong Kong. Its made of a dead baby fish and coated in plastic, just like former fishermen of Hong Kong have been doing since the invention of the plastic googly-eyes to glue on the front.

I just didn't see it going over quite as well.

It was then that I realized I simply had to have one. What would be more hilarious than to show it off with the same air of arrogance only to watch the people who cared about petty things like that recoil in horror? And it would only cost me about a dollar fifty American? Sounds like a deal to me!

So I bought it and I brought it back to my apartment and placed it in an empty nutella glass. I put the jar with the dead fish in it on the table and stared at it for a bit. The initial amusement of it had worn off and so I left it there and turned my attention to my computer. There I spotted an IM window open previously with PJ.

Every year there are people who you care about but who you don't know what to give them for Christmas. You want to give them something, but you can't think of anything they need or want within a socially acceptable price range. PJ was one of those people that year for me. My solution to this is every year I choose one of these people and give them a small cardboard box filled with small cheap items which they find amusing, and whose sum total equates about to one present. Christmas had already passed but I was scheduled to see PJ in March so I had told him I was bringing his present then. PJ's box had been previously filled with strips of LEDs, a few small parts I had scavenged which were perfect for making robots with, and other misc junk which I knew he would love.

Then I turned to the fish. Even better than me acting proud of this as my own possession, how much more infinitely hilarious would it be if I passed this off as a valuable gift?

I'm not the most rational and logical person I'll admit, but PJ seems to have an abnormally low general opinion of my common sense. Unfounded or founded, it is an awful lot of fun to mess with him using that fact. Opening the IM window again I decided this was a great time for continuing this tradition.

Pika: I got you a souvenir
Pika: hopefully they won't find it in customs, I think they would be upset with me
PJ: What have you done now?

I choose to leave the situation there for the time being and not discuss it further.

In March I brought PJ his Christmas present. He eyed the box carefully, obviously remembering the customs comment.

"Come on," I coaxed, "open it."

He opened it and found the Nutella jar directly on top of his other presents. "Huh," he asked intrigued, shaking the jar slightly, "What is this?"

"Its a dead fish in a jar!"

PJ nearly dropped the jar but instead placed it to one side.

"Come on!" I said, "Nothing says 'Merry Christmas' like a dead fish in a jar!"

"You know," PJ laughed, "I guess its true."