Category Archives: Musings

My Song ‘Tauntauns to Glory’ Made the Pegasus Award ‘Brainstorming Poll’

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I have no idea who suggested it, but I appreciate whomever-it-was putting what is arguably my most popular song up for consideration during the “brainstorming” phase of the Pegasus Award cycle.

Pegasus Award Logo

This does not mean that the song has been officially nominated, because the Pegasus Awards operate in three parts: first, the brainstorming; second, the nominating; and finally, the voting.

The nominating phase is open now, and folks may nominate up to five artists/songs per category:

  • Best Writer/Composer
  • Best Performer
  • Best Filk Song
  • Best Classic Filk Song — songs must be at least 10 years old to be considered “classic”
  • Best Adapted Song
  • Best Song of Passage — for which “Tauntauns to Glory” was suggested

As the main site says, “Anyone with an interest in Filking or Filk music can place a nomination and/or vote.” To nominate, use the handy nomination form. If you need ideas on what you might nominate, check out all the results of the Brainstorming Poll.

Nominations must be submitted by 12:01 a.m. PDT, 31 July 2014 — meaning, the first minute after July 30th ends (on the West coast).

Again, thank you to whoever suggested me and my song for the award!

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Why You and I May Never Agree

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This has been fermenting in my mind for some time now. Some folks may think I let it go too far, and have produced figurative vinegar instead of wine. But, vinegar also has it uses.

Straw Man Walking
(Some straw men are more active than others. [Image: “Straw Man Walking” by Ken Bosma, on Flickr under Creative Commons.])

I thought I’d take a stab at why it is not just unlikely that we will ever agree on many issues, but very nearly impossible. I hope you’ll bear with me and forgive any errors I may make.

First, some symbolic language:

  • Let X be a topic upon which we differ. Either you support it and I oppose it, or vice versa.
  • Let A then be some factor related to X which one of us perceives as unfavorable. The other may perceive it as favorable, or may allow that it is not precisely favorable but is also not completely negative.

Now the fun begins.

One of us formulates an argument along the lines of, “I oppose X because of A.” Perhaps we state it just that clearly, or perhaps the unfavorable A is only implied.

The other of us formulates a counter-argument along the lines of, “I support X despite A.” (Or, if we think that A is actually favorable, we might argue, “I support X because of A.”)

(Note that this is different from arguing on one side “I support X because of A,” and on the other side “I oppose X because of B.” There, we are not arguing quite the same cases. Maybe there’s another blog post in that discussion, but I doubt it.)

This “I oppose/support X because of/despite A” type of formulation works for many different arguments, even if we choose to add conditions meant to make our positions complete or more “reasonable.” The more caveats and addenda we add, the more complicated we make our arguments. “I support X, under conditions Y and Z, because of A and B, and despite C.” We might wonder whether the additional conditions are intended to convince our opponents, or ourselves.

(Also, the respective arguments need not be stated in terms of outright support for a particular position. For instance, we could say, “I think X works well despite A,” or “I think X works poorly because of A.”)

With that as a symbolic basis, here’s the crux of why I doubt we will ever agree: Once we have established our relative positions, and do not take the time or make the effort to examine our differing assumptions and premises, neither argument is particularly convincing. As the poem goes, “ne’er the twain shall meet.”

Shall we consider a few examples?

Abortion:

  • “I object to abortion on demand despite a woman having the right to subject her body to whatever procedure she chooses, and because of the effect such a procedure would have on a potential human life growing inside her.”
  • “I support abortion on demand because a woman has the right to subject her body to whatever procedure she chooses, and despite the effect such a procedure would have on a potential human life growing inside of her.”

Gun control:

  • “I support the private ownership of firearms by United States citizens because that right is enshrined in the Second Amendment, and because citizens have the right to defend their lives and property, and despite the terrible and regrettable damage done by lawbreakers using firearms.”
  • “I oppose the private ownership of firearms by United States citizens because of the terrible and regrettable damage done by lawbreakers using firearms, and despite that right being enshrined in the Second Amendment, and despite citizens having the right to defend their lives and property.”

Socialized healthcare:

  • “I oppose socialized healthcare because of the limits it must impose on accessibility and care in order to approach financial viability, and despite the numbers of people who are unable to obtain insurance or care on the open market.”
  • “I support socialized healthcare because of the numbers of people who are unable to obtain insurance or care on the open market, and despite the limits it must impose on accessibility and care in order to approach financial viability.”

(Note that both sides in this case could use reports of people who fall through the metaphorical cracks of either socialized or open-market healthcare systems as “because of” or “despite” factors — because no system of healthcare will ever be perfect.)

The dichotomous arguments can be applied to belief systems as well: “I believe in X because of A,” or “I am skeptical about or do not believe in X despite A.” Perhaps a single example will suffice: Religion.

  • “I have faith in my chosen religion because of the positive effects I have seen in my life and the lives of others, despite the difficulty of squaring all of its tenets with the objective reality of the world around me, and despite the regrettable and sometimes reprehensible things that have been said and done by some of its adherents.”
  • “I have no faith in your (or perhaps any) religion because of the difficulty of squaring its tenets with the objective reality of the world around me, and because of the regrettable and reprehensible things that have been said and done by some of its adherents, and despite the positive effects that you and others have experienced.”

Feel free to formulate your own versions of the above, or your own sets of arguments on both sides of whatever controversies you choose: anthropogenic climate change (formerly known as global warming), the death penalty, debt financing, Keynesian economics, whatever you wish. Post them below, if you like. You may find that it can be difficult, but interesting, to formulate an opposing argument.

Here’s one sure to make people’s eyes water: Societal acceptance, if not normalization, of marriage between homosexuals.

  • “I support limiting the special status of the marriage relationship to men with women, because throughout history and across cultures, even in societies where homosexual relationships have been tolerated or even accepted, the marriage covenant has been limited to men with women; because the ‘norms’ of a society should derive from the majority of the society, and the majority of society is and is likely to remain heterosexual; because homosexual relationships are not a plausible categorical imperative for all of society; because economic and social partnership benefits can be extended to long-term homosexual relationships without conferring on them the special status of marriage; and despite the growing tolerance or even acceptance of openly homosexual behavior in society at large.”
  • “I support extending the special status of the marriage relationship to homosexual unions because of the growing tolerance and even acceptance of openly homosexual behavior in society at large, and despite any objections anyone might raise, and despite any economic or social accommodations that might be offered short of full recognition of marriages between homosexuals.”

I will forego other examples, because this post was already unwieldy enough even before that last controversy. If you’ve made it this far, thank you for your forbearance. Please permit me one last observation.

If these formulations just ended in disagreement, all would be well: you think what you think, I think what I think, and we agree to get along regardless. It gets worse if disagreement results in attempts to silence the other side. But this type of thinking becomes even more of a problem when we direct our argument away from ourselves and what we think is right and toward each other: “You should support/accept/believe in X because of A and despite B.” Left out, but at least somewhat implied, is “because I do,” which at times seems to mean “because I am an intelligent, right-thinking person and believe all intelligent, right-thinking people should support/accept/believe in the things I support/accept/believe in, and therefore if you support/accept/believe in the things I do then I will recognize you as intelligent and right-thinking, too.”

Better, in my opinion, just to disagree.

In closing, Scripture says, “Come, let us reason together.” It does not say, “Come, let us always agree.” We need to be able to handle the disagreement; not, perhaps, ever to like it, but at least to tolerate it. If you can handle the disagreement and I can handle the disagreement, maybe we can move forward together — even if we don’t necessarily want to go in the same direction.

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The Only Answer to the Likes of ‘Boko Haram’

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Greek mythology — as well as two landmark works of science fiction — tells us what needs to happen to the savage thugs of “Boko Haram.”

It boils down to this: kill them all.


(“Hercules and the Lion,” by Francisco de Zurbarán (1634). Image from Wikimedia Commons.)

I should make it clear that I am talking about the Islamist militant group colloquially known as “Boko Haram,” because that’s apparently not the group’s real name. And apparently the translations of “Boko Haram” itself are problematic, i.e., “Boko Haram” seems to mean something other than “Western education is a sin”. According to this Wall Street Journal video, which repeats the common but apparently erroneous translation of “boko,” the group’s more formal name is “Jama’tu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad,” which means “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad.”

But regardless of what they call themselves, or what groups like them call themselves, when they undertake to kidnap, sell into slavery, murder, and so forth, they need to be eradicated like the vermin they are.

Harsh, you say? Un-Christian of me, to call for judgment instead of mercy? So be it.

Sorry, but if you want to show mercy to the vicious brutes who kidnapped those girls and threatened to sell them into slavery, then pat yourself on the back for your enlightened thinking and please get out of the way. Or if you think pleading with them via Twitter hashtags is likely to elicit some mercy on their part, then please consider the possibility that you may be willfully blind to evil in the world. Or if, God forbid, you actually think what ‘Boko Haram’ did was good and proper — positive and laudable in any way — then I hold you as an enemy of all that is decent and respectable. As are those militants themselves.

I can hear the cliched objection that violence is not the answer, but Robert A. Heinlein had what I believe is the definitive answer to that, from Starship Troopers:

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that ‘violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.

The best option — the only option, if what we want for Nigeria is freedom and safety — is to destroy them, utterly and forever. We will find it hard to do so, not only because some among us have become soft and unwilling to do the dirty work of liberty but because we are at heart sympathetic people who would prefer not to be destroyed ourselves. But Frank Herbert warned against such sympathies in a Dune epigraph attributed to the Bashar Miles Teg:

Sympathy for the enemy — a weakness of police and armies alike. Most perilous are the unconscious sympathies directing you to preserve your enemies intact because the enemy is your justification for existence.

We do not need “Boko Haram.” Nigeria does not need “Boko Haram.” The world does not need “Boko Haram.” They are like the Nemean lion that terrorized Greece until Heracles strangled it. He got to wear the lion’s impervious skin as armor, but we should be satisfied to bury the rabid dogs in unmarked graves.

But will a Heracles — Nigerian or otherwise — rise up to kill this beast?

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Happy Independent Record Store Day

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Today — April 19th, 2014 — is an international celebration of independent music stores.


(Independent Record Store Day logo.)

At the Independent Record Store Day website, you can search for the indy record store nearest to you.

Oh, and this isn’t as much of a self-serving post as you might think, since it’s highly unlikely that you will find my CD in any record store. Not that they couldn’t order it, mind you — and if you asked them to, that would be ultra cool — but as a matter of course, they won’t be carrying my music.

But don’t let that stop you! Find an independent record store near you, and go check them out!

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Writers, Damaging My Calm

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This falls under the category of “how not to respond to rejection.”

KEEP CALM - CARRY ON
(“Keep Calm – Carry On,” by John Cooper, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

Sometimes writers put my tact and diplomacy to the test. Witness this response I received from one author:

Dear Gray:

Your statement “it does not seem right for us” tells me no one read my book. Someone should read it because I am a phenomenal writer. How about you? I would like for you to read my book, then write to me and tell me why it is not good enough to publish. Everyone has a little free time, Gray, what do you have to lose? If it really is not right for Baen, just stop reading, but give it a few chapters before you write it off.

Thank you in advance for your help.

This is the kind of thing that makes me want to jump through the computer screen and throttle the person on the other side. Rather than responding directly with a virtual flamethrower, I’ve decided to use this as a teaching example for other writers who are submitting their work for evaluation.

There is so much wrong with this writer’s response that I have to take it point-by-point:

  • “Your statement ‘it does not seem right for us’ tells me no one read my book.” Funny, it should tell you that it did not seem right for us.
  • “Someone should read it because I am a phenomenal writer. ” Thank you for pointing that out. It wasn’t obvious from what I read of your manuscript.
  • “How about you?” I did.
  • “I would like for you to read my book, then write to me and tell me why it is not good enough to publish.” And I would like for someone to unload a dump truck full of money in my driveway, but it’s unlikely to happen.
  • “Everyone has a little free time, Gray, what do you have to lose?” More of the remaining seconds of my life, which are fewer and fewer every second. Funny how that works.
  • “If it really is not right for Baen, just stop reading, but give it a few chapters before you write it off.” I did stop reading. I gave it as much as I deemed fit. I won’t say how much. (I believe the most classic response to complaints along these lines was Isaac Asimov’s, who reportedly told an author that he did not have to eat an entire egg to know it was rotten.)
  • “Thank you in advance for your help.” You’re welcome, I guess?

Writers, please don’t do this. No, strike that expression of polite consideration: Writers, don’t do this.

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On My Last Day at NCSU-IES, Here’s a Song

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Today is my last day on the Industrial Extension Service staff, and it seemed appropriate to mark the day with the first “workplace ‘filk'” I wrote there, simply entitled “The I-E-S Song.”

I started in January 2008 as primarily the speechwriter for the Executive Director, and I filled my time between speeches with other — primarily marketing-related — writing and editing assignments. But along the way I had the opportunity to do a few unique and interesting things:

  • Planned the logistics for the statewide “Manufacturing Makes It Real” Tour in 2010 (which became the still-extant MMIR Network)
  • Got some of the “Made in North Carolina” products we collected into the NC Museum of History
  • Helped start the short-lived NC Aerospace Initiative in 2009-10
  • Produced the “Manufacturing Minute” series of videos in 2012-13

And along the way I wrote a few songs: “The I-E-S Song” in 2008; “The Economic Recovery Blues” and “Oh, How I Hate Groupwise” in 2009; “The 1B4NC Song,” “We Know Manufacturing Makes It Real” in 2010; “If You Want to Get Better” and “The Old, Old Days of Industry” in 2011; and “Dirty, Sexy Manufacturing” in 2012.

Note that none of my work-related songs made it onto my album, Truths and Lies and Make-Believe. The audience for my music is already pretty small, but the audience for workplace songs in particular is tiny.

Anyway, I wrote a little rhyme to mark my departure, too.

It’s been fun
I had a good run
And now I’m done.

Fare thee (or, fare me) well.

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Ever Heard of the Logan Awards?

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Do you like comedy music? Would you like to nominate a funny song for an award?

Logan Award Robot Cat Statuette
(The “Robot Cat” statuette, designed by artist Jamie Noguchi in honor of Logan Whitehurst’s song “Robot Cat.”)

The Logan White­hurst Memo­r­ial Awards for Excel­lence in Com­edy Music are pre­sented by The Funny Music Project. The Awards will be selected by a jury and presented at “FuMPFest 2014” in Chicago, hosted by Dr. Demento.

The FuMP has presented the Logan Awards since 2011 for

  • Out­stand­ing Orig­i­nal Com­edy Song
  • Out­stand­ing Par­ody Song
  • Out­stand­ing Com­edy Music Video

If you want to nominate a song released in 2013 for the 4th Annual Logan Awards, use this handy nomination form. You can also see what songs have already been nominated.

The web site doesn’t say when the nominations will close, so nominate while you can — early and often!

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Frank Zappa, “Weird Al” Yankovich, and Me

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Now THERE’S a headline I never thought I’d write, and I get to do it courtesy of Dr. Demento!

Weird Al and Dr. Demento
(“Weird Al” Yankovich and Dr. Demento. Photo by Genevieve, from Flickr under Creative Commons.)

I felt as if I was levitating when I learned that two — not one, but TWO — of my songs had been played on The Dr. Demento Show since the beginning of the year. (Sure, since then other things have brought me down, but when I think about this it still puts a smile on my face.)

“Another Romulan Ale” seems like an appropriate song for New Year’s, and Dr. Demento played it on his first show of 2014. And, sure enough, Frank Zappa and “Weird Al” Yankovich were on the playlist — along with Cheech & Chong and Bob Dylan. Quite a group!

Then on the 1st of March the Dr. did a show focusing on music related to science fiction:

This week Dr Demento presents The History of Science Fiction in Song…from “Stardrek” and “Banned from Argo” to “Tauntauns to Glory” in 80 minutes…plus “We Won’t Give ‘Em Sex,” “Winestoned Plowboy,” “There’s a Baby On the Plane”, more.

Folks familiar with science fiction and fantasy music (a.k.a. “filk”) know that “Banned from Argo” is arguably the most famous filk song of all time. So it’s one thing for Dr. Demento to decide to play “Tauntauns to Glory,” but for him to list it in the show description in the same breath as “Banned from Argo” … that took this whole experience over the line into surrealism, even before I realized I was on the playlist again with “Weird Al,” this time plus Devo, Nat “King” Cole, Frank Hayes, and Leslie Fish.

So, yeah, good times!

If you like “Romulan Ale” or “Tauntauns” or some of the other songs from Truths and Lies and Make-Believe, and think Dr. Demento should play more of them, he has a song request form you can fill out. That would be cool, or I’d be much obliged if you would post a review on Amazon or iTunes or CD Baby or elsewhere. That would be awesome!

Meanwhile, as the Dr. would say, stay “deeeee-mented”!

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Living in Interesting Times — 30 Years Past 1984

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How much is our world in 2014 like the 1984 that George Orwell described?


(George Orwell. Image from Wikimedia Commons.)

In other words, how much of our world as it exists now — particularly the technology-saturated Western world — would Orwell recognize as reflecting his cautionary tale?

The television in my living room doesn’t watch me watching it, the way the citizens’ did in the novel, but it certainly has enough electronics to keep track of what I watch and deliver that information to marketers without my being aware of it. And my laptop has a camera that could have been watching me as I typed this blog entry — and it could have done so without my knowledge. In addition, consider the proliferation of closed-circuit TV surveillance cameras in big cities around the world. Orwell might say we were indeed living in the world of his novel.

And remember, his novel was written in 1947-48, and published in 1949.

I can think of a few other parallels between our world today and the dystopia Orwell envisioned:

  • In the novel, Oceania is locked in a near-perpetual war with Eurasia and Eastasia. No matter how hopeful about (or intent we are on) extricating ourselves from the Terror War, it seems likely the terrorists will have different ideas (something I wrote about in my 2002 essay, “Yogi Berra, Polybius, and the Recurring Jihad”). And that says nothing about the rise of Chinese power and the resurgence of Russian ambitions (e.g., their looming presence over Ukraine).
  • In the novel, history is frequently rewritten to excise people and ideas that have fallen out of favor, something that was observable in Orwell’s day especially in the Soviet Union. Today, the ‘Net and its archives may prevent that kind of complete removal, but here in the U.S. some “progressive” historical interpretations are changing the perceptions of our traditional heroes — history being rewritten not to excise, but to diminish, people and ideas no longer favored.
  • In the U.S. recently we have seen a lot of animus toward the “top 1%” as well as emphasis on the shrinking middle class and the expanding ranks of people dependent on the government for their support. In some respects this seems to mirror the class structure depicted in the story.

And of course we have Orwell’s famous concept of “doublethink,” which we encounter almost daily at both ends of our political spectrum. Especially with respect to the idea of personal liberty, many people at either end seem simultaneously to support and resist personal freedom; or perhaps those who support all personal freedoms equally, from bearing arms to abortion, just don’t attract much attention.

What do you think? Even though it’s 2014, are we close to 1984?

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How Coca-Cola’s “America the Beautiful” Commercial Could Have Been Awesome

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It was a pretty good commercial, I thought.

But they missed a great opportunity to make a simply good commercial into something spectacular.

Coca Cola Sign in Decatur Texas
(“Coca Cola Sign in Decatur Texas,” by anyjazz65, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

I understood what they were getting at in the commercial: that people who originate all over the world have come — and continue to come — to this land of freedom and opportunity. Not only that, but no matter where we originate we can all appreciate both the physical grandeur of this country and the truths we hold self-evident in this marvelous nation.

So what would have made it awesome?

If, in the finale, they had gathered all the singers and other participants into one place, and had them sing “from sea to shining sea” as one chorus.

Doing so would have illustrated the “melting pot” ideal, in which no matter our origins we become part of the magnificent cultural alloy that is the U.S. citizenry. In some respects it would have fulfilled the promise of the old “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” commercial. And, perhaps most important, it would have reminded us that we are at our best when we are “E Pluribus Unum” — out of many, one.

It could have been awesome.

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