Any time you hear the words “spent fuel rods” and “uncovered” in the same sentence, as I saw earlier today in a CNN article, then you are dealing with the potential to depopulate LARGE portions of the nearby geography. Dumping sea water onto a nuclear reactor is an act of EXTREME desperation. I am very concerned about this. Not for my OWN safety, but because a lot of people are very close to wishing they had died in the earthquake/tsunami.

ALSO, and this is speculation on my part… it seems to me that the Japanese government is understating the problem. The word “meltdown” had been thrown about entirely to freely without much explanation of what it means. I see scientists on CNN almost 24/7 explaining how earthquakes and tidal waves work… but there is a noticeable lack of folks describing in detail just how screwed the people working in/around those reactors really are. The phrase “walking dead” comes to mind. Let’s hope they get a handle on this thing.

Point 2: I will not vote against someone. Some people think that if you can’t vote FOR someone, then voting against someone else is the next best thing. I disagree, but this is a personal choice, not really a philosophical one. In my mind, the PURPOSE of a vote is NOT to keep someone else out of office. If you don’t have someone to vote FOR, then the system is broken and your vote is unlikely to fix it.

Point 3: I will not vote to “teach them a lesson”. I will not vote against my principles for the sole purpose of “showing” some party that I no longer support what they are doing. Again, people have been doing this for a long time. Here’s a question: Have “they” ever learned? No. The student is untrainable, so I’m not going to waste my time. Not voting FOR them is enough. Actively voting AGAINST them (when you have nothing to vote FOR) is ridiculous.

Point 4: I will not vote out of shame or intimidation. My ability to complain has NOTHING to do with whether I voted or not. The struggles my ancestors had to go through to get the right to vote has NOTHING to do with whether I vote or not. I will not vote for someone simply because I HAVE to vote for SOMEONE.

Point 5: I will vote for the candidate that best represents me or my interests. I will vote ONLY for that candidate an no other.

Point 6: It follows from Points 1-5 that if there IS no candidate that best represents my interests, then I will not vote. The system is broken, and I refuse to participate in it. I don’t refuse in hopes of “teaching them a lesson”… I simply refuse to waste my time or violate my principals. To hell with the “lesson”.

Best of luck to everybody who’s out there trying to vote.

Television?
Movies?
Computer Games?
Short stories?
….online or in magazines or anthologies?
Novels?
….online or physical books? How about audiobooks?

For me, it’s television and audiobooks. I haven’t read an actual physical novel in quite a while, but with audiobooks I’ve “read” the entire Dark Tower series from Stephen King, and I’m four books into the “Wheel of Time” from Robert Jordan… all books that I would never have time to read otherwise. In fact, if it weren’t for audiobooks I probably wouldn’t read novels at all… period. I just don’t have the time, and when I DO have time, I fill it with either writing or gaming.

Oddly enough, I read very few short stories, and almost NO fiction on the internet.

How ’bout you?

How much work you did?

Or how much fun you had?

Yes? No?

What?

Yeah. The gang. I quit it.

I’m making my way down my list of Books to Read Eventually and I finally got to Freakanomics.. It’s an entertaining attempt to use statistics and economic analysis to get answers to perplexing questions that, on the surface, have nothing to do with either. Such as: “If selling illegal drugs is so lucrative, why do so many crack dealers live with their mothers?” and “Why isn’t Dark Icon Published?”

Here’s the answer:

Because only the crack dealers at the top make any money. This isn’t mere conventional wisdom; it’s backed up by actual numbers from an actual street gang over the course of a four-year period. The guy running the neighborhood drug-dealing gang is making around $100,000 a year, or $70 an hour. Not a lot, considering the risks, but it’s a serious improvement over what I’m making right now. The “soldiers”… the people out selling drugs and shooting at each other, are making the equivalent of $3.00 an hour. There is a level below the soldiers who don’t make any money at all; in fact they PAY dues to the gang for the privilege of one day becoming a soldier.

So the next question is: why are these guys risking their lives for $3.00 an hour… less than minimum wage? Because they all want to be the guy at the top. Don’t they realize that there is only room at the top for a few of those guys and that, statistically, they don’t have a chance in hell of making it? Some do. Some don’t. Those that do, usually end up getting out of the gang. Those that don’t usually end up getting out of the gang an entirely different way (a coffin). And then there are the one or two out of a hundred that actually become that $100,000 a year drug-dealer, only to get arrested by the feds the following year.

Sounds sad and rather stupid. Who in their right mind would sign up for such a thing? But then the authors go on to compare this to other, legitimate professions… like sports: Thousands of kids busting their asses (without pay!) and hitching all their hopes on the slight chance that they’ll become a high-paid professional athlete. They are surrounded by people who are making money (legal or not), but they themselves don’t make any until some point in the future when they turn pro. IF they turn pro. Sure, there are a lot of pros out there making money, but their numbers are staggeringly small compared to the number of kids who want to BE them. There’s not enough room for all of them at the top, but the kids either don’t know or don’t care.

Then the authors compare crack-selling to the acting, scriptwriting, and publishing professions. People put in a lot of work under crappy conditions for little pay, on the odd chance that maybe they’ll be one of the few people who can become a superstar. There isn’t enough room for everybody at the top, but we’ll all work ourselves into an early grave trying to get there. A few make it. Most don’t.

The analogy doesn’t fit 100%. Enjoying what you do for a living means something over and above the amount of money you make doing it; and I personally don’t buy into the whole mentality of scarcity. But on the surface, was the young Dark Icon in high school any different than the kids down the hall playing basketball, trying to be the next Michael Jordan? Some of those kids were pretty talented, too. None of them is famous now. Neither am I. Somewhere along the line, we all stopped trying to be that $100,000 a year drug dealer. I bet they still play basketball, though. And I still write.

Hey, anybody wanna buy some crack?