Author: Shane

Why am I the one who feels guilty?

/ Shane / 2 Comments

One of the best things about the Honda Fit is that I can park in about 33% more spots than I used to be able to when I had the Malibu. If you live in the suburbs you probably don’t care, but if you live in the city, you can appreciate that this has basically revolutionized my life. This alone was worth the price of a new car.

Often I will be driving through a full parking lot, and I’ll see two hulking SUVs crowded the lines of their respective spots, making the spot in between too narrow for most cars. I squeeze in there and hop out, giving a smile and a wave to all the other SUV vultures circling the lot, swearing and shaking their fists at me.

This exact scenario happened at the kids’ school the other day (minus the swearing and fish shaking), and it wasn’t until I was already parked that I realized it was a “fuel efficient vehicle” spot. I actually felt guilty for a minute, and went to back out of the spot. Then I had a moment of clarity.

Here I am parking my tiny subcompact in the shadow of these monster trucks, and I feel guilty because I don’t have a “hybrid” sticker on the back? Even with the hybridization, I get better fuel economy than they do. When we bought the Fit, we made a conscious decision to buy a car that most people said we could never fit in. All the guy with the hybrid Porsche SUV did was pay extra money. Which one of us is sacrificing more for Mother Earth? And yet, I bet he didn’t worry about taking the “fuel efficient vehicle” spot.

I understand that not everybody can get a subcompact (although I still argue a lot more could then would admit it). The most efficient vehicle is the one that is as small as possible to do the job that it needs to do. A 15 passenger van is more efficient than driving the family in 3 separate cars. But how to label the parking spots in a way that’s fair? MPG per person? A 20 page explanation on who qualifies in which situations stapled to the sign? I don’t know.

In the meantime, I’m going to keep parking in the “fuel efficient vehicle” spot. Guilt free.

Haven Re-opened

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Ahh, that time of the year again.

I start every post-Haven blog post with essentially the same idea: boy, I really love being up there. It’s true though; it’s something that I have to relearn each time we go. When I’m there I feel refreshed. Even though I know it will be enjoyable in my head, I only know it in my bones when I’m sitting on the sand, listening to the wind through the trees, smelling the pines.

I’ve been so disappointed that we didn’t get up to the Haven very much last summer, and I’m trying to make sure we do a better job this year. Not only is it enjoyable, but it recharges me in a way that nothing else really does, and I think the more time I spend there, the happier I’ll be.

And all this despite the fact that it rained all night and I almost knocked myself unconscious with tree limbs not once, but TWICE (to be fair, only one actually hit me in the head. *I* hit the other one with my head while fleeing from a third tree limb).

After last year, we were extremely nervous that the Haven would be under water again. The first year it was dry and wonderful, the second year was underwater, awful, and filled with ravenous mosquitoes, so this year is best two out of three. So far, it seems dry and mosquitoes weren’t really an issue at all.

It rained all night, but it wasn’t windy, and we all kept dry. In the morning we went out to eat and it was sunny by the time we got back. Everything was dry by the time we packed up, so no complaints on that front either. About the only real problem we had was that the air mattress leaked all night and we ended up sleeping on the ground. It was pretty uncomfortable; I don’t know how the kids do it!

We weren’t going to be there very long, so our plan was to not do any work and just enjoy it. However, we did decide to go map out the driveway a little bit. A few hours later, Sara and I had cleared out all the underbrush and small trees, and it almost looks like a driveway! We’ll need to chop down quite a few bigger trees of course, but it went from being some kind of pipe dream (“Yeah, we really ought to get around to that sometime”) to something that’s ready to go. I honestly think with a little help we could get it mostly taken care of in a day or two!

So here’s to another year of camping and land barony! And maybe even driveways!

Why “Handlebars” is the best song

/ Shane / 2 Comments

I know this is an old song. So sue me.

Handlebars sounds like vintage Eminem, except instead of racism and spousal abuse, it has SCIENCE!

Aside from being catchy, the thing I like about the song is the story it tells without actually telling the story. In the beginning, achievement is met with childlike wonder. He’s proud of his ability to ride a bike with no handlebars, or take apart a remote control. His ambition is to make a comic book with his friends. Everything is so simple, but he’s happy.

However, as he goes along, the pride kind of changes into something else. Rather than being proud of what he’s accomplished, each new advance leads into a hunger for more; more mountains to climb, more feats to accomplish, more power and privilege, and more people to subjugate. The more he can do, the more his ambition grows.

As the song intensifies, it drives us forward along with him, and we see how it evolves, one tiny step at a time. He consistently describes himself as happy, but the tone towards the end betrays him. Science lets us make a vaccine that can save millions, but human nature allows us withhold that vaccine. Science lets us split a molecule for power, but human nature turns it into a bomb.

Technology is great, but if we use all that power to guide a missile by satellite, then what use is it? Is that really what the boy riding his bike with no handlebars aspired to? Though it was a journey of a thousand steps, is he really happy with where he ended up?

Despite nothing in the song being futuristic, I think this is a science fictional writer’s song. It struggles with the same things science fiction struggles with: technology and how it causes a sensawunda, how it changes people, how it shapes the human race, and how it can be used for both good and evil.

I highly recommend you give it a listen.

Welcome to Night Vale

/ Shane / 3 Comments

I listen to a lot of audio fiction, and there is no podcast bigger right now than Welcome to Night Vale. Clearly the rest of the world doesn’t need me to tell them about Night Vale (since they’re, yanno, more downloaded than This American Life). But too bad, I’m going to tell you about them anyway.

Welcome to Night Vale is the greatest thing of all time, ever. FACT.

I actually learned about Night Vale first by following them on twitter. They would just send these random, awesomely strange tweets, such as:

or

Most of the fiction podcasts I listen to follow the same formula: host intro, short story, host outtro. Night Vale is…something different. It’s more like an old radio show, where each episode builds into the next one. The writing is stellar. Anything mentioned in an episode is highly likely to show up again and again in subsequent episodes.

Night Vale is an interesting place. It’s sort of like every episode of the X-Files were true, and everybody knew it, so it wasn’t even worth remarking upon. It’s Orwell meets Lovecraft, and your host Cecil just reports on the daily ins and outs, traffic reports, weather reports, and community calendar. There are Vague, Yet Menacing, Government Agencies, secret police, Lovecraftian hooded figures on the city council, angels, a literal five headed dragon running for mayor, and sentient glowing clouds.

In their own words:

WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE is a twice-monthly podcast in the style of community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, featuring local weather, news, announcements from the Sheriff’s Secret Police, mysterious lights in the night sky, dark hooded figures with unknowable powers, and cultural events.

Turn on your radio and hide.

Thank god for Night Vale community radio. How else would we know the dangers of the summer reading program? Who else would inform us on the awful goings on in Desert Bluffs? Remind us not to go to (or think about) the dog park?  How would we know where to hide on street cleaning day?

My favorite parts are the ads. Just to give you a taste:

You cannot see.
You grope around wildly as your footing is also unstable.
You feel a thin liquid filling in your shoes.
It is not water, you can tell.
A pungent smell of brine or anxiety. Your hand strikes something solid – a wall, you think. It is soft, leathery, but also wet. You keep your hands to the surface and it’s moving in and out, like it is breathing. No. More like spasms.
You hear a dull rumble from above, a gurgle from below, you still see nothing. The walls jerk back quickly, you lose your balance and slide down to the floor which is the same surface, but now the liquid is sloshing past you, something grabs your leg. Something is grabbing your leg, you are being pulled down you cannot see which way madness. Which way madness. You scream but no sound comes from your stubborn lips, your impudent throat. You reach. For what, you do not know, only that you reach. A blinding flash. A moment of understanding. You are in an empty store room, tied to a chair.
There are others, but they are hooded and limp. You recall this living nightmare, you take comfort in its familiar pain. You smell fermentation and can hear a dull unending beeping. Someone shouts in a language you do not know.You love your family. You. Love. Them.
Welcome to Red Lobster.
Come see what’s fresh today!

And, one for Subway:

A thousand ways in, no way out. Eat fresh. Eat so terribly, terribly fresh. Terribly, awesomely, gruesomely, terrifyingly fresh.

And finally:

Got a home improvement project? Need help?
Incomplete?
Having feelings? Strange feelings? Feelings you’ve never felt?
Incomplete?
Is your body filled with hot blood, waving curves of sinew, and skin? Can you feel all that blood? Is it even your blood? How can you be sure?
Incomplete?
Are you dizzy from it all, all of this? What are your hands doing?
Incomplete?
Where are your hands now? Where have they been? Where are they going? Where are you going?
Have you ever broken the surface of something with a hammer? Ever channeled sublime thought into sandpaper? Ever wanted to touch something because you feel things, because touch is the only sense you trust?
Incomplete?
What is trust? Is making a thing proof that you exist? Is fixing a thing proof that you have transcended mortality? History?
Incomplete?
Feel things? Feel things?
You can do it. We can help. The Home Depot.

Quote Monday has needs

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Sara: “How could we not have predicted that I would need a pot to preserve animal skulls?”

::Overheard::
Ollie: “Evie, what does ‘meow meow meow’ mean in cat language?”
Evie: “Well, it could mean a lot of things, depending on what you’re thinking.”

Evie, very excited: “I ran the mile in 10 minutes, 52 seconds!”
Sara, to me: “Yeah, and that was in a dress, tights, and pearls.”

I guess it’s our fault for giving her such an old lady name, but Evelyn’s sense of style can definitely be described as “Fancy Church Social”.

Sara: “How could we not have predicted that I would need a pot to preserve animal skulls?”