The enemy's gate is...where?

Ender's Game has been my favourite novel since I was eleven. I was delighted to see Linday Ellis take on the novel, or rather, the infamy the novel has recieved because of the beliefs of its author.

The movie is coming out in 2013 and I am torn whether or not to see it. I once had an exchange with Nash of That Guy With the Glasses on Twitter about the issue, he being of the opinion that Orson Scott Card does not deserve material support. My belief was that a work of art can stand apart from the beliefs of a creator unless the creator is intent on cramming it down your throat.

When the movie comes out, expect calls for a boycott, given the recent attention regarding Chick-Fil-A in the States. Gays haven't quite reached the levels of marriage equality we enjoy in Canada, and they're fighting back hard, fighting against the tide of obstinate conservatives.

I am an apsiring writer. I am looking to Orson Scott Card, not as a role model, but as a cautionary tale.

Within recent years, to be undiplomatic, Card has gone over the deep end. No, I haven't read his latest books, but all the negative buzz around it has discouraged me. Yes, it could be argued I should read them and make up my own mind. Thing is, I don't belive people are piling up on Card without merit. Freedom of speech entitles you to be heard, not respected---particularly if what you have to say is the stupidest idea on the planet.

Card, to be blunt, has forfeited his ability to write, by which I mean explore themes and ideas, in favour of twisting his talents into polemics. That is very, very sad. Someone who became a major talent and write some of the most influential and seminal works in the genre has hauled up the drawbridge so he can be the little king in the empty fortress in his own mind.

I'm scared of that being the inevitable fate of a writer. I'm hoping this is a fate that can be avoided.

An over-examined life

I am impatiently waiting to hear back from York University, who interviewed me for a temporary position in the university bookstore, and who said that they would call me at the end of this week. This is anything but a definite time so I am trying to stay cheerful but panic, inevitably, is taking hold. If I don't get this job, I haven't the foggiest idea of what I'm going to do.

What pisses me off the most of it is that everything I want to do with my life, just about everything, has to be placed on hold until I get a regular paycheque. Hopefully, unlike my past job, it would actually impact my savings. If I do not hear back from them by two o'clock tomorrow I'm calling them and requesting an answer. I have been given the silent treatment so many times over the past two years I will not accept it anymore.

What makes me anxious the most is that my lack of money is cutting into my ability to live my life.

A happy life is a proactive one. I have never been a daredevil, or someone who just casts his anxieties to the wind and pushes forward boldly, but I have never been completley inhibited either. In fact, the past five years, while having their ups and downs, have been mostly positive for me. When it was not positive it was sheer tortute, and I am trying, so far without success, to dig myself out of the latest trough. I have not let unemployment interfere with my life, but I have been unemployed for so long that if I do not find a job soon it is going to get highly problematic.

My previous post was about my fears about death and any existence thereafter. Really, the only guarantee of freedom from fear of death is a well lived life.

If you truly have lived you don't need to fear permanent unconsciousness. Anything coming after life, that's just gravy. There are people I wish to emulate because I believe that they are living their lives to the fullest, and I want to follow their example.

I have anxieties, even in the best of times, that I have not lived enough. I have never been an extraverted, outgoing person. But I don't consider myself deprived: I've been to London, Paris and New York; I have gone SCUBA diving (I haven't certified yet, in the same way you don't always pass your driver's test the first time); I've performed volunteer service I am proud of; I've been to  Worldcon; I've lived in a city other than the one I was born in; I've met favourite authors; and I probably could keep going on. You could credibly say that I am proud of my accomplishments---and I am. I want to do more.

I'm insatiable; I am a perfectionist who wishes that his zeal for perfection would trickled down into his life. Lacking money drives me crazy, though lately I have made peace with my poverty. The worst thing about being unemployed? You get used to it.

Even if I did have the money I need I would drive myself crazy since I am very careful with my money to a fault. More or less, more than most people, I think. Once I get a steady paycheque I can relax a bit about spending, since I have never been loose with my money. I really should relax about money though not having any is a major problem.

Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. I have the opposite problem: I've examined my life, know what I want to do, and I'm almost frantic at making my life the best it could be, and the world seems to be sadistically blockading my path. I am happy pretty much with myself and my accomplishments and want to further my life and my goals. Unfortunately my life has other plans.

All in my head?

I've been in a slightly melancholy mood today, during which my mind inevitably drifts to the topic of death. I am a young, physically active young male in a postindustrial nation with a very good health care system so I am not at risk at dropping dead in a heartbeat. However, in six decades, or less if I am unlucky, I, probably, won't be around anymore.

Sartre said that life loses all meaning when you lose the illusion of being eternal, or something to that effect. Granted, there are existentalists who never feel despair or hopelessness in the grand face of eternity. When I was eighteen, inspired by the works of Camus, I was on an existenalist high. I've never been a churchgoing type, and have waivered between the most softest shade of deism and the lightest shade of atheism throughout my life. I have never had any interest in organized religion, neither the obtuse belligerency of Islam, nor the sanctimonious smugness of Christianity, or any other shade. Buddhism, probably, would come closest to satisfying my spiritual needs, since it largely exists without complicated creed or alienating ritual.

I do not believe in the Abrahamic God or any sort of active creator: I don't think there is any empirical evidence for such a supposition. I can't go through life saying that a tiny flame of faith burns within me and use that as assurances that a God exists. I don't put stock in anything that can be easily explained as delusion or imagination. A lot of philosophy about God seeks to establish that there is this force that exists outside the universe, who flipped on the switch---and walked away.

My opinions on Near Death Experiences are complex. Yes, I want to believe that an afterlife exists but the wanna-be scientist located within me is hesitant to accept stories of going into the light as evidence. Of course, it can be countered with evidence (which I will not get into right now) that maybe, just maybe, there this something to the NDE phenomenom; and I do agree that materialism has a superiority complex. We don't know everything about the brain, that is obvious.

When I was twenty I was really interested in the mind-body problem, and the Peterborough public library had a copy of Sir John Eccles and Karl Popper's The Self and Its Brain which argued for a nonmaterial theory of mind. I skimmed the book, the neuroscience confusing me. I wanted assurances that the mind was immaterial and there was life after death. I was in a morbid place---Terri Schiavo and the death of the Pope dominated the news at the time.

But what would noncorporeal existence would be like? I don't put much faith into religious explanations of an eternal paradise. Most of what makes us human (our drives for food, sex, our sense of self preservation, etc.) would naturally be discarded in a world where they were not needed. That would not appeal to alot of people. One part of the afterlife I find interesting is what would such a place be like where medieval serfs could rub shoulders with modern people---could you coexist with such people?

What evolutionary advantage would life after death grant us? There must have been one. Granted, it could be argued that our brains collapse consciousness into a waveform, or something to that effect. Something wibbly-wobblyt-timey-wimey. Something vaguely plausible. Mario Bureaugard and Pim van Lommel immediatley spring to mind, but I cannot endorse them whole heartedly. Not without more evidence confidently defended.

I'm not a very spiritual person: that much is obvious. I cannot consider myself a staunch materialist either.

Six decades or so until I find out.

And our figurehead is not what she seems

We're all British now, apparently.

I spent part of Canada Day in a pub watching the festivities on Parliament Hill. It began with a singing of God Save the Queen. On the Google Doodle for today, there was a beaver wearing a crown. These are very recent developments.

I am committed believer in democracy. I've held a lukewarm opinion of the monarchy, which in recent years has turned negative since Harper has decided to ram the monarchy down the country's throat. Harper has been playing the pro-monarchy card so cynically if I were a member of the royal family I'd be insulted.

I don't get the warm fuzzies when the head of state of another country comes over to wave at us once every four years or so. Yes, Canada has always been under some form of monarchy---so what? Its part of our history (at least, part of the history of a third of the population: ask a French Canadian or Aboriginal what they think), and, again, so what? A proper study of history reveals what deservedly should be left in the past.

Frankly, the monarchy has never unified us. Quebec has loathed the Queen since day one, and, seventh generation English Canadian grandson of an Orangewoman me, the number of people who consider themselves English Canadians are dwindling as we embrace a new identity as a multicultural nation.

We make our own policy without the blessings of the Queen which makes me wonder why we should entertain the illusion---respect her as a foreign head of state, yes, but as the head of state of Canada? Really?

I don't like the idea of being a constitutional monarchy because it shows we are not a real country but a British protectorate, and I do not like one bit the idea that  family of people by virtue of birth has acquired the right to be the head of state. No, they hold no real power---which makes my opinion of them worse since not only are they foreign and redundant but powerless.

I believe Canada must, and indeed one day will, discontinute the practise of constitutional monarchy. Removing them from Canadian politics will be thorny and hard but one day this country will remove the crown from Canadian politics.

What have they contributed? Nothing What do I think they deserve?

My Stories

I write stories. My favourites:

Vox

Singapore

Baby Stay Young

Joanna Banana

Executives of Neon Death (Coming Soon to Bewildering Stories)

Any Empire by Nate Powell

At TCAF this year I purchased the second graphic novel by Nate Powell. Swallow Me Whole, which I bought the year before, was an examination of schizophrenia and the perceptions of reality. Any Empire deals with the intersection of violence and power. The protaginist is Lee Powell, an army brat who escapes from the pain of constantly moving into the fantasies of his action figures. He falls in with Sarah, a compassionate girl who seeks to emulate both Nancy Drew and her own social worker mother. Turtles have been turning up half dead, the result of the gang run by Donnie Purdy, who, like Lee, is an army brat who adores his special forces father, or rather his idea of him.

All three of the kids have their own fantasies: Lee as the heroic ninja with his kick ass girlfriend fighting evil; Sarah as the crusader against injustice fighting mind games from the shadows; and Purdy as the biggest badass imaginable. Purdy holds onto his gang by virtue of being as antagonistic as possible, cherishing a laser tag gun and refusing to relinquish it because of the feelings of control he gets. He constantly has to assert his dominance over the turtle-killing twins in his gang.

The drawing style is minimalistic and the plot dips between the characters and not necessarilly in chronological order with nothing to distinguish the borders between past and present. Any Empire can thus be a disorientating read, and while Swallow Me Whole had some of the same problems, since the book dealt with schizophrenia (I had to read the ending of Swallow Me Whole four times before I understood it, a result of the art style working against itself) it was more forgivable.

One point that Powell makes is that, for all the sentimental patriotism that surrounds the military, some recruits will not be motivated by a desire to preserve their country and their citizens but for the power they recieve by having social and legal sanction over human life. This becomes true at the ending where Purdy's unit participates in "excercises" against "Domestic Destablized Zones." You could argue of the benevolent nature of the American military, but it stands to reason that an institution comprised of those wanting the biggest stick they can find to smack people smaller than them around.

Overall Any Empire is a quality graphic novel but I cannot say that it grabbed me the way Swallow Me Whole did. The latter's plot was more straightforward and did not swerve wildly through perspectives and time periods like Any Empire. Still, I recommend both easily.

Make this boy shout, make this boy scream

Like a million fellow Canadians I am in my twenties and unemployed. I've managed to have, in the past year, several small jobs that didn't pay more than minimum wage, last more than four months or hire me for more than twenty hours a week. At this point in time the job market is swimming in university and high school students who will fight like demons for the few positions open.

Come September I am hoping to have a job. Any job: I've long since abandoned hope of finding a job that I can live off of, especially given the nature of the Toronto real estate market. It has been two years almost since I lost my last regular job, the one that allowed me to live if not luxuriously at least comfortably---and that was at Canadian Tire.

I cannot travel. I would like to have a Masters degree, and probably a doctorate, but cannot pursue that until I get the courses to elevate my GPA. I cannot look at an ATM without fighting the urge to vomit. And I'm among the lucky ones: I have no outstanding debt to pay off. A piddly credit card bill, but I never let that exceed two hundred dollars.

I'm tired of being considered entitled or lazy. I'm sorry that a decade ago I didn't think of going into the trades, for you see I lacked the precognition to foresee the rise of the Alberta oil industry and the collapse of the white collar industries. At the rate we're going the Harper regime is going to decide to throw EI away and legalize slavery, and Albertan slavers will go door to door kidnapping the idle.

So why don't you move from Toronto to Alberta?

Easy for you to say. Sure, leave behind my friends, my favourite places and activities, and move to a part of the country where I know next to no one and start from scratch? Not easy. I won't adapt to the more conservative political nature of Alberta, and, frankly, I've had enough of conservative dolts from living in Toronto.

There are a million young people like me. One million. Population of Edmonton numbers.

So why isn't the government doing anything about it? Especially given that the youth unemployment rate isn't changing one bit...oh, right, Harper canned Katimavik, closed youth job centres---fiscal reality. To me, nobody in Ottawa, Queen's Park or City Hall has any idea how deep the problem is unless it is forced upon them, as in Quebec.

That will come to the rest of Canada. Mark my words.

When the hell will things get better?