In Which I Unearth Writings From My Youth!

Can I just say first off how awesome it is that the ATX is finally getting some rain, and how nice it is to watch out the window?

I had this brilliant idea to post about all the pets I’ve ever had, because they were all beloved and they all have funny stories attached to them. One broke my nose, two became blind and hairless, and one we thought had a really large ass but it turned out she had cancer. So by funny stories, I mean bizarrely tragic. But when I sat down to write the post in TextEdit like I usually do, I noticed that it was beginning to get a bit long. And by long, I mean it was ten pages (double-spaced in Word, just cause I was curious). And I wasn’t even through the dogs yet. Ten pages! When you’ve had six dogs, three cats, three hamsters, and a chicken like I’ve had (told you I was from the sticks), I guess there’s no way it can be brief. So now I don’t know what to do with this post. I could make it into a recurring series, but I just don’t see people caring that much. I mean, I spent some time on it (it ain’t easy to write ten pages). So what do I do with it? I think I’m just going to complete it, all fifty pages or whatever, and save it for my eventual memoirs.

But since we’re on the subject of childhood (I guess), I thought I’d share a discovery I made when I was at home a few weeks ago. I was helping my mom clean out some boxes from our storage house (where all my childhood memories are eaten by rats) when I came across some spirals. And what were in these spirals, you might ask? Stories that I had written as a kid! Yes, I came across a treasure trove of vintage, first edition stories written by me in my formative years. I knew this was something I would have to share, if only to display how awesome I was as a kid.

The first thing I noticed about these stories was hardly any of them were finished. Yes, even at that young age, I was a tortured novelist, fraught and anguished by the toils of writer’s block, and couldn’t for the life of me finish anything. The same is true to this day. The second thing I noticed was, apart from some stilted dialog and on-the-nose narrative (I was in elementary school!), some of the ideas were not half bad. It embarrasses me, but I want to share the plot lines of a few of my favorites.

First up we have “The Craft”. Mind you, this was years before my brilliant title was stolen and used for a pretty bad teen witch movie, which in turn was made into a pretty bad (but it had its moments!) teen boy witch movie, The Covenant. But back to my “The Craft.” The story concerns a scientist who finally gets around to making one of those hovercrafts that we’ve all been bitching about. You see, World War III has just ended, and there’s world peace and all that nonsense, so scientific minds are able to sit down and invent shit like hovercrafts. So he’s a brilliant scientist, everyone loves him, until he goes mad. You see, he’s also invented some sort of cream that makes things invisible. Thats right! And he decides he wants to kill a bunch of people. So he makes his hovercraft invisible. How does he do this? Well, he’s also invented a container that does not become invisible when invisible cream is put inside it (you following yet?). He stacks tons of these barrels against the wall and, in a scene truly representative of my knack for dramatic flare, crashes the hovercraft into the barrels, causing invisible cream to cover him and the hovercraft. Now, he stalks the streets of New York City in his invisible craft! Don’t you see how scary that is? It’s a car that’s INVISIBLE and IT’S ABOUT TO RUN OVER YOU!

Well, eventually two cops catch wind of his little plan and have to stop him. It goes on for several pages, people die, cops are frustrated, and so on. BUT! The cream has a weakness. If it gets water on it, you can see the object again (so bite me, M. Night Shyamalan). The scientist crashes the car into a lake and, AHHH!, everyone can see him! So the cops chase him. The scientist ends up boarding a ship headed for the new Moon Colony. After a dramatic fight on the space ship, the scientist is taken down and put to trial. And the world continues on in bliss.

Now that’s a hell of a story, if I do say so myself. Sure, a little unbelievable at parts. And I’m pretty sure that plot line was used in a Batman: The Animated Series episode. But man, I had three-act structure down and everything. In fact, I’m a bit jealous of my younger self. The today me would never write a story so over the top stupid (okay, maybe one or two, What Goes Around Comes Around for those of you who remember THAT little project). And I think I was a better speller back then.

But my favorite, FAVORITE, story that I ran across was called “Cost.” Now, this was one of the ones I didn’t finish, and it’s a damn shame. Just listen to this plot: humanity has spread across the galaxy, colonizing and all that stuff. One of the planets they choose to inhabit is called Cost. Why is it called “Cost?” To remind them of the great “cost” it took to spread to the stars (yes, in the fourth grade, I thought about things like that). However, this planet has a little problem. There’s no water (which means nothing would live there in the first place, but I digress…) No water means there’s no oceans. No oceans means there’s no TECTONIC PLATES! With no tectonic plates, the geological pressure that builds under the surface can’t release itself! You know what? Here’s an excerpt from the story that should explain it better. It is presented entirely unedited, just as I wrote it whenever it was that I wrote it:

Dr. Mead ran his fingers through his hair as he listened to Dr. Pace lecture them about the problem.
“I can’t explain it,” Dr. Pace said frantically. “On Earth, we didn’t have to worry about a little pressure. We had volcanos [sic] and earthquakes. Here, on this planet, a little pressure could kill us all.”
Dr. Mead finally spoke. “If a little pressure was that dangerous, why did we move to this planet?”
“I don’t know,” said Dr. Pace.
The Mayor, who was also in the room, cleared his throat. “I can explain that. When the scientific pioneers landed heer [sic] they found only rock beneeth [sic] the earth.”
“So what could happen?” asked Dr. Mead.
“Well,” said Dr. Pace. “If it builds up more, this whole planet will explode.”

Did you get that? THE PLANET IS GOING TO EXPLODE! THERE’S NO TECTONIC PLATES. First off, why the fuck is The Mayor even there and how come he knows more than the scientists? And I think Dr. Mead got his name from the fact that I was writing in a Mead notebook. My creativity had limits, it would appear.

As I said, I didn’t finish this one. But there was a bit of a rough outline of where this epic was headed. Everyone, naturally, freaks the fuck out and they evacuate the planet just as it explodes! And they go someplace else. Cut to a few years later. One of the kids who escaped the disaster is cruising in his spaceship with his crew around the area where the planet was and, holy shit, it’s still there! Why? Didn’t it blow up? Well, they land and explore the surface. As it turns out, and I swear I am not making any of this up, the earth of Cost was highly magnetic and the planet had a strong magnetic field. When the planet blew up, the pieces eventually drifted back into place. Cause, you know, that’s what magnets do.

So while the crew is there the planet, naturally, decides to release its pressure and blow up again. Funny how that timing worked out. So they get out in time as the planet explodes again (that’s right, I wrote a story with TWO exploding planets!). And then the people decide to colonize Cost again cause apparently it’s the heroin of planets and they can’t realize the need to leave well enough alone. They just know that, every twenty years or so, they have to leave for a bit while the planet passes gas. The End.

Those were just two of the stories that I found. There were a few more, but these were by far my favorites. And you know what? I’m pretty damn proud of them. And I’m pretty damn proud of you if you made it this far. I mean, come on. That “Cost” story? Brilliant! I can SO see Michael Bay optioning that one from me. And “The Craft” would make a great Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie. You might have to change the title though. Anyone out there write when they were kids? Were you as brilliant (or stupid) as me?

I could talk about the Olympics, but I was going to save that until they were all over. Needless to say, I’ve been watching quite a bit of them. More than probably healthy. And we still have another friggin week to go! They’ve been fun, and I have a few things to say (not ten pages worth, sadly) but I’ll get to those later.

How My Favorite Book Ended Up In the Trash Tonight

As many of you know, I like to read. I like to read a lot. In fact, I probably read too much. I have way too many books. I read them so fast that I don’t even remember them half the time or take the time to savor them. But I can’t help it. Ever since I was a little kid, I have read and read and collected books and even attempted to write some of my own. 

So naturally, people often ask me what my favorite book is. Unlike movies, where I have a list of like five million that at any given moment of the day could be coined “my favorite,” I used to actually have an answer for the book question. When I was in high school, a friend of mine was reading Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. When he tried to tell me about it, it sounded completely boring and uninteresting. Something about little kids fighting off an alien invasion while sprouting a lot of philosophy and getting bullied all the time. And they like to play games at their school, apparently. But my friend INSISTED that I read it because it was going to change my life, it was so good. I was like, “Fine, whatever, I guess,” just so he would shut up and also, you know, never judge a book by it’s cover and all. 

Ender’s Game was the best book I had ever read, and no description or summary or praise could have really prepared me for what I read. Chances are, you’ve heard about it, your friend’s have talked about it, often in hushed whispers and awes of amazement. I won’t get into plot details or anything, but I want to point out that the book spoke to me in a way that nothing ever had before. Above all else, it was simply about what many great books are about: learning to love yourself, regardless of who or what you are, and to not take any shit from anyone. And on top of that, OSC’s writing was phenomenal. The points he expressed, the characters he created, the unthinkable places where he took the plot leave me spellbound to this day. 

Orson Scott Card quickly became my favorite author. Not just one of my favorites; my favorite. The cock of the walk. I read all the sequels and most of the prequels to Ender’s Game, and they were wonderful. I read some of his other books. I planned to read everything the man ever wrote. I was enamored. I planned the Ender’s Game movie in my head and I wanted to write books just as well as him someday. 

Now, I was aware that OSC had a very strict religious and conservative background, which is just fine with me. Even when I disagreed with him on some of his points, he expressed them in such and elegant and un-condecending manner that impressed me. He never made you feel like your point of view was wrong, just that there were other options out there. But his main ideas were always those of inclusiveness, of peace, of love for everyone and, whether you grew up Mormon like Card or discovered you were a socialist through an online test like me, that’s something everyone can agree with and feel good about. 

So it was with great sadness that I once ran across this article online, composed by Card. It is called “The Hypocrites of Homosexuality.” The gist of the article stem’s from Card’s belief that there is no scientific explanation for gay behavior, and that gay activities not only threaten the Christian world (“…one cannot serve two masters,” he writes), but the future of humanity itself. According to Card, when the gay lifestyle is accepted by society at large, less people will have children, and before you know it mankind will cease to exist. Let me know, if anyone cared to read it, if I got any of this wrong. Because I read it several times, trying to see what Card was really getting at, if there was actually some sense to his argument, if he was simply giving another point of view in his usually tactful way. 

But I came away with nothing except what I summarized above. Now, I certainly understand where he is coming from with the religious thing, because it is something I have seen all my life. And by saying I understand, I in no way mean that I agree or even accept his line of reasoning. But I know what he’s talking about. The second part, all that downfall of society stuff, is really too ludicrous to even get upset over. Last time I checked, the straights outweighed the gays by a pretty substantial margin. And the gays have been around as long as humans have, and we’re still here, right? Even if being gay were ever accepted by society at large, thus giving more people the courage to come out and be who they are, I really don’t think not  having enough babies will be an issue. That’s what China is for. 

This article obviously soured me on OSC for a while, but I didn’t really think about it. I resolved that maybe I didn’t need to read all his books, but I would still value the ones that I had read. The themes of Ender’s Game still apply, regardless of who wrote it. But when I tried to read it again, maybe a year ago, I couldn’t do it. I could not separate the man from the art in my mind. How could anyone who wrote an article linking gays to the end of humanity possibly write Ender’s Game? It was still a beautiful book to me and I figured that, with time, I would be able to read it again. I’ve even recommended it to people since then. 

Orson Scott Card has written a new article, published in the Mormon Times. According to Card, the recent passing of gay marriage laws in California and Massachusetts have rendered democracy invalid. People did not want these laws to be passed, and the courts passed them anyway. As such, people who truly believe in marriage should over throw the government, because they are creating an unfit environment to raise children or to foster democracy. Again, paraphrasing Card here. Let me know if I got something wrong. 

I could go through the article line by line and offer a rebuttal, but I won’t and I can’t. It depresses me too much. I think even some of the most hard-core social conservatives would roll their eyes at some of Card’s claims. I mean, here’s an actual line from the article: “How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.” I mean, I don’t want to call him crazy because that would put me on somewhat of a level as him, but honestly. Read that again. 

Like I said, I really don’t have to go line by line and explain everything that is faulty with some of his logic. And I’m not even going to touch the part where he starts comparing marriage and property laws because, A) that argument is a little creepy, B) it makes even less sense than some of my tangents (and that’s saying something), and C) I really don’t know what it’s supposed to fucking prove. 

But the reason I brought any of this up in the first place is this: enough is enough. Whatever you think on any of these issues, whatever you believe God wants or society wants or whatever, this is downright hateful. This is a New York Times bestselling author saying this, and no one really brings it up. When congressmen say stuff like this, it’s forgotten with a smile and a shrug. And as much as I hate to compare gay rights to civil rights, which has many similarities and many, many differences, what if he had said this about another race? Or another religion? Why is it only okay when it is about the gays? Here’s a link to a rebuttal that can sum this stuff up better than I can. I just wanted to put my personal two cents in. 

I’m done with Orson Scott Card. I’m done with Ender’s Game. And I’m done giving a pass to people who say stuff like this. Gays aren’t going to destroy society. Attitudes like this are. Whether you are straight, gay, Mormon, Methodist, Jedi, red state, blue state, whatever: we shouldn’t let this go any more. Because we’re all human. I feel stupid that I actually have to type that out, it sounds so trite, but people forget.  

In the meantime, I’m looking for a new favorite book. Any suggestions? And I haven’t proofread this because I want to go to bed.