Bill's Notes

If IB Bill is a professional writer, why does the writing suck sometimes? Or why do amateurs do a better job blogging?

I'm glad you asked that question. Because some of the amateurs are good and should be paid for writing, and because I don't get paid for this so this really isn't my best. A lot of it is undeveloped, underdeveloped and unfocused. I could spend a few hours honing, but realistically, I don't have the time or energy.

This is Industrial Blog. That implies bricks, gears, grease on the floor, sparks flying around, things clanking and that sort of thing. Sometimes I am assembling from parts gotten elsewhere. This isn't pretentious artist blog. Or Bill's Showcase of Glittering Prose Blog. It's Industrial Blog. With all that implies.

So if an amateur writes better on their blog, more power to 'em. Plus, we pro's are used to editors. And no one would say this blog couldn't use an editor and a proofreader.

FWIW.

ZombyBoy did a meditation on memory, regret and forgiveness. It's a very personal item and he was brave to share it and braver to leave it up. Since it's personal, I don't want to quote much except this: "...in the darkest hours of the night, it’s all still there."

Sometimes in the night I'm reminded of a Robert Silverberg story, Symbiont. The narrator's failure to live up to an agreement forces three people to suffer greatly. The narrator finally acts, too late, concluding [paraphrasing] that the ghosts he's haunted by are his own.

And that's enough for a workin' man.
What I am is what I am.

Ah, nothing like sappy lyrics from the 70s to put it all in perspective.

BTW, I am mentally checked out after an intense week of frenetic editorial activity and my brain is currently just kicking out all sorts of random thoughts, a mad stone forest of undigested thoughts, the tangential shreds of a life that no longer concerns me. Okay, I copied the latter part of the predicate of the last sentence from Tropic of Capricorn. I went to find the quote but I've googled and it's gone. Trust me. It's a good quote. But regardless of its merits it's inappropriate here but none of it concerns me; I'm interested in truth.

And here's the truth. The ultimate truth. The one thing you really need to know.

Oh wait, I tried a different pattern of words on google and found it.

Just as the city itself had become a huge tomb in which men struggled to earn a decent death so my own life came to resemble a tomb which I was constructing out of my own death. I was walking around in a stone forest the centre of which was chaos; sometimes in the dead centre, in the very heart of chaos, I danced or drank myself silly, or I made love, or I befriended someone, or I planned a new life, but it was all chaos, all stone, and all hopeless and bewildering. Until the time when I would encounter a force strong enough to whirl me out of this mad stone forest no life would be possible for me nor could one page be written which would have meaning. Perhaps in reading this, one has still the impression of chaos but this is written from a live centre and what is chaotic is merely peripheral, the tangental shreds, as it were, of a world which no longer concerns me.

By the way, this rough diamond was found amid a steaming pile of crapulent insane repetitive extended analogies and a blooming thicket of prolix sesquipedalian verbiage.

Where was I? Oh yes. Truth. Let's see. What did Virginia Woolf say ... oh stop it. This is not that self-indulgent. I said it was just random shit kicking out of my mind. Woolf wrote in "Monday or Tuesday." I always got the sense that Miss Thingummy just wasn't that hot. I reproduce the entire story here.

LAZY and indifferent, shaking space easily from his wings, knowing his way, the heron passes over the church beneath the sky. White and distant, absorbed in itself, endlessly the sky covers and uncovers, moves and remains. A lake? Blot the shores of it out! A mountain? Oh, perfect—the sun gold on its slopes. Down that falls. Ferns then, or white feathers, for ever and ever——
Desiring truth, awaiting it, laboriously distilling a few words, for ever desiring—(a cry starts to the left, another to the right. Wheels strike divergently. Omnibuses conglomerate in conflict)—for ever desiring—(the clock asseverates with twelve distinct strokes that it is midday; light sheds gold scales; children swarm)—for ever desiring truth. Red is the dome; coins hang on the trees; smoke trails from the chimneys; bark, shout, cry “Iron for sale”—and truth?
Radiating to a point men’s feet and women’s feet, black or gold-encrusted—(This foggy weather—Sugar? No, thank you—The commonwealth of the future)—the firelight darting and making the room red, save for the black figures and their bright eyes, while outside a van discharges, Miss Thingummy drinks tea at her desk, and plate-glass preserves fur coats——
Flaunted, leaf-light, drifting at corners, blown across the wheels, silver-splashed, home or not home, gathered, scattered, squandered in separate scales, swept up, down, torn, sunk, assembled—and truth?
Now to recollect by the fireside on the white square of marble. From ivory depths words rising shed their blackness, blossom and penetrate. Fallen the book; in the flame, in the smoke, in the momentary sparks—or now voyaging, the marble square pendant, minarets beneath and the Indian seas, while space rushes blue and stars glint—truth? content with closeness?
Lazy and indifferent the heron returns; the sky veils her stars; then bares them.

Did you read it? Did you? Did you read it all? Every word. Congratulations. If you read it and understand you will have grokked the quintessence of modernism and need to read no more of it and God bless us everyone. Want a hint, mes amis? Compare the ultimate sentences in the last two paragraphs. Note the parallel construction. Is Woolf saying truth is like the veiled stars, and closeness is like them bared? Do we fail to find truth in seeking truth, and so content ourselves (in this world of marble square pendants and herons flying overhead and mad stone forests) with intimacy, and thereby find truth? Who knew there was an undercurrent of romanticism in modernism and Virginia Woolf. (I still think Miss Thingummy needs a date, but don't look at me.)

So he said: "Once there was a boy
Who woke up with blue hair
To him it was a joy
Until he ran out into warm air -
He thought of how his friends would come to see;
And would they laugh, or had he got some strange disease?"

The people sat waiting
Out on their blankets in the garden
But God said nothing
So someone asked him, "I beg your pardon:
I'm not quite clear about what you just spoke -
Was that a parable, or a very subtle joke?

God shuffled his feet and glanced around at them;
The people cleared their throats and stared right back at him

So the Crash Test Dummies seem to agree with Woolf (who I guess struggled with intimacy too but not speak ill of the dead) and Henry Miller has written about self-intimacy and how wonderful it is to be Henry Miller and not to have to go to work anymore.

So now you know the ultimate truth.

Part of this weekend's plans: Edit two Very Long Chapters of a book on epistemology. Good thing I met the high-powered agent interested in said tome. Otherwise, I'd probably take a pass.

But Bill, what do you know about epistemology? And how do you know you know?

Exactly. The answer is this: It's a layman's book, not a piece of actual philosophy. [Shudders ... philosophy.] Why shudder at philosophy? Excessive abstract thinking, I dunno, rattles around in my Anglican-American brain and just gets kicked out unprocessed. I'm not much better with theology. Or economics.

Wish me luck, that the editing muse may visit me so I get in the zone.

By the time I logged on, I forgot what I wanted to blog. I've been meaning to put it up here for a while, too.

...

...

Not early senility.

...

Jebus I'm absent-minded. Okay, let's retrace our steps. A shrink friend of mine said if you go into a room and can't remember what you are there for, back out of it and try again. Supposed to trigger the brain's memory or some doohicky in the grey matter. All I know is it works. Over to the last Web site I was on ...

Oh yes. There it is. I know what it was.

Stem cells.

Don't understand the issue at all. Not sure I want to know.

Part of the problem is I don't understand the development of a human in those initial couple of days. That's probably why even though I'm ardently pro-life, I may not be as purely pro-life as I'm supposed to be. I'm more of a "fetal heartbeat — definitely no" — kind of pro-lifer. That's six weeks. Or brain activity, which is around there somewhere, too. In the first six weeks of gestation, I believe that we as a community can make a judgment call, state by state, about how to proceed.

A friend of mine believes first mitosis (I'm probably getting that wrong) is the salient moment, that once the unique DNA is prepared and rolled out, you have a human life. But I also hear that gazillions of embryos are spontaneously aborted in the first few days, and I don't think God would do ensoulment only to abort quite so much. But I could have that wrong, too. I don't know when the soul gets in there ... probably when there's brain activity. And for that, there has to be a brain of some kind. Brain and heart — no touch. Before that, let's talk.

Anyway, I hear "stem cells" and I just shut off because it seems to me all this stuff is at the embyonic level which requires a bioethicist.

My pro-life view no doubt will please no one. I dunno.

YMMV.

UPDATE: I totally disagree with this post, now that I wrote it.

I have nothing much to write about this morning. Been a busy, busy week. So in lieu of a post, please accept a blessing and prayer.

May God grant you peace during this day, and give you safe travel, peace and joy over this holiday weekend, so that you may enjoy fellowship with your loved ones and honor God in your hearts. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

May your love grow more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, that you may be able to discern what is best and what may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes from Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God [Philippians 1:9-11].

Best.

I once compared certain rock concerts to the Nuremberg rallies, saying there is an incipient and inchoate fascism inherent** in any crowd gathering where hands are thrust into the air in unison, whether the adrenalin rush is caused by hate speech or power chords. There wasn't much agreement from my usual commenters, probably because I overstated the case. Now I've run into this quote here in which the pope made a relevant pronouncement a few years back:

"rock festivals ... assume[] a cultic character, a form of worship..."

Standing in a crowd thrusting your hands in the air with others? You're at worship. Now the question is this: What are you worshipping, what have you lifted your hands up to? To quote Shakespeare from Timon of Athens, Act V, Scene XIII*:

You may be an ambassador to England or France,
You may like to gamble, you might like to dance,
You may be the heavyweight champion of the world,
You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

You might be a rock 'n' roll addict prancing on the stage,
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage,
You may be a business man or some high degree thief,
They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief

You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk,
You may be the head of some big TV network,
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame,
You may be living in another country under another name

You may be a construction worker working on a home,
You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome,
You might own guns and you might even own tanks,
You might be somebody's landlord, you might even own banks

You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride,
You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side,
You may be workin' in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair,
You may be somebody's mistress, may be somebody's heir

Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk,
Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk,
You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread,
You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed.

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You're gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

* Okay, yes, it's really Bob Dylan. But Shakespeare could've said it.

** Dear God when did I start writing like this? I'm not even sure how to express this is regular language. Forgive my pomposity.

Chris takes issue with my interpretation of ROTS. Fair enough. He's wrong, though.

He writes:

Bill,

Ok, you've got this rather wrong, though understandably so. Anakin's conversion to the dark side was rather more realistic than believable, but that's because people like to think of evil as something big and obvious and foreign; in reality evil is none of those things. People really become evil for trifling reasons, generally in a slide down a slope padded by lots of small bad reasons for it.

Anakin, like many, noticed his choice only really after he made it, and then thought it irrevocable when it actually was revocable. Indeed, this is almost the point of the last third of RotJ; Luke eventually convinces his father that his decision to be Sith is not permanent.

I don't know where you get the idea that Vader enjoyed being evil; he never seemed happy throughout the entirety of the three original episodes. Vader rather seemed resigned and very heavily task-focused; he was always in the process of accomplishing something (in the later movies obviously at the command of the emperor). Vader didn't enjoy evil; no one really does (except psychopaths, which Vader wasn't).

Lucas, perhaps unconsciously, captured the truth that Evil is not nearly as glamorous as the costumes it wears, and is far easier than anyone would like to believe.

(Incidentally, it's really silly to describe all evil as being rooted in a lack of faith, since God's good doesn't come from his faith, and we're made in his image. Moreover, it's perfectly possible for a selfless love of Padme to lead to evil; have you never heard of the sin of worshiping graven images?)

No, I'm afraid you'll find it is you who are mistaken. About. A Great. Many. Things.

Vader enjoys the hell out of being evil. He loves the fear; he loves the authority; he revels in his power.

"I find your lack of faith disturbing."

"Apology accepted."

His threats to general in charge of building the Death Star. He loves it. He can't get enough of it.

The rest falls under the Space Opera criticism. If you're gonna give me eight hours of film, the conversion has to be more than it was. But part of the problem is this: There is nothing inherently interesting about the character of either Anakin or Padme. Padme is a queen. She is a nice person. She wears funky hair. Anakin's a sulky jock who is made entirely of mydol chloride or something. That's about it.

And while you make a plea for the "banality of evil," in Hannah Arendt's phrasing, Lucas didn't manage that, either.

I do agree, however, that Luke did spend a lot of time explaining he could un-Sith.

Still, it's a great world that the flat characters inhabit.

I guess that's the problem ... the characters are flat, not round, as E.M. Forster wrote. A flat character will never surprise you. And in three movies, neither Padme nor Anakin did anything surprising.

Nothing in particular, just ugh!

Okay, so back into the dating pool, my initial thoughts: The reason many women are bitter, angry and lonely is that they have dated, and in many cases married and reproduced with, idiots. Men who do drugs any stronger than marijuana past the age of 22 or so, men who are marginally employed or chronically unemployed, men who lie to you, cheat on you and steal from you — these kinds of guys do not make good relationship partners.

Part of the problem: Women are attracted to self-confidence. Men who are sure of themselves help women feel secure and make them all gooey inside. But guess what? Assholes are every bit as sure of themselves as mature men, and in most cases, more so. It's a big part of what makes them assholes. It's important to be able to tell the difference between the groups.

How do you tell the difference, ladies? The same way men do when sizing up each other: Look for what justifies the confidence. What is the root of real confidence and maturity? Three things.

First, mastery. If a man is confident in something, then he should have attained a commensurate degree of mastery. The gap between the level of confidence and the level of mastery may be called the "achievement gap".

Second, degree of difficulty. Obviously, excessive pride in doing something easy is a little silly.

Third, honor. It's not enough to achieve mastery, after all in these days of Sith lords we all know you can achieve mastery of evil. But it's dishonorable. A man has achieved mastery in something that is honorable.

Similar to these lines is another factor: manners. Even if you're very good at something difficult, if you make others feel small, you lose credit. In almost all cases, there is someone better than you — a lot better than you — at something. Confident people recognize that. There's nothing wrong with real pride in real achievement. But you really aren't suppose to rub other people's face in it. It ignores our common humanity, and the fact that all of us are fellow travelers to the grave, and that time and circumstance happen to us all.

That's the top part of the equation. On the bottom are more mitigating factors: Leeway is granted for the following.

* Age. Is the person old enough to know better or not?

* Sample size. Is this person having a bad day, an awkward moment, and/or doesn't articulate himself well, or have we seen enough behavior of this person to know this is an accurate depiction of the person.

* Ego necessity. Mastery doesn't always precede confidence, in most people confidence precedes mastery ... a little. This is often called "stepping up" and is a good thing, as long as we see growth evidence (not just potential, evidence that the potential is being fulfilled). Growth sometimes requires your ego to get ahead of your achievement. It can be a good thing. But you need to see evidence of growth.

* Situational reasons.This might be called inspiration. But sometimes we need to call on deeper resources within us, be braver than we really are, or fight fear with a false and unjustified confidence in order to survive and get through a difficult situation. It's not blind faith, but it's something close to it, and it's a close cousin to ego necessity.

So our equation is:

Justified confidence = Mastery times degree of difficulty, plus or minus honor, plus or minus manners, divided by the sum of age, sample size, ego necessity divided by growth, and situational reasons.

JC = {[(Ms * DD) +- H] +- Ma} / [A + SS + (EN/GE) + S]

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to come up with individual scales for each variable.

Now, how do women who date assholes go wrong?

My guess is this: First, they fail to look enough for evidence. They fail to account properly for honor. And they mitigate too much. They give credit for ego necessity and situation where none is warranted. You need to see more than potential. Everyone has potential. You need to see actual growth movement to get credit for ego necessity. They explain away situations too much.

Let's give an example. Some men project confidence, both in person and in their voice. They are used to approaching women who are strangers and can get them talking easily. They can do so with a sense of authority and mastery. Is this person an asshole?

You don't know. This is important. You have no idea except the man has mastered the art of approaching women. A woman may think, "ah, now this is a man in charge of his life, who knows what he wants and goes out and gets it. This is a guy for me." Is this a good relationship partner long term?

Maybe, but maybe not. Because think about it. Look for the source of mastery. Is this because the man has mastered the art of talking to people and projects a real confidence in himself? Or is this because he's in his comfort zone when picking up women, a comfort zone that comes from years of experience?

There's more to this than this, but I better stop here. Do I know what I'm talking about?

Interesting article on the death of The Joke.

I must admit I rush through jokes, tell them as if I'm apologizing for telling a joke, and try to get to the punchline quickly. Because joke-telling is a lost art; I'm not good at. But I am good at passing on a joke.

And speaking of one-liners. My friend John said something that nearly made me crash the car. It's impossible to recreate the situation, but here goes a try: Four of us are driving to see ROTS in my new car and I've got Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues on the CD. It's a song we all like, and we're kind of into it, and a guy in the back seat is singing along in a baritone. Anyway, during the guitar break in the middle, which goes on for a little bit, John comes out with the following question, asked earnestly, "This is the part where they actually kick shit, isn't it?"

I nearly crashed the car.

Yes, I thought ROTS was the best of the three prequel movies in Star Wars. Yes, I thought it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the heck of it. And yes, the volcano scene despite the awful movie physics was outstanding.

And don't let anything I write next detract from the fact that I thought it was really, really good.

But ...

But ...

But ...

That's not the way it happened. That is, this three movie series about how Anakin Skywalker turned into Darth Vader is not true, it's not how happened. I don't care if the entire thing happens in George Lucas' world. Sorry. I didn't buy the switch at the critical moment of the film. Lucas blew it and went the wrong way from the beginning. The whole Chosen One was wrong; the whole virgin birth was wrong; the whole slave upbringing was wrong.

How does evil happen? What is evil? Lucas doesn't seem to know. Character is destiny. Evil is the willingness to sacrifice others for your own interests, desires, knowledge and pleasure, a desire and willingness to live for your own glory instead of the glory of God, that is, pride and lack of faith in God's goodness. Pride is the seed of rebellion in every human heart. All sin is rooted in unbelief. The story is old, in some ways the first story ... the story of the fall of man.

Was Anakin proud? Some, but mostly he was a confused kid. His switch seemed too whimsical, a phase. It's believable that a person can do what he did, but it's not the stuff of a trilogy, a space opera. What causes a metanoia — a change of heart?

Good people usually turn bad because of crushing disappointment, and that disappointment turns to lack of faith in the goodness of God. Some people stay there, but others turn vindictive, angry, it turns to wounded pride, a preoccupation with settling the score. Some turn back, but others keep going. They become a relentless focus on self, on wounds to the self and the desire, and further sometimes, to suppress that knowledge, this becomes an obsession to set the entire world right. And some, in this process, get power, and the enormous power makes them mad.
That's not quite the story of Anakin. His love for Padme is too selfless. For him to be evil, she needed to be seen as a thing to him, as something to give him pleasure and as useful to him, even if he uses her on an emotional level. But his love, puppyish as it is, is too real. A being capable of real love doesn't kill a bunch of children to save his wife. And a being capable of real love cannot be held by the forces of darkness to the extent that Darth Vader was. Dominated, ruined, confused, used by evil, yes. But not held.

If you can love anyone selflessly, you cannot be held by the dark side long enough to enjoy evil for its own sake. Anakin is not dark enough, is not self-focused enough, to have become what he became in Darth Vader, which is a being that loved and delighted in power.

Your mileage may vary.