Lisinopril

When I went to the doctor Friday, it was on the assumption that since my blood pressure is high, he was going to put me on some kind of blood pressure medication.

I was hoping for Donald Duck's Atomic Pills. No such luck. Instead, lisinopril.

It's supposed to help reduce the blood pressure. And make me pee more frequently. Though I don't really need any help in that particular department.

My secret hope is that they are in fact Atomic Pills and will give me some kind of gnarly powers. We'll see.

To the Board of Review

Isaac is an interesting character.

He has an immense capacity to learn and memorize seemingly obscure bits of information, but if the information isn’t immediately pertinent to what he wants to do, he doesn’t bother.

As his father, I’ve seen him use that ability time and again on topics he’s passionate about – and I’ve seen him ignore that ability when the passion isn’t there.

That’s one of the reasons I’m thrilled to see him participate in Scouting.

When he began collecting Scout patches, for example, he could tell you at a glance what patches were valuable to a collector, and which could be passed on at patch swaps without a second glance. When we once worried about whether he’d surrender patches we thought were valuable on a whim, we now caution those who go to patch swaps with him to be aware he’s a bit of a patch shark.

When he saw his older brother and sister participate as counselors in training and then as full counselors at Scout camps in the Grand Teton Council, he pined to join them – and learned quite a bit about the areas he wished to work in, even before he was eligible. When he became eligible, he used his capacity for learning and his passion for Scouting to quickly become a CIT to be reckoned with.

Scouting gives him focus, gives him the passion he needs to use his God-given abilities, all the while giving back to those who need to earn that certain merit badge, or who need a camp counselor they can count on to work hard where others might slack off or give up.

I’m grateful that Scouting gives him this focus, because as he sees his focus grow in Scouting, he sees where he can use his focus in his studies at school, or his efforts to become closer to his family and his God at home and at church.

I’m grateful for Scouting’s leaders, from Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, to Jeff Fullmer, Isaac’s most recent Scoutmaster, for first forming a program meant to help boys channel and focus their abilities into developing newfound passions, and also for helping these boys help others around them with the passions and knowledge Scouting helps them develop.

Though Isaac tries to deny it, I know he enjoys the leadership opportunities Scouting has given him. I look forward to watching Isaac continue to mature as Scouting continues to be a positive shaping influence on his character. Scouting has done things for Isaac that I alone as a father could not have done. I heartily recommend Isaac as an Eagle Scout, as the passion that brought him to this point is his.

Sincerely,

Brian Davidson

Help Me Out Here A Second, Folks . . .

Because I always enjoyed hearing Burt Reynolds laugh – and he’s got a good one – I thought I’d watch Smokey and The Bandit, since Burt Reynolds recently passed and the movie was suddenly free on Amazon Prime.

First, the laugh:



Then, the only funny scene – and I mean the only funny scene – from the movie, featuring said laugh:



Then my wife, also caught up in Reynolds nostalgia, decided to watch the movie as well. We watched it independently, me on the way home from work, she at night after everyone else had gone to bed. I’d never seen the movie all the way through, while she remembered watching it several times.

After the rewatching, we compared notes. And neither one of us could figure out why the movie is all that good.

As I mentioned before, there’s only one really funny scene in the film, coming at the expense of Paul Williams, who always had a sense of humor about his lack of height.

The rest? Meh.

And my wife was taken aback at how the women in the film were pretty much objectified sexually, and that was about it.

And the more I watch these “trucker films,” the less I understand their appeal.

BIG NOTE: This does not mean I don’t like truckers, or appreciate what they do. I just think they’re poorly represented in the literature.

Truck drivers and CB radios and such had their brief, inexplicable moment in the sun in the late 1970s. That romantic appeal to the road, freedom, apple pie and burgers at the roadside greasy spoon. And all that defiance to authority. So American.

But why is this movie funny?

And why, when those mailboxes go flying, doesn’t the windshield of the Trans Am shatter when it gets hit by the debris?

Hollywood’s Trucker Era might have been the last victims of the Rural Purge. Though that doesn’t explain The Dukes of Hazzard.

ANOTHER BIG NOTE: Again, I’m not saying you’re wrong if you like this film. That’s your business. I’m just saying I’m having a little trouble understanding the appeal.

A REALLY BIG NOTE: And I understand the Coors thing. Now. Had nothing to do with bootlegging or alcohol content at all. It was just unpasteurized and had to be kept refrigerated. Or at least I think.

A PONDERABLE: This was the second-highest grossing film released in 1977, behind Star Wars. Figure that out.

Den Chiefs and Elephants

It wasn’t too long ago that scientists who study the way animals think thought African elephants were less intelligent than Asian elephants.

They devised an experiment to see if elephants were self-aware. They marked a spot on the elephants’ heads with paint. Some elephants they left alone. Others, they put in front of mirrors.
The Asian elephants who saw themselves in the mirrors almost always probed at the paint marks on their heads with their trunks and even after the mirrors were gone, they continued to poke at the part of their heads where the paint was, while those who did not see themselves in the mirror paid no attention to the paint.

Thus, they concluded, these Asian elephants knew it was their reflection in the mirrors and that the paint was on them, and that the elephants were self-aware.

Not so with the African elephants. Those who were shown the mirrors pretty much ignored the paint marks and smashed the mirrors with their tusks. Those without mirrors also did not pay attention to the paint.

Because the African elephants almost always smashed the mirrors, scientists concluded the African elephants saw their reflections as a threat, not as themselves. So they were deemed to be lower on the scale of intelligence than their Asian counterparts.

A few scientists thought there was something wrong with the experiment, and thought about it for a while. They spent time observing how both Asian and African elephants interacted with strange things – like mirrors – placed in their environment.

They noticed Asian elephants explored new things with their trunks, probing at them, feeling them, manipulating them, quite often with finesse and great care.

African elephants, on the other hand, used their tusks to probe at new objects. And when the objects were fragile, like mirrors, they got broken.

So these scientists did the test on self-awareness with mirrors the African elephants couldn’t break. And discovered that with the unbreakable mirrors, the African elephants became as curious about the paint marks on their foreheads as did their buddies in Asia.

Both types of elephants were equally self-aware, equally intelligent. It was the scientists who got it wrong.

There’s a German word I want us all to learn right now: Umwelt. In German, it means “an organism’s subjective perceptual world”. In other words, umwelt is how each living thing, whether an elephant, a mouse, or a human, sees the environment and its place in the environment.

By learning more about the African elephants’ umwelt, scientists discovered these elephants are just as intelligent as those in Asia.

How does this apply to Scouting?

Well, as adults, we have a pretty good handle – most of us – on how we fit into our environment. When we’re at a scout meeting, we know we’re pretty much the ones in charge. But sometimes doesn’t it feel like even though we’re in charge, the scouts have a different perception of the situation?

Their umwelt might be, “Here we go again. Another adult telling me what to do. But I’ve got enough buddies here, we outnumber this adult. Commence the shenanigans.”

How do we bridge that gap of perception?

One way is through having a den chief.

A den chief isn’t an adult. A den chief is a Boy Scout, preferably a good number of years older than the scouts in your den. Den chiefs, being younger than you, have a better perception of how people his age and near his age perceive the world, and how they fit into it.

A den chief has a better understanding of what it feels like to be young, because they’re young too. Adults, we kinda forget. And we get more goal-focused: “Get me through this den meeting and we’ll get everyone in the room passed off on this requirement but WHY ARE YOU HAVING A GRASS FIGHT WHEN WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE LEARNING ABOUT TOOLS?”

Den chiefs can help us bridge that gap. They can help us by helping our scouts use up some of that energy they come with. They can help us by showing the younger boys that learning a new skill can be as fun as having a grass fight. They can show our young Cub Scouts that there’s a Boy Scout who wants to hang out with them and help them learn and have fun with them, and when they see a good den chief in action, their umwelt changes a bit to “Den Chief Chris makes Cub Scouts more fun! And he helped me to learn how to use a hammer!” It’s an older scout helping a younger scout.

Having someone in your den who understands a bit better the umwelt of your Cubs can help you see that Cubs can be as intelligent and teachable and wonderful as an older Boy Scout. We need all the help we can get to understand how others work. Den chiefs can help you do that. Please get one. Or two. You’ll still have elephants capable of smashing mirrors in your den, but you’ll have a better perception on how they interact with the world around them.

We Almost Have An Oldies Station Again!

I was a mite on the excited side yesterday when I heard a new radio station in the area touting its oldies format.

We haven’t had a good oldie station since 98.1 changed its format to what I don’t even know, listening to them.

So I gave 101.1 a whirl this morning.

So far, the jury is out.

The story I saw touted their mix of “oldies” from the ‘50s to the ‘80s. As I listened this morning on the way to work, they played four ‘80s song and one from the early ‘60s.

There is a crapton of bad music out there from any decade or generation. But the ‘80s. There’s a special crapton of music from the ‘80s.

Sunglasses at Night, 1984. I blame you, Canada. It’s got the synth. It’s got the stupid lyrics. It’s got the potential to be overplayed. Ick.

Any Way You Want It, 1980. For this, it sounds like we can almost blame the Irish. Oh, the movies. The movies used this song and loved it and loved it and loved it to death.



Where were all those drinks coming from?

Their one nod to the oldies I hoped they would play: 1961’s Run Around Sue, by Dion (after he split with the Belmonts, leaving him, apparently, looking for a new girl and a backup group to which to append his name).

So yeah, an oldie, but not necessarily a goodie.

I had to listen to all of these marvies in a five-song set this morning.

Maybe they’ll be better on the drive home . . .

NOTE: I don’t mind at all if you, dear reader, love these songs. That is your right. I’m merely saying here that I don’t like them. So take no offense, please.

In Other Words, Writer, You’re Doomed

Ironic I should stumble across this article at aeon.co shortly after I finished reading Frans de Waal’s “Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are”.

Harks me back to some of the criticism I’ve received on Doleful Creatures, namely that most of the female characters in the book are dead, and the only major living one is bad.

This prompted two schools of thought:

1. I guess maybe I do need to add more female characters
2. Pound sand, smallheads.

This article prompts a third: Do I know enough of the female mind to even bother trying?

Read the article (warning, breasts are briefly discussed, but not in a dirty way). Then you tell me. I’m sure most people out there would consider me, a white male, infinitely unquali9fied to write a female character. Yet I’m being told to do just that.

What to do?

Concentrate on the story, for one.

Figure out why the obsession over gender, for another.

Maybe it’s my white male privilege showing, but when I read I rarely concentrate on the gender of the characters in the story. I want a fun story to read, that’s about it. If it makes sense that a certain character is a certain gender, that’s fine. But I never get out a blank Gender Scorecard and keep track of who has what parts, and get all snotty when, at the end of the story, there’s a gender disparity.

Easy for me to say since “most stories” out there are chock full of male characters written by men, so I don’t have to worry my pretty little head about it? Okay, I guess. From a certain point of view.

Getting away from description, first of all (as in the breasty example) seems to be the best bet in writing a better opposite-gendered character. Maybe make characters work with the story, no matter their gender, rather than checking off boxes.

Yet part of this article makes me want to give up a little. For sure I’ll fail at writing a decent female character, so why bother?

And here’s the corollary: I’d like example of female writers who produce good male characters that stray from the stereotypical man seen on the cover of most romance novels:

Distant, aloof, fabulously wealthy, muscular, moody, mysterious, oh so mysterious . . .

Instead, I’m reminded of something from “Keeping Up Appearances,” said by Daisy, reading such a book:

“They're always tall and handsome, romantic heroes. Never short and fat. I've never yet come across a heroine who's fallen for anybody short and fat. It's a bit unfair, really. Plus, it makes no account of the weird shapes we females actually fall for!”

Umwelt

I do not confess genius.

I do confess curiosity. And a wonder that maybe – just maybe, mind you – what applies in one field of study might just apply in another.

So as I continue to read Frans de Waal’s “Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are,” I have to wonder if there are concepts within the study of the cognitive ethology of animals that could be applied to our interactions with members of our own species.

Particularly compelling is the concept of umwelt, or understanding how animals use their abilities and senses to interact with the world around them. (De Waal defines umwelt in his book as “an organism’s subjective perceptual world.”

For example, African elephants were for a long time considered unaware of their own self because, unlike their Asian counterparts, they appeared unable to recognize themselves in a mirror. Asian elephants could clearly see they’d been marked with paint, and rubbed and probed the marks only after they saw themselves marked in a mirror. The African elephants, by contrast, simply smashed up the mirrors with their tusks and seemed to pay no mind to their paint markings.

It wasn’t until scientists noted that the African elephants always explored new things by prodding them with their tusks that the scientists decided maybe it was their method of experimentation, not the elephants themselves, that was the problem. They fixed the problem by making mirrors the African elephants couldn’t destroy as they explored them with their tusks. Once the exploration was over, the elephants reacted to their paint markings in the same way as their Asian counterparts.

Once scientists understood the African elephants’ umwelt, the experiment netted the same result.

Might we, then, be better off exploring each others’ umwelts, not assuming, for example, that we all perceive the world in the same way, or in a way that hoes any particular political or societal expectation? Smart people are doing just that. (I’ll also make the distinction that understanding another’s umwelt doesn’t mean we have to agree with it, but understanding it sure helps.)

This is probably a blinding flash of the obvious, but hey – y’all should be happy another fella has seen this particular light, thanks to de Waal’s book. Terry Pratchett is right that while there are books of magic and magical books, probably the most magic that comes out of books are the explosions they cause inside the readers’ heads.

And I’ll probably take this all too far.

Or not.



Anyhoo, reading de Waal’s book is certainly eye-opening, and not just for the societal benefits. As an anthropomorphic writer, I’m learning things that I can integrate into the books I’m writing, particularly Doleful Creatures. Getting into the umwelt of each creature I write about as characters can certainly help me shape the worlds I’m creating.

One thing confused me about de Waal’s book – maybe it’s my inability on the first read to get into his umwelt. Who is this book written for? I’m half convinced it’s meant for the layman such as myself, but also for the smaller world of de Waal’s compatriots. If for the layman, I might wish de Waal had written in a less meandering style, though that may be part of his use of English as a second language (I have a Dutch father, and I see some Dutch-to-English coming out in de Waal’s writing, much like I heard from Dad).

Doleful Creatures: A Little Thinking Out Loud

The animals in Doleful Creatures phase in and out of awareness – awareness that they are creations of God and on a journey to become gods themselves. Those who’ve seen traumatic events are especially prone to phasing, and some – like Aloysius – have almost stopped phasing completely, becoming more animal-like; able to communicate with others but bereft of any knowledge of their origins or their potential.

When they remember their origin and potential, they’re relatively at peace, albeit a bit anxious about the ending of the Sixth Day, when they’ll all lose their awareness and become true animals for a time.

This is not about them in a stage where they await to become human – they’re simply growing in intelligence, alongside humans once the Sixth Day ends.

[Midlife Crisis Arriving on Schedule]

This might have been the start of a midlife crisis. And this, its corollary.

Because it’s a shock to suddenly have a kid who is 18 and technically no longer a kid. He can’t buy alcohol, but he can vote. And he’s graduated high school. Signed up to take online college courses starting in a few weeks. Finishing up mission papers. Looking for that first job.

Maybe we could be doing better by him. By all our kids.

There are times maybe I think I don’t know them all that well, that we need to talk more.

There are times maybe I think we’ve talked too much.

I remember this 18-year-old kid as a toddler, following me around our new home in Sugar City. He wasn’t quite two, but I set him to work watering the apple trees. He loved to play with the hose, to watch the water bubble out, and to pretend to put gasoline in his little car with it. When he wasn’t filling the gas tank with my screwdrivers.

I remember him following me around saying “shit shit shit” after he heard his dad say the word in the shed.

I miss that shed.

Oh do I miss that shed.

And that kid.

Never quite believed my mother when she said if she had to do it all over again with her little kids, she’d do it, no hesitation.Maybe this is an inkling of discovering that feeling in myself.

My brothers and sisters, too, are looking to the past. Seeing old photos of us all looking young and wondering when they look in the mirror who these old folks are.

Mom and Dad are gone.

We’re the responsible ones now.

And in a way, that’s a scary thought.

Responsible for our own versions of little us, who aren’t technically so little anymore.

Feeling a little like Buzz Lightyear. Worrying that the hat doesn’t look good.



Not quite at the Statler and Waldorf part of life, but getting closer.

Do I Suck or Does the Suit Suck?

Mrs. Lancaster, do you ever have deja-vu?

I don’t know. But I can check with the kitchen.

Doleful Creatures keeps percolating. But right now, I’m at the Bowling Alley of Despair stage, where I’m not sure anything will come of my efforts.

And then I have to ask myself, “What efforts?”

I’ve percolated. I’ve tinkered. But not really done much of anything with the book.

Part of me thinks, with the new ideas that’ve come, that I need to start over. Abandon the 100,000 words I have on the page and start fresh.

That could work.

But is it true that none of the effort in the past few years matters? I have to think it’s wrong to say that.

Then again, maybe it is wasted effort. I cannot dismiss the possibility that I suck rocks.