Anyway, the whole thing got me wondering on some of the deep philosophical questions. The “Who am I?” and “Am I really like that?” types. And while I am still not through that jungle, I have realized something. I do not have the luxury of hypocrisy. I cannot actively do what I think is wrong. This is probably part of the fact that in games like Fallout 3, I cannot take the “evil” path. I am just a good guy, that’s what it comes down to.

So, you might be asking, who do I say does have the luxury of hypocrisy, and what exactly is it? Well, in reverse order, the luxury is of being able to do something you know is wrong and then rationalize it away so you don’t feel bad. And to in part answer the first, I am in particular talking about a religious person’s ability to do wrong then say “oh, I’m just human, but I know what is right, and I am sorry so God forgives me.” Having a moral system that derives itself outside of you allows you to do this, because your actions are separate of the morals.

But, I do not have this separation. My morals come from me, at least as I understand them and have assimilated them from society. But I don’t look to any one source and say “that is my moral set, and that is where I get it from.” I do not place anything above my own conscience like that. And because of it, I have realized, that I doomed to regret every time I don’t do the right thing, no matter how much I don’t want to, and no matter how much it might not be any sort of “objective” right. I have no ability to seek forgiveness from an outside source. And yes, I have tried to find absolution from friends for some regrets before, and it always just falls a little short. In the end, if the morals are in me, then my only hope of absolution is too. And, as they say, the hardest person to forgive is yourself.

On the bright side, I feel that this is probably the leading reason that most people think that I’m one of the nicest, if rough around the edges, people they have ever met. One friend even compared me to Canada (which was huge for her, as she is Canadian.) Still doesn’t mean I didn’t wish I could be a hypocrite sometimes, but I guess it is better than the alternative.

So, back story on this train of thought. I was at the beach today with my kids. Normally, I’m on my kids like white-on-rice in the ocean, but I was giving them a little more “leash” today as it was not very crowded, the ocean was very calm, and it was very shallow (due to low tide). I still was keeping a hawk-eye on the kids, yet some random woman decided to march up to me and scream at me, going so far as to call me a bad parent, all the while adding to any likely distraction I might have had.

I’ll admit, her rant unnerved me. Coincidentally, after her rant, it was about time for us to leave the beach anyway, and as we did, she gave me a stink eye the entire way off the sand. I do not think she was even remotely in the right. I am normally very self assured that I am a good, nurturing, caring, and safe parent. Yet, for the rest of the day, I have had a sense of worry that perhaps I’m not. Words from a stranger that has no clue what she is talking about, it would seem, can have an effect regardless.

Fortunately, I have great friends who have cheered me up. One of them, the wonderful Jennifer Liang of JordanCon fame, pointed me over to Free Range Kids. This website is dedicated to the kind of parenting I ascribe to. Granted, I might not be as free a spirit as the author (dubbed by media as “America’s Worst Mom”) who allowed her nine year old to take a subway ride on his own in NYC. Back-story! The family are NYC natives and take the subway as readily as you or I walk down the street.

Anywho, she brings up several good points, especially in her interview over at Dads Divorce, about how it is only recently that we’ve become super smothering and over-protective of our kids and raises valid worries over it. I did not need to hear her to feel these myself, but it makes me a little more comfortable to know other people feel the way I do. Sheltering kids does not help them. How is it that my generation (and perhaps the younger part of the last) has completely gone so over-protective? Easy answer: it makes people money.

Advertisers will play the trump card of “Will you protect your child, or are you just cheap” every change they get. Now, don’t get me wrong. Safety belts and helmets and car seats are awesome. Something that makes a noticeable and statistically significant change to child safety is great. But when nurses say “don’t get a baby-on-board sign, it could decapitate your child in a car accident,” I start to wonder. Did the company that makes those signs suddenly decide they could charge more for a bumper-sticker? Where did this almost assuredly urban legend come from of a baby being beheaded by a flimsy piece of plastic?

Well, at least I can rest assured of one thing. My kids are going to be strong and independent. My kids are going to know how to think for themselves and how to stand up for themselves. And when other kids are floundering over the sudden freedom of college or post-high school, my kids will excel because they have already been eased into responsibility and freedom. I am not a bad dad.

It is hardly a new thing for members of another gender to sing gender charged songs. Tori Amos did it quite a bit with one of her albums, and listening to her rendition of ’97 Bonnie and Clyde is creepy. But I have to wonder, why not bend the lyrics? I mean, I can see the “you are covering a song, dip-weed, you don’t change it,” but both in the case of Tori and of Jonathan, it feels like they are trying to bring the other genders take and feel to the song. So why not a song about the mother killing the father, and why not a song from a guy who was cheated on and dumped? And this isn’t me trying to be all hetro-normative either. I’d be fine if the singers were going for non hetro-normative takes, but at least in these two cases (and likely in others), it just doesn’t seem like what they were doing. Iunno, thoughts?

No, that can’t be it. But there is a certain human hatred of change, I think. Even the young, most flexible people that embrace change hate it. See, they embrace and love it, but only in certain fields. And there, they love it because it isn’t really change. It is still something they are in control of, after a fashion, or perhaps at least something they understand. Kind of like surfing, I’d imagine. The surfer doesn’t control the wave, but they can still ride it because they kind of know what it will do. The same goes with change.

And even old people like change, or at least embrace it after a fashion. Perhaps it isn’t as outward, but it seems the more crotchety and old a person gets, the more they look inward for the change to embrace. Their bodies, which have honestly been fairly stagnant for a while, are changing again, so that is what they have to embrace. And perhaps we are all like that. It isn’t that we hate change any more or less, we just change which change it is we are changing with. (Phew!)

And me? I guess I am starting to drift away from feeling like keeping up with computer tech and focusing more on publishing and writing, which I guess is a good thing, ‘cept my newfound change-love isn’t paying ye olde bills yet (although I am getting paid for some writing now, so that is a plus). So meh, change. But what happens when my old love and new love meet? What else? A big cluster of pain. Thus why I am writing this. I have a Firefly post to put into Tor as I read this, but Tor upgraded to a new system for putting blogs in, and I don’t want to deal with it. So I am putting it off and whining. Go me. Oh well, back to actually doing work.

I know that sounds cheesy, but oh well, I’m in a cheddar mood. And, in particular, a mood to wonder at the oddness of love in a world of science. Love cannot be tested. The very concept of testing love breaks it. To try and force someone to prove love hurts them, and anyone who has ever had an “if you love me you’ll . . .” thrown at them knows this. And to anyone who doubts love, here is a simple concept: if you doubt it, it isn’t missing in the other person, per se, it is missing in you.

And right there is where love and faith come together. You can know when you are in love, but you have to take it on faith the other person is. You have to take it on faith that the other person won’t hurt you or betray you. And, if you know that you cannot trust that person, well, you might not be able to control your love for them, to turn it off like a switch, but you can at least have the presence of self to take yourself out of the situation. If there is one thing I doubt, it is that anyone who knows your feelings and does not return them will ever properly return them. To think otherwise is a romantic comedy, and those are just works of fiction.

Or perhaps I’m being emo. But meh, everyone has the right occasionally.

About a year ago, I had the honor of getting to meet Tom Doherty, the publisher and top dog of Tor books. In the course of the conversation, I asked him if he had any insight or idea of where the genres were headed, and he replied with an odd answer. He said that books like Twilight by Stephanie Meyers are good. Not per se good on their own, but good because they are brining a different audience into genre. It really made me realize that this man could see the silver lining to any genre cloud, and not just one with dollar signs. Although dollar signs might be involved, and I don’t fault him for that. He is a businessman too, after all. (yes, this is quite a setup).

Which is why I don’t fault him in this article. (It’s only a few paragraphs, read it, I’ll wait.)  For those who don’t even want to read that much off my site (and who would), his quote of “We are excited to publish Terry Goodkind again. Millions of people delight in the novels of Richard and Kahlan and eagerly await the continuation of their story.”

Yes, that is right, Terry Goodkind, the man who believes he has the power to channel Ayn Rand; the man who doesn’t write fantasy novels, but instead philosophical discussions with fantastical settings; the man whom, whether or did it intentionally or not, ripped of Robert Jordan’s setting and trope-mixture four years later, is getting to write three more books for Tor.

Now, I originally liked The Sword of Truth. Even to this day I think the first five or so novels aren’t bad (although number two had a bit much in the ol’ melodrama.) OK, they all have a good amount of melodrama, but I was a teenager when I read them, so sue me. I ate that stuff up. I had tried The Eye of the World, but it didn’t stick the first time, so I had to settle for Goodkind. I will admit, I somewhat regret that, but it’s past, so whatever.

Anyway, it was around book five that he started to get into the political commentary hard and heavy. Saving grace for book five was I really liked the pseudo-villain, Dolton Campbell, for being a sneaky prick who was burnt by his actions and didn’t whine about it, but instead got even.  But after that, the entire story became an Objectivist parable. The writing style also went downhill because at this point, it is Terry F-ing Goodkind, you don’t need to line-edit him!

So yeah, the series jumped the shark, I said F-it after Naked Empire, and finally got my hands on The Wheel of Time and have been happy since. Now if I could only make myself read G.R.R. Martin, but that is another rant.

But now, Goodkind is coming back. Humorously, I hear that he had signed a three book deal at Putnam, and the first one bombed like hell. (pause) OK, I just went and looked up the summary of The Law of Nines on Amazon. I see why. Callbacks to The Sword of Truth in an urban-fantasy (not that he’d call it that, I’m sure). No word, as far as I know, of what happened to his other two promised books with Putnam. I wonder if they just dissolved it after the bomb. Good money after bad and all that.

But, long and the short is, Goodkind is back at Tor, and a small part of me died a little.

In other news, I noticed Terry Goodkind has signed a three-book deal with Tor for more Sword of Truth type novels. That breaks my heart. I’ll explain why in another post.

Oh, also, my latest Firefly rewatch is up too: “Our Mrs. Reynolds”

Not really much to talk about today, otherwise. Pre-writing on a new novel is slow but moving, and I am currently hiding from tourists that have descended upon my town for some flower-naval-gazing-thinger.  Up side is a tall ship is in port, but s’bout it.  I’m getting pretty comfortable doing my Firefly re-watch, and still somewhat dumbstruck that I do technically get paid to write now.  Aside from that, only other big thing going on is JordanCon later this month.  Which, if you are in the Atlanta area, you should totally come.  It isn’t just about Robert Jordan, although his writing (and the Wheel of Time in particular) are a big part of it.  Brandon Sanderson will be there along with a few other writers doing a Writers’ Track, so that much is awesome.

And that’s about it for me for now. Back to relaxing a bit while the kids are at the circus with their mother.