Death Is Bad

I grew up inside my own head. I read a lot, and thought a lot, and didn’t care for physical play. I was scrawny as a kid, chubby as a young adult. I disliked being constrained to a body. It was something that tied my mind down. I would have preferred to be transferred into a robot body, or even eschew the physical altogether and live entirely within a computer.

Now that I am fit, I revel in my body. I love having a physical form and using it to do things. Simply being alive in a physical vessel is a constant pleasure.* I stretch, I flex, I feel air across my skin. I wish I had started working out years ago, this is a whole new facet to life. It feels like I was living in two dimensions before, and a whole third dimension has opened up to me, an entire new axis of experience. It is amazing. I don’t even know how I could explain it to my younger self, there’s no words that can convey the feeling. Or rather, there must be words, but I am not skilled enough to deploy them. I refuse to believe that someone of sufficient skill couldn’t explain how this feels. Even so, my younger self would not believe them. I see young people who are out of shape and obviously just don’t care and I want to say something to them, to wake them up, but I know it won’t make any difference. Most likely they’ll think I’m an asshole. So I hold my peace and hope they’ll discover this for themselves some day.

Unfortunately, as is always the case, caring about something also means it can hurt you. When I was younger, I could have been crippled and not cared too much. Old age didn’t seem all that terrible, as long as my mind was sharp. Now, I fear what will happen as I age. Already my body is starting to show signs of wear. Eventually it’ll start to fail on me. Moving quickly will hurt my joints. My muscles will atrophy and my insides will pain me every day. Many common illnesses will have the potential to be fatal. I almost wish I hadn’t found this aspect of life, knowing how it’ll be ripped away from me later.

It is worth the existential terror, though. My life would have been much emptier without this glorious physical aspect I’ve found, I think I’ll have been happier having experienced this and lost it, than had I lived never experiencing this physical joy.**

Seriously though, let’s solve this aging shit already.

*Although I admit, I’m still wary of the whole “eating” concept. That’s kinda gross.)

**Yes, perhaps this is a delusion born of the fact that I can’t go back. I can’t double-guess myself ad infinitum.

I met a number of cool people at the con, and I regret not having gotten pics of more of them. In particular – Kevin Riggle, who hung out with me a fair bit of Friday, and Anaea Lay (author of Your Cities) who was my “con girlfriend” in that we hung out much of Sunday and went to the awards together. She has just posted the first post-Hugo-win interview with Author Ken Liu (of Paper Menagerie, which deserved the Hugo so much! It was beautiful. Much better than that Movement thing I wrote about)

This is Anaea Lay (far left), I went up to her after a panel because 1) she was cute, and 2) I figured I could actually start a conversation with the whole similarity-of-names thing (originally my first name was pronounced exactly like hers except with an “sh” sound added to the end). Turns out they do both have origins in greek antiquity. :)

Learned a bit more about myself too. Figured I had most of that stuff ironed out already, but it turns out that growing as a person doesn’t mean you’re done growing, it just means you’re done making all the noob mistakes and can start working on slightly more complex mistakes now. :) My actual girlfriend (as opposed to Con girlfriend) recommended that I not mention that I have a girlfriend at the con. We’re monogomish, and she’s got a bit of experience with that, but this was my first time without her by my side. It’s easier when you present as a couple, how do you slip that in when the SO isn’t there? I tried that and I hated it. Several times I was about to mention her and I had to stop myself. It made me feel skeevy and dishonest, and I didn’t much like myself. A lot of people in SF/F fandom identify as poly (I still dislike the term… I’m not poly, I’m just monogomish) so I shoulda just been direct about it. Bleh. Lesson learned.

On to further coolness!

I went to the live recording of The SF Squeecast. I went for two reasons – 1) Cat Valente was there, and I’d seen her on a previous panel. She’s smokin’ hot, and she’s got an intense charismatic prescence about her. It makes you want to be near her more. (she’s second from the left) 2) I needed something light and fun to lift the spirits, and podcasts are usually that sort of entertainment. Especially, one would assume, podcasts with the word squee in them. It did not dissappoint! It may have been even better than the Disaster Response in SF panel in terms of pure fun (hard to say). Seanan McGuire (aka Mira Grant, far left) stole the show, she is an absolute RIOT. If the hyper chibi anime girl jumped into the real world, she’d be Seanan. If fact, she might actually BE an escaped anime charecter, she looked distinctly dissapointed a couple times that she couldn’t pratfall on command. I’ll post a link to the episode once it’s available, it was a blast.

I now understand the Newflesh trilogy a little better. It’s just Seanan romping around having a blast in a B zombie movie. Hell, Shaun is basically Seanan. I can see why she gets Hugo nominations from her fans. It’s impossible not to like her, and you want to have a good time along with her. Deadline is still a bad book (as highlighted in the FAQ), but now I understand.

The Awards themselves were a blast. Scalzi was very entertaining (as always), the pomp was great, the whole thing was awesome. And I got a pic of me with Zach Weiner!!!!! WOOOOO!!!

Note: I wrote this before Death Is Bad was up. I originally posted it to my other site, HPMoR:The Podcast. I’ve moved it here, but I’ve left the original post uneditted.

I was woken up this morning by my phone ringing. I ignored the first call, but when it was followed by another call immediately I assumed something was urgently wrong. It was my brother, stationed in New York, calling to ask if I’d “done anything dumb” like go see the Batman midnight premiere. After a “What? No…?” he said that was good and he had to call our other brother.

For a second I considered going back to bed. But when that’s your wake up call you know something bad has happened at a Denver Batman premiere. And since it’s a Batman premiere, you immediately think a crazy man shot, exploded, or otherwise murderized a movie theater.

I think everyone I know is safe. At the very least, everyone I care about deeply is safe.

Some small part of me can almost empathize with the shooter. That’s the shit part of all this, and that’s why I need to vent.

A truly great work of fiction changes the way you see the world. The Dark Knight (2^nd movie) was truly great. That’s why there were rumors after Heath Ledger’s passing that his acting as the Joker was partly responsible for his death. Take something that’ll twist your view of humanity and reality for two hours, make yourself the focal point of that twisting, and live it for months. How could someone not be changed by that? All folk psychology. Actually shooting a movie is nothing like living inside it. As Jack Nicholson said, to suggest his death was caused by a role he played is insulting to actors everywhere, and to the memory of Ledger in particular.

But the audience, we can live in a movie for two hours. If someone gets really wrapped up in it, he can live in that world for days, or months. He already has to be a little bit crazy, of course, a bit detached. And that’s why we can relate to the crazy-fuck shooter. We’re all a little bit crazy nowadays, we all live in a world that’s only half real, the other half a constructed façade we make for ourselves and agree to respect. So we imagine what it must be like, to be more than just a bit crazy, to be full-on insane and tear through that façade and be unable to understand why everyone else is still bound by it. There is nothing there!

Now and then, there is a slip. What if someone really WAS the Joker? What if someone brought that chaos into the real world, and showed people what a joke we all live inside of? It wouldn’t take much, would it? Go to a movie theater and bring them into the movie. Make life surreal, make it like the altered reality I’ve been half-living all these months. It shouldn’t be that hard, to make life a movie.

The real question is – Joker outfit, or Bane outfit? At first glance it should be the Joker outfit. After all, this is a Joker emulation. It is exactly the sort of thing he would do. And no one’s seen Bane yet, this may not be Bane’s style. It probably isn’t, actually, he seems more focused than the Joker. So… Joker. But – Joker is sooo two years ago. Bane is now. Bane is what’s happening. When bringing the movies to life you have to bring the current movie that everyone cares about to life. Not the last installment. How sad. Poor little crazy man, living in the past, all hung up on a fad that’s passed. No, it has to be new, it has to be hip. As every revolutionary knows, style is important. So – Bane it is. Black leather and gas mask. Done.

Who knows but Joker would’ve done the same?

Obviously this is horrific, and only an actual insane person would do this. The brother who called me just got back from a year-long tour in Afghanistan. I can’t imagine him going to a midnight showing, out for some fun with his friends in a supposedly safe place, able to finally be at ease… and then have this madman break in and start shooting. Maybe shoot my brother, leave him crippled, or dead. Surviving a year at war only to be killed in a movie theater.

Actually I can imagine it, which is worse. What I can’t imagine is my reaction.

I hate that I can relate. When one steps back for just one second and considers what’s actually happening… the lives destroyed, the way the real world is torn asunder. How could I have empathized even for one minute? But then you step forward again and there it is. It’s intoxicating while you’re in it. Intoxicating is actually a good analogy, it’s just as distorting and harmful. It’s the same way deep religion submerses you in a fantastic altered reality.

I had an almost identical reaction to the Columbine shooting. Although this really can’t compare. This was just waking up and hearing the news. Columbine played out live in front of me, stretching out over hours. I chain-smoked while I watched, and wrote, although I don’t have those notes anymore. I’m sure they were similar. I’m not sure why I chain-smoked through it. I suppose it felt appropriate to have the air swimming with murky whorls of grey, dancing in the sunbeams. One always tries to shape their environment to reflect their mental state, no?

Why is the President commenting on this? Are we all really that close to the line of insanity? Is that why this is such a big story right now? Kids are shot every day in the inner cities, no one comments on that. Maybe it’s just because this is not part of the plan.

I don’t know if my mental state actually reflects what these mad fucks are feeling. Maybe I’m projecting far too much. I think I can say one thing with some confidence though. When they actually went through with these acts, the reality of what happened was nothing at all like how they imagined it would be.