Long ago, when the Muddled Calendar was actually present around here (dang, I hope I have the code for that still), one of the Muddled Faithful suggested that February 2th (pronounced twoth), or 02/02, should be celebrated as oughto, oughto day. It is the day you think of what you ought to do.

In the words of a person known only as Funkmaster G-Force:

Its the 02-02-2005 day, or aught two, aught two. We could make it oughto oughto day ,as in Jerry ought-to ought-to have the Monster Within wrapped up by then, or we oughto oughto make this a beer drinkin holiday.

While FGF’s definition made it more of a deadline, I’m unable to achieve that level of planning so I use it as a New Year’s follow-up. In the 31 days since January 2th, you can get a good idea what sort of vector you’re on, vis-a-vis resolutions for the new year.

Here’s how I’m doing:

Weight: Right on schedule. Five weeks, five pounds. I realize they are the easiest pounds, but I’m still stoked.
Bike miles: WAY behind. The rain is partly to blame, not getting into shape as quickly as I thought I would is another factor.
Writing every day: Ugh. I have to just shake off the way the world is going to hell and write my stories about people in worlds going to hell.
All the other resolutions: I… don’t remember what they were. I’m sure I’m doing well at them, though.

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Followers of this sprawling mess of a blog will recall that a few days ago, I responded to an offer from someone who claimed to be a young writer looking for work. I get a lot of these requests, and generally they’re from robots. So when I respond to these messages, I am responding to an email spammer. That can make me rather flip. Apparently it also makes me sound Canadian.

Turns out Cliff is real! And he wrote back! And… he was pissed off. And he hates Canada.

Anyway, in fairness, it’s only right that I present his response here.

Hey man,

Not sure what life did to you that made you this way, but its unfortunate. Bottom line is i’m not a very experienced writer, but I one day wanted to try to make some money doing what I love. I know that day is not close, and likely there are some stages in between, one of which is gaining experience wherever I can and just getting my name out there.

So to keep it short, I knew the best way to try to gain experience was to offer to write for free, and since really i’m just looking for experience and to get out of my comfort zone a bit, I’m open to write about pretty much anything. So I made a catch all template and compiled a pretty decent list of websites that in some regard I thought were cool or at least decent enough to attach my beautiful and regal name to, and reached out. I’m sorry I didn’t personalize the reason for Muddled Ramblings making the cut in my template, if I did it might sound like this

Hey Virgin,

I think your site is pretty cool. I’ve always been a fan of blogs that are about nothing and everything at the same time, that contain good writing, and manage to post at least somewhat consistently. I thought maybe my writing, although not on the level of yours (I guess it’s easy to write well when no other humans will talk to you), might be close to a decent enough caliber to get published on your site. I have lots of ideas, but probably the one that’s going to fit best with your site that looks like actual poop, will be a recent interaction I had with my new puppy that deals with me pulling a piece of feces out of his rectum while not in the process not getting and excrement on my prized nike boots. What do you think, would you be into that kind of shit? (see what i did there, with the double entendre for shit, get it, I’m like the Jay Z of crap puns, wink emoji, hehe)

Anyway, hope you’re doing well in Manitoba Quebec or whatever fuckin canadian shit hole you probably hail from, and if you’re not, well i’m sorry about that, I know the effects of inbreeding sometimes manifest later in life.

Tootles,

Cliff
#MAGA

OF COURSE I had to reply. Like moth to flame, I am compelled to fling myself at boorishness. I have to admit, had I looked up #MAGA before I wrote my reply, I might have answered differently — and his letter only reinforces my opinion of those who chant that mantra. Anyway, this is my response:

Ah, Cliff,

You see the thing is that you sent your query to an address known pretty much only to email spammers. I get offers like yours all the time, and they’re invariably from article factories where people are paid to shovel out shit promoting whatever product the factory is marketing that day. Forgive me if I assumed you were one of those. The fact I responded at all is an indication that your pitch was better than most, however; there was at least the glimmer of humanity in it.

Crafting a pitch letter is difficult, but you need to keep in mind whom you are competing against: shit factories and spammers. Links to articles set off the spam alarm, while offering to write is shit-factory move. Personalization is key, as you point out yourself, and is also a good chance for flattery: “I really enjoyed your episode about…” In fact, your response, underneath the anger, contains the seeds of an excellent pitch. Beautiful and regal, even.

Writing and marketing are very different skills, but it pays to have a thick skin when doing either of those things.

I’m glad to hear you’re writing for the love of it, and I wish you success. I’m not sure what it was about my message that flipped your switch — ironically, I thought my reply was most likely to bring a brief smile to a tired shit-factory marketer before being thrown in the trash, as much of the humor was at my own expense. Perhaps next time I’ll try to make it more clear who my assumed audience is. Had you responded with something approaching a civil tone, we might have been able to work something out. I’ve never had a guest writer on the blog, but the idea was starting to appeal to me.

.j.

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This meme ran around Facebook for a while, and it was so popular even I saw it. If this list looks familiar to you, it’s because I’ve already posted a version over there. It was a fun exercise, though, and worth expanding a bit and sharing in more intimate environs. After some thought I’d probably change some of these, but it’s not just a list of albums, it’s a list of memories, of little stories set in a time long ago.

The challenge was, without too much thought, to list ten albums that influenced you as a teenager. But “teenage” spans an enormous amount of time in terms of changes to who you are. In those few years I changed more than in all the years since. So I limited myself to my first teen phase: The time when I got my first radio and my first record albums, but before I traveled to England for a year — which was an entire phase of my teen life all by itself.

So here’s the list I came up with over in Facebook land:

Pink Floyd, The Wall — I’ve come to like other Pink Floyd albums much more, but this was was a gigantic concept album that told a story. Isn’t this where we came in?

Electric Light Orchestra, Out of the Blue — A big, ambitious album that needed the double-LP-sized canvas to carry its imagery. Kids these days don’t get the experience of opening up that super-glossy double album to see neon spaceships. Night in the City (oh, oh, oh) Madness at midnight.

BTO, Four Wheel Drive — Fuck yeah. This album spanned my various teens and carried me into adulthood. In a car, loud.

Steve Miller Band, Book of Dreams — I still had dreams of making my own synthesizers when that came out. While my friends were all about “Fly Like an Eagle”, this is the album that did it for me.

Eagles, Best Of (So Far) — That record belonged to my sister, and for a while it was the only pop album in the house, permanently installed on her clamshell record player. (By the end of that album’s life, there were two pennies taped to the tonearm of the record player.) You might think that such repetition would scar a guy, but honestly, while the world seems intent on hating the Eagles these days, I think they wrote some pretty good songs.

Fleetwood Mac, Rumors — More storytelling. I had no idea at the time what disfunction in the band created this magic, but this was the second pop album in the house, followed immediately by the Record Club Deluge. When Tusk came out I was dismayed, as was the world, but historians will revere the latter over the former. Yet the album was not just beautiful music, it was well-constructed, gently moving your mood from one place to another.

Kiss, the album with “Detroit, Rock City” on it — Pompous, giant guitars, the first album that got mom to tell me to turn it down. “Beth” was also there, but come on. If I had this in my digital library I’d listen to it right now.

Robin Trower, Bridge of Sighs — Memorex sponsored the “Blank Tape Special” once a week, playing an entire album starting with “hit the record button… now” followed by a pause to give time for the leader to pass over the heads. (Can you imagine that happening today?) Late at night, headphones on, half asleep in a beanbag chair, letting that bass do its magic. The next morning I wasn’t sure just what I’d heard, but I knew it was great. It took a long time for me to actually hear the music. I kind of went into a trance whenever I put it on.

Boston, Boston — The solid wall of sound. I still hum those tunes. I met a girl named Mary Ann in Wallingford, and that song became the story of my life.

Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks — I save this for last, but of all these albums it had the greatest impact. At a party in West Hagbourne the album came out and they thought it would blow me away, but it was already part of my vocabulary. This album changed me almost as much as it did the recording industry. Of the ten listed here, this one shaped my view of the world the most. After Punk went mainstream (*ahemRancidahem*) I turned to Riot Grrl for my musical anger.

There you have it.

I have subsequently thought of many albums that could arguably be on the above list, albums I listened to many times, from ABBA to ZZ-Top. But these are the ones that came to mind first, so I’m riding with them.

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Recently I got this email:

Hello,

My name is Cliff and as I’m sure you’re busy, I’ll be brief. I’m a young writer trying to gain recognition for myself. Having recently started a sports blog called [redacted because this is probably spam] with a group of like-minded friends from college, I personally aspire to write about more than just sports.

That said, I would love an opportunity to contribute some of my own work for Muddled Ramblings in a non-paid role, as I think I can provide some great work for you and hope there is an opportunity for me to do so. Hopefully you can use someone with my particular set of skills on your team, as I’m willing to jump in wherever I can help out. I’m a pro with WordPress and blogging and a quick study when it comes to content management systems.

Here is a more recent piece I wrote on the USSSM:

[redacted because this was probably spam]

I can write about absolutely anything and would greatly appreciate the chance to work with you. I am eager to expand my topical range and make new connections.

If you’re the wrong person to speak with, I apologize and would appreciate you forwarding along my information to the right person.

Best,

Cliff

I get these from time to time, and because they are so misplaced, sometimes I reply. I always hope that somewhere on the other end there is someone who appreciates the answer, even if it does them no good. I fervently hope that someday I’ll even get a response. Maybe this will be the time. Anyway, here’s what I wrote, complete with grammatical errors:

Hi Cliff,

OK, maybe.

I get offers like your from time to time, offers that make me wonder if there is a “Cliff” or a “Betsy” or whoever. Offers from people (or perhaps robots) who have clearly not visited Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas. People (or robots) who probably haven’t even read the name of the blog, since they still think I’m interested in, as you put it, “great work.” There is damn little great work here.

Also, your ability to be brief is not really a plus.

But I sense something different about you, Cliff. Something I can’t put my finger on, but I think the heart of the connection comes from your use of “college” and “sports”. Muddled Ramblings is no more about College or Sports than it is about anything else, but someone interested in sports who also went to college probably wrote more than one term paper in the small hours of the morning after doing keg stands and playing the travesty of a game kids are calling “beer pong” these days.

When I was a kid, beer pong included paddles.

I’m not interested in the term paper that scored you the ‘A’, that’s for Mainstream Media and big-money prima donnas. I want to hear about that time you were hammered and still wrote an essay that the professor had to confess was based on an “interesting idea”, and for that reason alone you got a ‘B’. Hell, even as I write this I’m partaking in blended Scotch Whiskey (I call it my “gluggin’ scotch” to differentiate it from actual sippin’ Scotch Whiskey, which is always single-malt. Don’t tell me how much you paid for the Johnnie Walker Ultraviolet Label; it’s still a blend, buckaroo), and you can bet these words will appear on Muddled Ramblings.

Truth be told, I’m often sober when I post to MR&HBI, but the spirit is always there.

So Cliff, if there is a Cliff, I’d be curious to see if you could share a bit of work in the “Muddled Style”. It probably won’t make your robot overlords happy writing something for such a small audience without links to their shit in the text, but hell, the robot overlords will have to get over it.

Just so you know going in, the revenue stream at Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas is zero. Nil, nada, nix. I pay more than I should to keep it running for one simple reason: I love doing it. If you want to participate, you have to write for the same reason. For the love.

Can you do that, Cliff?

.j.

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If you are one of my treasured patrons and you have mentioned in the past that you cannot access the TOP SECRET super-awesome patron-only content, you should have received and email from me. If you are unable to access the special content, but didn’t get an email, please let me know.

The system is much simpler, but at this time it is not overly tested. Please let me know if you have any trouble.

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I’m one of those people who heads for the shadows when “fun group activities” are afoot. While I imagine fun ways I could participate, I simply don’t. So when it was announced that this year’s winter-festival-of-your-choice party at work would include a gingerbread house decorating contest, I immediately decided that I would not be participating.

But… I had an idea. I’m one of the only engineers in my group, and I started to think about how a gingerbread house could be expressed abstractly, the way it would look in software. I got some pretty grand ideas.

Still, when the contest organizers were patrolling the area, trying to get people to accept the kit and commit to participating, I demurred. My arm was not twisted. For the next half-hour I heard other arms being twisted, and a loud-for-the-workplace lament that not enough people were participating. “I’ll do it!” I called across the office. “Bring me a kit.” [“Feel the wrath of the arm not twisted!” I didn’t add.]

The kit included a fully-assembled gingerbread house and stuff to stick to it. But in software, that’s not what a house looks like. So my first task was to break the house down to its constituent parts, the same way a software engineer breaks a big problem down into a set of smaller, more manageable problems.

It’s important to recognize here that the front of the house and the back of the house are the same, except for location and orientation. So in software, we define an end panel that works for both cases. Same with the sides, and for the roof panels. You break a thing down into its fundamental pieces, find what’s common between those pieces, and build your structure.

The challenge then, was to present those pieces in a meaningful way, and then create a language that would express how the parts were assembled and how they were decorated. When thoughts of poured-sugar virtual building elements with the parameters that defined them entombed inside gave way to reality, this is where I went:

On a cookie sheet I staged visual representations of the various parts of the house. I included things like the color sequence of the gumdrops when used in series (a co-worker gave me a demerit for not following the Apple rainbow in my sequence. I should have thought of that.) Then there was the purely abstract assembly instructions. The final result looked like this:

But it’s not software without bugs, and the wreath that came in the kit was broken. I filed the error in the company’s bug-tracking system:

Did I win? No. Of course not. Did I give my co-workers a little insight into how I think? I’d like to think so. I’m surrounded by creative people who view what I do as vaguely magic. Perhaps they understand me a little better now. Though to be honest it would take much more effort than one is likely to give at a holiday party to understand the intricacies of my gingerbread house.

Then there was this conversation:

Me: I think I overdid the roof.
Guy I work with, squinting at my display: Oh?
Me: Piping and a gumdrop on every roof tile? Along with the candies all around the edge. It might be a bit much.
Guy: Where?
Me: It’s all there if you look, but you can only see it in your head.
Guy: Oooh.

And that is my job. I build things you can only see in your head.

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This episode took a while to get out; there were several things working against it. November was a big one, but this episode resisted me every step of the way all on its own. Then in the middle of the night I figured out what was missing, tied things up, deferred a chunk of exposition to a later date, and here we are!

So what are you waiting for? Start reading already!

A couple of important things happen in this episode; Martin makes a decision about Elena and Bags has a couple of surprises. Happily, those surprises also allow me to release the rest of Bags’ backstory for my valued patrons. If I can remember how to do that.

I think it would be more fair to my patrons to commit to a regular release schedule, but I’m not sure yet what frequency I can commit to. We’ll figure that out in January; December is filled with house guests and general wassailing. I hope to get some good writing time in, but, well, the new year is all about resolutions, right?

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In the last couple of days I’ve thundered past the 50,000-word line, and earned myself a sixteenth NaNoWriMo victory. The primary objective, Glass Archipelago, is by no means a complete story, but I did put the words to use fleshing out a setting with three very different cultures. I could have kept going, as I was having a lot of fun, but it’s time to turn my attention back to Knives. The first few days of the NaNoWrimo effort were in fact Knives-related; I banged out the rest of Kat’s backstory, which I will be releasing in the coming week. As with Bags, the amount of backstory you can read depends on your patronage.

Also, the after the next episode of the main story, I’ll be able to reveal the rest of Bags’ backstory. So, lots to look forward to, if you are a fan of hastily-written exploratory prose. Woo!

Meanwhile, I’ll be having a sip of the good stuff this afternoon, and reviewing the plan for the next few episodes of Knives. It’s going to be tough to go to work tomorrow.

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We were taught in school that the Electoral College was an institution designed to protect the American public from themselves. That some rational group of men would stand between the public and the presidency so that candidates with foreign ties or who openly spoke against the principles of our republic would not be able to charm their way into office. Alexander Hamilton actually wrote about that at length.

Now there are people who say that our current President-elect is precisely the kind of guy the electoral college is supposed to protect us from. He covers all the checkboxes: shady foreign ties, a long record of unethical behavior, conflicts of interest, and that fascism thing. But the electors are not going to protect us from Trump. In fact, they can’t. They are bound by the laws of the states they represent.

So why does the electoral college really exist? For the same reason it’s never going away: less-populous states don’t want to get railroaded every election by the more-populous states. The electoral college was an invention to get the constitution ratified in the first place. In this country, citizens of the more populous states are less powerful by design. It was the only way to get the little states to sign up in the first place.

Personally, I think if you believe in one person/one vote, then all the votes should count equally. That, or we should go ahead and split up a few states. California becomes three states, New York two. Texas, I’m not sure about. Three? West Texas, East Texas, and Austin?

It doesn’t seem right that simply drawing lines on the map differently should change the outcome of an election that covers all that territory, but if that’s what it takes to get equal representation, then why not? Honestly, I think California would function better if it were three separate states.

Though I have to note that if the polar ice caps keep melting, a lot of people are going to be moving in the next few decades. The imbalance may just take care of itself.

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A long time ago I was in an intense conversation with a co-worker. I was speaking in defense of the right of the citizenry of this country to own guns. My friend disagreed. My friend is Jewish, and to further my argument I posited the dubious assertion, “If the Jews in 1920’s Germany were well-armed, things would have been different.” Honestly, it might not have made a difference, with the steady, insidious erosion of Jew’s rights across Europe at that time. But it makes a good argument.

My friend scoffed at my assertion. Not at the idea that well-armed Jews might have turned aside the oppression of their people in Nazi Germany, he scoffed at the very thought that a national socialist scapegoater would ever rise to prominence in this nation.

And here we are. I have never been a stronger proponent of the loose-ass interpretation of the 2nd amendment.

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Sorry for the delay; it’s not that the episode hasn’t been in the chute for some time, it’s that I got so caught up in writing Kat’s backstory as a “special treat” for patrons (be careful what you ask for) that I let the actual story moulder for a bit. This episode is compact, but I like it for two reasons: Something important happens, and as a bonus we catch a glimpse of Captain Baldwin’s humanity.

Speaking of the backstory, I took the last week off my day job to bang out a sloppily-written long-short explaining why Kat is such a hard-ass, and perhaps to provide clues to unlocking her tightly-wound soul. Alas, it took a few days to gain any traction, and the story is not finished yet. There are two big events I still need to write, and a third I need to finish or jettison. I do have the first chunk ready to publish, however, and I will be trying to remember how to post patron-only content on the Knives site.

NaNoWriMo is coming, and I will be spending a lot of time on a different story, but I hope to keep moving Knives forward at the same time. That would be easy, were it not for the aforementioned day job. Where oh where is that $5000 per episode patron?

While we all work to find my sugar-person, please enjoy Episode 24: Conscripted.

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Many years ago I was called up for jury duty. To this day I’d like to go back and do it better.

I found myself one Monday morning milling with a bunch of other regular folk in the courthouse lobby, until someone herded us into a courtroom for the process of voire dire, which means the lawyers fight within the rules to stack the jury in their favor.

It goes like this: a juror candidate steps up, the lawyers from both sides ask potentially-revealing questions, and based on the answers one side or the other throws them out. As I sat, waiting my turn, I heard questions like, “do you trust the police?” and equally leading questions from the other side. I was pretty sure my honest answers were going to disqualify me.

Finally it was my turn to step up and face the music. You know what they asked me? Nothing. Not one damn thing. Both sides profiled me; the prosecution saw a white guy, the defense saw the only non-retired-military white guy they were going to get, and just like that I was to be one of twelve deciding a man’s fate.

Short story: two guys got in a fight. Unfortunately, one was a cop. The other was a deaf hispanic man who thought he was fighting for his life and knew enough martial arts to prolong the struggle. In the end there were several police, three paramedics, a few firemen, and two dogs on the scene.

After three days of testimony, we were sent to our room to discuss. Another dude nominated himself as foreman; no one else gave a shit, so he was the guy. “Let’s start with the easy one,” he said. The gray-haired man to my right nodded. “Guilty,” he said. The foreman nodded in agreement, then read the actual charge. “Guilty?” he asked the room. There was an uncomfortable pause. Some of the members of the jury didn’t see things so clearly.

Sitting in front of each of us, ignored in the rush for power by the guilty-as-charged crowd, was a thick packet of instructions. The instructions went through the charges, count by count, with rules of evidence spelled out. “If you find A, then you must conclude B.” I pointed out that the process was spelled out in front of us. At that time I was happy for the instructions.

Most of the charges seemed clear-cut, but there were problems. For example, during the wrestling match the defendant had put his hand on the policeman’s gun. That’s a big no-no, as you might imagine. But there was a lot of reason to believe that he had no idea he was doing that. He was just grabbing, holding, trying not to be buried. And the cop? An obvious liar. I hadn’t heard the term ‘testlying’, at the time, a phrase used by the San Diego police, but cops get training in saying what’s necessary to get the conviction. At the time I thought his testimony was too clean, too perfect, and we were hearing what the textbook said to do, rather than what he actually did.

There was a pretty sharp divide between retired men and younger women. One spanish-speaking woman said that the defendant’s translator hadn’t done him any favors.

I looked through the instructions. There was nothing about how to judge the act in the absence of intent. I asked, asked again, and finally we were brought out before the judge in the presence of counsel for both sides to be told that we could split the charges and only find the guy guilty of what he actually did.

Back we went, for more discussion. “Guilty as hell” from the white-hair contingent, “It was all a misunderstanding with an asshole cop” from the female side. The jury might have hung, but for one thing I said. One thing I know to be untrue now. I said, “we are here to decide the law, not right and wrong.” The woman across the table from me nodded and cried, a compromise was reached, and we found the defendant guilty of reduced charges.

I apologize to Mr. Cervantes. Deciding right and wrong is exactly why juries exist. Juries deciding what is right has changed the course of this nation. Those packets of instructions focussed my jury early, but the word “must” was all over the place. Those instructions were carefully written to prevent the jury from thinking in terms of right and wrong. Most of the time, that’s probably helpful. Some of the time, like in the case of Mr. Cervantes, it discourages a higher ethical sense that makes us a better people.

Those packets are powerful. They give a paint-by-numbers view of the law. And sure, when a jury decides to stray from the script you get the acquittal of the cops that beat Rodney King, but you also get juries that kick racist laws in the balls. Eventually, over time, juries who believe in right and wrong make this country greater. Juries are the most powerful institution of government in this nation. As a juror, I feel like I failed my country, and I brought half a jury with me.

Sure you should vote. But you really want to serve your country? Step up when jury duty calls. Listen, think. Defend the law, but don’t forget what’s right. That’s why you’re there.

Sweet!

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