Author: Daniel Hero

Four feet of steel met extradimensional weirdness and from all appearances, prevailed. Which is to say, when Niall’s sword met the orb’s outermost fringe, a pitched squeal rose raggedly and rapidly as its tattered curvature rushed towards the northern pole, where it promptly winked out of existence with a briefly blinding blue flash.

Niall had expected whatever witchcraft this was to repulse his blow, or at best, perhaps yield a satisfying crack. But beyond the noise and the flash, it offered surprisingly little resistance and like stepping down on a stair one expects but does not exist, the king overbalanced – his sword hurtling towards… was that a man in a bed? Before Niall could blink confirmation, his eyes stung with blue light, his ears rang with otherworldly chaos, and with a deft flick worthy of a master swordsman he flipped the blade to the flat.

Manx Horgan awoke to what could only be a stack of Marshall amps strategically placed all around his bed – turned up to eleven. Covers pulled up tight with one arm tucked under head and chin, his shout of startlement was drowned out by Jimi Hendrix feedback. Manx’s eyes opened immediately after a bright blue flash to see a man swinging a very large sword directly at him. He curled into a ball so quickly he banged knees against chin as a king’s sword met a king sized down filled comforter.

Manx’s bed was an effective stop for both King and sword – although not in that order. The strength of the blow combined with Niall’s momentum and an unexpected king sized Temperpedic mattress caused his highness to lose his footing and fall, faceplanting on Manx’s bed and rebounding backwards onto his recently made royal backside. The sword made a soft whuf and remained on the comforter, even as Niall did not.

The area described by the circumference of the now vanished bubble encapsulated Manx, his bed, both end tables next to the headboard and a good stretch of what was once his bedroom floor, up to and including the entrance to the bathroom, where walls disappeared over the doorway in a tight arc. These tipped over with a low thud, with only what remained of his bathroom counter, sink, and a closet on the other side keeping them from collapsing to the floor entirely.

Thankfully Manx did not sleep in the nude, or for that matter, pajamas. He went to bed that night on a warm spring day, so he wore his favorite faded grey NASA t-shirt over black boxer briefs. He felt the weight of Niall’s sword at the foot of his bed as he sat up, swinging his legs over and out of bed, attempting to blink sense into what he saw around him. Everything around him screamed authenticity – from the stone walls of the castle, the short stairs leading up to an oak throne just behind his headboard, to the equally stunned expressions of the crowd just beyond the foot of his bed. Not to mention a smell that he could only describe as medieval. The man lying unceremoniously on his back shook a head with a crown on it. Instinctively, Manx grabbed the sword by the guard and laying the blade (carefully!) on his opposing forearm, offered the sword back hilt first.

Niall scrabbled unceremoniously aloft as he took the blade back. He kept the point of his blade trained as he rose to stand above the man sitting in his bed. He took in the remains of what was obviously a ruined bedchamber. This sprawling bed of a rich man or prince, the tables at the head, they in turn supporting objects both strange and familiar. The odd material of the floor it all stood on, not to mention the man himself – tall and well fed, with a closely shaved face, and as the man smiled hesitantly at him, the straightest, whitest, most complete set of teeth he had ever seen.

Manx looked about nervously, the first tendrils of fear beginning to bloom. He was in trouble and he didn’t have any idea what to do about it. Then he heard the soft click of his (battery backed up) radio alarm clock and the first clean piano notes of a song Manx knew well from his childhood. The acoustic property inside the stone walls carried each note perfect and true. Startled faces looked around and at each other. Adrenaline pounding, Manx immediately knew what he had to do. Ignoring the man with the large sword pointed at him, he leaped on his bed and turned to the royal audience. Grinning widely, he hit the first sentence on the mark: “I wanted to be with you alone…and talk about the weather…”

As he lip synced to a British band that wouldn’t be born for many hundreds of years, Manx did his best to sell his performance using every technique he could recall. He danced in place (they didn’t know how badly). He made eye contact. He smiled where he could. He encouraged the crowd to sing along during the chorus of “La, la, la, la, la” that’s repeated five times. He thought he caught a few joining in but couldn’t be sure. By the time he got to the final line, “Isn’t it funny how time flies…” he’d jumped off his bed and was standing, one hand outstretched in his best Freddy Mercury pose, the other resting on the off switch of his alarm clock.

The song ended and Manx pressed the off button as he dramatically lowered his outstretched hand.

Dead silence echoed off the walls.

King Niall spoke one sentence.

As the guards moved in, Manx supposed he wasn’t in a musical after all.

“JESUS SUFFERING FUCK!” Caused Roger to sit bolt upright in his sparse bunk from a deep and satisfying sleep. By the time “ROGER!” came, he had already swung his feet to the bare metal floor, panic beginning to replace the shaggy remains of sleep. The voice didn’t have far to travel, the bunk residing no more than twenty paces from where it issued.

“ROGER!” This one seemed to vibrate the composite steel and carbon walls around him, which made sense when he exited the tiny compartment, as Ian’s head was now glaring down the length of the short corridor at him – in mid breath for another go.

“What?” He was too frightened to be annoyed.

Instead of finishing his now complete breath with another bellow, Ian, with a jerk of his chin, invited Roger to join him down the short walk to what by convention was called ‘the bridge’ but what was, in fact, merely a nice place to sit while the computer and the drive made all the real decisions.

Roger slid into the only other chair and asked again. “What?”

“What did I tell you about these Kruder and Dorfmeister engines?”

“What?” Roger asked, now very afraid indeed.

“If you say ‘What’ one more time, I’m going to stab you in the neck with a pencil. What did I tell you about these K&D drives?” What Ian’s voice lost in decibals, it gained proportionally in menace.

Roger caught himself just before the fatal what escaped his lips – instead he swallowed, took a moment, and said with too much hope, “Make sure and blow the baffles every fourth transition?”
“YES!” Ian screamed in his face, a mere two feet away. “And did you in fact blow said baffles? Don’t bother answering, I’m looking at the truth in the maintenance log. Care to guess what that means?”

“Oh shit.” Roger said.

“JESUS SUFFERING FUCK!” Ian repeated.

********

It was precisely the moment when crown met brow that the big blue bubble appeared. The recently crowned read surprise on the priest’s face and for a fleeting moment thought his reign might be the shortest ever, until he spun shoulders around to see what everyone was slack jawed about. Then he did something very unkingly when his jaw went slack as well.

The bubble was big, taking up the space between the bottom stair of the throne and at least twenty feet behind; it met the stone floor at the equator, forming a smooth, inscrutable dome at least that high. It also gave off a dim blue glow. The silence throughout the court was equally smooth and inscrutable. And could not last.

Somewhere in the crowd a low mewling escalated into a moan and two hundred people rushed to leave at once. King Niall unsheathed the ceremonial sword at his side and used the voice he’d developed on so many fields of battle – one meant to carry and be obeyed.
“Hold!” He shouted. “Hold and have courage!” The crowd ignored him but they met barred doors at exits and guards with swords, certainly not ceremonial, drawn. The initial rush slowed and in doing so caused those behind them to turn and look for other exits. Niall saw his moment and acted.
“We do not know if there is anything to fear! Hold and have courage! I did not see this thing appear. Who saw? Who witnessed it’s appearance? Speak!” Niall strode halfway down the stairs, but not before exchanging his useless sword for a very functional one with the nearest soldier. “Who saw?”

One man, a cousin of one of the nine if Niall was right, called out, “We all did.”

“One moment it was just there.” Said another.

“It appeared from nowhere!”

Then it was two hundred voices all speaking at once.

“SILENCE!” Niall bellowed. The hall grew very still. The king, sword in hand, approached the big blue bubble. “Are you from heaven or from hell?” He asked in his voice meant to carry. The bubble gave no reply. “Well then, let’s see what steel can do.” With a swing that started somewhere from the pastures outside the castle walls, King Niall struck the big blue bubble.

Almost no one was more surprised than he when the bubble burst.

*******

“See this dial Roger? This one here. The one resting at zero. It says there is no home to go to. Nowhere to land.” Ian had decided to move swiftly past fear and directly into anger. Roger wasn’t there yet. Roger was seriously considering voiding his bowels. The idea of eternity trapped in a nonrelativistic void between dimensions with a pissed off Ian was not the hell he was raised to believe.

“What do we do? What do we do?” Roger babbled.

“We wouldnt be worrying about that if you’d done your damn job.” Ian said. It was then that Roger decided Ian might be on to something.

“I was perfectly happy making the regular runs at scale! I said we shouldn’t bypass the default settings! I told you we shouldn’t fuck with it!”

“Look. I have an idea.” Ian said. Roger closed his mouth with a snap and sat back in his seat with his arms crossed.

“Are you going to stab me in the neck with a pencil if I say what?” Roger asked.

Ian rolled his eyes and snorted. “I reserve the right to put us both out of our misery if we don’t fix this. But we’re going to fix it. We have to.”

“What do we do?” Roger asked.

“The only thing we can do, get the computer to chew on the last transition log and compare it with the four we made before that. Go from there.” Ian said.

Roger chewed on his lower lip and his eyebrows scrunched together before he said, “Do you know the odds…”

“If you make me quote that fucking movie I am going to find something more interesting than a pencil.” Ian said.

“I love you.” Roger said.

Ian shook his head. “Asshole.”

End of Part One

Here we are, one day before the midterm choice of 2018. I, like many of my fellow citizens, are feeling much less sanguine about this election compared to the last. We’ve got plenty of reason to feel this way – and not primarily because of the kick in the balls we all collectively absorbed in 2016. For one thing, the news is mixed. Not only are there reports that turn out is high, which is historically good for Democrats, but there are reports that the outcome will be close.

I find it difficult to reconcile these two things. If young voters do indeed turn out in the numbers so far reported, than the corresponding turn out of the deeply conservative base will have to be nearly 90% in order to mitigate the youth vote. Will nearly all conservative voters vote and vote the party line? I don’t know. I used to think I did.

Then Trump got elected. Two years ago, I held a firm conviction there wouldn’t be enough Americans foolish enough to vote for one of the worst examples of humanity on the planet. There was enough, perhaps just enough because of foreign help, but there was enough for me to admit I was wrong.

I’ve since struggled to adjust my thinking regarding those people who voted for Trump. This is less of a struggle for those who will vote Republican this time around. Everyone who lived past infancy either has been, is right now, or will be a deluded fool about something. I’m willing to hold a charitable thought for those who initially voted for Trump under certain conditions. Those conditions comprise a very short list. But to continue to cleave to this man, now, even after he’s demonstrated on so many levels why I name him a failure in almost every way that matters, is simply unconscionable.

I’ve always been of the mind that one should avoid dealing in absolutes. Really? Of course not. They are a quick way to be wrong, which is why I do my best to avoid them. Always and never are rare, especially when we’re talking about matters of humanity. There are times though, when absolutes are appropriate, necessary, and unavoidable. Like now for instance. The thing that horrifies the most about absolutes is their strength. Absolutes are examples of pure strength. If an absolute is true, argument is pointless. No matter how much you may want, wish, or seek for an escape, absolutes are an iron vice that allow no exception.

The devil of course, dwells in detail and context. For example, I have family that voted for Trump and I’m fairly certain will vote the Republican ticket this time around. I also cannot help but agree to the proposition that anyone who falls into this category is making the same mistake twice, compounded by an order of magnitude the second time around. My premise is this: If you vote for Trump and those people who support and enable him, you fail a test of basic human decency. The first time you did it can be understood, even forgiven, depending on a variety of factors. The second time… I don’t know. I just don’t know how to come to any conclusion other than you are not a supporter of basic human decency. Even if I love you, you are not free from this conclusion, as much as I wish otherwise. This is an absolute derived from logic. Sure, my premise may be too strict, there may be other conditions that mitigate or change the outcome, but as a general rule of thumb, the conclusion is inescapable. Even here I want to avoid absolutes.

I do know this. I remain in the camp that wishes to afford you the rights and dignity you would deny or rescind from others. Your insistence that this country become a place where human rights and dignity are lessened places you in the peril you wish to visit on others. The nature of human evil is contagious, I feel it’s chilly fingers seeking a place to purchase whenever I view the actions of people seeking violence and promoting anger and fear.

I watched a video of a man today being interviewed on his way inside a Trump rally. The interviewer asked him about his tattoo – an entire back piece, at the top, between his shoulder blades, was the archangel Michael, in the act of casting into hell what the man described as the enemies of the constitution (coincidentally, his enemies), the portraits of George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. This man withstood hours of pain and paid hard cash to indelibly mark himself with a message of hate. If you don’t see why this is a message of hate I think you may just fall into the same category as the gentleman with the tattoo, which is to say, either utterly ignorant, a deluded fool, actively participating in the promotion of evil, or some combination of all of the above. It’s statements like this which get me in trouble with my wife. Because of the strength of absolutes. I feel an atavistic repulsion towards people like this, in the worst parts of my reptile brain, I yearn to do combat because I know flight is not an option. This is what I mean when I talk about the contagious nature of human evil.

Fortunately, I’ve constructed for myself a list of truths which are an effective bulwark against the reptile brain. I consulted all of human history and philosophy that I’ve learned in a long life of curious and avaricious reading. Here it is:

Faith, while comforting, is no substitute for knowing.

It is impossible to know everything but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try (oftentimes this means unlearning what you previously learned).

Beware power and authority, those who possess it are least likely to be trusted with it, especially those with absolute power.

Treat others better than you treat yourself (let’s face it, we’re often not that nice to ourselves) whenever you can.

People are disappointing, love them anyway.

If things go pear shaped tomorrow I will be repeating this list in my mind right after I finish the Bene Gesserit litany against fear. May your methods be equally effective. Good luck to us all.

I have a bad habit.

I read the comment section of facebook posts. I must be a closet masochist. The pain resides in the cognitive dissonance generated between what I read and my belief that human beings are rational, reasonable, pragmatic problem solvers capable of, what was up until that moment, impossible or undreamt. Believe me, I see the irony when I mock religion.

I used to lie to myself when I engaged with them – the easy lie that a well built argument, or a particularly well executed rhetorical judo throw would perhaps, maybe, plant a seed that would reach for the light. But we all know better.

In my more charitable moments I tell myself it’s a reaction to the ugliness of blatant untruth. As if you overheard someone in an elevator sincerely espouse a belief that the moon is made of cream cheese. I snort, I roll my eyes, I go through the dance of explaining how the moon was actually formed (fascinating, by the way), but all of this is for my benefit, not the ignorant fool who thinks no one would starve on the moon. Part of it is the pleasing tones of my own voice – I’m no less immune to this then the other guy. Part is a self appointed ethos of not letting egregious bullshit go without rebuttal. Part of me also just enjoys verbal combat. I don’t take it personally when it’s used effectively against me either – on the contrary, if it’s really good, or novel, I’ll steal it for my own use. But I digress.

Jimi Hendrix said that knowledge speaks and wisdom listens. I also believe that one is a fool who deals with fools. I tell myself both of these things whenever I’m tempted to weigh in on a thread, especially when I don’t know the fool in question. Unfortunately, the fools have gotten control of something they neither understand nor respect. Namely, our modern civilization. They do not understand that civilization (is, was, and ever shall be) exists balanced on a knife’s edge. History is the study of the ruins that prove this truth. Ask a Syrian refugee. Ask any refugee.

The repeating history of humanity is of a small group of people dictating the quality of life for the rest. We live in a country founded on this principal – we make that small group as large as possible. The fools are being led by those who want to go back to that small number, for some that number being as small as one. At the risk of sounding foolish, it’s really just that simple. So the question then becomes, do we deal with the fools and thereby through the commutative law of foolery we become fools as well, or do we deal with their greedy/evil/deluded/combination of all three leaders?

That’s a trick question. Because we have to do both. The fools are our responsibility. They are our fellow citizens. As much as it is tempting to say “I wash my hands of you” the truth is we cannot. Left to their own devices, well, you see the ongoing tragedy that only deepens and worsens each day. I know how difficult this is going to be. I have family that, while none I know of are rabid supporters, do in fact support what little they think they know of what is going on, which is horrifying enough.

Making phone calls, protesting, giving money to the cause, and especially voting are all necessary. I just can’t shake this nagging feeling that it won’t be enough. Those who are behind the fools can smell the blood in the water and they’re not going to be put off their feed through any of the normal methods. Our would be feudal lords don’t give a bloody fuck about protesting in the streets when they outright own one party and are leasing with the option to buy too many in the other. They care if you vote, in the same way Putin cares that his citizens vote. They care more about their continued profits and power. They sure do care when all that is threatened.

I think there will come a time for a nationwide strike. A day when, oh, I’d be thrilled to see 45% of the entire workforce (those whose absence is ethically sound) not go into work that day. They don’t want to work for the benefit of all? Let’s not work for them for a day or more. Now,I realize that just about everyone cannot afford a day without pay, they like it that way so you’ll continue to show up. Do it right and we could even get some companies to agree to pay their employees that day. They can afford to pay for a glass of milk so long as they’re assured the cow is coming back to the barn.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if on that day, we all learned something new? Maybe a refresher course on how our government works. A day when we contemplate the great civilizations of the past – and where they went wrong so we may avoid their mistakes. But I’m not picky, anything that increases your store of knowledge and teaches the wisdom of listening will do.

I don’t know, maybe learn how the moon was formed.

It’s been a difficult refrain from writing anything overt regarding King Blear and his idiot knights who say MAGA!  If only it were a shrubbery they wanted.

I’ve written little around politics lately for two reasons. The first is, I want to write about how events unfold as dispassionately as possible. Unfortunately, I’m finding calm equanimity and close observation of this confederacy of dunces to be mutually exclusive circles on the Venn diagram of possible emotions regarding he whose name must not be spoken yet cannot be ignored – like flatulence in an elevator. Incandescent fury, on the other hand, lies over close observation in an almost perfect circle. The passion of the pissed off is not an emotion I care to cultivate.

Yet there is so much to be angry about, in both quality and quantity. I know people who live with anger like an old roommate. I don’t know how they do it. Feeding anger is dangerous. If you try and use anger as a muse you risk being warped, like a flower bent over water so the only reflection it sees is it’s own. I’m sure on the spectrum of human experience there is a personality configuration that relies on anger as fuel without the corresponding corrupting spiral into, if not ethical or moral degradation, then social or personal. Say, Lewis Black versus Ann Coulter. You can tell Ann slid down the slope (hell, she got a sled and jumped headfirst) because her anger has cascaded downwards into a bedrock hatefulness.

I admit my revulsion towards the anger I notice in conservatives tends to sympathy when I see it in fellow liberals. How can it not? We tend to be furious about the same things. It’s important to recognize and account for one’s biases when you view what you regard as deliberate any effort to destroy much of what you care about. This sentiment highlights a difference between the average liberal and the average conservative – the former are more likely to place emphasis on the first part of that sentence whereas the latter appear to ignore the first part entirely and focus almost exclusively on the second.

Maddeningly, each side sees something different being destroyed.

Anger is useful. It tells you what it is you care about. It can help you get out of bed in the morning and it can turn you into a red toothed monster. In many ways, an inability to get angry or the willful suppression of appropriate anger, is as detrimental as an inability to feel, or the willful suppression of most emotions.

Anger is different because it makes every other emotion it’s mixed with worse. Perhaps worst of all is when it’s mixed with righteous certitude. You see it in the red faces of the fevered right and those who’ve watched friends and family suffer. In the latter you see examples of where angry righteous certitude ultimately serves the moral good e.g., pre civil war abolitionists, the civil rights movements of the 50’s and 60’s (actually, from every decade), all the way up to today with the black lives matter and the me too movement.  A loathing of subjugation, murder, and sexual assault has a long history of validated righteous certitude.

I can’t negotiate with that particular demon.

Here’s what I know about anger. Anger is almost never an emotion that inspires good decisions. Anger rivals only fear with its power to cloud the mind. It lends a hideous strength to weak positions and nearly unstoppable force to those with heft. Let it slip the bit and anger is a wild horse that will take you for a ride. The longer you wait to jump off, the more difficult the walk back, if it doesn’t carry you over a cliff.

Unlike fear, anger constantly demands action. When you realize this, it’s not a far leap to understand the antidote to anger is delay. But even this doesn’t reliably pull anger’s fangs. Delay that doesn’t extinguish rage is the tempering force that causes the mighty to tremble. If conservatives have taught us anything, it is beware the fury of patient humans. It’s terrible fire to play with and only those with wills of steel and an unerring moral compass can hope to forge anything with it and not burn.

So that’s the first reason why I haven’t opined in writing lately. I couldn’t trust myself not to emulate Marcus Curtius, the original Leeroy Jenkins. For those a little shaky on their Roman mythology, instead of asking what his country could do for him, Marcus (and the horse he rode in on) leapt right into that chiasmus.

The second reason why I’ve made myself abstain from lap swim in the swamp is the rich variety of other people anxious to dive in. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I thought I’d sit down, shut up, and listen. The insistence, rightly so, of voices other than those that dominate our shared culture, in being not only listened to but deserving of respect, is best begun by sitting down, shutting up for a damn minute, and listening. It doesn’t mean you don’t get to talk anymore. It doesn’t mean what you value doesn’t have value. It doesn’t even presuppose you will come around to that point of view. It does signal that you are open to vistas that are beyond your perception. You might not like the view. But it shows the person who sees the landscape differently that you aren’t blind. This is a step not possible for far too many angry people. I’m trying to do this not just for those I am sympathetic towards but towards those that I am not. As a middle aged white guy, what I have to say can wait.

For example, I find it a herculean task listening to the current leaders of congress, professional defenders and deflectors for them, and nearly all of their knee jerk supporters. I force myself to listen to much as I am able of the first, as little as I can and remain informed (if none other than their current tactics) regarding the second, and close but nonzero amounts of the third. To be fair, there is a small percentage of people that identify as both republican and conservative who are nearly as horrified and angry as their democratic counterparts. I at least hear lip service in that regard. It is difficult not being angry with them as well. Too many are only just now wading toward the shores of sanity with far too little recognition of the part they played in the sinking ship. I’m looking at you George Will. Still, the reasonable and necessary thing is to let that go for now and enlist their help with pulling more towards the beach.

Because that’s what cool heads do.

They do not, for example, scream at the television whenever Sarah H. Sanders is in front of the camera and speaking. Cool heads are able to channel their ire into things that, if not serve the greater good, then at least do not detract from it.

Paint by numbers perhaps.

But that’s just sticking your head in the sand, I hear you say. And it’s true, that absent any other action, finding a hobby and hoping things turn out alright is, in my opinion, a morally reprehensible option. For the foreseeable future, the bare minimum of executing your civic duty is by voting every election for a Democrat.

We must. The simple logic is that we live in a two party system. Any significant third party presence that draws disproportionately from one side of the ideological spectrum predicts the opposite side’s victory. Republicans are supporting and enabling the erosion of our institutions and the relationship America has with it’s allies. They seem unwilling or unable at this time to defend our country from foreign attack, so long as they benefit. Worse, a significant faction would like nothing more than our country to be a Christian version of Iran. One wonders what flavor of Jesus would become the official religion. And what the Mormons or Catholics would think of that choice. If we don’t vote democrat, or something that completely subsumes the democratic party the way Trumpism did the republican party, then things will slide into dystopia all the faster. Republicans need to lose decisively and for as long as anything that resembles Trumpism is evident. We’ve seen what they’re willing to do and history shows us just how far they can go.

I leave it to wiser minds than I the task of indicating how much effort, and of what nature, qualifies someone exempt from the stink eye of history. The way things are going and depending on how bad things get, I suspect few of us will get a lake named after us.

There is a special category for those who do not vote. Barring being a victim of conservative voter repression, if you don’t vote, you’re the worst kind of fool. You’re standing slack jawed at the open gate as foam flecked barbarians invade the city. Only the perverse shields of idiocy and luck are keeping you from being gutted already. Their aim is to burn the fucking place down. Are you going to help them, or are you going to try helping us shut the damn gate?

It’s been a bit. I’d like to say that this hiatus was in service of something noble, or even that I’ve continued to generate content. Unfortunately, I cannot. My ready excuse is life stuff. A busted hot water pipe followed by weeks of restoration. New interior paint in half my home. A sick spouse followed by an injured pet. I want to blame the numerous vagaries of day to day life that make it easy to put off calling up the blank white page. But these are just excuses.

The truth is, I’ve been doing more thinking than writing lately because it’s easier and safer to let things remain akin to what I recently discovered described as “maladaptive daydreaming.” This is a form of psychosis where the happy individual has difficulty completing common tasks because of an overwhelming desire to remain engaged in vivid daydreams that are complex, based off events in their life, and detailed in both plot and character. I think this condition deserves a less clinical title. It should be called the “Mitty Avoidance Complex” (a nod to James Thurber’s eponymously named short story character) or perhaps just Mitty Complex.

I’m not a full blown victim of maladaptive daydreaming. In fact, you could say I merely have an itty bitty Mitty Complex. I’m capable of other forms of escape. Sometimes I just cue up Sophie’s Choice, Silkwood, The Bridges of Madison County, as well as The Iron Lady and submerge myself in a nice hot deep Streep steep. Yes, I binge watch some guilty pleasures on Netflix. The less said of that the better. I’m looking at you Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant.

I have been working on a short story, although it’s been percolating on the back shelf for too long. I’ve also got the rudiments of another poem or two rattling around. All of which means zero if I write none of it down. There is nothing sadder than a writer who will not or cannot stay committed. This is my personal Sisyphean ball that never fails to roll backwards onto me, leaving me stuck to the outside as it rolls inexorably to the bottom of a canyon worthy of a Wily E. Coyote cartoon.

Not writing shares a lot in common with not exercising. Both are necessary, make me feel better after having done it, and hopefully make me slightly more attractive to the opposite sex. I approach the prospect of both like the recalcitrant mule of yore. Lots of baying, stamping of feet, biting of bits, and overall grumpiness. And also like the mule, I forget about what I was so against once I actually start doing it.

What is it that I’ve been daydreaming about these last few months? Let’s just say it involves a cast of characters so vile, so low, so unredeemable that almost no fate is too severe. There is a direct relationship to the quality of a story and the quality of the antagonist. My favorite villians are urbane, polite, complex, utterly vicious in the pursuit of their goal, and so vastly flawed that while I may share some sympathy, I applaud their eventual fate. I can also find satisfaction in antagonists that are not human. The grind of history. Nature’s cold impartiality. The unintended consequences of seemingly sound reason. Not all evil is human evil. Although to be fair, it does claim the lion share.

If you recall, those who suffer from a Mitty Complex, either of the itty bitty or Walter whale size, base their fantasies off of real life events. Have you been paying attention to real life events lately? If so, I suspect I’m not the only one engaging in acrobatic flights of fancy.

I just hope the orange jumpsuit matches his complexion in the same hue I see it in one of my favorite inner movies.