Showing posts with label Monty Python. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Monty Python. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
Monday, January 22, 2018
A Thinker's Book of Dangerous Knowledge (a book review post)
Of course, those hardly qualify as reviews, but that tends to be the state of the world, and there's not a lot in between.
There should be a lot in between.
The stuff in between often requires a lot of thought, though, which is kind of the point of this book.
So let's get it out of the way that I know Peter. Like for real. Like he lives a few blocks away, and we go over to his house sometimes to do things like play Cards Against Humanity. I've known Peter for pretty close to 20 years now.
We like a lot of the same things, so I get all of the jokes and references in the book. However, there are a lot of them. At some points, I would say that there are too many, that the jokes detract from the message. I say that as someone who gets them. If you're not a Monty Python fan or a Doctor Who fan or... well, a fan of any of the other things frequently referred to, then this book isn't going to work for you. You're just going to end up confused by all the things you're not getting. And that's too bad, because there is some worthwhile material in here. But Peter has created his book, probably inadvertently, to appeal to fairly niche audience, most of whom probably don't need a book like this to begin with. The people who need the book are the ones who have the jokes flying over their heads.
Which would be the time to tell you that if you are unfamiliar with Monty Python et al. that you should probably check them out, because everyone should have some kind of passing familiarity with... things, but that reminds me of another thing from the book, because Peter mentions so many times that you should run out and buy... whatever he's referring to at any given moment, like the complete collection of Flying Circus... that you'd think he's getting paid for product placement. Or getting a commission on sales, and I'm pretty sure that's not true. Pretty sure. At any rate, while it's amusing to be told to run out and buy some other author's books once or twice, after a while, you begin to wonder why you're reading the book in your hand.
And that thought isn't helped by how often Peter tells you that you probably shouldn't be reading his book, anyway. Self-deprecating humor only goes so far before you start to believe the person saying it.
All of that aside, it's not a bad book. Despite that it deals with kind of a heavy topic, Peter keeps it light, and it moves along fairly quickly. If you're unfamiliar with more formal thinking strategies, this book could be part of a good introduction. It's the kind of thing that can put you on the right path, though it's not really the path itself.
I could go on about all the whys and wherefors, but in this day and age when the word on any given day consistently has something to do with "fake news," thinking and how to do it and why to do it ought to be something everyone is, well, thinking about. Especially before you forward any news bites. Or, even, before you believe what the President #fakepresident is saying. So the book isn't perfect and could use some shoring up in places (like the section about deductive vs. inductive reasoning), but it's a good start.
A good start which will never be seen or read by the people who need it most, which is, unfortunately, most people. Because most people never move beyond their search for confirmation bias and most people don't read... Hmm... There's probably a connection there.
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Some Christmas
Can you tell how much the tree leans in this picture? Since I turned it so that it is mostly leaning toward the wall, I don't think you can see the full effect.
The dalek invasion of '14.
Based on the bags of coal, they must not have been all that good this year.
Evidently, that was no mere kiss.
She didn't want to be left out.
Tomorrow: She loves it.
And we all stood back.
But, UNEXPECTEDLY, there was the Spanish Inquisition!
And the Empire:
Have a great New Year!
The Empire says so.
Friday, April 12, 2013
How To Be... a Lumberjack
First, how not to be a lumberjack:
Second, and I didn't know this, but lumberjacks don't really exist anymore. No, these days, they are called loggers. The term lumberjack, or lumberjill for women, is reserved for woodcutters prior to the introduction of modern logging equipment like chainsaws. These guys used axes and hand saws, were the manliest of men. In fact, they developed their own culture around their profession embracing strength, masculinity, and the confrontation with danger. In fact, even today, logging is still one of the most dangerous professions there is.
100 years ago, the way to become a lumberjack was to be strong and be willing to do the work. Be willing to risk your life, because that's what it was. The work was migratory, so you had to be willing to move around and live in logging camps, which were often as dangerous as the work. The pay was low, and the work was hard, but there was also a strong feeling of brotherhood and tradition among lumberjacks which, I suppose, made it worth it to those willing to do the work. Also, it was a good place to disappear if you needed to do that, provided you could do the work.
The working conditions aren't so bad anymore, but it's a little more difficult to become a logger these days. You can't just walk up and get hired on because you're strong. Logging companies want people with experience, and you can't take classes for this stuff, so the only way to learn the trade is to do the trade. Small, local tree trimming companies are good places to get the necessary experience, and they are often willing to take unskilled workers and train them up: how to use a chainsaw, how to climb a tree (and be able to use a chainsaw while up in the tree), and how to fell trees in difficult areas. City governments can also be places to get hired on to learn this type of work. If you feel logging is the career for you, it's possible to move on to a real logging company once you've learned the ropes.
If your heart really lies in being a lumberjack, a real lumberjack, there are still ways to do that as the lumberjack culture has been kept alive these past 70 odd years through lumberjack competitions and the like to determine who the real men are. These competitions require the traditional skills of a lumberjack: ax throwing (you know, to take down those trees that are trying to escape), ax chopping, individual and team sawing, log rolling (a favorite in cartoons), and pole climbing. The only real problem with this is that if you really want to be able to win these competitions, you have to be willing to make training for them the equivalent of a job, so you better be independently wealthy or still live at home with your parents.
Second, and I didn't know this, but lumberjacks don't really exist anymore. No, these days, they are called loggers. The term lumberjack, or lumberjill for women, is reserved for woodcutters prior to the introduction of modern logging equipment like chainsaws. These guys used axes and hand saws, were the manliest of men. In fact, they developed their own culture around their profession embracing strength, masculinity, and the confrontation with danger. In fact, even today, logging is still one of the most dangerous professions there is.
100 years ago, the way to become a lumberjack was to be strong and be willing to do the work. Be willing to risk your life, because that's what it was. The work was migratory, so you had to be willing to move around and live in logging camps, which were often as dangerous as the work. The pay was low, and the work was hard, but there was also a strong feeling of brotherhood and tradition among lumberjacks which, I suppose, made it worth it to those willing to do the work. Also, it was a good place to disappear if you needed to do that, provided you could do the work.
The working conditions aren't so bad anymore, but it's a little more difficult to become a logger these days. You can't just walk up and get hired on because you're strong. Logging companies want people with experience, and you can't take classes for this stuff, so the only way to learn the trade is to do the trade. Small, local tree trimming companies are good places to get the necessary experience, and they are often willing to take unskilled workers and train them up: how to use a chainsaw, how to climb a tree (and be able to use a chainsaw while up in the tree), and how to fell trees in difficult areas. City governments can also be places to get hired on to learn this type of work. If you feel logging is the career for you, it's possible to move on to a real logging company once you've learned the ropes.
If your heart really lies in being a lumberjack, a real lumberjack, there are still ways to do that as the lumberjack culture has been kept alive these past 70 odd years through lumberjack competitions and the like to determine who the real men are. These competitions require the traditional skills of a lumberjack: ax throwing (you know, to take down those trees that are trying to escape), ax chopping, individual and team sawing, log rolling (a favorite in cartoons), and pole climbing. The only real problem with this is that if you really want to be able to win these competitions, you have to be willing to make training for them the equivalent of a job, so you better be independently wealthy or still live at home with your parents.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
The Tick (or How I Wish I Could Write) (an IWSG post)
There are always two forces at play: the way things are and the way we want things to be. Both things pull at us: acceptance and desire. It's a rough road, but it's one we all have to make our way down. Well, that's not actually true. Giving into acceptance is always an option. Allowing things to just be the way they are even when we want things to change.
However, there are areas where acceptance can be a good thing. To a certain extent.
A while back, I had the opportunity to hear Jeff Kinney speak. He's the guy that writes the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. Now, I've never read any of them, but my kids have really enjoyed them, so I wanted to hear what he had to say, so my younger son and I went to a Q&A and book signing he had at the Shulz museum. The thing I found most interesting is that he never wanted to be a writer; he wanted to be a cartoonist (see the link to the Shulz museum?). However, the more he tried to get into being a cartoonist, the more he found he didn't quite fit. It came down to the fact that he couldn't draw a circle.
I'm almost completely serious about that. What he actually said is that it was because he couldn't draw the same character over and over and have that character look the same each time he drew it. He also said he can't draw circles and implied that those two things are related, which I can see. If, as an artist, you can't freehand a circle, it makes it difficult to draw heads.
After many years of trying to be a cartoonist and just not being able to get anyone to pick him up and having the reason repeatedly be that it was because his characters never looked the same, he realized he was going to have to do something else. But what? This is that point where the struggle between the way things are and the way you want things to be can be really debilitating. He could have just given up. Thrown in the towel. Gone off to flip burgers.
He could have surrendered and just accepted that he couldn't be a cartoonist and gone off to do something else entirely. Like flip burgers.
Instead, he wrote The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, because, in that format, it didn't matter that he couldn't draw a circle. It was okay for his characters to never match. Sure, it's still not in his ideal world how he would have it be, but he's doing something close to what he wanted to do, and he's been very successful at it.
At this point, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with The Tick.
The Tick, of course, is a comic book, but it's not one I ever read. The character was invented by Ben Edlund, and the comic series started up at a time when I just wasn't interested in spoofs and the like. Actually, it was my low time for comics in general, the end of high school and beginning of college. I'd pretty much dropped down to just Spider-Man, X-Men, and Batman at that point. Once I got back into comics for real, I didn't pick it up because it was farther into the series than I wanted to try to go back and get, and I hated picking up series, especially new series, somewhere in the middle.
However, when The Tick came out as a live action TV series in 2001 with Patrick Warburton as The Tick, I was all over that. Mostly because of Warburton who has the greatest voice/chin combo in the world, but, after I started watching it, it became because of the writing. Which is Wow. I mean, there were such great lines in this show:
The point, though, is this:
I wish I could write like that. I really do. Ben Edlund is credited with writing the TV show, but I'm not sure if he was the only writer or not. I do know that Douglas Adams was the only writer of his books, and I wish I could write like that, too. Do you see a connection here?
But, see, I just don't think that way. At all. I read (or watch, because Monty Python falls into this same category) this stuff, and all I can think is "where in the world did that come from?" My mind just really isn't wired that way. So this stuff that I love, this bizarre stuff that I wish I could do, I will never be able to do. It's just not my thing.
So I could decide that since I can't write in this "Monty Python" way that I just won't write at all. I could decide that.
But I don't.
I don't decide that, because I'm a good writer. I'm a good story teller. I'm just not good at those kinds of stories with bizarre leaps of logic.
And you know what? That's okay, because I'm embracing the kind of writing that I am good at, because I like that stuff, too. Like Jeff Kinney. He never became a comic strip artist and had his own syndicated strip the way he wanted, but he is doing cartoons, and he likes what he's doing even if it's not the thing he most wanted to do. It's that conflict between what is and what is wished for.
All of that to say this:
Just because you may not be able to do something (like bizarre humor or epic fantasy or hard sci-fi) that you really want to do doesn't mean that you can't do something like it. Try things out and figure out which thing you are good at and grow that thing. Grow into that thing. Maybe it's not what you always dreamed about, but it might be close. Or it might be something you end up liking even more. The point is that you shouldn't give up the struggle just because that one thing, that one thing you always thought was the only thing, is out of reach. Keep struggling and striving and working and being but don't ever just accept defeat. Accept the thing you can't do and subvert the things you can do to get as close to that thing as you can.
However, there are areas where acceptance can be a good thing. To a certain extent.
A while back, I had the opportunity to hear Jeff Kinney speak. He's the guy that writes the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. Now, I've never read any of them, but my kids have really enjoyed them, so I wanted to hear what he had to say, so my younger son and I went to a Q&A and book signing he had at the Shulz museum. The thing I found most interesting is that he never wanted to be a writer; he wanted to be a cartoonist (see the link to the Shulz museum?). However, the more he tried to get into being a cartoonist, the more he found he didn't quite fit. It came down to the fact that he couldn't draw a circle.
I'm almost completely serious about that. What he actually said is that it was because he couldn't draw the same character over and over and have that character look the same each time he drew it. He also said he can't draw circles and implied that those two things are related, which I can see. If, as an artist, you can't freehand a circle, it makes it difficult to draw heads.
After many years of trying to be a cartoonist and just not being able to get anyone to pick him up and having the reason repeatedly be that it was because his characters never looked the same, he realized he was going to have to do something else. But what? This is that point where the struggle between the way things are and the way you want things to be can be really debilitating. He could have just given up. Thrown in the towel. Gone off to flip burgers.
He could have surrendered and just accepted that he couldn't be a cartoonist and gone off to do something else entirely. Like flip burgers.
Instead, he wrote The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, because, in that format, it didn't matter that he couldn't draw a circle. It was okay for his characters to never match. Sure, it's still not in his ideal world how he would have it be, but he's doing something close to what he wanted to do, and he's been very successful at it.
At this point, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with The Tick.
The Tick, of course, is a comic book, but it's not one I ever read. The character was invented by Ben Edlund, and the comic series started up at a time when I just wasn't interested in spoofs and the like. Actually, it was my low time for comics in general, the end of high school and beginning of college. I'd pretty much dropped down to just Spider-Man, X-Men, and Batman at that point. Once I got back into comics for real, I didn't pick it up because it was farther into the series than I wanted to try to go back and get, and I hated picking up series, especially new series, somewhere in the middle.
However, when The Tick came out as a live action TV series in 2001 with Patrick Warburton as The Tick, I was all over that. Mostly because of Warburton who has the greatest voice/chin combo in the world, but, after I started watching it, it became because of the writing. Which is Wow. I mean, there were such great lines in this show:
- And, so, may Evil beware and may Good dress warmly and eat plenty of fresh vegetables.
- And isn't sanity just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean, all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but, when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh, oooh, the sky is the limit.
- Destiny's powerful hand has made the bed of my future, and it's up to me to lie in it. I am destined to be a superhero. To right wrongs, and to pound two-fisted justice into the hearts of evildoers everywhere. And you don't fight destiny. No, sir. And you don't eat crackers in the bed of your future, or you get all... scratchy.
- Eating kittens is just plain... plain wrong! And no one should do it! Ever!
- Everybody was a baby once, Arthur. Oh, sure, maybe not today or even yesterday, but once. Babies, Chum: tiny, dimpled, fleshy mirrors of us-ness that we parents hurl into the future like leathery footballs of hope. And you've got to get a good spiral on that baby or evil will make an interception.
- I'm taking off the kid gloves and putting on the very mad gloves.
- Well, once again, my friend, we find that science is a two-headed beast. One head is nice; it gives us aspirin and other modern conveniences. But the other head of science is bad. Oh, beware the other head of science, Arthur; it bites.
- You know why super villains are so unhappy, Arthur? They don't treasure little things.
- When you get in bed with evil incarnate, it always steals the covers.
The point, though, is this:
I wish I could write like that. I really do. Ben Edlund is credited with writing the TV show, but I'm not sure if he was the only writer or not. I do know that Douglas Adams was the only writer of his books, and I wish I could write like that, too. Do you see a connection here?
But, see, I just don't think that way. At all. I read (or watch, because Monty Python falls into this same category) this stuff, and all I can think is "where in the world did that come from?" My mind just really isn't wired that way. So this stuff that I love, this bizarre stuff that I wish I could do, I will never be able to do. It's just not my thing.
So I could decide that since I can't write in this "Monty Python" way that I just won't write at all. I could decide that.
But I don't.
I don't decide that, because I'm a good writer. I'm a good story teller. I'm just not good at those kinds of stories with bizarre leaps of logic.
And you know what? That's okay, because I'm embracing the kind of writing that I am good at, because I like that stuff, too. Like Jeff Kinney. He never became a comic strip artist and had his own syndicated strip the way he wanted, but he is doing cartoons, and he likes what he's doing even if it's not the thing he most wanted to do. It's that conflict between what is and what is wished for.
All of that to say this:
Just because you may not be able to do something (like bizarre humor or epic fantasy or hard sci-fi) that you really want to do doesn't mean that you can't do something like it. Try things out and figure out which thing you are good at and grow that thing. Grow into that thing. Maybe it's not what you always dreamed about, but it might be close. Or it might be something you end up liking even more. The point is that you shouldn't give up the struggle just because that one thing, that one thing you always thought was the only thing, is out of reach. Keep struggling and striving and working and being but don't ever just accept defeat. Accept the thing you can't do and subvert the things you can do to get as close to that thing as you can.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)