Semi-Random Stuff

I've been quiet here 'cause I've been hard at work. Got that libretto off to the opera people, for example. Yay! Mind you, it seems (rather unsurprisingly) that the opera itself may be a teeny-weeny bit delayed, what with half of Queensland and specifically, large chunks of Brisbane going inconveniently under water and requiring all kinds of money and resources for patching up. Seems the Queensland government doesn't necessarily see opera as its first priority at the moment. Philistines!

Back in the harness at the ju-jitsu classes as well. There are quite a number of new youngsters along, and a few extras in the somewhat-more-senior class too. It's nice to see, and all grumbling aside, it's nice to feel like I'm able to provide something valuable to the parents and kids around here. I'm desperately trying to get all my paperwork in order now. Oh, for the good old days when you just hit students with a stick every now and again, and gave them a scroll once they'd learned enough to take the stick away from you and beat you senseless with it.

The weather continues most peculiar-wise. On the first day of Autumn, it was -- distinctly autumnal. Like somebody threw a switch. It went from being relatively warm and pleasant to being distinctly chilly. And today, I swear, we had an honest-to-god south-westerly wind. Cold, dry, and hinting rather boldly at wintriness to come. Natalie will be pissed off. She hates the cold.

The new regime is working out. Monday evenings: sword. Tuesday evenings: films with Cool Shite. Wednesday evenings: I teach ju-jitsu. Thursday evenings: the kids go to gymnastics after school, in Launceston - but I'm sharing the drive duties with Viking Neighbour Anna, who also has a couple of spawn in the affray. Friday evenings, the two boys go into Launceston to play in a community orchestra - but that's Nat's problem, 'cause she plays in the same group. Every second Saturday, the Younger Son goes into Launceston to have a bass lesson, and the Mau-mau had her first dance classes last Saturday, which may wind up being an ongoing thing.

Thursdays are the joker in the deck, I think. I'm up by 0730 handling breakfasts, kids out the door stuff. But I can't put them on the bus, 'cause the Mau-mau has her piano lesson on Thursday, at 0900. So I have to drive down with her electronic keyboard (it's weighted. The school doesn't have a weighted keyboard. So the one we have at home has to travel) in the car, and set it up in whichever area has been allotted this week for the lesson.

A couple hours later, I have to bring Jake's cello to school so he can have HIS music lesson. But before that, I pick up Jake and Younger Son, and we go off to study Swedish for a while. (Yep. It was Spanish. But there's nobody much around to have a Spanish conversation with... whereas Viking Neighbour Anna and her savage brood of junior coast-raiders are fluent in the Swedish lingo. Which is a heap of fun.)

After the language lesson, obviously, I need to come back to the school at some later point to collect the cello and the keyboardy thing, and every second week to collect a gaggle of kids and take 'em into Launceston for gymnastics.

Parenting is kind of tiring.

Meanwhile, the paperwork for my Masters degree has pretty much all been done. I think. I keep getting notes and forms, and dutifully filling them in and sending them away. I know what I'm supposed to do. I know how long I've got in which to do it. Next I have to have some kind of a meeting with my Prof... but he's a very decent chap (I know him from U of Q. He directed a student comedy review in which I took part, among other things. Odd to find him no longer a drama student but a full prof of lit, with a family and kids and so forth. On the other hand, he probably finds me just as damned unlikely.)

And in other news: huugge congratulations to Shaun Tan for taking the short-animation Oscar! His film "The Lost Thing" is a wonderful little work of gentle, ambiguous sadness. It's based on his book of the same name, and you could do a lot worse for yourself than picking up a copy on DVD. Shaun is one of Australian speculative fiction's real gems. I've only met him peripherally, here and there, but the way he treated the kids in his group at the WorldCon last year suggests to me that the rumours about him being a really nice, really decent human being are entirely true. He's already picked up a swag of awards for 'The Lost Thing' and earlier works such as 'The Arrival' (which is a hell of a thing; a very thought-provoking book in the form of a hardbound comic, without a single word of text... really amazing work) and of course, 'The Rabbits', which he did with John Marsden -- so while an Oscar was probably unexpected (sure caught Pixar by surprise, I hear!) in my opinion, it's well-deserved.

I managed to get some reading in, here and there. I'm still compulsive on that count. Input, input, input. Not as many novels as I'd like, but that's only to be expected this far from a bookstore.

One that did intrigue and perplex me, however, was Isabel Allende's 'Zorro'.

I've always liked the Zorro character. I enjoyed the breezy fun of the first of the recent flicks, with Catherine Z-J and Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas. I appreciate the qualities of the older versions - the famous Tyrone Power film, and so forth. I've even read some of the way-back-when novels that made the character famous.

Zorro was devised as a pulp character, during the first boom of the pulp era in 1919. Those early pulps didn't aspire to greatness. They aimed to be cheap, and fun to read. With time, some very skilled and powerful writers rose out of the pulp tradition, keeping the strengths of the pulp stories and adding truly literary qualities to create works that persist in the public mind today. I'm thinking of Raymond Chandler, naturally enough, but there were plenty of others. And indeed, even though the writing in those old novels was often slipshod (actually... damned crappy in many cases) nevertheless, there was something about the larger-than-life characters they created which caught people's attention. Who hasn't heard of The Shadow, or Doc Savage, to name just two?

Zorro wasn't high literature, though. And that's why I thought it might be interesting to see Isabel Allende's take.

I will admit here that prior to this, I've never actually managed to finish one of her books. Allende has fine, measured prose, and an eye for creating characters with texture... but in the three or four of her better-known novels I had previously attempted, I'd never actually noticed much by way of plot, action, or suspense. To be more clear: as a storyteller, Isabel Allende couldn't keep me interested in a moderate-length novel. Elegantly depicted settings with lovely characters circling aimlessly about one another for a couple-hundred pages simply aren't enough for me.

Call me a philistine. (But if you do, take care. If we start pissing in each others pockets about how much classic reading we've done, you're going to need a very, very deep pocket.) Or simply acknowledge that Allende has her strengths - but active storytelling isn't one.

And indeed, I'm afraid her version of Zorro was rather bland and bloodless. Oh, the ideas are all there. Her Zorro is half-Amerindian, raised with all kinds of cunning Native American knowledge and skill. She offers up a villain, a romantic interest, a secret society of swashbuckling do-gooders... but she does it all from a lukewarm, dispassionate distance. All her action sequences are narrated from afar, without any feeling of real peril or suspense. All her seductions are depicted rather clinically off-screen, with an almost old-maidish sense of distaste.

I finished the book. I promised myself I'd do that. But I'm afraid that as a Zorro novel, it was just another Isabel Allende watercolour.

I guess she's playing to her strengths. I guess it's too much to ask for vigour and pace from someone whose writing style doesn't lean in that direction. And it's clear she's trying something different with a classic character anyhow. Credit where it's due: this isn't some hamfisted attempt to shove a polemic into a piece of genre fiction after the manner of Richard Flanagan's 'Accidental Terrorist' (which was an appalling insult to the intelligence of people who enjoy crime fiction and thrillers). This is Isabel Allende creating an 'origin story' for a historic character; an effort to give depth and texture and psychological rationale to a creation mostly known for his accessories: cape, mask, whip, and sword.

On the other hand, if I really wanted I could kickstart something of an argument on this book. Allende says in the afterword that she grew up with Zorro stories, and loves the character. That doesn't show, I'm afraid. Her version of 'love' appears to be a classic emasculation of everything best-known and most widely remembered about the character.

How so? Well, the story is told by a female narrator who repeatedly demonstrates her greater intelligence and insight than the central character. Diego de la Vega gets a raft of new characteristics... few of which are particularly admirable or desirable. His bandito mask, for example, arises from vanity: his ears stick out without it. He retains his strong sense of justice, but invariably his 'adventures' arise from wounded pride, or thwarted romance: he is portrayed as fundamentally, permanently immature, a 'man-child' forever at play, incapable of real adulthood. He is incapable of forming effective romantic relationships at an adult level; always drawn to women who don't want him, doing little more than dallying with women who do -- and completely incapable of facing up to women who might be a real match for him. Oh - and the narration simply walks away from him when he reaches full adulthood, and finishes by summarising his career as a hero in the briefest and most disparaging terms.

From a swashbuckling folk hero to a petty, vain, self-deceiving womaniser who does good, yes, but frequently causes as much harm in the process, and creates as much trouble as ever he manages to quell. Quite a reconstruction, coming from someone who 'loves the character'.

Is this interpretation in keeping with the original character? Yes, most likely. I think it's quite reasonable to place this slant on Zorro. If you want to. Or if you really feel the need. But is it necessary or enjoyable? Does it actually enrich the legacy of a widely-loved character?

Personally, I don't think so. And if there were a 'masculinist' movement as widespread and effective as its distaff alternative, I might waste a bit of time carping and complaining and playing the victim. But really, who gives a damn? If Allende wants to reinterpret this character from a deeply matronising (yeah, I have to use the term. Because it describes perfectly the approach she's taken. Think 'patronising', but apply it to the dismissive fashion in which women like to belittle "boy stuff") viewpoint, that's her gig. She's got plenty of readers, and she showcases her usual strengths in her prose, so hopefully it will be well received by her usual demographic.

Still. If a male writer, just for argument's sake, were to take a beloved female character from literature and reinterpret her in a similar fashion... eh. Can't have that argument anyway. Where the hell would he get such a book published? I doubt even an Ernest Hemingway or a Norman Mailer could get away with it these days.

Right. That's enough for the moment. Gotta go pack some lunches for tomorrow. I've just used some leftover puff pastry and some fresh-grated parmesan cheese to make simple cheese twists. They'll make good snacks for the munchkins - and right now, the whole house smells pleasantly of toasted cheese. Yum!

Yes!

One of the problems with being part of the 'good guys' is that unlike the screaming rightwing whinge-and-whine crowd, we tend to keep our peace unless seriously pushed. Don't believe me? Okay: where's the liberal-minded equivalent of Glenn Beck, Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine, and Rush Limbaugh?

Seriously: loony rightwingers are huge frickin' whiners. They like nothing more than a soapbox where they can jump up and down, scream and rant and cry out about their victim status. As a result of this, they often look bigger than they really are. (Like toadfish. Or bullies in general.)

Case in point -- this article:

In a tolerant society, racists hear this: your race is run

This is a response to a survey carried out by the University of Western Sydney, by the way. (Who knew Western Sydney even had a university? Is there a Bachelor of Bogan available? Sorry... cheap shot. But fun. And relevant, because of the image of Western Sydney as a low-income, reactionary sort of demographic, which makes the information from this survey all the more interesting.)

The upshot of this article is that far from racism being horribly rampant in Australia, only about one in ten of the population holds what we'd call racist views. Further: the only country the surveyors could name that showed MORE overall tolerance than Australia was Canada, and that, apparently, by not very much at all.

That. Is. So. Fucking. Cool.

What it means for you and me is this: speak the hell up. Don't be afraid. Don't be put off by the vitriol of the Abbotts, the Morrisons, the Bolts and their ilk. Speak out. There are more of us than them by a long, long margin. We are the majority. They are the minority. Speak up and let them know.

Don't ignore it when you hear it. Don't turn away and say nothing. You may fear that publically confronting a racist asshole could get you into trouble. Well - it may, yeah. But the odds are that most of the crowd will be on your side, and if you speak up loud and clear, you may well find that other people are encouraged to speak up alongside you.

I'd guess it's probably not just racism, either. I suspect (given the size and popularity of Mardi Gras in Sydney, for example) that we're not so terrified of homosexuality as they'd like us to be either. And who knows? There may actually be a lot more of us who think like sane creatures on a whole range of issues!

The Egyptians did it. The Tunisians did it. The Libyans are trying like hell to do it. And in Wisconsin, even some of the Yankees are giving it a go.

Speak up. Be heard. There's enough of us to drown out the tirade of hate and fear, and maybe together, achieve something positive for the people of this country, whatever colour or creed they happen to be.

Bullying

Yeah, I figured it had to happen sooner or later. Young Jake is -- well, he's not an average kid. And eventually, that was gonna cause problems.

Those of you who have met him will be aware that he's not at all a villain. He's curious, and intelligent, and gregarious, and his worst fault is not unexpected: he believes instinctively that everybody else his age shares his interests, and that the offbeat stuff he knows must be just as cool to every other person out there.

So yeah, sometimes you have to shut him up quite directly.

But he isn't malicious, or destructive, or vicious. Unfortunately, he is imaginative and outgoing... and eventually (I always assumed) that was going to be an issue.

I don't actually blame the school. I figure this is simple primate behaviour. Jake is ten, going on eleven. His classmates are similar, and even a year older - being as how he's in a shared 5/6. At that age, boys are just beginning to move out of simple childhood, into the complicated area of adolescence. And the hairless ape begins to make himself known.

Evolution... I have no idea why anybody bothers to argue against it. You only have to watch a troop of monkeys or baboons, and then sit through a session of Parliament to know without the slightest doubt that pretty much all of humankind is only a hair's breadth from picking fleas off each other, and enjoying a quiet banana on the sly.

So, you know. Boys. Beginning to feel the first stirrings of adulthood. And what do they do? They set about playing dominance games.

The same things occur when they're younger, of course. There are all kinds of competitions and struggles. But it somehow gets more important at this age. And it gets more overt, and unpleasant.

Naturally, there's nothing I can actually do for young Jake except listen, and talk to him, and maybe share my own experiences. (Yeah. Of course it happened. What would you expect? I grew up with a Yankee accent and an IQ a couple standard deviations above the norm in rural, bassackward Far North Queensland. I know about this shit first-hand, naturally.)

The school will do its best, of course. And who knows? Maybe things will fall out well. Maybe the idiots in question will find some other kid to pick on, and forget about young Jake.

But probably not. And sooner or later, all this primate bullshit will have to run its course. Jake will just have to learn how to play out the stupid ape games in a way that leaves him free to do what he likes.

My heart goes out to the little guy.

WTF?

Huh. I can't actually remove a post? Weird.

Unwell

Elder Son brought a filthy cough with him from music camp. It's doing a number on me.

Lungs rattling, can't actually cough effectively -- something went wrong in my throat a few years back after a massive bout of laryngitis, and the whole 'deep cough' thing just doesn't happen -- I wind up in spasmodic fits that just shake me down. My head hurts, and I'm exhausted. Wondering how much of your lung capacity has to be fucked before they call it pneumonia.

Bad timing.

An Apology, Of Sorts

D'you remember when Asperger's Syndrome didn't exist? Wikipedia calls it: "... an autism spectrum disorder that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. It differs from other autism spectrum disorders by its relative preservation oflinguistic and cognitive development."

And I suppose that's fair enough. Except that up until 1994, when it was standardised as an actual-factual diagnosis, persons suffering from Asperger's were more commonly called "clueless munters", or something similar.

Blind folk, deaf folk, amputees, victims of cerebral palsy -- these are disabilities you can see in action. It makes sense. We can imagine being blind, or deaf, or missing an arm or a leg, or being stuck in a wheelchair. And people with these disabilities have the good manners to be obviously different.

On the other hand, the most notable effect of mild Asperger's would appear to be an inability to read nonverbal cues, a lack of empathy, maybe a little clumsiness. There's no prosthesis. There's no guide dog. No wheelchair. The person with Asperger's is just... difficult and irritating to be around.

There was a bloke back at university. He wasn't stupid. He did well enough in computer science to go on as a programmer for Defense, and I understand he may have been involved in a couple of fairly exciting development projects. So: not actively stupid, no.

But oh. He was so difficult to be around.

He wanted to be liked. That was obvious. Painfully obvious. He would go to ridiculous lengths to repay a favour. He'd bound out of bed at two in the morning to pick up some drunken fool from the outer suburbs, merely because they'd rung (while the rest of us in the house would say things like "Tough shit, ya drunken sot.") He'd be first in line to pay for shared food or drinks. He'd offer you just about anything in his power.

I'm sure you've met people like that. The harder they try, the more obvious it becomes, and the more painful it is.

He really didn't understand personal-relationship stuff, either. Couldn't tell when he should get the hell out and leave a room to the two people who were just about stripping each other with their eyes. Couldn't figure out that five or six polite refusals to different events meant the girl wasn't actually interested. Didn't know when he was too early, couldn't figure out when he stayed too late.

Once I saw him slap a mutual friend. It was like a scene from a movie, and in retrospect, I think that was the mental model he was drawing from.

The bloke he slapped is a long-term, unshakeable friend of mine: Mick. Mick is quick-witted as hell, but deeply non-confrontational, and he's learned humour as a form of defense. At one point, the cry of "Hey! Your mother!" was a standard tagline and greeting from Mick. He'd heard a bunch of Yankee 'your mother' jokes, and in his way, he'd simply boiled them down to their absolute minimum. He'd point, and in a gruff voice, he'd say "Hey! Your mother!" and instantly you'd know he was referencing all those stupid jokes - but more importantly, he was referencing and lampooning the kind of macho, braindead oik who might make a joke like that. He was, in fact, making himself the butt of the joke while sharing it -- and since he has genuine comic timing, it worked.

At least, it usually worked. Except this one day, sitting down to a late breakfast in a Uni cafeteria. In walks Mister Clueless, and sits down opposite Mick. Conversation starts. Mick cuts to his tagline -- and out of the blue, Mister Clueless reaches out and slaps him on the cheek, like some eighteenth century period piece gentleman putting a cad in his place. And he says: "Don't you say anything about my mother!"

Mick was confused as hell, and surprised, but being Mick, he just shrugged and said something like right, yeah, whatever.

I was confused too. But it was obvious it was going no farther, so there was nothing to be done.

You see my point by now. When was the last time you saw anyone, anyone in the normal spectrum of emotional development act out a scene like that?

So. It's probably twenty-five years since that happened, at a guess. And honestly, I haven't seen or heard from Mister Clueless in probably a decade. I don't really care to hear from him, either.

But... I always had a certain degree of sympathy for the guy. He was an utterly clueless, graceless munter, but he meant well, and he wanted to be liked. I couldn't find it in me to really enjoy his company, but I can say truthfully that I never disliked him. It was just uncomfortable to be around him.

Of course, nowadays there would be a label for Mister Clueless -- because if ever there was anybody who should be a poster child for Asperger's Syndrome, it's him. And it's that post-hoc label, that after-the-fact knowledge that gives me considerably more sympathy for him than I had before.

The thing about Aspbergers... not only is it invisible, but it's bloody difficult to compensate for. Blind? Canes, guide-dogs, Braille, and lots of assistance from a sympathetic public. Deaf? Sign language, hearing aids, cochlear implants. You get the picture.

But - how do you replace that invisible sense of social aptness, of propriety? How do you instill a situational sensitivity? If the bloke is twenty-five, has had a reasonably normal upbringing, gone through schools and societies and clubs and shit, and he STILL doesn't know that he should go home when his hosts are turning off the house lights and going to bed, how do you fix it?

I can imagine being blind. I can imagine being deaf. But I can't imagine being unable to perceive social, emotional, and behavioural cues. I try to think about it in terms of, perhaps, a language I cannot understand, like Russian -- and then I remember that at least I know Russian is a language, meant to convey information. And I can watch, and I can listen, and I can learn, and maybe one day I can speak enough Russian to say ja jebal tvoyemadj in a friendly fashion, and not get my teeth knocked down my throat.

That's not the same thing at all, is it?

And so, probably ten years too late, I'm offering a limited apology to Mister Clueless. I'm sorry, mate. There wasn't a word or a name for your condition back when we were around each other. I knew -- hell, everyone knew -- that you were fairly useless at sorting out social stuff... but I didn't understand that it was truly, honestly, something you couldn't help, and I never really thought of how it might be, groping your way through a world of information, cues, rules and responses you couldn't even perceive, let alone act on.

It wouldn't have made me any happier to be in your company. But if I'd known, I could have been more up-front, and tried replacing the subtle social stuff with more direct verbal instructions. I didn't do it back then because I didn't want to hurt your feelings -- but that seems kind of stupid, in retrospect. You need empathy and social skills to have easily bruised feelings. Just coming out and telling you when you were behaving inappropriately would probably not have hurt you, and quite likely would have helped us all. I should have twigged, eh?

Sorry about that.

It's Only A Flesh Wound!

Okay. I dunno about you, but to me, this is both appalling, and hilarious:

One-armed legless man bashes male nurse

The headline is linked directly to the article from the Northern Territory News, so feel free to click it. My absolute favourite line is:

"The NT News understands the 50-year-old patient assistant carer was trying to handle the disabled man when the man punched the carer repeatedly with his good arm and flailed his stumps angrily."

I know it's wrong. Yes. But... that final image just won't go away. I'm afraid there's beer in my keyboard now.