Every Sport is Derived From Tennis

The following geneology will reveal how all sports derive from Tennis. It's commonly known in the sciences that all sports are either descended from Tennis or Ping Pong. Which of these is the prime mover of sports is a futile debate, as Ping Pong is a cuter version of Tennis, while Tennis is clearly Ping Pong while standing on the table*. For the sake of this exercise, we will assume Tennis is the prime mover, because no one calls it “Ground Ping Pong,” but many refer to Ping Pong as “Table Tennis.”

Tennis is people separated by a net, whacking a ball at each other’s sides with a racket.

-Pairs Tennis is Tennis with more people; all other multi-person variants will be excluded

-Ping Pong is Tennis where you do not stand on the court*

-Badminton is slower, wispier Tennis

-Racquetball is Tennis where both players face the same direction

-Volleyball is Tennis with no rackets

-Pole-vault is Tennis where the goal is to get over the net

-Golf is Tennis with no opposition whatsoever and several clubs to defend yourself

-Fetch is one-way Tennis where the dog is your teammate

• Skeet-shooting is Fetch where the gun is your teammate
• -Bowling is Skeet-shooting with many targets and no ambition
              -Chess is bowling where the pins are skilled and fight back
• Checkers is Chess with no ambition again

• Baseball is one-way Tennis where the court is square and there too many people for so little to be happening
• -Cricket is more Baseball

-Football Europa/Soccer is Tennis without the net in the way, mostly with feet

• Football Americana is Soccer, mostly with hands
• Rugby is meaner-spirited Soccer
• Basketball is Soccer with an annoyingly placed goal, mostly with hands
• Field Hockey is Soccer, mostly with sticks
• Polo is Field Hockey that needlessly confuses horses
• Water Polo is Field Hockey in water
• Ice Hockey is Field Hockey, on ice
• Ice Soccer, sadly, does not exist

• Track is Soccer without anyone else in the way and no ball
• Nascar is Track in a car
• Equestrian is Track on a horse
• Swimming is Track in water
• Diving is Swimming without the follow-through
• Synchronized Swimming is Swimming where the goal is to not beat or lose to your opponent.
• Rowing is Swimming in a boat
• Yachting is Rowing if you’re rich
• Whitewater is Rowing in a boat when you can’t find a reasonable river

-Boxing is Tennis with no ball or subtlety

• Judo is Boxing with no manners
• Wrestling is Judo that starts on the floor
• Fencing is Boxing with swords
• Sumo is Boxing with no punching
• MMA is Boxing where you just hit them everywhere

Please let us know if you think we missed a sport. We hope to provide a holistic genealogy.

John at Otakon 2012

Welcome to Otakon 2012, an Asian culture convention that greeted 32,000 attendees this year.

Behold! Acres of B.O.

The convention has been an annual retreat for me for years. In many ways it’s my TED Talks, even though I go to film and show screenings rather than lectures. I don’t have the knowledge to curate viewing myself, but in a weekend I’m exposed to more new plots and characterizations than I’d find in a year’s subscription to HBO or Asimov’s. That’s not a slight against our American media, but recognition that it is American media. Otakon prominently features Japanese, Chinese, Indian and Korean film and fiction.

We have cross-cultural similarities, but they produce different thoughts and norms, which broaden an imagination largely trained by just one media culture. Even the mundane tropes of their TV shows cast different light on what we could do in our stories but never think about. No U.S. police procedural or cyperpunk was like Ghost in the Shell; no Romantic Comedy I’ve ever seen stacks up to Delhi Belly; and the only filmmaker I can compare Let the Bullets Fly to is Quentin Tarantino. I sit through some of the most juvenile programs, simply studying how they handle things we never think about. I sketched out the first original novel I ever wrote sitting in the back row during a High School Comedy marathon.

Totoro reminds John to stop being pretentious.

There are many reasons to go to something like this. The Voice Actors After Dark panel, where I heard a vampiric butler read Go The F*ck To Sleep, was one. The Anime Music Video Contest, in which fans create music videos of spliced popular music and clips from shows, routinely beats the hell out of what I see on MTV and validates it as an artform. I’ve got no desire to see Final Destination 5, but the fake trailer one fan made from its audio and clips from the anime Another is something I’d pay to watch, if only it were real. And then there’s cosplay.

I’ve never been into costuming. I enjoy that other people enjoy it, and have a profound appreciation for the fandom. As an author, I’d love to create characters that audiences would spend months patterning costumes after. Yet at the show I ran into a new breed of cosplayer, which almost inspired in me a desire to dress up. It’s not merely satisfactory to create a good likeness of your favorite character. These characters created the likenesses of their favorite characters from specific moments in their favorite stories.

For instance, anyone can fashion a purple vest and giant foam sword. But what about recreating the time Final Fantasy hero Cloud Strife dressed in drag to sneak into a brothel?

If only I were capable of photographing
myself high-fiving someone.

Full Metal Alchemist has enduring popularity in fandom, but it takes real tenacity to pretend you’re dead for two hours to recreate the saddest moment in the series.

Spoilers!

Yes. Yes, this is humanity tapping its full potential. My inspiration took me far enough to follow someone dressed as The Laughing Man for half a city block, until he was next to a payphone. If you know why, then you belong here.

Probably the only J.D. Salinger quote
that will ever appear on this site.

I didn’t bother too many people for photographs, especially as I only recognized a tenth or less of the characters. My favorite moments didn’t seem appropriate to photograph; people in intricate costumes at rest, hugging or chatting with friends they hadn’t seen in months or years. Once it leaves the individual experience, a lot of Speculative Fiction in any medium exists as an excuse to bond. Half the reason I photographed this group was just because they looked so happy to see each other.

For people with so many weapons, they were so cheery.

The other half was they looked like the bitchin’est version of the British Red Coats ever. Otaku and assorted anime fans get crapped on for liking such weird Japanese stuff. Why can’t they enjoy normal American things? You know, like...

It's Mysterio's hand gesture that gets me.

To be fair, both the anime-lovers and comics-lovers tend to get short shrift in our society. I endorse both the above-photographed groups, though, especially after they wore and carried all that stuff through a 100-degree city. Don’t bother asking why they’d want to go through such exertion - not the same week as the Olympics, my friend.

Fandom can get unnerving at such conventions. Craigslist fills up with roleplaying sex requests, and apparently in the Dealers’ Room one company set up a stripper pole for Panty & Stocking cosplayers. That grown women would do that for hours is entertaining to some segment. But for me, this is entertainment:

A stripper pole with a Gone Fishin’ sign. That’s all I can ask from any sales booth.

Bathroom Monologue: Don't Smile

"Quite often now I hear that people who smile too much are hiding something. They are likely stupid or unable to handle reality, and are thus untrustworthy. I wonder on this, because it strikes me that folk who frown too much aren’t hiding enough. Your marriage sucks? Your job sucks? Man, if you can’t handle that, then you aren’t trustworthy. A reasonable person can suppress mundane struggles and go around smiling to strangers. It’s that facial whiner who frowns because his train is ten minutes late that I won’t trust with an account. I expect every employee hates some aspect of his or her life. Smiling despite it is a sign you can handle your load."

Bathroom Monologue: Too Big To Swim

“So they train their whole lives just so they can train for three years just so they can swim for two minutes, and the majority of the people who get to swim for two minutes will be deemed failures? This, my dear, is where depression comes from.”

“Wait, Alison Schmidt is six-foot-one?”

“I see we’re taking different revelations from the Olympics.”

“Six-foot-one?”

“It’s fine, Lita. I’m sure you could take her in judo.”

“I’m six-foot-one!”

“Sure, but you have more practice at judo.”

“That’s too tall to swim.”

“According to whom? Not the Olympic committee.”

“According to my swim coach who said you had to be slim and elegant!”

“You should take him at judo.”

“Wait, what did the guy say? Missy Franklin’s wingspan is wider than she is tall?”

“Is that rare?”

“Yes. Measure my arms.”

“Can’t I measure something else?”

“You’re never touching anything else if you don’t measure them right now.”

“What the lady wants, the lady gets. You hold this end of the measure, though. We’re not all giants like you… swimmers.”

“I can’t believe this! All I wanted to do when I was a kid was swim. You couldn’t get me out of the water.”

“Certainly your pipsqueak dad couldn’t.”

“Dad. All he wanted me to do was bake.”

“You’re an awesome cook! It’s why I’m wider than I am tall. But not so much wingspan.”

“So? How wide is it?”

“I don’t want to say.”

“Say it.”

“This feels too much like when Jack Nicholson asks the surgeon for the mirror.”

“God damn it!”

“Seventy-four-ish. That’s, you know. That’s close to your height.”

“I could have been an Olympian!”

“What if they made an Olympic event for cakes? You could get the Gold Medal for flour. Well, I guess that’s already a thing, but—”

“Dad paid off that coach. I know it.”

“Maybe they were just dumb back then. I’m pretty sure when you were eleven, they still thought egg yellows were good for you.”

“If he was alive, I’d set his toupee on fire.”

“You could try out now.”

“I can’t try out now! These girls are, like, sixteen. That’s half… half my…”

“Please don’t give me that look like I’m supposed to finish your sentence. If I do, you’ll hurt me.”

“I had so much fun swimming. I wanted to do it more than anything, it was like flying in warm air. Do you even know how much I loved it?”

“No, because every time I go near water it’s for hydrotherapy. My leg makes the dream of the 200-meter backstroke a little harder to fathom.”

“I… hey, I didn’t… I just didn’t realize how much I missed it.”

“There’s a pool at the center. I think it’s ten bucks to mess around until closing time, if you want to do more than miss it.”

“You think?”

“I think ten dollars less sweets for me would do us both some good.”

Bathroom Monologue: Alternative Abstinence Argument, Redux

"Hey kids. You don’t know me because I’m not famous. I’m overweight, my fashion sense is dreadful and my beard is unkempt. I bring this all up because I fuck. Almost everyone I know fucks, and I don’t know many cool people. Fucking isn’t cool. It never has been and it never will be. It’s jamming an extra finger of meat inside a pink hole. Ignore premature ejaculation, rape, syphilis, chlamydia, HIV and the anxiety over whether your period is late for the next month – fucking is downright uncool because of who does it. Your mom fucks. She fucked to have you. Think about that the next time you’re swapping smut stories. Think about your mom moaning your dad’s name. Yeah. Fucking. Fun, but uncool."

Bathroom Monologue: To No One Real

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Bathroom Monologue: Steak the Vampires, Redux

“Here’s the deal,” Coach said as he heaped even more steak on Tim’s plate. It was pink, barely rare. The blood congealed with the juice of the spinach and lentils on the other side of the plate.

Tim looked at Josh. Josh just shrugged, took his plate and reached for the pepper grinder.

“You know how you’ve been saying the new janitor acts weird? How Susan and some other girls seem all drained and you thought it was vampires, and I told you to quit that shit?”

“Yeah,” Tim replied. He really didn’t want to get yelled at about that again, and couldn’t figure out what this had to do with a steak dinner.

“You know all that stuff about vampires? Bite you on the neck? Turn into bats? Crazy made-up shit?

“Yeah.”

“Well they’re real. They’re real and they’ll be coming tonight.” Coach rubbed his greasy hands together, then slopped the remainder of the steak onto his own plate. He cut it up as he spoke. “They’re coming in mass and they’re coming for you. Every kid on the team is going to be screwed. You’re the healthiest blood bags walking the streets.”

He gestured at Tim’s plate with the carving knife.

“Eat. You got to. It’s the plan I’ve got.”

Tim had a dozen objections, and none cared to voice themselves when his gym teacher was pointing a carving knife at him. He took a bite of his steak and grimaced.

“We’re going to steak them.”

“Stake them?” Josh asked from around a mouthful of meat. He didn’t seem to care. His parents never let him eat like this.

“Steak. E-A-K,” Coach enunciated slowly. “Vampires are magic, right? Well magic is weak as shit against iron. You read any old book and you see: iron stops witches’ spells and cages demons. So when they come, if they get you, they’re going to get a mouthful of iron-rich blood. Beef’s full of iron. So are those veggies. Shame I couldn’t get you some liver, but regardless, you’ll knock them right on their asses.”

Coach shrugged and contorted his face apologetically, then shoveled steak into his mouth.

Tim licked his lips, looking at Coach. He wondered if, in case vampires were actually coming, a History or Chemistry teacher would have come up with the same plan.

Josh handed him the pepper grinder.

Bathroom Monologue: Real News

“No news anchor has ever been off television for three years and returned. If you terminate me, you’re right that the three-year non-compete clause will kill my television career. You’re wrong that I won’t be able to hit back, though.

“I get paid enough to have lawyers who have parsed this clause, and there is nothing preventing me from going to Youtube and ripping you apart. More people watch a funny cat video than your leading sitcom. Now, this won’t hit with the internet-illiterate part of our audience, but it will poison the 18-25 demo your advertisers are terrified about. If you think I can’t get an audience, you’ve never seen a famous person go inflammatory online before.

“I can take my claims to the NY Times Op-Ed and The Huffington Post, and my exit will be the top story on every other network, but that’ll be a blip in a promotional tour. The book I write about you will sell more copies for every move you try to make to discredit it, and it will go digital-first, with links and social networks that will draw anyone with a Kindle or iPad to new media. Don’t be surprised if Facebook signs me as their first anchor for their first exclusive on-site programming, where I will get to cover any story I want. If that comes to pass, I sincerely hope that I get to cover your resignation from this network.”

Bathroom Monologue: The Severe Lady, Mahut-Ky

"She was one of the precious few examples of uniqueness I’ve ever encountered, and she was young, even if her expression was always quite old. She was frightfully tall and her stature suggested some voluptuousness to her character, but she wore clothing of such constraint you could not see even the inference of her figure. Even her hair was pinned as tightly her scalp as the scowl was to her lips. She wore a severity unmatched amongst her peers. Her manner was reserved, motions and words quick, eyes constantly across the scene for the most expedient conclusion that would render what she required. She had no patience for an overwritten book or solemn execution. Customs and politeness were, to her, barriers to a lifelong goal of destroying this wretched world we shared.

"If I never imagined such a person would end the world, it was only because I never imagined any single person could engineer such a thing. But if there were such a person, she was fine for the task. She was equipped to accomplish much in little time, and she had the audacity of youth, that inexperience that allows people to do what anyone with experience thinks cannot. One afternoon I sat in a parlor and listened to her proselytize how ours was a broken planet in dire need of the cleansing of life and renewal through nature’s bare machinations. It is perhaps the greatest testament to character I’ve ever witnessed, in that never during her bouts of venom or illogic did I resent her arguing that we all ought to take up arms, essentially against ourselves. I found in my breast only a longing that, should her impossible design come to fruition, I would have supported it.

"I did not join the cause, for I am a fellow of limited character, and she requires pliability. I do sell her everything at half-cost, though. She makes that much of me a follower in the faith."

Bathroom Monologue: Will Kill

Twitter will kill Facebook will kill Youtube will kill television will kill the movies will kill radio will kill live theatre will kill fiction will kill the serious novel will kill poetry will kill philosophy will kill actually going outside will kill sleep…

will kill conscious imagination

will kill reason

will kill dogma

will kill politics

will kill independence

will kill unity

will kill the natural order

will kill chaos

will kill nothing.

Bathroom Monologue: Loving Cannibals

Because they lived near The Z, there were some customs they couldn’t discard. Leaving their uncle to die would only make him wander into their camp later that night, hungry and distant. Conferring him to the soil would likewise assure his rise, and the buried rose with the strength of the land. His liver was too grave and they simply had had to behead him to prevent the turn, and soon it was impossible not to submit to other customs.

As they ate his feet, they told stories of the walks he took at dusk and where he might have gone, and the times he carried medicine back from the east with nothing but rags tied around his ankles.

As they ate his hands, they recollected the many pots these fingers had spun, and their mother reminisced on how these palms had helped deliver two of them into the world.

When they ate of his ribs, they spoke of his heart and courage, his lungs and broad voice, and of his infinite guts and gall. No one was allowed to remain silent, no mouth empty, and no metaphor unplumbed.

When all from littlest to eldest ached with fullness, they committed what was leftover to their stock of jerky, mixed and unsorted so that no one could avoid consuming his remains, and so no one who ate in the weeks ahead could forget him. To those outside The Z they seemed a mad folk, unwelcome to any but the keenest opportunists. To each other, customs made them family.

Bathroom Monologue: Tug on That Cape, Redux

The best part of being a superhero happened Saturday morning. He wished he didn’t feel that way, but it was true.

On Tuesday he caught a train as it was derailing. A couple of people broke their arms. There were no fatalities. He signed more autographs for the stranded commuters than there were bruises.

On Wednesday he airlifted an iceberg to the southern Sahara. The governments assured him this would help irrigation, or at least give the locals clean drinking water for a few weeks.

He spent Thursday and Friday traveling through space to correct the trajectory of two satellites headed out of the solar system. It would have been lifetimes to build and send new ones, but now all that work was saved and new photos were beamed to earth, showing the cosmos from an angle never before seen. He took a minute to look from that angle himself, in person, before heading back to earth.

The best part was Saturday morning and he couldn’t help himself. He woke up and his costume was missing from the clothesline. His wife was still asleep, facedown on her pillow and snoring happily.

He padded to the living room and found his cape stretched over two chairbacks, forming a tent. His one son wore the pants of his costume like giant sleeves, and his one daughter wore the shirt like a flowing dress that ran over her little feet. She was drooling on his insignia. They were both transfixed with morning cartoons.

Maybe, if he were more profound, some other time of the week would have been the best. He wasn’t, though.

Bathroom Monologue: A Chance in Hades

For one day every decade, one person will be admitted per hour into the grand halls of Hades itself. This person must be desperately in romantic love with a citizen of Hades, who must have died in some way before the age of twenty-one. Every contestant will be brought into the heart of the underworld and put face-to-face with their lost lover. They then have the one hour to exit Hades with their lost lover, exiting solely by foot (void where ferryman is necessary), and if the two should reach the mortal world, the lost lover will be restored to life. The only challenge is that once the living contestant comes face-to-face with their alleged lost lover, the two must not break eye contact until they return to the mortal world. If the contestant looks away at any time, at anything but this person he or she claims is so dear that he or she would plunge into the underworld in rescue, then the citizen of Hades will be ripped away and lost to them forever. It’s something of a bet about mortal nature, and perhaps cynical, but it’s a chance.

The Most Despicable Antagonists in Fiction

I got over a dozen responses to my open query on the most despicable antagonist in all of fiction. I've listed them in the order they were received. No two voters agreed, though the first two did aim at the same book. Without looking, what book would you have guessed would spawn two nominees for Most Despicable?

It wasn't Shakespeare or Harry Potter, but it was British:

Tony Noland was the first to enter, saying:

The British legal system, in Bleak House. Many lives destroyed by Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

Katherine Hajer was second, also pegging Dickens’s Bleak House:

Any antagonist who does evil in the name of kindness or righteousness. Let's go with Tulkinghorn, then. I don't know about "most", but he's a great example.

  

Then Larry Kollar asked:

How about Satan in The Book of Job? Ruined his life & health on a bet.

Dave Cornford said:

Nils Bjurman from Larssen's Millennium trilogy. Few to choose from in those books.

Catherine Russell said:

Okay, well in print (but MEANT to be performed) Iago from Othello is the most despicable imo because he ruins lives for no other reason than sheer spite and jealousy.

Helen Howell said:

For me it's Voldemort from Harry Potter, because he's power mad and will try to destroy anyone who stands in his way.

Joshuo Londero said:

In The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B the main character meets a little boy at boarding school of the same name. He goes by the nick-name Beefy. They become life-long friends, but Beefy has a way of turning everything to shit. He is one of the most vile, despicable and endearing characters I have ever met.

Beverly Fox said:

Baby Kochamma from The God of Small Things because she destroys lives using the most age-old weapons available: religion and manipulation.

Cynthia Schuerr said:

Jane Hudson in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? She was frightful. It's very old and not many may remember the horrible things she did to her sister. But she was truly despicable. She kept her sister locked up and tormented her physically and emotionally.

Chuck Allen said:

I vote Mrs. Coulter from Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy because crimes against children seem especially evil to me.

Eric Krause said:

I'd say Pennywise the Clown from Stephen King's It has to be up there. Just the way he gets Georgie at the very beginning would put him on the list, and he's just getting started there.

Jemma Mayer said:

For despicability, I nominate the Patriarch Rostov from Jacqueline Carey's book Naamah's Curse. Over the months of her captivity, he forces the main character to tell him about sleeping with the multiple people she's fallen in love with, one of whom is now dead, and tells her it's a sin, sullying her memories of her loved ones and her opinion of herself. He's sadistic too, of course, but I hate that he tries to turn her own thoughts and feelings against her.

And just before midnight on the deadline, Randall Nichols wrote in:

Darcy Parker from Strangers in Paradise - alive, she was little more than your average, mustache twisting villainess, sporting all the cliches of manhating, weaponized sex, incest, pimping, and organized crime. But the way the specter of her and her actions hovers over Katchoo's life after she's already died, sucking in David, Casey, and even the the seemingly unshakable amazon Tambi [the woman who killed her] is her true evil - by having a hand in bringing almost of all of Katchoo's loved ones into her life, she poisons almost ever relationship a damaged woman has.

If you have your own opinion, feel free to drop it in a tweet or in the Comments below and I'll add you in. Now that we've come to the end, you may ask: "What's our host's opinion?"

Well, I do have one, and I'm unsurprised no one picked it. I kept it down to an honest Tweet-length.

I said:

The kid from Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree. After everything else, he even takes the tree’s pathos.

True Story of John: YA Fiction Versus Real Young Adults

I didn’t have much of a YA phase when I was an actual young adult. By my teens I wanted Stephen King and Noam Chomsky and whatever else people my age weren’t supposed to be able to handle, just as I craved R-rated movies and staying up past midnight. I wanted meatier fiction with more robust characters and plots, and for authors to do more with their prose. It’s only in recent years that I’ve tried to acquire a taste, or at least a respect for YA.

Among titles about teens, few excited me as much as Among Others. It stormed the early 2012 awards, and as soon as it was available at my library I seized the peach-colored paperback. I found a folding chair and carried the book down to the lake, away from phones and computer and human distractions. After slathering my Irish self with sun tan lotion, I sat back to read of Jo Walton’s faerie-loving bookworm. “Morwenna,” what an exotic name, and she was so reserved, so sympathetically introverted and brave and well-read and well-meaning and timid and enchanting and wise within her inexperience. She was the archetype of a child, and I could think of no adolescent trait she lacked.

A few dozen pages and a stiff wake shaking the dock later, I looked up from the paperback. Behind me in the woods there was a girl screaming at her wrinkled grandmother. The girl could have been the age I imagined Walton’s protagonist to be, though she behaved nothing like what I’d been imagining as she wriggled in her grandmother’s grip. I also hadn’t imagined Morwenna in a pink bathing suit.

Most of what she screamed was raw noise, not words, since protest is often the chief weapon of children. There were stray phrases about how unfair she was, and how she was mean and she wished she were dead. The grandmother was less audible over the shrieking, but I made out that the girl had been swimming for an hour and they’d be late for something if they didn’t leave now. “But I’m sorry,” I heard as they trekked towards a car in a hail of juvenile wailing.

For several moments afterward it was difficult to look at Among Others, not unlike the difficulty of meeting someone in the eyes after a humiliation. I clucked my tongue at this portrait of a fictional girl and the display of a real one in stereo.

“Realism,” I said. I had to laugh to myself. Fiction is harder to get into when you’re hit with the reasons people mistake it for lies. 

It's since come to my attention that Jo Walton does not consider her novel to be YA.

Bathroom Monologue: Set your hair on fire

So set your hair on fire. It’s the easiest way to do things; nobody questions a burning man, and it’ll all grow back after you drink them. Douse a little lighter fluid on your scalp as you walk up to their door, and howl as loud as you can. If they don’t open immediately, pound on their windows. They always come out for that, and when you beg them for water or to dunk your head in a toilet, they always invite you in. Once you’re in, do whatever you want. I only drink enough to make it through the night, since personally, I feel bad about draining good Samaritans dry.

Bathroom Monologue: John is Not a Shark

During the reformat I lost my Skype information and had to create a new account. But how could I convince my friends to add me to their contacts when no one was online?


This, like everything else, can be solved with a Bathroom Monologue.

Bathroom Monologue: Missing: one short-haired cat burglar

MISSING

one short-haired cat burglar

lost little kitten, no collar

wears leather two sizes too small

may be in possession of rare coin collection

REWARD offered for coin collection

cat burglar need not be returned

photo of body acceptable

REWARD DOUBLED if she’s cut in half

warning: claws v. sharp

Bathroom Monologue: Mana From Heaven

There’s peculiar weather in the most southerly isles. It’s more predictable than the seasons themselves, more predictable than war and politics, more predictable than old milk turning to new smells or young love turning to old disappointments.

One day a year, and on the same day every year, it snows yellow and green flakes across those shores. They’re cold as ice, and they stack and stick and turn into fluffy mounds of odd snow, and they taste something like powdered mango that’s gone off.

Originally the islanders ate such flakes out of poverty, but soon they realized the unique properties of the annual precipitation. It appears anyone who eats these “mana flakes” is given the gift of magic, able to cast spells from the tops of their heads and keep going until they tire themselves out.

Folks fly from island to island, and conjure parades of imaginary creatures, and do the same old card tricks they always do except for this day they’re real. There is something like a two of spades really vanishing rather than going up your sleeve that tickles a certain kind of person. I spent one such frosty afternoon listening to a little girl teach her pet pink elephant how to sing. Never been much of a mana flake eater myself, though I do enjoy watching the tourists frolic in waking dreams. My hotel takes all major credit cards.

Consumed: Walter Lewin, R. Scott Bakker, and Saint's Row The Third

Today the second and final of the "lost episodes" of the Consumed Podcast is up and available. It's our most eclectic mix of topics ever, and features one of my favorite pieces of media in years.

That media is Saint's Row the Third, a videogame from THQ and Volition. In many ways it is what ignorant people think Grand Theft Auto is: loud, crass, violent, anarchic and shameless. It pulls the rare trick of taking slews of potentially offensive material and turning them into something lovable; it's an open-world game so absurd that everyone I've shown it to has fallen in love with it. There's just no other game out there that has a giant purple stuffed bunny lashed to a whaling ship as a lure so a gang of drug-running luchadores can jump you. The podcast discussion gets particularly fun when we realize this game passes not only The Bechdel Test, but tests for representations of transgender characters.

On the more serious side, we also have two books to discuss. The first is R. Scott Bakker's The Darkness That Comes Before, a Fantasy novel that Max actually enjoyed for once. Bakker's philosophy and psychology makes us question recent trends in characters who know or manipulate too much to remain believable, and the tenuous relationship between skepticism and religion worlds with bizarre and inscrutable events.

Lastly Nat provided us a copy of Walter Lewin's gorgeous For the Love of Physics, which may be the best science-advocate book I've read. If you haven't seen Lewin's energetic lectures on Youtube, then you should check them out (just as soon as you give our podcast a listen). He begs comparisons to Hawking, Sagan and Tyson, and we ponder what the best ways are to teach Physics, the science that seems to turn the most number of people giddy, while still scaring off so many others.

They are about as different as three topics could possibly get, and yet it's one of our best podcasts. A big pat on the back to Max for digging this one out of the archives and polishing it up. You can get the episode for free right here.

Who is the most despicable antagonist in fiction?

Next Tuesday I will be hosting a meta-blog on this very site. All writers and readers are welcome to participate, and it only takes one sentence to pitch in. To participate, simply answer the following question:

Who is the most despicable antagonist in fiction?

Give us the name, the source material, and if you please, a sentence or two on why. Ideally you’ll tweet this to me @Wiswell or leave it in the Comments of this post. It can be from any form of fiction, including sequential art. The answer will look something like this:

Ken Kesey says:

Screwtape from C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. He spends the whole book advising Wormwood on how to ruin a life and he’s insipid about it.

Though I doubt Mr. Kesey will participate, you are welcome to. I’ll be happy to you’re your name to any blog, page or book you please. Submissions end on Sunday, July 22^nd. On Tuesday, July 24th, we'll see a master list of everyone's answers. Keep your answer short, keep it honest, and we ought to have an interesting and diverse list of what people see as despicable.

So, what do you think?

True Stories of John: Grandma's 95th Birthday

This weekend I did my good deed for the year. I spent the last several months wrangling my brother, sister and aunt from three very different locales and shuttled them down to Maryland for my grandmother’s 95^th birthday. 

While there were many good moments this weekend, the best came months before it, when my family members were goaded just enough that they took over the planning and didn’t need a mastermind anymore. They needed me to start it, tell them where to go, who to call, what was covered, what to do when, and then, without me knowing, I was being told who my ride was and where to sleep. It was like a plan coming together, though one that required eight-hour trips each way for my sickly body.

The whole thing was worth it when my grandmother opened the door, laid eyes on my brother, and her face opened up. Later my sister, a fully grown chemist, laid on the sofa with her head in Grandma’s lap and they reminisced about life twenty years ago. 

I got an entire restaurant to sing Happy Birthday to her while the waitress brought in the cake we snuck behind Grandma’s back. On Sunday morning we sat with her on her actual 95^th birthday and she dug out faded envelope with her baby photos, her high school graduation, college graduation, and wedding with the original John Wiswell.

Everyone managed to step on someone’s toes at some point this weekend because that is how families work, but I could not have asked for a better birthday for my grandmother. We got her a tiara, and slippers, and a card that sang “Born to be Wild,” and learned that Grandma doesn’t know what “Born to be Wild” is.

Of the many highlights, my favorite is below.

Her final birthday gift was a brand new copy of Fifty Shades of Grey. A gag gift (or ball gag gift, if you ask me). It turns out my sweet old granny knows what this book is and hollered laughing at the ceiling over it. She promises to hide it under her pillow when polite company comes over. It’s only better that the book was Mom’s idea.

Bathroom Monologue: Revenge of Pigs

The Pigs were mistrusted, distrusted and even disdained after the revolution, so their generosity was surprising to many, especially to horses. The farm fell on hard times without centralized management, and it turned out winter kind of sucked as far as food supplies. Their offer of unlimited grazing appealed at first to the forgiving, and then to the hungry. The Pigs promised hundreds of miles of land for which any beast could sup on all the grass they found, open to everyone, refusing no one. They would even stay here, refusing to eat of the foreign grass and look after the farm while the other animals ate abroad. It was their attempt to show they were more equal than others. Day by day their haters dwindled, largely in the face of no local vegetation, joining the steady stream of free-thinking critters excited for a free meal. They’d never heard of a “tundra” before, but they couldn’t wait to get there.

Bathroom Monologue: Blatant Sports Night Riff

"They had this amazing stripper."

"Amazing?"

"He was built like a Greek god."

"Did he have a better body than me?"

"Of course he did, Casey. It's his job."

"Okay, but when men are asked that question, they know how to answer it."

"Oh yeah? Did the last woman you saw naked have a better body than me?"

"Of course she was, Dana. That's why I picked her over you."

"Men do not know how to answer that question."

"It worked for me."

Bathroom Monologue: Regret the Right Thing

“I love you, Mom!”

Why did he have to say that? Of everything Kyle could have said on his way out the door, or every nothing, of all the times he muttered in his life. Why did he have to be audible that afternoon? And why did he have to yell that he loved her right then? Why not any other time, she couldn’t remember any other time in at least two years, so why not pick any moment in those two years other than the last?

Kyle was above embarrassing emotions. He was too old, too young, too manly, too preoccupied, too thoughtless, too next-generation. She played out the reasons as she wandered his room, and her room, and the garden he’d planted for her birthday, around the tree fort she’d broken her hand building for him. It was reducible, she thought one midnight: he was what she’d been at that age. She would have made fun of such clichés when she was his age, but now he’d never be her age.

Now it was all she heard. Now when the pressure cooker hissed, she heard, “I love you, Mom!” Now when the alarm clock beeped, waking her or confirming she’d laid awake all night, she heard him yelling between the chirps, “I love you, Mom!” When tires screeched on the pavement outside their house, she imagined her boy skidding off the highway and yelling, “I love you, Mom!” Twice now when Freddie opened the front door, she’d honestly heard him yelling it.

Some nights she felt like a living ghost, her son’s ghost, inspired by him, tethered by him, tortured by his absence, tortured by his refusal to come back through any doorway she checked. The neighbors said she wandered, as though walking around your own property was uncouth just because of the hour. She’d paid her mortgage, she’d earned this place without her runaway husband, and raised two good boys at the same time. So didn’t she have the right? Who had the gall to revoke that, to call the cops, to call Freddie to intervene in her rights?

Freddie wanted to help her. She saw it in his face, mixed in with the hurt of being the other son, the other man, the person she couldn’t help but find less interest in, all because he was simply there. He slept on the sofa, which wasn’t even a fold out, to make sure she wasn’t alone. Sometimes when she turned into a ghost, he followed her around the house, taking sharp things out of her hands. She forgot she picked those up. Sometimes he put stress balls into her palm, a sort of jestful, sort of earnest compromise.

She sat on the coffee table Freddie had bought her, squeezing a stress ball until she felt the sand inside grate against her fingertips, and watching her surviving boy sleep. Her eyes lit on his chest, constantly assuring herself that he was breathing, that he was okay, as though if she was certain enough one was alive, then the other would come home, come through the front door and yell, “I love you, Mom!”

Freddie murmured something in his sleep, something idle, something anodyne, something intelligible. Something that wouldn’t haunt anyone. She wished she could fixate on that, and knew she couldn’t. So she reached out and stroked his mangy beard, and whispered, “I love you, too.”

Bathroom Monologue: Perfect Ruin

The golems knew little about their ruins. They retained information poorly, and had been at a loss for order ever since the returning dinosaurs ate their creators. The returning dinosaurs did not eat the golems because the golems were made out of rocks and hair.

The dinosaurs ignored their temple, since it was made of still more rocks. It was The Apocalypse of Skyfire that ruined it, with the meteors and meteorites, and very little fire, and very little visible sky. The golems tried and failed to rebuild the pillars and ceilings for several hundred years, before The Apocalypse of Demons, which scorched the entire place and destroyed two thirds of their otherwise amortal ranks.

It was the devastation that led them to finally being useful again. Many golems lost limbs to the wicked demons, and went about trying to rebuild themselves in order to rebuild the ruins. Except golems have never been any good at self-determination, and one golem missing one arm linked itself to the remains of twelve of its dismembered kin. This did not spawn a nightmarish granite caterpillar, but rather a rippling wall of loyal minerals.

This golem-that-was-thirteen crossed a golem-that-was-twenty, and five golems-that-were-five became a disorderly link-of-twenty-five. None of them were decent architects, but they were damnably difficult to get around. Golem after broken golem built upon each other, linking or simply climbing until they formed a consenting dome over the ruins.

Then? They stood still. It was the single greatest event in golem autonomy ever known. And while it seems petty compared to their biological competitors, it’s kept their ruins in perfect condition for three apocalypses since. Nothing’s managed to mess up their beloved property any worse.

Bathroom Monologue: His Damned Niece

His damned niece.

He got up two hours before Denice every morning, so they couldn't talk about Freddie, or about work, or their inevitable divorce. Getting up that early, rising with that little sleep, made it feel like the avoidance postponed inevitabilities. He took his one cup of coffee in Freddie's doorway, watching the underdeveloped chest inflate under the instruction of tubes. He always left before the boy woke. He did so for many reasons, but mostly for one.

He took forty minutes in the parking lot, leaning on the steering wheel, exercising his breathing. Music, self-help books, even pot didn't steady his nerves as much as gathering his will over time. The gradual tick towards work.

He cancelled all his company e-mails accounts, refused any physical mail at the office, and kept his phone off until he walked out the building's doors. No one overheard a single sentence, and when they asked, his sentence was always, "Fine, Denice thinks he'll be a ball star," followed by an annoyed exhalation that always shut the conversation down.

And it worked. For weeks it constructed the silence on the topic that he needed, and then his God-damned niece had to fuck it up. A grown woman would have known that not answering her e-mails meant to leave him alone. She had to call his department and ask how he was doing with his son's cancer. That call spread like Freddie's disease, through the body of his workplace, though his co-workers and superiors, atrophying his morning in the parking lot, corrupting it into therapy sessions and office-mates dropping by to ask how the kid was. It made everyone feel at liberty to prod inside his wounds. He never asked anyone to deal with it. They told him to, and they controlled his family's health insurance.

Bathroom Monologue: TiMechanics Repitch

Introducing TiMechanics-brand time machines!

Tell your aunt how you feel before the old bat died!

Getting bad grades? Take that Earth Science exam as many times as you like!

Forget an item at the store? Now you can go back with the coupon, and pay attention to catch the clerk looking down your blouse this time!

And the best thing is that TiMechanics brand time machines are up to 67% accurate*, the most reliable on the market.

TiMechanics: where every second is precious.

*TiMechanics brand time machines may result in chronal dislodging, schizophrenia, and/or accidental transportation to the Pleistocene epoch. If you are mauled by a sabre-toothed cat send defective TiMechanics merchandise and proof of purchase to TiMechanics Headquarters at 0 Washington Avenue, New Washington, circa 2801. Consult an estate attorney before using TiMechanics. Warranties voided by paradox.

Consumed 8: Skyrim, Dark Souls, Secret of Kells &

The latest episode of Consumed is up today. It's actually not the latest, but a behemoth "lost" episode from several months ago. It manages to transcend time by leading in with Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, and discussing particular problems that game has that Dawnguard hasn't fixed. Is it just generic Fantasy? Why are blockbuster games so entrenched in world-building that was trite in prose decades ago? And when does filling out a giant world cause creativity to collapse and eat itself?

Nat Sylva and Max Cantor considerately waded through all these issues, and then into Dark Souls, Skyrim's big competition that's due to leap from console to PC soon. Max has some inspired ranting on why the two franchises are nothing alike, and why he can't stop playing it. Even though this is a lost episode from months ago, Max actually still hasn't stopped.

The most provocative topics came from our discussion of The Secret of Kells, a beautifully animated film with some serious trouble handling race. We debated token roles in media, as well as the popular theme of "HERO THINKS TRADITION IS BAD" and how ambitious such writing rarely gets.


We were also joined by educator Ross Dillon, since he had keys to the apartment and Max hasn't taken any self-defense classes. Ross begged us to discuss Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the show too smart for its own good that 30 Rock trampled to death a few years ago. It had a strong heart, and we discussed how the series had aged since its brief run, and the incredibly gutsy elements the cast managed to get onto network television. The stance on Cocaine V. Drunk Driving is still stunning to me.

You can download the podcast or shout feedback right here.

Bathroom Monologue: Spider-Manologue

“People say I’m just spider-powers and a pretty face I keep behind a mask, but I’ve got more to offer. Did you know I was a teenager when I developed a fluid that was stronger than steel? Also wrist-mounted squirt gun that could spray that fluid several hundred yards in a splitsecond. For the work of a teen, it’s surprising I wasn’t picked up by Super Soaker, right? But don’t stop there. In my garage, I made a costume thin enough that I could cling to walls through it while supportive enough that I don’t freeze my butt off on top of skyscrapers. This is a tall one, by the way. If the webbing gives and you fall, you might be dead before I can catch you. That happens sometimes. Before I could even get a learner’s permit to drive, I’d built homing devices, broken into Fantastic Four Plaza, and… well, I caught you. So I guess the radioactive spider that bit me as a teen was pretty smart, or criminals are getting a lot dumber. So what I’m saying is: I could make this a very long night for you, or you could just tell me where the old lady is.”