I warn you now, this is going to be a rather serious and personal posting. There hasn’t been one of these in a while. Here’s hoping I don’t muck it up too badly.

Exchanging email with a friend of mine recently, I was asked, “I don’t know how to find out what or who I want. Any suggestions?”

My answer: It’s not a “who.” There is no “who.” “What” is easy: Respect, chemistry, loyalty (one can have multiple partners and still be loyal, it all depends on how you go about it), humor… give or take a few ingredients. Settle for nothing less. Be ruthless, even if it hurts, in protecting your own heart and soul.

I’ve adopted three mottos this year. They help me sort through the conflicting emotions and facts and impulses so I can get down to cases and actually do something about my problems.

Motto The First: Life’s Too Short. There’s absolutely no reason in the world one should cling desperately to an untenable situation, nor should one hold back from stating their true feelings and beliefs before those who are most important in one’s life. Fear isn’t a good enough reason. Not fear of reprisal, not fear of being alone, not even fear of making the wrong choice. (And yes, I’ve lived with all three of those fears for quite some time now.) In the end, you have to stand up and do something. The sooner the better. None of us are getting any younger. Don’t take the chance that you’ll look back on today and regret your inaction.

Motto The Second: One Standard Will Do Nicely, Thank You. As much fun as it can be to throw this around when we see others living in a way that doesn’t match their stated beliefs, or engaging in blatant hypocrisy, this motto is mostly about performing regular head-checks on one’s own values and actions. I don’t think I’ve completely mastered the seemingly simple art of saying and doing what I believe to be right, but I’m getting better… and isn’t that what this is all about? Of course, this motto remains a statement of policy regarding things one should not put up with in those people we choose to make a part of our lives.

Motto The Third: Actions Speak Louder Than Words. It seems obvious, but I’ve realized that sometimes it needs saying. People are always saying what they think someone wants to hear. It isn’t even so much that they deliberately lie, but that they’re afraid to be thought poorly of by anybody. Or they’re afraid that if they say what they really think they may lose the respect or love of someone important to them. But you know what? Someone can say whatever they must, but they can’t hide their actions forever. I know. I tried. (Once again, this motto is as much internal as external.) It may be safe to say that one of my biggest challenges is learning to shut up and put my beliefs into practice. Again, of course, I haven’t perfected the art. But I now hold myself accountable for doing so, and I hold others around me similarly so.

How about it, friends and neighbors? Do these mottos apply to your life? Do you perhaps have others to suggest? In the immortal words of Joe Don Baker, “Go ahead on.”

Has this ever happened to you?

I’m sitting here on a quiet Saturday afternoon, puttering around (after putting away a pedestrian Potter publication) and it hits me. Wave after wave of the blackest, most overwhelming despair wells up from out of the inky depths of what passes for my soul. There’s no real reason for it, other than perhaps hunger and fatigue and a bit of loneliness… but not enough of either or all to warrant such a horrendous outpouring of inner turmoil and self-loathing.

Wow.

A couple handsful of oyster crackers (the last thereof, sadly) and an hour’s nap was enough to bring me back to something resembling sanity, or at least normalcy. Yes, I’m feeling much better now.

Here’s what I think: I think I’m starting to get better, starting to really look forward to the future (even if the good parts are too damned far away yet!) and therefore starting to loosen my ironclad grip on the pain I’ve been burying inside all my life.

This is a good thing, right?

Yeah, except when the pain rises up and demands its share of my time. Talk about “double-plus ungood,” baby. Mood swings? How about mood merry-go-rounds? Mood slides? Mood see-saws? I’ve got ’em all.

Unfortunately I managed to fire off a really horrid piece of writing during the depths of today’s episode, and I’d just like to let those few who saw it know that I’m really perfectly okay, if a bit rattled. I could use a hug, but that’s about all I need right now.

That, and a decent meal. Yes indeed. Hunger is not our friend. But that’s a rant for another day, or another venue.

Not that I’m into the astrology, mind you, but:

If you go down on someone who has the same sign as you, does that count as cosmic cannibalism?

(It’s a day late, but I used the phrase of the day in a sentence. Go, me!)

I skipped out on breakfast this morning, and so was looking forward to a nice little lunch purchased from the nearby “bento stand.” Except, of course, it was closed today. Ack! What to do, what to eat!

Karel: It just means I’ll probably sort of vanish from the office a wee bit early, stop somewhere for a bite before going home.
Mari: you should really stock some food for times like this…
Karel: ACK!
Karel: I have a box of Triscuits in my bottom desk drawer!
Mari: yay!

Yep! I’d stored some snacky goodness away for just such an emergency. Mind you, Mari had to remind me to look for it. But wait, there’s more!

Karel: And then someone says, “free veggie dogs in the lunch room!”
Mari: see? it all works out 😉

That’s what she thinks…

Karel: *cough* Ewww. Okay, they’re not very tasty. But, it’s food. Beggars, choosers, etc.
Karel: (two bites later) Okay, they’re not just untasty, they’re nasty.
Mari: LOL
Mari: lots and lots of mustard will fix anything
Mari: I hate veggie dogs too
Mari: so i speak from experience
Karel: Not enough dijon poupon yellow crap in the world to make [this veggie dog] edible.
Karel: Bleah. I’m gonna be downing triscuits in a vain attempt to “saltine” that taste away.
Mari: good luck
Karel: I’m even MORE glad I have this box of triscuits now!
Karel: They ought to put warning labels on those things.
Karel: “WARNING: If knowing how hot dogs are made isn’t enough to keep you from eating them, two bites of these veggie dogs will cure you forever!”
Mari: heh

Seriously, people. Why on earth would you make “vegetarian fake meat products” in the first place, let alone make them so inedible? Is it some sort of evil backhanded plot to turn people off of meat-like foods altogether?

A note to those who arrange free food for our building: Please, please, if you’re going to have meat-like products, let them be real meat instead of vegetarian goop dressed up like meat. Thank you.

Karel: *grin* And it all becomes a journal entry.
Mari: hey you write what you know
Karel: And what do I know? That veggie dogs taste like ass.
Mari: really? when was the last time you tasted ass? *grin*
Karel: Thppppt. Fine, mock my use of colloqualism.
Mari: ok i will
Mari: hee hee

First, a disclaimer. I am not all that widely read on the subjects contained in this entry. Most of this is probably obvious to anyone with more than a passing familiarity with higher physics. I’m only setting this down “in print” to get it out of my system, seeing as how I’m all fired up by my little leap of logic.

Okay, we got that out of the way. On with the show.

Analogies can both help and hinder understanding. Take the following: “Every action causes ripples like a rock dropped in a pond.” It’s true that actions have consequences, but we also know that those ripples vanish and are absorbed by rough waters.

The proponents of “chaos theory” like to use another analogy, that of the butterfly. The idea is that a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world, and as a result a hurricane strikes somewhere else some time later. This particular analogy has always bothered me, but I couldn’t articulate why until this morning when I kicked a pebble off the road.

I asked myself, “How could kicking a pebble, the equivalent of a butterfly flapping its wings, possibly do anything to the world at large?”

Yes, I get most of my best thinking done while I’m walking outdoors.

It’s all about scale, and how events of one scale interact with objects of another. The idea that every small event affects everything else regardless of scale is absurd. A better way to look at it is as if there were layers of interaction.

My pebble didn’t do anything to the world at large. In its own layer, nothing important changed. It didn’t strike another pebble or anything like that. One could argue that the pebble’s layer is completely inconsequential, but that’s a topic for another entry.

In the layer “up” from the pebble’s own, nothing important happened because I kicked it. Had the pebble been instead thrown at a glass object, that could have set off a chain of events at the human-sized layer. The same would be true had it struck an animal or a person. At that point my action, having affected a lower layer (that of the pebble), would have then affected objects in my own. Still nothing of hurricane proportions, since it’s unlikely that I could precipitate anything on the scale of, say, a war just by hitting somebody with a pebble. I don’t operate at the global level.

Thinking “down” for a moment, the microbes that crawl on the pebble’s surface have been relocated, for better or worse. Perhaps they could mutate into the next ebola virus because of the change of lighting or interaction with microbes in their new location… but that seems staggeringly unlikely.

This is all fairly straightforward and even obvious. It still gives me some insight into human social and political interaction. As I just mentioned, I don’t operate a level that gives my actions the kind of global consequences that a statesman’s can. This works both ways, however.

Explain voter apathy. It’s easy, really. People talk about how nothing really changes no matter who we elect. That’s not actually true, but it’s effectively true. The politicians are at a different layer from the common folk. (I leave it to better minds than mine to decide if it’s a higher or lower one. In truth, it’s that the layers aren’t stacked vertically at all. This is just another example of an analogy falling apart on closer inspection.)

Most of the actions of our elected officials mean nothing to most of us. Some affect everyone, many affect few. The more layers separate us from them, the less likely a given action will touch us in any meaningful way.

All of this could be thought of as “stating the problem.” Once you grasp the idea that not every action affects objects universally, however, you can start to look at ways to maximise the effects of specific actions. The common sense notions of choosing your battles wisely, letting go of problems about which you can’t affect change, and focusing your energies on achievable results all come into play.

We also realize that some actions are just outright stupid. Deliberately puking on the steps of a government building probably won’t put a stop to war, for instance. Nor will praying really hard. Let’s put it this way: Millions of people prayed for peace. We still went to war. Was the praying a bad idea? Maybe not, but a better use of that energy might have been sincere, well-planned lobbying. Perhaps.

It’s not that I think I have the solution to achieving social change and making the world a better place. What I think I’ve found, though, is a tool to help make better choices about the methods used. Conversely, I like to think that if more people understood this idea then they’d stop believing that little, silly things can be responsible for all the world’s troubles, or put a stop to them.

Because clipping billions of butterflies’ wings won’t put an end to hurricanes.

Before I really start, I’d like to get this out of the way: You and I both know that The Two Towers is going to get next to nothing on Oscar night. The Academy is going to wait until next year, and rightly so. “TTT” isn’t a movie, it’s the middle part of a movie. And that’s all I have to say on that subject.

The meat of this particular meandering diatribe is the Animated Feature Film category, the only one to which I have any emotional attachment of any kind. Let’s just run down the list as presented on the official Nominees page, shall we?

• Ice Age: Splendid 3D animation work, not a bad little story. The technical bits that qualify as “cutting edge” nowadays are becoming more and more difficult for the average viewer to discern, but there’s just enough of that edge to make this a completely valid contender on technological merit alone. Add to that a cute, if generally bland and harmless, story with talking animals and what you get is an Oscar contender.
  
• Lilo & Stitch: Of the two (or three, depending on how you count them) Disney flicks in the running, this is the only Mouse-made production to have even a slim chance. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a cute enough movie. I liked it, the family liked it, and you don’t have to twist my arm too much to get me to watch it. Like Ice Age, though, the things that are good are only barely discernable against the overall harmlessness of the film. There’s nothing that stands out from this picture, so a vote for Lilo is just a knee-jerk vote for Disney tradition.
  
• Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron: Hoo boy. I’m torn on this movie. For one thing, it has next to no story. It’s a series of vignettes and sketches loosely tied together by recurring characters. Some of the bits are truly inspired, while others inspire you to take a long bathroom break. The animation quality is similarly uneven. There are moment of unquestionable brilliance and quality, and the animators do things with computer-assisted action sequences that will be ruthlessly, shamelessly copied for years to come. There’s just not enough good material bridging those bits together to make this movie a winner.
  
• Spirited Away: I’d like to offer a reasoned, unbiased account of this film. I really would. It’s probably impossible, though, since this is undoubtedly one of the most enchanting, intriguing and marvelously beautiful animated films of all time. As for its Oscar chances, it all depends on how you look at it. I’ll get into that in a moment.
  
• Treasure Planet: As near as I can tell, it was included because there wasn’t much else in the available field. I haven’t seen this movie. I don’t know anyone who has publicly admitted to seeing this movie. In a year without any other 3D-assisted or 3D-animated fare, in a year without Miyazaki competition… maybe. But I sort of doubt it.

The competition is clearly between Ice Age and Spirited Away, with Spirit as a sort of dark horse. (Stop that groaning, I’m being serious.) Lilo & Stitch and Treasure Planet, besides being less than stellar on their own, represent too many chances for the votes to be spread thinly. A vote for Disney is a vote for… which movie?

Disney’s smartest move would be to put their public relations muscle behind Spirited Away, since any attempt to champion their own products would probably split too many votes to be effective. Miyazaki’s film is going to get some votes, no question about it and no matter what Disney’s PR people do between now and late March. If Disney only had Lilo or Planet in the running, they could get away with championing that one at the expense of Spirited Away, which admittedly they would probably love to do. Even though they’re the distributor for Spirited Away, getting the Oscar for it might be something of a Pyrrhic victory. “Yay, we won… distributing a movie that is in every way superior to the movies we made last year.”

A side bonus for Disney is the chance to rake in some cash with the mid-April release of Spirited Away on DVD. They’re also putting out Kiki’s Delivery Service and Castle In The Sky on the same date as a sort of Great Big Miyazaki DVD Fest. Given the timing, do you figure they hope to ride Oscar coattails? But of course. Hell, it works for me.

The other serious contender, of course, is the quirky and charming Ice Age. It’s certainly not a better movie than Spirited Away, but the fact that it’s 3D animation (the current hot animation “thing”) and lacks all of the disturbing strangeness and cultural subtexts of Spirited Away may count for a lot when the votes are tallied. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Blue Sky Studios take the little gold man home. Saddened a bit, but not surprised. It wouldn’t be a completely horrible thing, mind you, since Blue Sky is such a new studio and Fox (the distributor) hasn’t seen much success with animation lately, so a win would add incentive to fund more creative efforts.

And there you have it. One man’s thoughts on an Oscar race that most sane folks will generally disregard in favor of speculation on whether Jack Nicholson or Daniel Day-Lewis will win for Best Actor, or which of the actresses from The Hours will take home statuettes. *shrug* As if I cared.