An Eye to the Inner Ear

For the last several days, I've been wondering what happens to the three little bones of the inner ear when we die. Sure, the hammer, anvil, and stirrup--or the malles, incus, and stapes--will stay in place for a while as the body decomposes. But when the tissues of the skull dissolve, do the inner ear bones somehow stay attached to the skull? Or do they fall into the gaping cavity of the skull to rattle around unto eternity? If you pick up a human skull and shake it, will you hear the inner ear bones bouncing like dice in a cup? 

I'd like to ask my doctor the next time I see her, but we have a new one and I'm afraid of the impression the question might leave. 
 

Fragile Memories

I accidentally broke my G&G IX commemorative glass about a week and a half ago. Alas and alack! Nothing is forever. 
 

Validating Our Worst Selves

As sometimes happens, I had a pretty lousy week (by the standards of my particular forms of privilege). I missed a day of work, the news was getting me down, I'd accidentally inconvenienced a couple of people, I wasn't getting much sleep, I had no drive to accomplish household tasks--the sorts of problems that really should be taken in stride. Instead, by Thursday I'd worked myself into a state of fierce self-loathing. 

Today I felt much better, thanks almost entirely to simply cuddling with Sylvia through Thursday night. As we drove to pick up groceries today, I made light of my maudlin mood of the days prior, mocking myself by saying things like "Oh, I've been so mean to people over the years" and "I've been a complete idiot so much of my life" and "I've accomplished nothing." I said it in a tone that tried to suggest I knew such feelings were silly, but Sylvia saw through me, as usual. She admitted that she sometimes felt that way too, but then she said something that hit me like a bombshell: 

"Why do our negative thoughts get all our internal attention and validation?" 

Yes! Why? All my life I've validated my worst feelings about myself while at the same time dismissing or devaluing the positive assessments of other people. I'm not alone in this. 

I wonder what percentage of human beings validate their bad feelings about themselves, and what percentage enjoy a healthier, more balanced view--not narcissistic, but a view that accepts their good and bad qualities without feeling undue self-loathing or overweening pride. Furthermore, I wonder that genetic traits or environmental conditions make the difference between mental health and depression and other disorders. 

I've written a few times about how much I loathed my first job after graduating from the University of Alberta: driving a truck full of automotive parts to different garages on the south and west sides of Edmonton. I had that job for three years, applying for other jobs all the while, and the longer I was there the more I began to believe that I'd never do better. (To give myself some credit, I recognized, even as an ignorant twentysomething, the inherent value of any job that in some way helped the community; I didn't feel as though I was "above" the job, just that it didn't suit my interests or skills.) 

For several months of this three-year period, I was living with my parents and commuting to Edmonton with Dad. After one particularly rough day, I confessed to Dad that I thought there must be something wrong with me because even after years of trying, nobody wanted to hire me. (I'd gotten the truck driving job thanks to Dad.) 

"Earl, that's bullshit," Dad said forcefully, startling me a little. "You're a very smart kid, but these are tough conditions. It won't be long before you find something much better suited to all the things you can do." 

Dad's no-nonsense clarity helped quite a bit that day, and he was right; it wasn't long before I moved on to better things, though not without some amusing misadventures. 

Sylvia's question today has helped me realize that I need to investigate why I've given so much weight to the ways I've failed other people, the ways I've failed to live up to my expectations of myself, the ways I've hurt others--almost always unintentionally--and yet, NOT always unintentionally, and when you hurt someone, what do your intentions matter anyway? 

This is turning into a screed, so I'll conclude with this: If you've ever had feelings like mine, I hope you'll give yourself a break. Believe people when they say nice things about you; don't devalue their judgement or support. I'm going to do my best to take my own advice. 

Bah-tuna Meh-kaka

I finally watched The Lion King today, expecting greatness given the film's position on many best-of lists. But the film left me cold. I felt nothing for any of the characters except mild annoyance, the music left me unmoved when it wasn't actively annoying me, and I felt the story was not only generic but told in the laziest possible way. 

I didn't always feel this way about Disney films with singing, dancing, and talking animals: I remember enjoying Lady and the Tramp and Robin Hood back in the 70s. Therefore, I don't think it's my general indifference to animals* that's affecting my enjoyment. And it's not as if there's anything wrong with the animation, the screenplay, the music, the editing, the performances, or any of the other factors so important to film. I recognize the artistry and competence of the creators. 

Sometimes a film clicks for you, sometimes it doesn't, I guess. Hakuna matata, as they say. 

*By "indifference," I mean that I feel no particular affection for animals in general. However, nor do I wish them harm, and I recognize that not only are they vital to our ecosystem, they also deserve respect as living creatures for their own sake.

And yet, for reasons I don't understand, I simply don't feel the emotional bonds that most people form with animals, no matter how cute those animals may be. I feel a lot of guilt about this and I've spent my life trying to change it, but that fundamental bit of humanity just seems to be missing in me.  

Colour Me Blood Red Howitzer

Tonight I'm throwing away some old broken toys, including this die-cast howitzer that I inexplicably painted red with old model paint sometime in my mid-teens. 

I'm torn my my relatively recent and ongoing urge to toss aside the detritus of my life. On the one hand, it's nice to get rid of things that simply take up space without offering any value. On the other hand, it feels like I'm finally acknowledging my mortality. Maybe it's silly to get so riled up over old toys, but at some point this thing (and others like it) brought me joy, and it feels like betraying the me that was to let it go. 

But go it must. 

Lilies of the Field

Last night I screened Lilies of the Field, a 1963 Best Picture nominee, featuring the performance that earned Sidney Poitier the Best Actor Oscar for that year. While I enjoyed Poitier's performance, Jerry Goldsmith's music, the lean direction, handsome black and white cinematography, and the simple but affecting story, the film nonetheless left me unsettled and questioning.

In the film, Homer Smith (Poitier), stops at a ramshackle nunnery to borrow some water for his car. Mother Maria (Lilia Sakala, nominated for Best Supporting Actress) believes God has sent Homer to help the sisters build a chapel. Homer demurs, as he's happier to live as a man of the road, taking odd handyman jobs to support his easygoing, itinerant lifestyle. But the nun's ineptitude compels Homer to stay and help, and over the course of the film he reveals himself as not only an able handyman, but a leader, marshalling the volunteers who show up to help into a formidable workforce.

The chief source of drama in the film is Homer's easygoing attitude and desire to leave set against Mother Maria's devotion to a relatively ascetic lifestyle and her unspoken fondness for Homer. She even comes up with a number of excuses and odd jobs in an attempt to extend Homer's stay, but in the end, his task complete, Homer leaves the chapel and the nuns behind, proud of a job well done but true to his own needs.

Lilies of the Field is a simple film, but it's funny and warm and important because it features a well-rounded black character in a time when such characters were even rarer in mainstream film than they are today.

What hit me hardest, however, was the way that Poitier's performance clearly showed the deep but understated pride Smith takes in his work and his finished creation. And a fine chapel it is, once the work is complete. While I recognize that screening films always leaves the viewer vulnerable to emotional manipulation, I couldn't help but question the value of my own work when presented with a vision of something concrete (almost literally) and lasting. The fruits of Homer's labour are obvious and long-lasting. Even though I personally am not religious, I can see the value in a place of meditation and meeting for the community, and I envy Smith and others like him who build things that exist in the real world, with tangible benefits.

My labour, on the other hand, hasn't been physical since my early 20s. Of course I agree that communicating is important, and that the right message can have wide-ranging benefits, but I'm still not sure that anything I've written has had anything more than a brief, infinitesimal impact on the wider world. Aside from a few ghostwritten gardening books, I don't have anything I can hold up and say, "This is what I contributed to the world."

Again, I don't wish to downplay my own contributions to the world, most of which, I hope, are unrelated to whatever jobs I've held over the years. But sometimes I feel like I've missed something important by choosing the career I have. 

We Dropped it Off, Honest!

This is mildly interesting: a few days ago someone dropped off a package and emailed me a photo to prove they had indeed delivered it. I'm not sure if this is creepy or good customer service. 

Be Yourself!

Busting Caps: How I Caused the Biggest Bang in Leaf Rapids

While I think myself as a pacifist, I can't deny that much of my play and entertainment revolved (and still revolves) around fantasy violence. I'm not educated enough to know if humanity's violent tendencies stem more from nature or nurture, nor do I understand why cowboys and indians and cops and robbers were games played almost exclusively by boys.

What I can say is there's something deeply satisfying about gunning down an imaginary foe, vanquishing something, even if only metaphorically. Lobbing nukes at Gandhi in Civilization, gunning down raiders and mutants in Fallout, slaying dragons in Dungeons & Dragons, beating up thugs, goons, robots and monsters in games of all kinds. Considering the suffering wrought by real-world violence, I have to wonder if these hobbies serve the greater good. Are they an escape valve for our darker impulses, or am I simply rationalizing my own behaviour?

The older I get, the more questions I have, the fewer answers. So instead of philosophizing further, a story:

Like many little boys, I used to play with cap guns. In the 70s, cap guns, at least the ones I had, looked like pistols from the Old West; wood and iron, with a chamber for caps: segmented rolls of paper, each segment containing a four or five millimeter diameter dot filled with gunpowder. By pulling the trigger, you could advance one segment up out of the gun and into the path of the gun's hammer; when the hammer slammed down, the cap would go off, producing a burst of sparks and noise. It was a very satisfying, visceral way to blow off steam, and many a friend went down in those days, plugged by my imaginary bullets. (Of course, I took my fare share of hits, too.)

With a child's logic, I reasoned that if popping off one cap at a time was fun, it must be exponentially more exciting to see a bunch of them explode at once. So one slightly overcast day in 1976 or 1977 or 1978, I gathered my friend Kelly Bear and took him to the town's only drug store, located, like most of the infrastructure of Leaf Rapids, inside the rust-coloured Town Centre. Using several weeks' worth of saved allowance (at the time, $1.00 a week), we purchased many, many red boxes of paper caps, which at the time were quite cheap; perhaps ten cents a box, perhaps a quarter. The druggist must have thought we were going to re-enact the American Civil War.

We carried out munitions out behind the Town Centre, at the corner where a loading ramp overlooked a steep dropoff of some two or three metres to the earthy ground below. A large boulder with an admirably smooth, flat top rested in that miniature canyon; we piled our caps atop it, and I carried a heavy stone about the size of a football up to the top of the loading ramp. Kelly wisely stuck his fingers in his ears as I hefted the stone over my head and flung it at the boulder below.

My aim was truer than it had any right to be. With a window-vibrating CRACK the caps exploded, the BANG so loud that my ears rung, and kept ringing, for minutes. Our nostrils filled with the acrid tang of exploded gunpowder, and countless bits of debris - chiefly the tattered remnants of the paper caps and the boxes they'd come in- rained down like dangerous confetti. Kelly and I both reeled, me more than him, as I hadn't been smart enough to anticipate the scale of the explosion.

It was tremendous, and best of all, we had plenty of caps left; once we gathered them all up (a time-consuming process), we figured we had about a third of our stash left, which we promptly used to repeat the experiment, taking turns blowing them up until we had only a handful of leftovers. No subsequent explosion was as amazing as the first, but we still had a lot of fun.

Perhaps luckiest of all, no one interfered with our play. We probably wouldn't have gotten into much trouble, given the era, but we felt like renegades, desperadoes, blowing things up because it was fun. To the best of my knowledge, no adult ever found out (until now).

To this day, I don't know if that experience was good or bad for me, or for Kelly. But if I had it all to do over again, I would.

How to Live with Envy and Ambition

As time marches inexorably onward, I notice that more and more of my colleagues are, inevitably, younger than me. This wouldn't be so bad, were it not for that they seem to have achieved more in less time. It leads to the inevitable question: what have I done with my life?

Sometimes I feel like I peaked early. My brief moment in the television spotlight began and ended at age 15. My only management role happened back when I was in my 20s. My first (ghostwritten) book was published just before I hit 30. Since then, I've been, in the parlance of the corporate world, an "individual contributor."

If I were a better person, this wouldn't irk me at all. I should be--and am--happy for younger people who achieve directorships, chairs and vice-presidencies. But it does make me question my own talent and ambition. What have I done wrong? Am I too late to make a difference? What qualities do I lack?

Frustrated Ambitions
I've thought about this a lot over the last couple of years. I think my failure to earn management roles can be attributed to a number of factors:

• Ambition. Rightly or wrongly, I've always viewed ambition somewhat skeptically. Of course I understand that ambition is responsible for a lot of good, when applied to the right projects and causes. But naked ambition, pursuing power for the sake of it, makes me nervous. So I don't chase leadership opportunities, and thus fly under the radar. 
• Self-confidence. I've never had a lot of self-confidence, even in my (supposed) fields of expertise. It's tough to manage people when you don't believe in your own ability. 
• Leadership. Who am I to tell people what to do? In my own defence, I've experienced a couple of moments of crisis, during which I took command in order to get people out of a jam, but I found that easy because there were imminent (very minor) threats and the right path jumped out with crystal clarity. But in the longer term, with unclear outcomes, I struggle to offer leadership. 
• Desire. I love storytelling, and I think, when it comes to my chosen career, that's where my strengths lie. If I moved into management, I'd have to leave all that behind. 
• All the things I haven't thought of. Believe me, I have no trouble coming up with long lists of my own shortcomings, but those lists pale beside the true picture of my inadequacies, which may be for the best; I'm not sure I could take it if I really knew the full extent of my failings. There are doubtless many good reasons I haven't been earmarked for leadership roles. 

Paths Not Taken--or Started

Sometimes, too, I wonder if I should have just resolved to be poor and stuck with writing fiction as my ultimate career goal. To this day, I wonder what would have happened if I'd finished the spec Star Trek: The Next Generation script I was working on and sent it to to the producers back during that golden era they were accepting material from writers without agents. The odds of anything coming of it, of course, were and are a million to one, but at least I would have known. There's a slim chance I might have found up with an accidental credit, because my (unsent) story, "Electric Sheep," explored what might happen if Data were hooked up to the holodeck and started dreaming. Elements of that story wound up in "Birthright" and "Phantasms" from the show's sixth and seventh seasons, which shows that an idea is worthless until it's executed. I failed to execute, so someone else made the sale(s). 

When Reach Exceeds Grasp, Be Happy with What You Have

Despite the trajectory of my life so far, I still feel as though I have the capacity to serve the public in a leadership context, but only if the opportunity is somehow thrust upon me. That sort of thing generally only happens in some kind of moment of crisis, so naturally I'm not going to wish for that. And perhaps I'm only rationalizing my own inadequacies. 

Most importantly, no matter what happens, I recognize how privileged I have been to work at all, and to do so in fields at least tangentially related to my true desires. I've worked with a great number of amazing women and men over the years, people who I consider friends and mentors. And with almost two decades to go until retirement, there's still much that can happen, and much that I can make happen if I ever find that reservoir of ambition and desire inside myself.

Be Brave Enough to See Your Own Worth. 

Maybe I haven't been a leader, but there are still achievements that I'm proud of. I try to do good work every day, I've been involved with a couple of projects that earned peer recognition, and generally speaking I feel and hope that my clients have been pleased with my work over the years. Maybe asking for more is asking for too much.

How do I live with envy and ambition?

By being grateful, by learning, by appreciating the people around me, perhaps by recognizing that there are many kinds of leadership. Some time ago, a supervisor told me I have leadership qualities that I wasn't recognizing or utilizing. Maybe I should take that advice in the spirit it was meant and start exploring.  

Flash Fact

There was a really nice moment in the latest episode of The Flash. Cisco Ramon is speaking to H.R. Wells while they prepare to face the crisis of the week. Things are looking grim (as is usual in the world of television drama), and H.R. wonders why Cisco is prepared to possibly sacrifice his life on H.R.'s behalf, considering they've had a somewhat adversarial relationship.

"You know what I love about working on this team?" Cisco asks. "We invest in each other."

The conversation continues in that vein, with the two men exchanging some pithy dialogue about friendship and family. It's not Shakespeare - far from it - but it was genuine and uplifting, and the kind of teachable moment that I think is popular culture's saving grace and most essential public service.

In the wider world, the reality outside television's box, we invest in each other. Not as much or as consistently as we should, but we invest in each other, and any progress we make is a result of those investments.

In the end, Cisco saves H.R. and the team even makes a friend out of an enemy along the way. I think that's a pretty positive message. It gives me hope that even in these dark times, there are still so many people out there, at all levels of society, who think it's still worthwhile to send out those good vibrations. 

Were I A Trillionaire

If I had a trillion dollars (oh, if I had a trillion dollars..!), I'd build a funky corporate headquarters on a lush Pacific island, powered by the wind and tides, and I'd ask people to come work for me. Everyone would get a nice office; there would be healthy snacks and plentiful amenities and as much vacation time as you like. Room and board and two trips home per year would be included in your benefits package. Each of my 100,000 employees will get paid $100,000 US per year.

What's the job? You decide. The hours? You decide. What value are we adding to the world? Well, you decide that too. Come up with a brilliant project, I'll fund it. Come up with a silly project that's probably doomed to fail, and I'll fund that too.

Earlco's values are easy to remember:

Empathy
Anarchy
Revolution
Love

Do what you love, love who you do it with, have empathy for all, and stir things up. Come work for me! Create something! Invent something! Or just play Frisbee golf all day.

There's only one trick: if we create something that will be of tangible benefit to humanity, we give it away. No patents, no copyright, no profiteering. If I've done the math right, my trillion dollars should give us 100 years to change the world. Probably longer, considering all the interest a trillion dollars generates!

Now, someone give me the trillion, and we'll get started. 

Newton Place

I lived in Newton Place, on the University of Alberta campus, for about a year. This is one of only three or photos I have of that time. I have only a few memories of Newton Place: it was where I watched the finale of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, I once dropped a glass in the laundry room and stepped on a sliver of it, leaving bloody footprints on the floor, and Pat and Leslie dropped in for an impromptu visit one night. We don't do impromptu visits in our culture very often. I think they're kind of nice, but on the other hand, I'm not brave enough to drop in unannounced myself, and I understand why they don't happen regularly. Or is it just a matter of age? Is it the sort of thing people in their 20s do, then stop as they enter middle age?

What a shame that we only get one go-round to figure out all of these little mysteries. 

Q2 and Good Shepherd

Adapted from a recent Facebook post...

On Saturday night I finally watched the last two Star Trek episodes I hadn't yet seen: "Q2" and "Good Shepherd," from Star Trek: Voyager. I'd seen part of "Q2" during its original run; a station glitch interrupted most of the broadcast. And hard as it may be to believe, I missed "Good Shepherd" entirely in its first run - I'd simply forgotten Voyager was on that night, and for some reason the VCR didn't catch it. Yeah, I was taping all the episodes back then, typically pausing the recording live to edit out the commercials.

The episodes aired fifteen and sixteen years ago, respectively. It was pretty alarming to see "Copyright MM" in the closing credits of "Good Shepherd," let me tell you...

Why did I wait so long, given that Voyager has been on DVD for years and I bought the sets back when they first came out? I honestly couldn't tell you. Maybe some part of me was saving them as a treat, even though Voyager is my least favourite of the Star Trek shows.

And you know, they were a treat. Neither episode was particularly good, even by Voyager standards, but they were familiar and warm and they espoused the values that brought me to Star Trek in the first place: the importance of working together for the common good, the idea that integrity matters, the search for scientific and ethical truth...

It was nice to take a step back into the 20th century for a couple of hours, even if it was via the 24th.

Sometimes it Takes Time to Sink In

It was only during the last couple of years that I learned the difference between rows and columns in Microsoft Excel. Columns, of course, go up and down, like...columns. 

Oregon Fail

A couple of friends have noted that I didn't write much about our trip to Portland, Oregon. While I enjoyed the trip, it went by so quickly that I found myself lacking a combination of time and inclination to take many photographs, something I already regret. But the truth is with our time in Portland so limited, and with the weather so hot and muggy, I found myself extremely disinclined to lug around my digital SLR. In fact, on this trip I took nearly as many photos with my cell phone as with my real camera.

There's also something to be said for just leaving some things to memory instead of trying to document every single important moment...and then missing them anyway, hidden behind your viewfinder. 

Abandoned in Place

Abandoned buildings, like this farmhouse in southern Manitoba near Virden, fascinate me. Who lived here? Where did they go? Why did they leave the house behind? The answers are probably mundane. And yet, no one is mundane at all...

Reverse Demotivational Poster

Demotivational Poster

The Parking Person

As I rolled into my downtown parking lot of choice this morning I noticed a woman with a clipboard standing at the ticket vending machine. After backing into my stall I saw that she was still there, poking away at the machine for far longer than it should have taken to purchase a ticket. 

By the time I clambered out of my car, she was gone. But as I was about to slide my credit card into the machine, I saw that there were two tickets already poking out of the ticket slot. Curious, I fished them out and noted that they were both valid for the day. I looked around for the woman, thinking she'd somehow mistakenly left the tickets behind, but then I realized that it would be silly to buy more than one ticket in the first place - unless your intent, all along, was to leave them behind for other motorists. I realized I was the recipient of a random act of kindness! 

My faith in humanity renewed, I took one of the tickets for myself and returned the other carefully to the ticket slot for the next lucky passer-by. This was no cheap gesture - parking costs $14 per day on that lot, and my anonymous benefactor had paid for at least two strangers to park. 

So thank you, anonymous do-gooder, for your generous gesture. I'll likely never know your name, but the thought is very much appreciated nonetheless. I'll pay it forward sometime this spring.