Author: Shane

We’re getting trilingual up in here

/ Shane / 2 Comments

I am extremely pleased to announce that my story, “My Heart is a Quadratic Equation” is now live at Nova Fantasia.

If you follow that link, you may notice that Nova Fantasia is not an English-language magazine. So unless you speak Galician, you may have trouble understanding.

You know what that means: I’m going big in Galicia baby!

Not only do I get to see myself in print in another language, I also get to learn the proper Galician phrasing for Nala: “un gato molestoso.” That sounds so much better than “annoying cat”, doesn’t it?

Fortunately, if you do not speak Galician, the story is available elsewhere in English.

FURTHERMORE, I shall also be appearing in Polish next month; I’ll post the link when I have it.

In conclusion: my plans for world domination proceed apace. You cannot hide from me, not even in Galicia.

Big Brother and the Surveillance State

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I recently got a mysterious, official-looking letter in the mail. I opened it up and it informed me that a couple of weeks ago, I was speeding. Apparently they have devices that use radar, photography, and/or lasers to automatically ticket speeders. *This time* it was a warning, since this was my first offense, but in the future they would simply mail me a ticket.

I know a lot of people freak out about red light cameras, but those never bothered me. After all, going through a red light is breaking the law, and it’s breaking the law whether there is an officer to see you or not. It is something you Should Not Do. If you do something you Should Not Do, how can you complain about getting caught by it, whether by man or robot?

On the other hand, this felt ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, but I can’t explain why (and no, not because it Happened To Me; I’ve *ahem* been on the receiving end of a red light ticket or two). Same argument applies, no? But for some reason this just really rubbed me the wrong way; some streets are now equipped with hidden monitoring equipment, which will slap you with a fine if you step out of line. I suddenly felt the oppressive hand of Big Brother on my shoulder.

Okay, but again, why did this feel different than red light cameras? I came up with a couple of possible explanations:

1) Speeding is not as cut and dried as running a red light. By and large, if you run a red light, you are in the wrong. Speeding is…more arbitrary. On many highways around Chicago, the speed limit is 55, and it would be *extremely unsafe* to travel at that speed. Traffic flows at 70. Try that in any small town in the Midwest and see if they feel 70 in a 55 is appropriate. The fact is, there is a “speed limit”, and there is a speed limit. Sometimes they match, sometimes they don’t.

2) As a corollary to #1, this means it is sometimes “okay” to speed and sometimes it is not. This means that we’ve ALL broken that law at some point. Legally speaking, speeding might be just as wrong as running a red light, but it doesn’t *feel* that way.

3) However, I think the biggest reason that this felt different is that, I don’t know if I committed this crime or not. I mean, I assume I did, and I’m sure they probably have some kind of photographic evidence that I did, but when I run a red light with a camera and I see that flash go off, I know they’ve got me dead to rights. I know immediately that I’ve done something wrong, I’ve been caught, and now I’ve got to pay. It’s the same feeling as seeing those flashing lights in your rear-view. That’s vastly different than receiving a notice weeks later that says, “Trust me, you’re a criminal. Take my word for it. We’re the cops, we wouldn’t lie to you.”

It’s the slippery slope argument. Suddenly, the onus is on me to somehow prove that I wasn’t speeding on some day I can’t recall, on some street I don’t even remember being on. Most people in that position will just say, “Eh, okay, I guess so,” and pay the fine. Maybe there was some reason I was speeding. Maybe there was a mistake. Maybe there was a glitch in the software. I don’t know, and I can’t know. Suddenly I’ve got to prove I’m innocent, instead of them proving that I’m guilty, and the deck is totally stacked against me.

Furthermore, it sets up a conflict of interest for the police. They now have a situation where they can assess more fines, at little or no cost to themselves, while also reducing their police force and thereby their payroll. There is no downside whatsoever to catching as many speeders as they possibly can, only upside. At least before there was an opportunity cost that they only had so many officers, so if they were catching speeders they weren’t solving murders. But now? Put a monitor on every street! And if they happen to catch one or two that were really innocent, well, who’s to know? Who’s to prove them wrong, or call them on it? Maybe they fudge some of the numbers, get a little extra cash in their pocket…

Is that how the justice system is supposed to work? Now the old, “Well, there’s nothing we can do, it’s in the computer system that way,” is a legitimate excuse for the cops too?

I know it’s somewhat ironic that someone who programs computers for a living would say, “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t rely on these things *quite* so much.” On the other hand, I know how often they make mistakes. I see, every day, that no matter how hard you try, they’re pretty unreliable. For some things, sure: if my search for the name of the actor who was in some movie doesn’t work, we’ll all go on just fine. But law enforcement?

Color me very, very uneasy about this whole development.

Quote Monday makes foam

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Ollie: “I want to do an experiment with that.”
::pointing to baking soda::
Ollie: “I want to put a scoop of that in Minnesota.”

Eh, baking soda, Minnesota, tomato, tomahto. I’m not sure Minnesota is quite as reactive as vinegar, but that’s what makes it an experiment!

Evie: “Winter is going to be so much better with foam!”

That’s probably true in general, but if you absolutely must have context, we bought a milk-foamer for coffee and Evie has big cocoa plans.

::Driving down the street::
Evie, hesitantly: “One time did you go into that building and play accordion with a strange man? Or was that just a dream?”

That’s me, baby: living the dream.

Sara: “He was sick in his tummy?”
Ollie: “No. In his mouth.”

Evie and the Grand Conspiracy

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The jig is up everybody. Evie knows. I mean she knows. She’s now a part of the Grand Conspiracy, if you catch my drift. Ah, that wonderful, magical moment as a child where you find out that everything your parents ever told you is a lie.

Being that Evie is a rather bright girl, I always thought she’d catch on a little sooner. But Evie’s kind of funny like that. She seems to want to hold on to her childhood with both hands, and goes out of her way to stay naive about things (I endorse this attitude wholeheartedly!). So I think she’s maybe had an inkling for a long time, but intentionally didn’t think about it. I mean, this is Evie here: this wasn’t exactly beyond her reasoning skills.

Now, this is kind of a strange time of year for this sort of revelation to come about. However, you’ll recall that Evie recently participated in a summer rendition of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. I think it’s somewhat impossible to get a bunch of first grade-age kids together and have them contemplate Santa without *someone* spilling the beans. From what Evie said, it sounds like one of the student teachers even confirmed it for them. EVEN STILL she held on to the magic for a couple more weeks, just as long as she could.

She has also been losing teeth like it’s going out of style, and we could tell she was testing us. We’d say something like, “Well, if your tooth falls out while you are at Grandma’s, the Tooth Fairy might not be able to find you,” and she’d give us this piercing, calculating look (all the better, we thought, when that dollar we slipped Grandma shows up under her pillow!).

Finally she broke down and asked us, and I have to say, it broke my heart to tell her. She’s just such an imaginative girl, and *so sure* that magic and fairies and Santa are a real thing that can really happen. How badly I want her to stay that way forever! I was just worried that this news would break her, and it’d be all cigarettes, haunted eyes, and jaded ennui from here on out.

She took the whole thing pretty well. For days, you could just see her little mind churning on the subject, walking through the implications. As each new aspect struck her, she kept coming back to us and asking for further clarifications. (“So you wrap all the presents?”,”So you eat the cookies and milk?”,”What about the Easter bunny?”, “That’s why you want us to go to sleep!”) She seemed to have a burning need to let everybody know that she was in on the secret.

She especially felt the burning need to let her little brother know the secret. We tried to explain to her about the Grand Conspiracy, and how most everyone in the country helps keep this secret from little kids (which is actually really weird when you think about it). We told her that she’s part of the Grand Conspiracy now, and it’s her duty to make sure that Ollie believes. It was touch and go for a bit (there was a lot of exaggerated, “I’m going to try to stay up to see the Tooth Fairy tonight, amiright Oliver???”), but she seems to have settled into it a little bit now.

She also seemed to think that, having been so initiated, she would immediately get to participate. (“Do I get to stay up and put the presents under the tree?”, “So, should I just give you the tooth and you give me the money?”, “Do I get to hide the eggs this year?”,”Do I get to eat the cookie this year?”) To each question we would reply, “Nothing changes. Everything stays the same.” That only seemed to sink in until the next question.

At least she has a good four months to come to grips with everything. I have a feeling she’ll eventually break and spill the beans to Ollie — I doubt little brothers ever make it quite so long as older sisters — but for now she seems to be feeling quite grown up about the whole thing, and enjoying being in the “know”.

Quote Monday is a sweetheart

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Sara: “Ollie, would you like to take any classes, besides ballet?”
Ollie: “I would like to take a reading class.”

Awww! That boy just melts my heart.

Ollie: “Mama, I like the way you smell. Under your neck smells like milk.”

Awww! That boy…no actually, that’s kind of unappealing.

Sara: “Ollie, can we try to spell some more things? How about ‘Gus’? What goes Guh-Guh-Guh?”
Ollie: “T-H-E”

Who said he needs a reading class?

Me: “And what sound does a horse make?”
Ollie: “Giddyup?”