The killdeer

Killdeer nest image copyrighted by Timothy Buck. Used with permission.

A killdeer is a type of plover, a bird that lays its eggs in a shallow nest made in an open field, rather than in the safer refuge of a tree. The eggs are mottled, a protective coloration that makes them look like the rocks that often surround them. The mother killdeer usually covers these eggs to warm and protect them. But if a predatory animal comes near, the killdeer starts acting very oddly. She flops off her nest and begins limping away, carefully favoring one of her wings, and occasionally flaps around awkwardly, making a loud distress call. Recognizing all the signs of a bird with a broken wing, the predator usually stalks the killdeer for some distance -- or at least until the killdeer has determined her eggs are no longer in danger. Then, if all goes well, she suddenly "recovers" and flies away, leaving the predator with nothing. Such distraction displays are common among birds (and some fish) as a means of protecting their young.

But distraction displays aren't limited to animals. Human beings -- especially children -- resort to them as well, in situations where there is a predator in their midst and they cannot hope to best that predator by physical force. In the movie Good Will Hunting (an otherwise excellent story marred by excessive profanity), Will's counselor and mentor Sean has a discussion with him about abuse. One of the things Sean says, almost in passing, is that his alcoholic father would "come home hammered, looking to wale on somebody, so I'd provoke him so he wouldn't go after my mother and little brother." Sean was a killdeer. He couldn't turn in his own father -- or maybe he tried, and nobody believed a little kid, or they didn't want to get involved in a domestic violence situation. He didn't want to be hurt, but he wanted even more to keep the people he loved from being hurt. So he stood up and took the abuse, drawing the predator's fire in order to keep other people safe. In similar fashion, in the case of child molestation, a killdeer child may try to draw the predator away from other children by putting on a seductive display, even though it may turn her stomach to do so. As the Wikipedia article on distraction displays states clinically, "Distraction displays have their cost and displaying adult birds are sometimes captured by the predator being distracted or by other opportunist predators." (my emphasis)

Like their animal equivalents, human predators often lack empathy for their victims; unlike animals, however, when human predators are caught, society usually demands that they account for their monstrous actions. It is illustrative of their mental states to see how many cornered human predators immediately, almost instinctively, blame their victims. And of course, most such victims also blame themselves, assuming that there must have been something they did to precipitate such behavior on the part of someone who should have protected them and who instead did them harm. It may take a very long time -- well into adulthood -- before an abused child finally internalizes the idea that he was not somehow to blame for what happened. The scene from Good Will Hunting ends with Sean gently, firmly, repeatedly telling Will, "It's not your fault," until the words finally sink in. A number of people seem to find the repetition in this scene funny. I'm guessing that's because they've never known what it is to be a killdeer.

Late-night wonders

In the past I've mentioned some of the odd things one sees when one is out late at night. Many an Epic Late Night Grocery Run has been punctuated by an odd sighting or two... such as the time I was leaving the Safeway parking lot and the car's headlights picked out a low, gray object about the size of a kitten, scuttling along the edge of a building (entirely too close to the entrance of a local restaurant, by the way). It was the biggest Norway rat I'd ever seen.

Then there was that incident the other night -- well, early morning, actually -- as I was tooling peacefully home along the city's main thoroughfare, which just happens to be a one-way street. Suddenly someone flew past me in the left lane. I'm guessing he was going so fast because he couldn't read the posted speed limit signs, driving as he was in the wrong direction. Gah!

So...

What wondrous oddities have you spied
when the garish lights of day have died?
Come, readers all, and here display
Your night-time tales of the weird or fey
To bring delight or cause dismay!

The return of the Nerd Brigade

After many weeks of hiatus, CM and the Nerd Brigade are up to their usual hijinks again. The house is alive with the sound of teen boys debating how to enter a room chock full of bugbears, the crunch of homemade popcorn and the scent of boiling hot dogs.

Back in the early '80s, when it seems a lot of parents didn't have anything more pressing to worry about, there was a sizable hue and cry about D&D and other tabletop role-playing games being a sort of gateway drug to Satanism. Such worries seem almost quaint these days -- witness the Nerd Brigade, a group of teenage boys from our church, none of whose parents seem to have batted an eye over their participation in this group -- but nearly 30 years ago parents really worried about the state of their D&D-playing kids' souls. It was enough of a concern that numerous articles were written in the attempt to pacify parents -- "no, your kids aren't going to become trenchcoat-wearing violent cultists just by playing D&D." (Some things never change; now it seems concerned parents get their panties in a twist about the occult effects of runaway bestsellers their kids want to read, such as the Harry Potter series. Uh, right. The minute I can holler "Wingardium leviosa!" and actually make something fly, you folks will have a leg to stand on, m'kay?)

RPG enthusiast Kismet has written a good article on some of the benefits of RPGs (they increase the exercise of imagination, improve reading and math skills, and encourage teamwork and camaraderie), and has also written an article on the pitfalls of such games (condensed into one phrase: they're time-wasters). In my opinion, though, D&D is like a lot of other hobbies: what you bring with you has a lot more influence on you than anything in the nature of the hobby. If Jhaymes has an unhealthy interest in gore and he bakes cakes for fun, you shouldn't be all that surprised if he comes up with a gray brain cake that bleeds realistically when you cut into it. It has little or nothing to do with the shady or occult nature of cake-baking, and everything to do with the inclination of the individual.

Mmm, cut me a piece of cerebellum, Jhaymes!

Back to basics

When I first started writing, I declared I would never, ever compose by typing on a word processor. It felt soulless, and back when I was lucky to reach a top speed of 20 WPM, longhand writing was usually faster. Since that time I've been able to reach an official typing speed of ZOOM ZOOM, and I've discovered the benefits of being able to type ideas almost as fast as I can think them. Still, I've determined there's some part of my brain that works differently when I'm writing ideas down. It's especially useful for hammering out creative concepts, as opposed to setting down logical thought (or at least what passes for logical thought in my loopy laundry-faerie mind). And I need to finish a particular creative project.

So. Off to the notebook. I'll see you back here later.

"They say of the Acropolis, where the Parthenon is..."

(Whadda they say? Whadda they say?)

The following bit is why I consistently describe the BBC show QI as "what happens when your favorite college professor is outnumbered by four rowdy soccer hooligans."

I've seen this well over a dozen times. It still cracks me up every. single. time.

Why can't we have shows like QI this side of the pond?

Beating the cold... WITH STICKS!

I'm about done with my case of the Ick. Likewise, it's about done with me, so that works out well. And now that my voice has come back -- such as it is -- it's time to return to a little more LibriVox goodness. In this particular instance, that means reading Chapter 6 of A General Historie of the Pyrates, Vol. 1. YARR MATEY! It be a book datin' from 1724 an' be widely credited ter Daniel Defoe, though nowadays that be contested.

I was so set to read the chapters about Anne Bonny and Mary Read, but alas, somebody beat me to 'em. So I'm having to be content with Charles Vane (indirectly connected to them through "Calico Jack" Rackham, once a member of his crew).

Still trying to figure out the best way to get the best possible sound out of a game headset, a shareware recording program, and a single voice & diction class taken 20+ years ago. Like most amateurs, I have problems with plosives and sibilance, and I keep trying to minimize them by positioning the headset mic in various places. But putting the mic up above my nose where I can't accidentally breathe on it means the finished recording is really quiet, and the sound has to be boosted artificially, leaving it with some weird artifacts. (Yeah, I know, whine whine whine.) If you have any suggestions, they would be most appreciated.

Better living through websurfing... kinda

O I bought about 2 pounds of Alaskan cod at the market the other day, because hey, it was on sale and I was reasonably sure I could come up with some recipe or other that would make good use of it. Fast-forward to today, as Soozcat drags around the house making various mucous-y noises and wanting to crawl into a hole somewhere... and yet people must be fed. And there's the cod, sitting in the fridge, waiting patiently to be foodified. So I typed "cod recipe" into the browser and took the first result it gave me, and lo! there was a recipe for a lovely fish chowder with ingredients we already had on hand. Tweaked it a bit, and we had dinner on the table for tonight, with enough leftovers that Captain Midnight may take another serving to work for lunch tomorrow. Not too shabby.

Of course, there is also the downside of the web, especially when I'm sick. That would include spending far too much time on Facebook playing Bejeweled Blitz, and other mindless pursuits. I should be writing all sorts of things instead. But I prefer to be distracted, because I'm a bum.

Remember, people, the Internet is a tool. That doesn't mean you have to be one.

I dreamed a dream in time gone by

(NOTE: Some religious content ahead. )

keep thinking about the idea of life as a kind of lucid dream, a conceit repeated over and over again in poetry -- everything from the doggerel of "Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream" to the full Wordsworthian "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting" -- and mentally connecting it to a series of scriptures where visions of eternity, the future, etc. are given in dreams. And here's what I'm wondering: if the poets are right, and our earthly life is truly the dream state, then are the experiences we call "dreams" just a means of temporarily "waking up" -- a state where our souls come in contact with a deeper reality?

My own faith holds that before we came to earth, our spirits existed in some pre-mortal state of being with God, and that upon our birth a veil of forgetfulness descended over our minds to cause us to forget that previous existence as part of our earthly testing (in part, to see how well we would do what was right, even when we believed no one was watching). Because of this belief in that veil of forgetfulness, I find it interesting -- perhaps significant -- that the specifics of our dreams so often fade from our minds when we wake up. (In fact, the only way to keep the details of most dreams clear is to write them down as soon after waking as possible.) Perhaps the veil was temporarily lifted in sleep and is allowed to fall over our minds again as we wake.

By this I'm not trying to suggest every dream has equal significance. Sometimes they're purely random nonsense, as when you find yourself in a house made of cheese with a roof of Branston pickle, and tiny pteronadons keep flying through the parlor to deliver packets of dental floss. (This dream's message: stop eating pepperoni pizza before bed.) Sometimes the dreams you have are heavily and obviously influenced by a movie you just saw or your latest bedside reading material, and you can tell there isn't anything significant about them.

But then there are other dreams. I know of at least one person who has, in dreams, had an important and very lucid conversation with a parent who had died. I know of two people who had the same richly symbolic dream, independently of each other. And I had a significant dream about a month after my father died, which was a great comfort at the time. Without going into it too deeply, I'll just say the symbolism of the dream was personal, very understandable to my twelve-year-old mind, and helped me remember that although my father might be dead, he wasn't gone for good -- that our family was still intact and had the power to remain so forever. It provided a lifeline at a time when I most needed it.

So: does God talk to us through our dreams? Personally, I think He does so on occasion. (Certainly it would seem to be the only time of day when we're prepared to give Him our undivided attention, no?)

The smell of rubber cement

(You can now listen to this entry, with an explanatory preface.)

I am not artistic. Yes, all right, I used to doodle cartoons that were a step or two above stick figures, and I'm a self-taught calligrapher, but I am not a full-fledged artist by any stretch of the imagination. And yet I find myself drawn to art supplies. I linger over all the items you might reasonably expect, like pens and lined notebooks, or implements of calligraphy, or fancy papers, or colored inks, certainly -- but I also end up inspecting all the watercolor pencils, fiddling with the French curve protractors, running my fingers over the squared-off chalky colors of the pastels and the fat greasy roundness of the oil crayons, opening the paint sets and sighing over the evocative names of the tiny filled tubes of watercolors (burnt umber, Prussian blue, viridian green, yellow ochre -- you can practically taste the names). Most of all, I love the smells -- the rich tang of oil paints, the sharp aldehyde scent of big-boned Prismacolor markers, and the heady, slightly giddy-making fuminess of rubber cement. I was set to use the phrase "kid in a candy store," but that isn't quite right -- more like a jewelry-lover at Tiffany's, or a bibliophile surrounded by beautiful leatherbound tomes in all directions. I am in my element.

To me, there is a repleteness of familiarity in all these things. Though I don't know how to use these art supplies and therefore don't feel right buying them, they seem to give off an air of intimacy. Because, of course, they are home.

When I look over the watercolors, when I make beautiful swooshes of color with the pastels, when I smell rubber cement, I am remembering being ten years old and lying on the floor next to my daddy's drawing board as he worked on another project for a client. I remember playing with bits of his Letraset letters, rubbing them off to make little letter-people on the paper. I remember covertly taking his Prismacolor markers (which I was not supposed to touch) out of their little carousel and carefully drawing my name. (Dad always made a sharp distinction between writing, which was just scribing down words, and calligraphy, which was drawing them.) And I remember always there was rubber cement: we used it to tack together school projects, make puppet show theaters and other creative objects, or sometimes we'd just paint it on our hands and roll it into squishy little rubber ball boogers as it dried. Rubber cement was a Dad smell, just like Old Spice and shaving cream on Sundays, or sweat and earth if he was working in the garden, or the tinny green smell of the canned asparagus that he loved (usually a birthday treat).

I love art supplies -- especially rubber cement -- because while I am pointlessly lingering over them, my mind is back in a time when Santa's existence was real and unquestioned, when my biggest decision of the day was what style of kite I should buy, when the Concord Public Library was full of unexplored wonders, when I had both a mom and a dad, when it seemed the structure of my life would always be as it was then. The smell of rubber cement is the ghost of home.

Wouldn't you rather be rich and obscure?

For a brief period when I was a teenager, I thought (as many teenagers do) that I wanted to be rich and famous when I grew up.

Thank heavens I thought it through before I ever made that happen.

Yes, many teenagers want to be celebrities. That's because many teenagers can't think about what's happening more than about three days ahead. (I feel confident saying this, because I was one of them. Hormones... they melt your brains, I tells ya.) If they were to consider it for more than a minute or two, they might come up with a few reasons why being a wealthy celebrity isn't all it's cracked up to be.

First, there's the constant flocking. Teenagers think it would be fun to stroll down the red carpet being cheered by adoring fans, while the paparazzi take dozens of photos and the fan magazine reporters describe everything they see in excruciating detail for the folks at home. And it probably would be, the first half-dozen times it happened. But then you'd start to realize that the fans and the reporters and the random people with cell phone cameras were following you at the mall, and in the grocery store, and when you went out to check your mail, and (horrors) at the pool or the gym. Everywhere you went, there would be people with cameras, people who wanted to shake your hand and talk exhaustively about your last project, people who yelled inane catchphrases at you, people who wanted just one more autograph. You'd always wonder whether people really liked you for yourself, or whether they only took an interest in you because you were famous or wealthy or had clout with other famous people. How long before that got old?

And then you'd have the real loons to deal with: the crazy stalkers who called you at 2:30 in the morning or tried to break into your home or tailed your spouse and children so they could talk to you about their unified field theories, the evil people who tried to blackmail you because they once saw you doing something wrong or stupid, and the reporters who would do ANYTHING -- and think hard about what that word really means -- to get the latest scoop story on you. At worst, you might become like the late Michael Jackson, a prisoner of his own celebrity who had to resort to elaborate disguises if he wanted to leave his home and go into a public place unmolested, and who encouraged his children to wear masks or veils to conceal their identity from would-be kidnappers.

Speaking of reporters, you'd have to get used to dressing for them every day, not for yourself or for your family or friends. It wouldn't be so bad on days when you looked nice, but if you slipped up even for a minute -- if you spilled food or drink on yourself by accident, or if there were a grease spot on your shirt, or if your nose were a little shiny, or if you'd been sweating heavily, or if you were having a bad hair day, or gained a few ounces, or if you failed to maintain an immaculate bikini wax at all times -- the press would take pictures of it and crucify you publicly for your minor lapse in fashion sense. (I can only imagine how this would work for your humble writer, no fashion plate even on my best days. As a wife and the guardian of a seventh grader, I find myself playing taxi driver pretty often. Imagine if I put on my knee-length caftan as a cover-up one morning, just to drive Captain Midnight to work, and some paparazzo snapped a quick pic of me in the car. For the next week or so I'd be squirming at the supermarket tabloids featuring that horrible photo under headlines like "Soozcat Caught in Fashion Faux Pas" and "Oh Caftan, My Caftan." I'll pass, thanks.)

Then, too, your time and interests would no longer be your own. Get caught reading a book in public, and people want to know why you picked it (uh, because it's interesting?); buy something you like at a store, and start an unexpected run on the hapless business; get second-guessed at every turn by every armchair critic, based on every private interest the media can dig up as well as every preference you've ever made public. You want people to know and mock your guilty pleasures? And if you've made or inherited money as part of your celebrity, that money isn't yours to spend either. Every hard-case sob sister and charity organization in the world will come to you asking for money -- and when you have to decline some of them, as you will eventually do because you don't have unlimited money or because you don't support their cause, they'll be furious and start bad-mouthing you to anyone who will listen.

Let's not forget the mean kids -- the ones who tormented you and made your life unbearable in high school. These people never really go away, they just go to Hollywood. Sometimes they inexplicably become famous in their own right, as with Perez Hilton. And sometimes they apply their venom in other ways, by sidling up to celebrities and trying to backstab them, Emperor's New Clothes-style. Can't you imagine one of these talking to Cate Blanchett, trying to convince this lovely and talented woman (who probably doesn't have the time or inclination to fuss over what to wear) that she ought to walk a red carpet clad only in my grandma's afghan?

Image evilly stolen from Getty Images. Eeeevil.

Let's face it: not everyone is cut out to be famous. There are certain pressures associated with fame that most people are simply not constitutionally equipped to handle. If you weren't already well aware of this before the advent of "reality TV," you should have attained enlightenment while watching Susan Boyle have a nervous breakdown in real time, or seeing Jon and Kate Gosselin destroy their marriage and family for the entertainment of the masses. I'm not excusing those celebrities who make fools of themselves -- who go out and get publicly smashed, shave their heads, run around sans underwear, et cetera -- but they really don't live with the kinds of circumstances that support or encourage normal human behavior.

Now, let's consider for a moment the relatively obscure life of Jack C. Taylor. You probably wouldn't be able to pick Taylor out of a crowd, unless you knew what you were looking for -- he's a grandfatherly-looking man in his mid-80s, with white hair and piercing eyes. His experience is similar to that of many Americans of his age: Taylor dropped out of college, he was a Navy fighter pilot during World War II, and started out his business career selling cars for a Cadillac dealership in St. Louis. Eventually, when he started his own business, he named it after the aircraft carrier from whose decks he had flown many of his missions during the war: the Enterprise. The Taylor family owns Enterprise Rent-a-Car; Taylor himself is worth about 9.5 billion dollars, and is about the 40th-richest person in the world. And unless you happen to work for Enterprise or you read Forbes magazine religiously, you've probably never heard of him before now. He could walk into your local Quik-Mart and buy a packet of powdered sugar Donettes, and you'd never know he was a billionaire.

That's more my speed: rich and obscure. And hey, since my obscurity is secured, I'm already halfway there!