50/50 - or - How Three Coins Broke a Brain

My brain broke today. What did it? Admitting, to myself, that I've been wrong about something for more than ten years.

Beware Prophecy

I don't feel good about stories that rely on ancient prophecies. Rather, I don't particularly like characters relying on them. The thing about prophecies is that they are necessarily non-specific. If you had a prophecy that said, "On December 30th, 2314, at 9:45 pm, Jason Diaz will be struck by lightning in front of City Hall in Oakland, California" - well, if your name was Jason Diaz, you would not be there that day. Prophecy failed.

So if the prophecy is going to have a chance of coming true, we need one important thing: the person or people concerned will not know about what's actually supposed to happen, otherwise they won't always cooperate. They can and usually do think they know, but they're usually wrong. Then, the actual prophecy comes around from behind the corner and gets them after all.

But see here, usually when there's a big famous prophecy, everyone and their evil twin brother is trying to fulfill it. Obviously they all fail because they're not the actual subject of the prophecy.

Except.

If they succeeded, they would obviously be the actual subject of the prophecy.

What is the difference between the man who succeeds and the man who fails? They both thought the prophecy was meant for them; they both fit all the signs dictated in the ancient tablet. Did he succeed because he's the chosen one, or is he the chosen one because he succeeded? There really is not much difference, for most fantasy books.

If I write down a subtle riddle now, and say it's prophecy, I'll be right. At some point in the future, it will come true. That's why we can all love Nostradamus - he's never been wrong. Some of his predictions have come to pass, and the rest haven't happened yet. He was a visionary! Who KNOWS how far he saw into the future? If we're still waiting on it now, 500 years later, why not five thousand?

There's a saying: Put an infinite number of untrained primates in a room, with a like number of typewriters, and give them infinite time, and they will produce the works of William Shakespeare. Sooner or later, by random key-pressing, it will happen. Even one monkey alone with one typewriter for all of infinity will succeed (though it will take infinite orders of magnitude longer for it to do so). So put my prophecy out there:

The lone bison stalks the mists, but who sees in the darkness? Catching shadows on the breeze, he ascends the spiral tower of fate.

Put it in a time capsule with a sealed envelope; on the outside, write "open when fulfilled" and on the inside write "you sucker."

Trolling the Future. That's the sort of thing I do for fun.

Extemporaneous Drafting

I wrote this up late last night after sharing a bottle of Dreaming Tree with Katie. I didn't have a plan going into it, so I'm more or less pleased with the result. Still, this is worse than your average first draft. There's a lot I would fix. There's no real transition between stealthy action and lengthy instruction. There are some continuity problems, like the tree Saladin cuts down keeps getting called a "tree" and not a "broken tree" or a "stump". And the dialogue probably goes on much too long. I could condense that.

I will do none of these things because however interesting, this is not material I could publish. It is very derivative of the Way of Shadows and Assassin's Apprentice; mix in some Harry Potter as well. I'm not really doing anything new, even if I find the mix interesting. Saladin is somewhere between Kylar Stern and Fitzchivalry Farseer, and Hernidand (a name I would change, mostly because I can never remember it) is like an old, feeble Durzo Blint.

Still, all things considered, not bad in my eyes.

The Motherlands

You had this project. I'm sure of it. Unless your class had lots of people who didn't know who their fathers and/or mothers were, which would make the whole thing really awkward for everyone.

The project: your family tree. In third grade they make you fill it out with names. "Dude, your mom's name is Tiffany? That's so weird, man! My mom's name is Agnes!" "Woah!"

In sixth grade, though, you're supposed to find out more. What were their names, and where were they from? "Well that's easy; my parents were born here, and their parents were born here too."

For me, the problem came as a high school freshman. This was around the time they invented (because I'd never heard it before) the word "Geneology" - as in, "Hey, Ted, do you know where your great-great-grandparents are from?" "I can't talk now, Chris, I have to look up what the fuck 'geneology' means."

In freshman english class, we were assigned this task: Find out where everyone's ancestors were born, and write out the stories your family has about them. The assumption inherent in this assignment is that your family knows these things and has stories to share.

This was not the case in the Ross household. I made some calls but got nothing more solid than "well, some English some German but mostly just wandered about a lot." And stories? I had bullshit. I did not turn that assignment in; I was a great student, and part of being a great student means that you can blow off pointless things like geneology and field trips in Ag Science to see cows get castrated. Still got over 1300 on my SATs.

So from there on the issue was settled: I'm American as far as I know, which isn't very far.

Fast forward now to 2006, when I happen to catch the World Cup just as it's starting. "Oh," I said, "the world cup! I've wanted to watch it but never found out when they have it! How lucky I am indeed!" (it's every four years in the summer, by the way - the next is in 2014, women's world cup 2015)

So I follow it, even after the US is eliminated; Mexico went on a little longer I think, so I caught all those games I could (Tulelake is about 50% hispanic, mostly Mexican-Americans, so having the game on in the store where I worked was good PR as a bonus). But then the final... Zinedine Zidane! This was the guy I'd felt a baseless connection to - a character from Final Fantasy 9 was named Zidane, so as a geek new to soccer Zidane became my favorite player based on that. Plus they kept talking about him, since it was his last game. "Way to go out on a high note, eh?" But then, Kapow!







This was the last thing the man ever did in professional soccer: his retirement game, the World Cup Finals, and bam, red carded off the field. I couldn't believe it.

I was hooked.

That was also the year I met my wife, so she had most of four full years of knowing me before being forced to enjoy another World Cup. Yeah, there's US-league and other league soccer, but I just can't get as interested as I get with international soccer. I don't know why. But I love watching the World Cup, I love the qualifiers, I love it all.

I don't remember who I decided to pull for once the US and Mexico were both out; probably Italy, since they were in our group, but I don't remember now. But I do know who I pulled for in 2010.

(from Wiki)

That, of course, is the Holland Lop rabbit, native of The Netherlands. And it's adorable. Don't you want something cute and Dutch to snuggle with now?

I don't know exactly how it happened; maybe I saw a couple games and was impressed, but I think not. I think I was fascinated by a country called "The Netherlands", whose capital is called "The Hague" - maybe I like the idea of having a "the" before important things. Maybe I like a country that has completely different words for itself depending on context. 

"Where you from?" 

"The Netherlands."

"Oh, a Hollander, eh? You Dutch make the best chocolate, don't let anyone say otherwise."

"Thank you sir, you are clearly well-informed."

So I called my mother (this was sometime between the Round of 16 and the semi-finals, I believe) and asked, "Is there any Dutch in our ancestry?" "Yes." "Cool. I'm Dutch now." "You can't just decide that." "Bye!" "Wai--"

And it's not like any other ancestries were being useful to me. You know who else is Dutch? Dick Van Dyke. Don't you wish you were Dutch too? Well maybe not; you probably have your own ancestry, and I suppose it has some cool famous people as well. But we have a pretty good soccer team. Not to discount the US team; they're great and still my favorite to watch, not to mention share a country with. 

Not much has changed since I decided to be Dutch. I have an ancestral cuisine - German and Polish is about all I can actually get to for entrees, but nobody desserts like a Dutchman. Who invented the donut? A Dutchman (even if you believe the BS myth about a ship captain spearing his sweet roll on the wheel, it was still a Dutch vessel). Who invented waffles? A Dutchman. Who invented Dutch Process Cocoa Powder? Guess.

I have an imaginary Old Country somewhere in Europe that I can visit, or say I'll eventually visit but never do. And if we ever do go toward Europe, Ireland will come first; for one thing, Kathryn actually knows more or less how Irish she is and which branches of her family tree are rooted there. Plus it's a beautiful country and I have a special weakness for their beer, colcannon, and bangers. Still, but part of my heart will always be Dutch, just like it's always been for nearly two years.




**** Author's Note: Fixed an error in here a couple days after publishing it. I'd said that the World Cup was every leap year. That is wrong. Completely wrong. Both happen every four years, but they never, ever, coincide.

Look Who's Talking Nyow

This is kind of a re-creation of the Cat Dialogue exercise I did around this time last year. Not a lot has changed with our cats; they're still cats, for example. Sushi and Poe don't get along very well, not that they ever did. The following is what I imagine happens every night, just after we go to bed. Almost always, there is the sound of a cat, crying as if lost and alone... somehow, she can't find her way to the bedroom in the dark, it seems.

Book Gushing

Have to write more about books.

Crucible of Gold is coming out soon; if you haven't read the Temeraire series (temerer, temperistaire, it's a hard word), you ought to. Do you like dragons? Yes you do! Do you like the Napoleonic Wars? Of fucking course! Do you like military campaign drama? Oh hell yeah, now I'm talkin' your language!


Naomi Novik is doing something really interesting. If dragons existed, what would be different? A lot, actually. She's taking a well-known (well, well-documented) point in history and seeing how it would play out differently with dragons involved. Sounds SO BORING I know but seriously, you'd be so wrong to think that! First of all, it's all character-driven, and the characters are great. Second, I don't really believe that Novik would just make Napoleon lose just because that's what really happened. Things at this point don't look so great for people who aren't in Napoleon's empire. I honestly don't know what's going to happen - that's very exciting.


I've been re-reading a lot lately to save money. Re-read a lot of The Dresden Files, re-read The Way of Kings (caught a bunch of details the second time through) and now I'm mostly through The Night Angel trilogy, which is good again. Mentioned re-reading all of the Robin Hobb books I have, which should be a good time. The last new book I read was The Wee Free Men (part of the Discworld series) and I've noticed since then that I'm more driven toward creativity than when I was reading Discworld books. I love the Discworld, don't get me wrong, that's why I was reading them nearly to exclusion of other books; but somehow, these other books make me feel more creative. I don't understand it. Still, I haven't been participating in prompts - my own prompts, the ones I wrote. Haven't done any of them.

What I have done is start on a separate work, already over 1500 words (not much really) that may be the first chapter of a book. It's a story meant to be a scene from that book, anyway; I don't have the idea for the book fleshed out, and I'm really missing some important details, but until now I was missing the most important detail - the words in type that are meant to be read by the reader. Those have all been missing, and looking back I see it's a huge, monumental oversight. I'm working on fixing it, though, and hopefully by the time I'm done with that the other problems will work out.