simplerich

I just finished reading Hatchet: 20th Anniversary Edition as part of my read a lot more than I have been monkey. (Check out my Monkey list from a previous post if you don’t know what I’m talking about.)

‘All flying is easy. Just takes learning. Like everything else. Like everything else.’

When I started Hatchet I was immediately put in mind of Follow My Leader, another book along these lines. At their heart they’re coming of age stories. I read Follow My Leader in the summer of 1976 as part of a bicentennial summer reading program being put on by the town’s public library. Follow My Leader is the story of a boy who is blinded in an accident with a firecracker and how he learns to live with his new blindness. I walked around with my eyes closed for ages afterwards thinking I should learn to be blind just in case… That was a lot of years ago and I still remember how I felt about the kid in that book… that kid who was older than me at the time I read the book come to think of it. It’s a great book. I recommend it to any 8-14 year old boy… or older if you haven’t read it yet. (I’d say girl too, but I’ve no clue what girls that age read unless it’s Little House on the Prairie or My Darling My Hamburger having never been a girl.)

Hatchet is a book I wish I’d read around the same time as the Follow My Leader. It’s the story of a kid who’s little two person plane goes down in the Canadian bush while he’s on the way to see his dad. The pilot died of a heart attack was the problem initially. The only tool he had to survive with was a hatchet his Mom had given him before he left, and his brains. He learns to use his brains and survive until help came.

“I am full of tough hope.”

It’s not a long book, but the distance the boy goes from suicidal to survivor, and not just survivor, but more than he was when he got there is huge. I had a hatchet when I was a boy, and a river we used to camp at that felt about as remote as the Canadian Bush. If I’d read this before going it would have added a whole level to the camping trips as I would almost certainly have pretended to be crashed out there on that river.

One of the things about this book and about Ender’s Game is that it portrays kids as capable and intelligent. When I was the age Brian (that’s the protagonist’s name) was in the book I thought I was pretty smart. I think all kids do at all ages… I still do… some things we never grow out of I guess. I felt I was capable of more than I was allowed, and that’s probably a good thing. The sense that he could not die out there in the bush, that he was capable of dealing with what had happened, and not just survive, but thrive in a way. That’s a big part of both this book and Follow my Leader actually… it’s more than survival or dealing with the hand you’re dealt. It’s about coming out the otherside bigger than you were before. The word “survivor” has an intimation to it…

Survivor: To remain alive or in existence.

That’s not what either of these kids do in either book, or in Ender’s Game for that matter. They’re put in a situation, a bad situation and they don’t just survive. That’s the bare minimum people do every other day to make it to the end of the day. They came out the other side stronger than they were before, tempered like steel by being run through the crucible or forge of a bad experience. They don’t just come out the other side the same they went in but glad to have lived through it… that’s surviving, they came out better than they went in. They came out changed. They overcame. That to me is why Hatchet is such a great book. For a kid to read stories about survival is fine, but for them to read books where mere survival is not enough… where the protagonist can go through something awful and come out better than before, that shapes the reader’s mind in such a way that when they’re, we’re, I’m put in a a situation that looks insurmountable or terrible or overwhelming there’s already an expectation in my head that I don’t have to merely survive, but I can, with some hard work, luck, and tough hope, come out the other side better. It’s not enough to grip with your fingernails and hold on to the edge of a cliff for dear life waiting for help, hoping to get out the other side merely alive… but to pull yourself up  and stand on the precipice and look around you to see what you can do for yourself. That lesson, the lesson that we can be independently successful even in untenable surroundings, that lesson is one every kid should learn.

I’ve been incredibly lucky in my life in that I haven’t ever been struck blind by a fire-cracker. I’ve never crashed in a plane in the middle of the Canadian bush and been attacked by an insane moose. I’ve never been sent to Battle School away from my family to fight the buggers for the existence of the human race. None of that stuff’s happened to me and honestly, I’m OK with that… but the things that have happened to me, that have come along that weren’t all sunshine and roses… those things have helped make me who I am, which is more than a survivor, more than someone who merely “got through them.” I wouldn’t be who I am today if I hadn’t gone through those things, and even though they aren’t particularly pleasant to go through at the time, I don’t think Brian would say his stay at the lake in Canada with the bears and wolves and mosquitos was a vacation… I also don’t think I would want to change any of them. If I did I wouldn’t be me, and I like who I’ve become.

Any kid out there could stand to learn the lesson that adversity doesn’t have to be just lived through, but can be used as the fire that tempers the soul, turning it from the fragile, brittle thing it can be in our insecurities to a tougher thing, a stronger thing that can not just stand pressure, but spring back, pushing back the darkness, pushing back the tide, holding a light up saying, as Brian did in the book:

Come on, he thought, baring his teeth in the darkness—come on. Is that the best you can do—is that all you can hit me with—a moose and a tornado? Well, he thought, holding his ribs and smiling, then spitting mosquitoes out of his mouth. Well, that won’t get the job done. That was the difference now. He had changed, and he was tough.

I loved Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother. I recommend it to everybody who will listen. So, when I saw For the Win was out at a Borders near where I live I snatched it up in hardcover to donate to a library and I downloaded a copy for myself to read. Cory believes that he can give his stuff away and still make money. He believes the biggest danger to a writer isn’t someone stealing his work and reading it… that it’s nobody reading him at all. So, he gives his stuff away as well as selling it.

Anyway. I donated the book without reading it. I’m glad I didn’t put my name on it. There. I said it.

Here’s the thing. With Little Brother I knew what the problem was. I knew there had to be some resolution. I had some characters I cared about to focus on and I knew the desired outcome and what I didn’t want to happen to them. I was engaged in them and in their story. In For the Win there are a lot of characters. I haven’t really cared about them much at all. I can’t remember the name of the one I cared most about so that’s no good. And the problem? The problem is life isn’t fair. That’s the problem in the story as I saw it. How is that going to be fixed? It’s not. Life ISN’T fair. I’m three-quarters of the way through the book and I shouldn’t do the review until I finish the book. It’s unfair of me to review it before I’m done with it. The thing is. I’m done with it.

I can close the book right now without knowing what happens to any of the characters in the story and I won’t wonder about it later. The book is about the economies in online games. I LOVE online games. I won’t lie. I even bought gold once in Everquest (EQ). I played Everquest 1 & 2, World of Warcraft, Asheron’s Call, Star Wars Galaxies, and another one… I can’t remember the name. I didn’t play long. I played a lot of them. EQ for years! I was guild leader of a decent guild that’s still around I believe, years and years later. I invested five years in that game. Loved it. I got the economy. I understand it and how it worked. Cory didn’t want to step on any IP toes (Intellectual Properties) when he was writing the book so the games are weirdly named, Mushroom Kingdoms and things like that… that’s fine… I get it. Don’t want to incriminate an existing game and get them breathing down your neck.

Except he put them as products made by Coca Cola. Really? You dodge one bullet by making up weird game names, but then you invoke one of the most iconic names in the world as the parent company? It made the made up game names more distracting. Had he simply named them Megacorp it would have been less distracting to me. It really jerked me out of the book, the made up names interlaced with real parent company names served as a distraction, a focal point that shattered my immersion into the book-reality.

Last thing, and this is something I wouldn’t notice in a hard cover book. Cory did this in Little Brother and I read it in dead tree format and listened to it in Audiobook and I didn’t notice it. Each chapter starts with a dedication to a book store. That’s cool. In a novel I can skip that part. In the digital version, reading it on the kindle it was harder to skip, scanning was an issue so I wound up reading more of it than I wanted to. That’s a limitation of the kindle more than of the book. Here’s the thing though. I don’t care. I know that makes me a jerk, but reading about why a particular book store is special to someone is like listening to a guy on the bus explain to you why Freebird is the ultimate in anthems and it really means a lot to him “because of the really wicked shit I was going through when I heard that song for the first time you know what I mean man?” I do know what you mean man… and I still don’t like Freebird! My favorite southern rock song is The Three Great Alabama Icons by Drive By Truckers. (I grew up from ’68-’81 in Southern Alabama around the time the writer’s of this song were in Northern Alabama.)

I love book stores. There’s an excellent used book store in Southaven, Mississippi that I miss deeply, but unless you’re IN Southaven you don’t care about it is my guess. And if you are, and you’re a reader… you probably already know about it. They did a pretty brisk business.

Would I recommend this book? No. I wouldn’t, and I’m sorry about that too. I love Cory Doctorow’s blog and many of his other books. Seriously, Little Brother is in my top 5 and that’s saying something! But this one… it just missed on too many things. I didn’t care about the characters, the gaming part didn’t ring true, 3/4 of the way through I didn’t know what I was supposed to be reading/caring about. I didn’t know where he was going. I didn’t know where the characters were going, and I just didn’t care. And on a stylistic note… what the hell was with the chin waggling? Dear Lord!?!? Everybody was waggling their chin all the time. It was so distracting every time it would happen I’d look up and look around. I’ve STILL not seen anybody waggle their chin except for one guy, in India I think while watching Eat, Pray, Love. I’m not sure he didn’t have something in his teeth.

If you read the book and finish it and the ending of the book is worth it… can you shoot me an e-mail? I’ll finish it and edit this to reflect my mistake in stopping too soon as well as issue an apology for reviewing a book I didn’t finish.

I’m an introvert. I’m very shy and I don’t think I’m good at meeting people or talking to them in social settings. Professionally this doesn’t seem to bother me much as I’m able to talk to people with whom I work and with people at work just fine. It’s a comfort zone thing. At work or related to work I’m fine. No worries at all. I’ll approach complete strangers with ease, figure out where they fit in with my work, find a point of commonality and strike up a conversation. I’ve done it at dinner parties, conventions, trade shows, and just working day to day. No sweat.

The sweat comes in when I’m not working. When I’m just me and I’m dumped into a social situation where I know the people who invited me but nobody else. I’m awful at those things. They’re exactly the same as the work situations in numbers of people or how well I know them… but my comfort level is off. Suddenly I’m no longer chatty or friendly or smiling. I’m stand-offish, and could just as easily stand in a corner, sip a drink until it’s gone, find the host, thank them for the invitation and sneak out the door after having “made an appearance.” What I’m describing isn’t rare either. It’s really normal social behavior for me. I don’t know why it’s so different. I’m confident, social, affable, and outgoing at work functions. Throw me in with non-work people though and I’m an awkward self-conscious wall flower.

Podcasts. I really like podcasts. I drive a lot for work so I listen to a lot of them. One of my favorite episodes was from Lisa B. Marshall, the Public Speaker from Quick & Dirty Tips. She talks about how to talk to people. She talks about her Mom starting to talk to people in line at the grocery store and how mortified she was by it. I’ve started trying to do this. It’s a little thing, a silly thing, a safe thing. Nobody gets better at something without practicing it so I’ve been practicing my chatting people up out in public with strangers. That way if I botch it I won’t embarrass myself in front of people I know. My hope is that this will help when I get to the next social function I attend that’s not work related. With the practice under my belt, and the confidence of having done this before in non-work related venues I’ll be able to do it a little better with people I will probably see again, and hopefully for more than just “making an appearance.”

So, if you’re shy or reticent to just jump into a social setting give this podcast a listen. Then, most importantly, practice it on people you’ll never see again.

I’m going to assume you’ve seen the cartoon. There are four seasons of the cartoon on Nickelodeon: Water, Earth, Air, and Fire. The movie started with a text crawl very much like Star Wars. Then there was a the normal introduction where the silhouettes of people did the karate, tai-chi, kung-fu or whatever moves as the names of the element were spoken aloud. Just like the cartoons that happened. It really settled me in as a fan of the cartoon. It set the tone… it made me think, “Ah yes… it will be loyal to the cartoon!”

The movie wasn’t all four seasons of the cartoon from Nickelodeon. It was just the first season and it was about an hour and a half long. So obviously some story lines were cut out and some side stories were cut. The actors looked like themselves so that was good. The scar on Zuko, the Fire prince’s, face was barely noticeable. That’s the only quibble I could find in the actors. Their acting was… good enough. Aang had a pouty lip. I guess there were two things and they were physical attributes. Seriously, his lip was always pouty looking. He looked like he’d been punched in the bottom of the mouth or maybe stung by bees or something. OK, crap. There were three things. Uncle was skinny and serious and didn’t seem as funny as wise, funny uncle had in the cartoon. That brings me to my biggest difference in the movie vs. the cartoon.

You know how Aang is 12 and an airbender? You know how airbenders are supposed to be pranksters? Fun-loving people who appear to not take things terribly seriously? They’re fun, funny. Couple that with Aang being 12 years old and you have a recipe for funny cartoons. Hiding behind ppl as they look for you, playing jokes on people, hide & seek, that sort of thing. A big part of my enjoying the cartoon was enjoying the youthful enthusiasm of the airbender. There was a lot of laughter and joy. The joy of life and living. That made it fun to watch. It made the character likeable and someone you wanted to see turn out OK. Not just physically, but mentally. You don’t want to see his joy of life hurt. In the movie though. M. Night Shazamalamadan decided one of the things he needed to cut was all the funny, fun, jokes, or joy. There were exactly two scenes that MIGHT have been reminiscent of the sort of fun-loving antics of cartoon Aang that made the show fun to watch.

You know how Katara’s brother, Sokka, and how he’s there primarily for comic relief? Always hungry, tries to eat the Appa The Flying Bison and Momo, the bat-lemur. Falls a lot? Twice he did something funny, and both times it was to fall victim to Katara’s bad water bending. She got him wet once and froze him into a block of ice once. Also, Uncle was never funny. Never did any funny stories or witty things that had a point. Just sort of a physically fit, taller, very thin Yoda. All serious trainer uncle, no funny uncle that liked to drink tea.

The bending effects were only meh. They did LOTS of the movements and motions and then something would happen really quickly and be over with. The effects were cool but too short. They could have been longer, not necessarily more spectacular. The end fight where Aang finally did his thing using the ocean to fight of the entire fire nation army by himself. That was cool. It was also done in the avatar state, also cool, and with a minimum of jumping around and arm waving… which is as it should be. For him to knock back two guys he did like 15 seconds of tai-chi, maybe tai-kwon-do… I think water was Tai-chi… movements, swung his arms around, and did a no-hands somersault just as an example. Lots of build-up, for not enough pay off. If it’d taken that long to bend the elements they should have had their butts handed to them by any relatively quick fighter. They’d be knocked out before they bent anything. (Don’t get me started on how all the earth benders ever did was pull rocks out of the ground.)

I’d give it 7.5 out of 10 stars. I enjoyed it. I liked the actors. I liked the story. I wish it hadn’t been as dry. I wish it’d been funnier. At least some funny. He was tortured. He was sad. He was grief-ridden… he wouldn’t have been any fun to be around. I hope they make more. I hope Aang (whose name isn’t pronounced the same in the movie as in the cartoons for some reason) has lip reduction surgery. Maybe they could put some of his lip fat into Uncle so he’d be fatter. A skinny Uncle was distracting.

Why do I care about Facebook’s privacy issues? After all, as Rob pointed out, I already have a blog, have posted on Usenet, and various public web forums in the past. I’ve been engaged with the Internet since 1993 there’s a LOT of me out there if someone wants to go looking for it. He’s right. There is. I’m also very careful about what I put out there online. I always have been. Even with the things like foursquare and twitter.

So why do I care about Facebook if I’m so careful about what I do on the Internet? The most common thing I hear about people when I bring up privacy concerns is “If you don’t have anything to hide what do you have to worry about?” My answer to them is, “Why do you use curtains or walls? Why do you shut the door when you go to the bathroom stall?” There are times when you don’t want the whole world up in your business. If I have co-workers and bosses who follow me on facebook, and I did, and they didn’t like what political sites I visited that suddenly showed up on my facebook page could that have consequences? Of course it could. Should it? Nope. But it could. What if it showed that I was on facebook while I was supposed to be working. Would they know I was on hold for the weekly conference call? Of course not.

Those are just the easy work related issues. The thing is. What I do on the Internet is no more Facebook’s business than it’s my phone company’s business if I go to the mall or to Wal-mart. It’s not their business. They don’t need to know it. Just because they CAN know it doesn’t mean they should know it. If they wanted to enrich my Internet experience they’re welcome to it, but ask me first. Let me CHOOSE to ask for it. Don’t opt me in.

I don’t really feel like I should have to explain my expectation of privacy honestly. The part where I expect and want it and am being asked to defend it is almost as offensive to me as my perception of Facebook’s violation of my privacy.

From a social hacking point of view what can we find out about a person from their facebook profile? Often they list their parents’ names which may include “mother’s maiden name” or “Father’s middle name” as appears in some security questions on some websites. Perhaps they show you graduated from Monkeyspanker High School and that security question is also asked, “What was your high school mascot.” Now decent social hackers would know that. That’s sort of my other point. Why should all that information be gathered up by the fine folks at Facebook for the social hackers out there to use? Maybe I don’t list my Mom’s middle name, but perhaps my sisters do, or my brothers, or my trans-gendered first pet whose name was “Sieze-her” and with all the information out there linking back and forth whether I put it out there or someone else does it’s out there.

I won’t deny that I greatly enjoyed re-connecting with my friends on Facebook. That added value to my life in general, and to my enjoyment of the Internet specifically. It was really good to meet them again as adults after having not seen them since high school. There are some really interesting people out there that I knew back when we were just high schoolers.   I will miss them. If Facebook were to decide that our privacy were important I’d gladly be back, but as much as I love re-connecting with everybody I feel like staying says it’s OK if a company has no respect for their customer’s wishes. It’s my saying it’s OK to treat my personal information as a publicly tradeable commodity. I’m not OK with that. My leaving may not make a difference to Facebook, but it will make a difference to me.

Thursday I’m going to be on Farmville meeting a friend of mine to watch Survivor together and then I’m going to log off my account, perhaps deleting it if I can find a way to do that.