SO, on October 7, 2014, the world will change forever. Well, not really. What’s actually going to happen is my next novel, We Are Not Good People, will be released. Whether or not I spend 2015 dancing on street corners for nickels or ordering rounds of drinks for strangers as I blaze, briefly, in alcoholic splendor before doctors arrive to harvest my ruined body for parts, depends entirely on what happens in the bookstores and online venues in the days and weeks afterwards.
In the past, with the Avery Cates novels, I organized a Street Team (organized may be a strong word here) to help with promotion, and we had a lot of fun, so I’m doing the same, gathering blackguards and bravos from around the world to help make it seem like a passably good idea to spend money on my book. And I want you to join the Street Team. It will be ever so much fun.
I understand your hesitation. I am a notably unreliable author who is easily distracted by glasses of booze and things like videos of kittens acting surprised. So, here are
REASONS TO BE ON THE WANGP STREET TEAM
You love me. You may not realize it, but you do.
You fear me and know if my writering career goes south I will start showing up at your door, begging for a couch to sleep on.
There will be swag — free books, signed things, T-shirts, bookmarks, anything else we cook up to give away or what have you, Street Team members will get first dibs. In the past every member got a T-shirt or a hat and some other stuff just for being awesome.
Meet new people! Who are not me pretending to be other people just to make my Street Team seem huge and imposing, promise.
All Street Team members pat and present earn the Right of Cocktails, which means they can march up to me at any time under any circumstances and, once they’ve identified themselves, demand that I buy them a drink, and I will.
Did I mention the swag?
The forum is there to exchange ideas and suggestions, so if you’ve ever wanted to humiliate and destroy me publicly (and who hasn’t) here is your chance. Why not suggest I dress up in a pig outfit and dance on your lawn? Because if everyone on the Street Team votes for it, I will totally do that.
The abbreviation of We Are Not Good People is WANGP, so you get to throw around the word “Wang” a lot and no one can complain.
The Pork Avenger (Artist’s Conception)
Someday, when they decide to make a documentary about me (most probably because I snap mentally in 2016 and start showing up in public in a pig outfit and dancing, eventually becoming known as The Pork Avenger) they will totally come to interview you about it.
Because I am dancing for right now, even though you can’t see it. And also weeping. How can you be so cruel?
So there you have it. There’s no official sign up or anything — just participate. Send me your contact info via email or message, let me know you’re interested, join the forum and say hello and suggest things. What can you suggest? Well, anything:
If you know of a bookstore that would love to have me come read, let me know.
Ideas for swag or giveaways
Ideas for digital graphics that I could create and distribute
Forums or other sites that people could post on
Ways to tweet and post about the books (or my other books), write reviews, or otherwise spread the word
Or, just lurk until something gets suggested that appeals to you. Literally, anything you want to do is appreciated and I’ll be extremely grateful for.
Onward! I’ve just discovered I will have to have my Pork Avenger outfit let out a little. I’m … not a young man any more.
Let’s say you have a time machine. What would you change? Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you would go back in time and buy me a drink that one time when you refused to buy me a drink because I kept mispronouncing your name and then braying like a donkey, clearly implying that I knew I was mispronouncing your name. But looking back you realize I deserved that drink, and because I was sober I went on a rampage of writing novels and you hate to see me successful, so you figure: I’ll go back and buy him a drink and he’ll get drunk and step in front of a bus and die.
Don’t worry. It’s a common desire. I get that a lot.
So, you acquire a time machine via Dark Arts or Black Ops or what have you. How do you go about putting this plan into motion? Do you
A. Set the controls for the evening we were together, walk into the place just as Past You heads for the bathroom, and do the deed? or
B. Set the controls for the day I was conceived and totally cock-block my Dad? or
C. Set the controls for a week earlier and spend your time moving objects and leaving notes for friends and family, subtly arranging them like pieces on a board to ensure that Past You doesn’t make it to the bar that evening so you can impersonate yourself, and then put more work hours into making certain that my favorite liquor is stocked behind the bar, and then even more work into several side projects, including releasing a dangerous gorilla from the zoo to terrorize the neighborhood so the bar won’t be too crowded, except I have a deadly fear of gorillas and so now Past Me isn’t coming to the bar, and you have to reveal yourself to Past You and team up to kidnap me and literally pour booze down my throat, accidentally burning down Hoboken, NJ in the process?
If you chose “C,” you may be Jane Goldman, Simon Kinberg, or Matthew Vaughn, the people who wrote X-Men: Days of Future Past. SPOILERS HO.
Sweet Jesus, I’m an Asshole
So, time travel movies tend to be ridiculous. Here’s a Pro Tip: Time Travel is not magic. It’s not supposed to be magic, at least – it’s supposed to be a manipulation of a measurable aspect of our physical world. As a result, they should have what we professional thinkers call “internal logic.” The rest of the world calls this making any damn sense.
XMDOFP Makes a valiant attempt to make some damn sense. The method of time travel is the typical mumbo-jumbo, but at least avoids someone actually building a time machine in favor of mental gymnastics, which has a nice simplicity to it, in my opinion. The basic premise is this: In 1973 Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) assassinates a scientist/industrialist, setting in motion a present-day where the world has been destroyed by “Sentinels” that hunt anyone with even a single mutant gene. On the verge of being exterminated, the final remaining mutants gather to send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, whose arms and chest are a special effect that made me doubt my sexual orientation) back to his body in 1973 to stop her. To do so, they decide he must find Professor X (Patrick Stewart/James McAvoy) and Magneto (Ian McKellan/Michale Fassbender) to persuade her not to kill her target.
So, let’s run this through the insanity machine: On the one hand, you have the entire world destroyed an enslaved by horrible Sentinels. Weighed against that is the single mutant who causes the chain reaction in the first place. Solution: Kill Mystique, preferably a few years before 1973. Film over within ten minutes, the rest of the running time is Jackman doing one-handed push-ups while the rest of the cast cheers.
But no, they decide that despite the fact that the entire world destroyed an enslaved by horrible Sentinels Mystique, the woman who unknowingly caused this awful future, is far too important to kill. So they decide to spend a few days trying to track her down and convince her to not exact vengeance on this man. And for some reason, for some unknowable reason, they send Wolverine back to just a few days before her terrible act.
Wait. Why?
You are sending him back in time. For fuck’s sake, send him a few months back, give him some room to operate. Okay, to be fair, the implication is that he’s only back in his 1973 body for as long as Kitty Pride is actively manipulating him with her mutant powers, so the idea that she could do that for months is probably crazy. Except of course that she does do it for several days, because in 1973 Wolverine travels around quite a bit, and a lot of plot happens, and so we must assume Kitty pride knelt there holding her hands over Wolverine’s head for two, maybe four days. Without eating or drinking. Or bathroom breaks. Sure. Why not.
Okay! So maybe they had to send him back with just days to spare. Stipulated. I may have been drunk while watching this movie anyway. But! Here is the next complicating factor: Despite having just a few days to accomplish this goal, they spend a great deal of time breaking young Magneto out of his plastic prison. Because Old Magneto, despite knowing for a fact that he was a complete asshole back in 1973, insisted he would be necessary to convince Mystique. Which proves to be completely untrue, and it doesn’t matter anyway because Magneto immediately begins acting like the complete asshole he was in 1973.
In other words, if Old Magneto had said: Hey, listen, I was kind of a jerk back then and probably wouldn’t help you, better leave me out of it, the movie’s forty minutes long and the rest of the running time is spent giving Halle Berry a reason to be in the movie in the first place.
Man, I’m not, you know, Magneto-old. He appears to be 40 in 1973, so that makes Sir Ian McKellan 80 years old, which is … about right. In 1973 I was 2. But I can remember, for example, what kind of jerkass I was when I was 18. If you time-traveled back to when I was 18 and asked me to do anything that inconvenienced me in the least, I would yawn and pretend to be asleep. I know this. So if we were hatching plans to save the world that involved time-traveling back to me at 18 and getting my help, I would raise my hand and say guys – bad idea. I was kind of an asshole back then.
You know, instead of producing a plot thread that exists solely to expand the story to an appropriate film-length.
We won’t even get into the fact that Wolverine drowns, except doesn’t, and then magically wakes up in a shiny new future with no memory of the previous 40 years … for some unknowable reason. The metaphysics in this movie? not so hot. Sure, the movie’s fun. It also takes itself a little too seriously, and has an enormous number of continuity problems just with the other films. But Quicksilver was fun. I love that guy.
(This originally appeared in Brutarian Quarterly #53; for a while I wrote a column there about ignorance in general and my ignorance in specific. It was a lot of fun and I figure I’ll post them here now and again.)
Episode Seven: Monetizing Ignorance
Use As Instructed.
FRIENDS, lord knows there are plenty of things I wish I could forget. Like the time in High School when I got really drunk and. . .well, actually, that covers most of High School, so it might be best to delete those seven years entirely. Or the time in college when I got really drunk and. . .well, actually, those are eight sloshy years that are best forgotten altogether as well, filled with bitterness and heartache, unrequited love and poor diet choices.
The point is, there’s plenty of terrible, hurtful memories I’d like to get rid of, most of which involve large groups of people laughing and pointing while I weep. This is where you realize that ignorance, often relegated to insult-comedy and character assassination, can actually have a beneficial affect on your life. Ignorance is not always a Bad Thing, in other words. Properly channeled, it could be one of the greatest medical advances ever.
Consider, if you will, the debilitating effect knowledge has on all of us. Terrible knowledge. Knowledge of pain and suffering, of humiliations and consequences, of evil and of pain. It’s a wonder any of us attempt anything after the age of twenty-five. The fact that any adult is in any way functional I put down to the glory of alcohol abuse, although I freely admit the negative affects of such a lifestyle often cancel out whatever false courage The Drink gives you. If we could simply delete unwanted memories whenever we liked, think of how much extra courage you would have on a daily basis? I mean, I wonder to myself what kind of superman would I be if I didn’t have this memory of being promoted to Senior Patrol Leader of my Boy Scout Troop when I was fourteen and entering into a six month slide of Epic Fail that resulted in me shying away from any hint of authority or responsibility ever since. Man, if I didn’t have that terrible memory—which involved the scorn and derisive humor of not only the former SPL whose position I inherited, but of the adult Scoutmaster and Assistant Scoutmasters as well—I might have actually become ambitious in my life. I’d probably already be ruling the world, except for that panic-inducing experience.
Now, because of my ill-fated attempt to be a teenaged authority figure, I flee any sort of responsibility, and I live in Hoboken with four cats instead of in some secret underground base with an army of mercenaries ready to die for my cause.
Imagine, though, if I could erase that memory and start fresh. Wake up tomorrow and no longer have any idea that taking on a leadership position might lead to humiliation and horror! Sort of like in that movie The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, except instead of erasing bad relationships, erasing any kind of bad experience that now makes you think twice before doing something. In other words, not so much erasing a memory as inserting ignorance. Ignorance which then acts to protect you from fear.
After all, why do most of us refuse to do things—say, mainline heroin, or jump out of a plane without a parachute? Simple: We know the consequences and choose to avoid them. But what if we didn’t know the consequences? That’s right: We’d be superman. And, yes, most likely dead within a very short period of time. But like the Replicants in Blade Runner, we’d be gods for that very short period of time, wouldn’t we? Unstoppable, completely without any common sense or fear of dismemberment.
####
Of course, I am old and dissipated by Drink. The world has likely passed me by, and it’s too late to save me—besides, my list of humiliations which have scarred me into terminal passivity is far too long. You’d pretty much have to delete my personality entirely and reboot me as a thirty-seven year-old infant. Which no one wants. So I must instead bend my intelligence and severe lack of restraint on helping the world altruistically, using my immense fortune and bottomless resources to invent The Inner Swine Bad Memory Redactor.
THE INNER SWINE BAD MEMORY REDACTOR (BMR)
The design of the Implement is, of course, pretty simple, and some might say that I’ll never get a patent as there is ubiquitous prior art. That doesn’t matter—the important part about the Bad Memory Redactor is in its proper use. If you learn where to apply the BMR and with what amount of force, you can surgically remove specific memories with complete accuracy and almost no negative side effects. For the purposes of this essay we are not counting the memory loss as a negative side effect, of course.
The procedure is simple: Based on detailed phrenologic diagrams supplied wit the the BMR, you simply select the spot on the head which will delete the appropriate memory. Then have your subject concentrate on that memory until it is all they are thinking of, filling all of their thoughts. Then you rear back and give an accurate but forceful smack with the implement. Like magic, the memory is deleted.
Think about what you could do if you didn’t know everything you know! Have trust issues? Burn out a few traumatic experiences from your childhood and ta-da! You’ll be a trusting, secure person. Fall out of a tree when you were five and get the heebies every time you’re up high? One expert swing of the BMR and you might realize your secret dream of being an acrobat. Haunted by dreams of being naked in front of crowds? One quick, slightly excruciating application of the BMR in expert hands and you’ll be break-dancing on stage in front of thousands in no time.
####
Ignorance does not have to be solely an affliction—it can be used as a tool as well, the same way debilitating alcohol consumption can help you through trauma even as it rots your brain and destroys your liver. Certainly you don’t want to be deleting every single bad memory you have—aside from making you incredibly dull and probably doomed to an early death due to your complete and impenetrable ignorance, the repeated head traumas would probably result in some semiserious and somewhat permanent brain damage. But for dealing with the occasional phobia-inducing searing hell of a memory, it’s genius. I’ll start the rates at $1500 per treatment, medical bills not included, though I will throw in a free ride-and-dump to the local Emergency Room if you fail to regain consciousness within an hour. Which hardly ever happens, trust me.
This originally appear in The Inner Swine Volume 19, Issue 3/4
Author’s Self-Portrait
Going to the Internet for Answers is the Ultimate in Blind Faith
According to the Internet, my friends, I’ve had cancer several times. That’s because every time I have a new annoying pain or symptom (which is, since I am older than my genetic code thinks I ought to be, ALL THE TIME) I am far too lazy to seek a trained medical professional (mainly because someday those medical professionals are gonna tell me to lay off the sauce and after bursting into manly tears I’m going to contact my local cryogenics representative and go out fat, drunk, and stupid like I lived) so instead I head to the Internet to enter in vague and inappropriate keywords and be told, invariably, I have cancer. Because everything is cancer to the Internet:
JSOMERS: My hand hurts when I do this.
CAPNCRUNCHY: We can’t see you, dude, it’s the Internet.
(This originally appeared in Brutarian Quarterly #52; for a while I wrote a column there about ignorance in general and my ignorance in specific. It was a lot of fun and I figure I’ll post them here now and again.)
Episode Six: Retroactive Ignorance
I Title this: Handsome Bastard
They say that time travel is impossible. “They” being the faceless, cruel scientists who actually rule this planet with their “knowledge” and “expertise”. If I had knowledge and expertise I’d probably be unstoppable, but this damned ignorance keeps getting in the way, dooming me to a life of beer-swillage and remote-fondling. And, of course, pondering ignorance and its power, which is apparently infinite. When they figure out dark matter and string theory, I’m sure what they’ll find at the core of the universe is, you got it, ignorance. In fact, a sufficient level of generalized ignorance even makes time travel possible, and not in the traveling-forward-in-time-at-regular-speed way.
Usually ignorance is pretty much in the moment and, like the elusive rainbow, disappears the moment you realize it was there at all. But sometimes ignorance—such is its power—can cast a long shadow backwards in time as the sudden inrush of knowledge that fills the vacuum exposed by your realization of ignorance sheds light on past events and makes you realize you’ve actually been a jackass for much longer than you had previously imagined.
The effect is startling. Trust me.
Naturally, such revelations are almost always humiliating in nature, for vengeful ignorance crushes its enemies and punishes those who attempt to dispel it. The worst part is, with retroactive ignorance the humiliation reverberates backwards in time, illuminating the last few months or years or decades of your life in the harsh yellow light of Fail.
An easy illustrative example of this is the simple mispronunciation of words.Say you spend your entire adult life pronouncing “segue” as seeg. “And then we seeg into the next scene.” You do so completely free of shame or self-consciousness because you don’t actually realize you’re pronouncing it wrong—you’re ignorant. And no one corrects you because they know how embarrassing it is to be corrected about something trivial like that. Then, one day, you’re reading a ridiculous column in a cool underground-type magazine and some points out that it should actually be pronounced segway, and you quickly experience the following string of events:
An urge to snort and point out how ridiculous this is to someone standing near you
The sour, rotten tendrils of doubt poke through your bravura
You look up the word and realize you have been saying it wrong for approximately your whole life
You are embarrassed
You start recalling how often you like to use the word in your daily conversations because you think it makes you sound erudite
Flashes of all the moments in time you’ve used the word go through your mind as your humiliation speeds backwards in time until it reaches you as a zygote and implants itself inside your soul
You realize your whole life has been a terrible sham and failure and begin to contemplate suicide
Someone says let’s go have a drink and you cheer up, but resolve to never use the word again
After three or nine drinks you suddenly realize you just used the word “segue” sixteen times in conversation and mispronounced it, as usual, all sixteen times
And no one corrected you in any way
So you decide they are all your enemies, secretly laughing at you behind your back, and excuse yourself to go throw up in the bathroom, attempt to climb out the window in order to make a dramatic and secretive exit, get wedged in the small bathroom window, pass out, and wake up the next morning in a hotel room in Mexico, sitting in a tub full of ice with a cell phone duct-taped to your hand
This happens. Trust me. Such is the power of ignorance.
In fact, I doubt it could ever be proven that the sudden realization of long-standing ignorance doesn’t actually alter past events as opposed to merely altering your perception/recollection of them. Say you suddenly remember a moment when you used “segue” incorrectly and now you remember that everyone burst into laughter and at the time you assumed it was because of something hilarious you just said even though what you said wasn’t all that hilarious, but now you see they were laughing at your sad lack of proper pronunciation. Or were they? Maybe they were laughing at something you said—until you realized your ignorance, and changed the past.
String theory is a hell of a thing. You can’t prove I’m wrong.
Of course, having established that Ignorance can travel backwards along your timeline and alter events in the past, isn’t it conceivable that it can also change the future? After all, once you learn how to properly pronounce “segue” you’re unlikely to mispronounce it in the future (unless you are brain damaged in some way). As a matter of fact, you’ll probably go out of your way to ensure you don’t mispronounce it ever again, as from that point forward you will be sadly aware of the humiliation involved. You will take steps. You will write the word phonetically on your hand in permanent marker. You will practice in front of the mirror, privately. You will invent little mnemonic games to help you remember.
In other words, you will consciously change your behavior, thus altering the future.
You’re starting to see why we should immediately build a huge golden statue of the God Ignorance and start slaughtering cattle at its base, yes? Ignorance could crush you, boyo. It holds the Deep Magic in its taloned hands.
I’ve been invited to be a presenter at the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference (www.writersdigestconference.com). I was told that, remarkably, if I didn’t live in the NYC area they would have paid for my travel and hotel but since I do they will pay for nothing. Which kind of encapsulates my publishing career to date, actually.
I will be making the following presentation:
Title: Take Off Your Pants and Write! The Benefits and Pitfalls of Pantsing vs. Plotting a Novel
1. Why in god’s name does anyone think you should be impressing impressionable young writers?
Because I’ve published eight novels with number nine on the way and over thirty short stories. Also: I’m a damn fine good looking man and the world benefits when I appear in public.
2. What kind of wisdom will you be imparting?
As the title hints, it will all be pants-related. Also, a little bit about plotting your novels. But mainly pants stuff.
3. Will you bring a bottle of Scotch and pour everyone in the room a drink as you famously did at your Bouchercon presentation in 2010?
No, I learned my lesson from that debacle. A drunk audience is not better than a sober one. They are worse. So much worse.
SO! There you have it. I will be imparting my noveling wisdom to those in need. Or at least those who have not yet found better, smarter, younger mentors.
Even in my dotage, friends, into which I am very, very deeply snuggled, wrapped in the warm comfort of forget fulness, epic naps, and a cheerful certainty that I have assets and income, as opposed to the icy certainty that I had debt and no clean underwear that was my constant companion in youth, even in my dotage I sometimes find myself out drinking like the old days.
I am not one who usually feels the need to sing songs about my youth. I like being this age and see nothing changing about that up until I have my first heart attack some time next week. Until then, I like this mix of experience and general physical stability and wouldn’t want to be 25 again for anything. Except, sometimes, I do miss going out drinking just about every day. No, seriously. Wasn’t that great? Monday, Wednesday, Sunday – whatever, someone was always calling around or sending an email out asking if anyone wanted to have drinks. It was a grand, wonderful time to be alive. And yes, also a dramatic and often sickly time, but do not ruin this, or I will end you.
Anyways, I do sometimes still get out to consume bottles of distilled beverages and then sing Irish folk songs like The Leaving of Liverpool remembered from when my dear old Dad used to get drunk and sing Irish folk songs, and when I do this with a crowd larger than, say, three, the same clusterfuck always happens, because crowds larger than three are programmed to act like they have never been in a bar before in their entire lives.
Recently watched The World’s End starring Simon Pegg and written by Pegg and frequent collaborator Edgar Wright. Didn’t love it, which was surprising because of the good reviews and the fact that I really enjoyed Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz and even liked Scott Pilgrim well enough despite not being familiar with the comic and it being sort of ridiculous. I thought I was going to fall in love with TWE and ask it to marry me.
Instead, I enjoyed the first part and got bored the moment the skiffy element was introduced. What started off as an interesting, funny, and surprisingly moving tale of grown men dealing with childhood disappointment and the mundanity of adulthood just sort of went all cockeyed, for me. Your mileage may vary, of course, and if you loved it I have no argument to make.
It did make me think about some of my own early writing. This isn’t really a review of the film or even a discussion about it, it’s about my own writing tendencies. Which included a period where I would deal with emotional and character development issues by copping out and introducing a Deus Ex Skiffy.
DEUS EX SKIFFY (I Just Made That Up and Like It more than It Deserves)
What that means is, I used Sci Fi and Fantasy elements as a way of writing about things I was uncomfortable with, by not really writing about them at all. It went like this: I’d start a story about, say, a doomed love affair. After establishing the characters I’d get bored with/be afraid of where the story was heading, and would instead suddenly introduce a killer disease or alien invasion and pretend like this was what I’d intended to write about the whole time.
Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it doesn’t. Either way, the Deus Ex Skiffy is a copout.
The World’s End sort of has this feel to me. What starts off as a melancholy story about a man who is just starting to realize that he peaked at age 18 suddenly turns into a rather confused, muddled story of alien invasion that, frankly, makes very, very little sense. The film’s still fun, and worth watching, but as a standalone effort it’s kind a mess. And I think it may have been a similar writing exercise as my own failed attempts at solving knotty character problems by introducing killer robots: They just got bored with the story they were writing and worried it was a little slow and dull, and so they changed lanes and ended a totally different story.
I mean, there’s pretty much zero foreshadowing in the story. This may have been intentional to keep the surprise factor, but if so it was a miscalculation, because it only adds to the sense of separation between two entirely different stories. Believe me, I know; I’ve done it.
(This originally appeared in Brutarian Quarterly #49; for a while I wrote a column there about ignorance in general and my ignorance in specific. It was a lot of fun and I figure I’ll post them here now and again.)
Episode Three: META-IGNORANCE
The other day I was sitting in Hudson Bar and Books in New York City drinking single malt Scotch and reading, when I had an attack of Meta-Ignorance.
Hudson Bar and Books is one of the world’s greatest bars for whisky. It isn’t a boisterous place where you can order pints of beer and watch baseball games—I have plenty of other places for that—but rather a jazzy, quiet place with a chatty bartender, the most fantastic cheese plate I’ve ever had, and an seemingly endless supply of good booze. It’s the only place so far I’ve ordered Glenmorangie Madeira Wood and not been laughed at, beaten up, or derisively offered a Dewars. Of course, my visits to Hudson Bar and Books are not without angst-inspiring moments; there is a sign posted in the front window that reads, ominously, PROPER ATTIRE REQUIRED, and there has not been one time yet that I haven’t paused with one hand on the doorknob, staring blankly at this sign, wondering if I was properly attired. So far I have established that proper attire requires pants of some sort, but beyond that it all remains mysterious.
At any rate, I was sitting there recently pretending to read a big, thick book and scheming to hit the bartender over the head, exchange clothes with him, and do his job for the rest of the afternoon—meaning I would lean rakishly behind the bar, drinking directly from a bottle of Scotch, and implore anyone who wandered in to tell me their troubles, in-between humming tunelessly and checking my facial expression for appropriate levels of rakish charm in the mirror—and waiting for my lovely wife, The Duchess[1]. When she arrived, she asked me what I was drinking.
ME: Scotch. TD: Is that whisky? ME: Yes. TD: Is bourbon whisky? ME: Yes. TD: What’s the difference? ME: . . .look! An elephant!
META-IGNORANCE
The problem is not so much that I am ignorant, but that I am ignorant even of what I am ignorant of. I simply don’t even know what I don’t know. The above exchange is a classic example: While I know what whisky is, and even have a vague idea of how to produce it, I can’t tell you much about why some is bourbon and some is not. Well, I mean, I can now, because I did some research. You’d think that over the years I’ve ingested enough of both kinds of booze that my underbrain could genetically analyze each and I’d sort of instinctively know the answer, but as with most situations where you’d think my underbrain would provide some sort of guidance, all I get is static and the occasional urge to take a nice long, hot bath. This leaves me defenseless against attacks of Meta-Ignorance.
Sometimes Meta-Ignorance rears its terrible horned head in situations where I really have no excuse—situations where I suddenly realize I am ignorant about things you might consider knowledge essential to my very survival. I’m not talking about the time The Duchess and I ended up hiking in the White Mountains of Vermont and were almost eaten by bears because I realized I was ignorant of things like which way is north and when lost in the woods what the hell do you do?
No thanks to you—or The Duchess—I now know the answer to the latter question is do not let your wife abandon you to be eaten by bears no matter how hard she tries[2].
But I digress—I was discussing moments of Meta-Ignorance involving basic knowledge you’d think everyone who manages to not be killed during their everyday lives must know, like what in hell a ground wire is. The Duchess and I recently bought our first house, and being a) concerned for my masculine image and b) one of the cheapest bastards you’ll ever meet, I naturally insist on doing all sorts of work around the house by myself, including wiring up light fixtures. Now, wiring up a light fixture does not require an advanced degree or even above-average intelligence, but I still managed to put my life and property at risk because when I opened the box and started the installation process, I had no idea what the extra exposed wire was for. Meta-Ignorance had reared its head: I didn’t even know what I didn’t know about electrical systems. How I didn’t electrocute myself and burn down the house remains a mystery, because I did some creative things with that wire before discovering the truth[3].
On a less immediately-threatening note, there is my Meta-Ignorance about my sad physical decline. Sure, I know that every year after you’re approximately 25 is just a steady boogie-board ride down the mountain to my eventual death, but the specifics of my bodily functions remain elusive and the only time I learn anything about them is when they go haywire. This kind of Meta-Ignorance can easily kill you, of course:
ME: Hmmmn, I have a painful welt on my ankle. TD: Want to go to the emergency room?[4] ME: Nah, it doesn’t look too bad.
[TIME PASSES]
THE CONSEQUENCES OF META-IGNORANCE
The real problem with Meta-Ignorance is that it’s impossible to combat, because you don’t know what you’re ignorant of. Ignorance can be cured—all it takes is some research and perhaps a bit of experimentation, possibly a willingness to take risks[5], which I can usually attain by drinking a few alcoholic beverages in a short amount of time. But if you don’t even know what you don’t know, you’re screwed. Think about it: You might be doing something right now that is going to speed you on to your death, and you don’t even know it. Like reading this article. Decades from now stern actors may be appearing in PSAs warning against reading anything written by Jeff Somers, as his words are now proved to cause insanity and blindness and eventual death.
There’s also the hovering specter of humiliation due to unsupposed ignorance. Above and beyond physical harm and death, all men fear public humiliation, which is why we are all so willing to feign knowledge and fake our way through things rather than admit we don’t know something. Sometimes I am convinced that all men are as ignorant as I am, and we’re all just nodding wisely and repeating phrases we don’t understand in order to appear wise. Take, for example, escrow. What in hell is escrow? No one knows. But if you bring it up in the company of men, all of them will nod wisely and say something like “Ah, yes, escrow: Can’t do without the ole’ escrow account.” Much in the same way I once looked my mechanic in the eye and said, “Ah, yes, the solenoid. Can’t get far without one of those!”[6]. But I know I’m ignorant about cars and engines and, well, physics. So whenever the conversation drifts to that subject, I start being cagey with my words—a lot of thoughtful nodding, as if I’m considering my options, replaces most verbal communications in these sorts of situations—and start building mental ditchworks to retreat behind if I get caught out. But what about subjects I think I’m fluent in? For example, my own family: I’ve started to realize I know next to nothing about my family, and anything I think I know that dates from before, oh, about when I was twelve years old is almost certainly bullshit I made up once long ago and have repeated to myself so often it seems true. Only to be revealed as bullshit the moment I relate it, authoritatively, to someone[7].
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Of course, one of the things I may very well be Meta-Ignorant of is how obvious it is to everyone but me that I am ignorant. I like to imagine that with my eyeglasses, my hipster-gone-to-alcoholic-seed fashion sense, and constant clutching of tomes to my concave chest I appear somewhat erudite to people who don’t know me very well, but the truth is strangers on the street are probably moved to pity at the sight of me, and experience the sudden urge to take me by the arm and guide me across the street. If you see me wandering the street pretending to be non-ignorant, however, I’d advise you to resist that urge; if it’s before noon I am hungover and prone to bouts of sudden-onset retching, and if it’s after noon I am inebriated and prone to violence.
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[1] My wife long ago ordered me to never use her name in my writing, so she is now known only as The Duchess. If you know what’s good for you, you will refer to only as The Duchess as well, even if you meet her in person.
[2] See The Inner Swine, Volume 10 Issue 1, “Don’t Be Eaten by Bears: Your Humble Editor has an Adventure”
[3] In fact, for all I know, I did electrocute myself and everything since then, including this essay, has been a delusion like An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Although that would mean you exist only in the dying twitches of my brain activity, your poor soul.
[4] This is an imagined conversation, of course. in reality my wife’s response would be: Suck it up, silky-boy, and go fetch me some cookies. And my response to her would be: Yes’m. And then my futile stab at rebellion would be drinking half a bottle of whisky in the kitchen while fetching her cookies and passing out with my head in the dishwasher. Don’t ask how my head gets in the dishwasher. You don’t want to know.
[5] For example, tasting a sample of what’s in the mysterious Tupperware discovered in the rear of your fridge, that may or may not have been left there by the previous tenants.
[6] His look of frank pity remains clear in my nightmares.
[7] Like the fact that I thought my Mother was Lutheran, and told my wife so many times, only to have my outraged Mother correct me at a birthday gathering. The Duchess will not let me forget it.
(This originally appeared in Brutarian Quarterly #47; for a while I wrote a column there about ignorance in general and my ignorance in specific. It was a lot of fun and I figure I’ll post them here now and again.)
Episode Two: PERSISTENCE OF IGNORANCE
YOU may think that ignorance is a natural state that requires no upkeep, but you are so very, very wrong. Ignorance—at least at the professional level that I maintain—is difficult to keep pure and unsullied by information. The cosmos is always conspiring to educate and inform you; to remain uncorrupted you have to work pretty hard. And drink. If you drink often enough and in sufficient volume, remaining ignorant becomes fairly easy, since everything people say to you starts to sound like the adults from a Charlie Brown television special.
STAYING TRULY IGNORANT AIN’T EASY
This is necessary because there is information everywhere. Facts, figures, analyses—they’re all pouring from the airwaves all the time. Just walking down the street your eye will catch sight of headlines on newspapers attempting to inform you, stray audio from radio and television programs that try to educate you on current events and their implications, and even overheard conversations that reveal aspects of existence or modern life that you did not heretofore suspect. Staying truly ignorant ain’t easy. I make it look easy, but that’s because of the drinking and the temporary bouts of paralysis I suffer from because of it. It’s difficult to overhear knowledge when you’ve got to concentrate carefully just to avoid falling into the comfortable-looking gutter that calls your name. If I weren’t so hungover in the morning that any motion aside from my ragged breathing caused me considerable pain, forcing me to use all my mental energies to anticipate the momentum of the train and compensate on a second-by-second basis, I’d learn five or six things every day just by peering rudely over the shoulders of my fellow commuters.
And this doesn’t even include all the information I gain from my failed attempts at doing things—nothing teaches like a trip to the emergency room. Like the time I thought I might try to install a radio into my old 1978 Nova all by myself, professionals be damned, and learned all sorts of things about the electrical system, the idle, and the way the human body conducts electricity.[1] Without even seeking to, I reduced my ignorance that day through simple experience. You begin to see how hard it is for most people to remain as pristinely ignorant as the day they were born.[2]
THINGS TO NEVER EVER DO
This effort may explain why ignorance is so highly prized in the world. People are generally proud of their ignorance, and react to any sustained effort to combat ignorance with puzzlement and hostility. The easiest way to make some random stranger your enemy is to make them think you are trying to actively combat your own ignorance; somehow this makes you fancy.
I know this to be true because I am well aware of my own shocking ignorance—see my previous column for a succinct rundown of my mental frailty[3]—and make doomed, frustrating attempts to combat it—this is easy enough to attempt, since I can literally choose anything at random and chances are I am almost totally ignorant of it—and thus encounter the world’s cold reaction to my attempts. For example, the other day I ran across a mention of World War I, and sure enough a quick survey of my store of knowledge of the subject revealed nothing but cobwebs, dancing bears, and humorous doodles of Teutonic men in spiked helmets. So, dedicated as I am to facing my ignorance like a man, I went to the bookstore and bought a book about World War I, which I carried around with me for a while, reading in my spare moments.
I had a dentist appointment one night after work, and was reading this book in the chair while waiting for the good doctor to come back and start scraping months of sin from my choppers. When she arrived, she glanced at my book and raised an eyebrow.
“You’re reading that for fun?”
I hesitated for a moment, because pissing off or irritating dentists is on my list of Things to Never Ever Do, because that same person was about to have a sharp metal stick in my mouth, and even when the dentist in question is perfectly calm, sane, and sober I am often horrified at the amount of pressure they put on that sharp pick lodged in my mouth while trying to unglue a particularly loathsome hunk of plaque or whatever they call it. The last thing you need is your Dentist muttering under their breath while they scrape away at your defenseless gums. Finally, though, I decided that my only alternative to the truth was to bolt from the room, and running just makes me sleepy. So I nodded as cheerfully as I could admitted that yes, I was not in any way required to read this book.
To her credit, my dentist tried to be polite. “Well,” she said with an expression of confused goodwill on her face, “well, that’s just super.”
This said with the same tone usually reserved for mental invalids and small, frightened children.[4] There followed some awkward talk of self-improvement and how super it all was, though you could tell she thought anyone who would read a book on World War I for fun was about one inch removed from crazy, and when she started jabbing into my mouth I had a few pants-wetting moments of terror whenever she glanced at the offending book while working on my teeth. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d made an excuse and slipped away to call the Department of Homeland Security[5] on me, which would probably take it pretty seriously, since historically the only people who read for pleasure are communists, terrorists, and child molesters of all stripes—like in the movie Se7en, where the cops utilize the deserted, forgotten library in order to track down the serial killer, who is apparently the only person in the world who still reads.
GREASING THE RIDE THROUGH LIFE
Maintaining ignorance greases the ride through life, there’s no doubt about that. Decrease your ignorance at your own risk, bubba. People will look at you strangely, give you nicknames like Shakespeare or Professor[6], and generally question your patriotism and trustworthiness. In order to maintain a high level of ignorance, I suggest the following battle plan:
1. Tune Out. Use an iPod or other music player all the time, wherever you go, set at sufficiently high volume to block any stray information that might otherwise squeeze into your ears
2. Be Vigilant. Remember, you can inadvertently learn anywhere—stay alert, and flee any radios or intelligent-sounding conversations you encounter. Watch out for people reading newspapers or books, although people reading Harry Potter books are probably safe. Don’t be afraid to stick your fingers in your ears and sing if you can’t make a quick getaway.[7]
3. Drink Heavily. Booze kills brain cells, so any stray information that accidentally educates you will be. . .what’s the word. . .I dunno. Zapped. Zapped is good.
The struggle to maintain ignorance continues silently every day, with unsung heroes everywhere doing their part. Pull your weight in this epic struggle, my friends, and win the love and affection of your fellow man. Remember: Nobody likes a smartass.
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[1] Hint: Extremely well.
[2] Some, I admit, have a special talent for forgetting life lessons immediately after learning them. Me, I relive these lessons over and over again, dreaming them, waking up in the middle of the night screaming “NO! NOT THE PANTS!”
[3] As a matter of fact, I think I’ve forgotten one or two of the dubious “skills” I listed on my mental resume in that column since its publication. HOORAY FOR BOOZE!
[4] I am disturbingly familiar with this tone of voice.
[5] Recently, someone sitting next to former Black Flag lead singer Henry Rollins on an international flight noticed Rollins was reading a book about terrorism and contacted the Australian government reporting him as a possible security risk. I don’t blame them for waiting to write a letter later; Henry Rollins looks pretty badass and even if he was
wearing sticks of dynamite and muttering under his breath while working on some sort of detonator, I’d probably wait until he was out of sight before reporting him, too.
[6] The Somers Consolidated & Immutable Rule of the World states that it will always be one of these two nick names. You will never be called, for example, Archimedes or Newton. A sub-rule does allow for the usage of Einstein if your perceived attempt at learning has a math or science flavor.
[7] This is a surprisingly enjoyable activity even if you’re not fleeing anything at the time.
