Tag Archives: manners

Scalzi vs The Bigots: Round One

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I’m going to do something now which totally surprises even me: I’m going to recommend an author whose work I’ve never read. Gasp! He’s on my List. I fully intend to read his stuff. Stay tuned. I’ll keep you posted. Fret not. Meanwhile, go read John Scalzi’s blog, Whatever. I kept seeing his name pop up in other writers’ blogs. And his book Redshirts was a giant meganerdy bestseller. So I checked him out and he is awesome. Mostly because he’s brutally honest about pretty much anything. His work, his friends, raising a teenage daughter, politics, religion, the business of writing, ukuleles, and probably most importantly, churros.

Unfortunately, in the world we live in, being honest about things that matter, out loud, on the interwebs, with a huge steady following, means that you’re going to have haters. Fact of life in the Digital Age, and something we’re going to have to deal with until the end of time. (Should I be capitalizing those words? Digital Age? I don’t know. Imma do it anyway.) And thus we arrive at the Scalzi-centric kerfluffle, which I find simply compelling. The opponents: in this corner, wearing the red shirt of brutally honest nerdy writerdom – John Scalzi. In the opposing corner, wearing the icky grey robes of hateful trolliness – the Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit (hereafter referred to as the RSHD).

A while ago, the RSHD and his gaggle of mindless followers started making trolly comments on Scalzi’s blog and on the RSHD’s own website. Busy as he is, Scalzi still moderates all his own blog comments. Admirable. (On a related note, why don’t y’all comment more on my blog? I know you’ve got shit to say. Quit keeping it all bottled up inside. It’s bad for your liver.) So he started using “the kitten setting” on those comments, a practice which I adore adore adore. Formerly known as the Mallet of Loving Correction, the kitten setting is when a troll’s comment is edited to reflect a more fuzzy unicorns and puppies and sparkly rainbows sort of outlook. All the hatey things directed at Scalzi are turned into heartfelt expressions of the RSHD’s schoolboy mancrush on him. Feels like a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper. Lots of fluffy bunnies. Takes the teeth right out of those comments, takes away their power. It’s fucking awesome. But, understandably, it further agitates the trolls.

Finally reaching his breaking point, Scalzi decided to put his money where the RSHD’s mouth is. Every time the RSHD does his asshat thing in 2013, he (Scalzi) is going to put five bucks in a jar, up to $1,000, giving the RSHD two hundred opportunities this year to say something hateful. And at the end of the year he’s going to donate it all to RAINN, Emily’s List, the Human Rights Campaign, and the NAACP, in loving support of everything the RSHD hates.

Brilliant!

But wait, there’s more. Scalzi’s fans started asking if they could get in on the action. Not wanting to take anyone’s money up front (in case the RSHD cools down and shuts up – unlikely), he set up a pledge system: the Counteract a Bigot Drive. At the end of the year, all the RSHD activity will be tallied and quantified into money dollar terms, and everyone sends their donations all at once. Here’s the breathtaking bit: the pledges rose to $60,000 in two days. That is a lot of anti-hater money. I don’t think I can say “fucking awesome” too often about this whole thing. It’s just…accurate.

Good on you, Scalzi and fans. Good. On. You. Many heartfelt hugs and thanks.

Besides being inarguably badass, here’s what interests me about this story. I’m wondering why it seems that nerds are, by and large, really, really nice. From my perspective, the occurrence of assholery appears to be generally lower among the geekier slices of the American cultural pie chart. For the purposes of this discussion, I will stipulate to the fact that I may have built myself a bubble of liberal, accepting, open-minded, lovely people. If I hadn’t I probably would’ve punched many a bigoted motherfucker in the mouth by now. Thanks, friends, for being decent humans. Also, I’m from an infected pocket of the world where people who appear otherwise normal throw around racist/sexist/homophobic terminology as readily as they do Nascar references. My nerdly homies who rescued me from high school suicidal tendencies were never like that, nor were the people that I later gravitated toward. All these people somehow or another reinforced in me the non-judgmental mindset that my parents engendered very early. Because they’re awesome friends and awesome parents. It’s really hard for me to be objective here, is all I’m saying.

Anyway, the easy answer is that nerds are nice because we got made fun of as kids or are lonely people or have the deck of mainstream media stacked against us. I take it for granted that that’s the case. However, I think the more interesting variable here might be the influence of science fiction and fantasy. For example, look at Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry populated the Original Series cast with people of every color and creed to make the point that in the future we’re all one. We’re all Terrans, and nothing else matters. In the mid-1960′s, that was a bold anti-racist statement, even if it was couched in such ridiculousness as Captain Kirk getting the hots for the green Orion slave girl. Hamfisted, perhaps, but important. Similarly, I recently heard Kevin Smith say that the X-Men comics are one big metaphor for homosexuality. I’d never made the connection myself, but it does make some degree of sense. You have this secret that could get you socially ostracized and you keep it quiet until you can’t anymore and then you come out of the mutant closet? Yep. That tracks. And while sexism is a hotly debated topic, still, among scifi/fantasy fans, I think there are more positive female role models in those pop culture areas than in others. I’ll take Princess Leia or Jean Grey or Trinity over Paris Hilton or Snooki any day of the fucking week (my burning hatred for reality tv obviously provides serious bias on this particular point).

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for prejudice in scifi or fantasy, though. It’s often in a futuristic setting where the social mores are so different from our own as to be unrecognizable (ie, The Handmaid’s Tale). Or, contrarily, there some sort of uber evil that must be defeated by disparate groups coming together against a common enemy (Hobbits and Elves and Dwarves vs the Orcs of Sauron). Consider, too, that our opinions of scifi and fantasy change drastically as we move along our own cultural timeline. I’m fine with Kirk boffing space tramps in every color of the rainbow, but I still get weirded out when Quark makes out with that Cardassian chick in DS9. Why is that weird? I don’t know. This whole thing might be a chicken-or-egg situation, though. Does scifi/fantasy make us nicer because it illustrates and exposes us to a prejudice-less worldview? Or are we nice because of environment and circumstance, and when we get a chance to make stuff we want to show the milieu that we would ideally create for ourselves?

I’d like to find a way to examine these questions with hard science, instead of just spewing my watered-down opinions at you. But it seems like there would be too many variables. Someone should at least try to do a study. Maybe I should take my anthropologist buddy to Comic-Con and set her loose.

No, that won’t work. Comic-Con tickets sold out last week. Also, bonus, she’d kill me dead. One can still dream.

Meanwhile, in the real world, we can all show the Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit how we roll, nerds and non-nerds alike, by pledging to the Counteract a Bigot Drive here. And if you’re a fan of scifi or social commentary, you should definitely check out Scalzi’s blog at whatever.scalzi.com.

Gobble, gobble, gobble, little consumer…

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Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! I know a lot of you Americans won’t read this when I post it because of the holiday. It’s cool. Maybe this is the week I finally gain an international following. Non-holiday-related greetings, hypothetical comrades from far-off lands! Thanksgiving is one of my two favorite holidays. The other is the Fourth of July. Because stuffing ourselves senseless and blowing shit up are two of the great American traditions, and I just like to do my part to keep them alive, you know? Plus I really enjoy both of those activities so, bonus. Score.

Anyway. Go eat some turkey (or whatever fake turkey food-like product you enjoy as a vegetarian option). Sneak an extra special holiday scrap to the dog. Take a nap. Give thanks for the things that make your life worth living. Watch the parade. Hug your mom. Make some nieces and nephews giggle. Eat pie. Rinse and repeat.

Now. When all that’s over, that’s where I come in. Because I want to talk about Black Friday. Have you seen that Facebook meme that says “Because only in America would we trample each other to death for sales, one day after giving thanks for what we already have”? True story, that. Ironic and sad. And I won’t go into all the over-commercialization of Christmas, and the corporate scumfuckery that turned “Black Friday” from a boring accountant’s term into a self-indulgent, materialistic, made-up holiday in and of itself. But I could. Makes me a little ill, though. I’d rather skip it. Let’s skip it. Shall we reminisce instead?

At the Giant Evil Bookstore, we went to full holiday mode on November first. A different interpretation of that sentence: on one of the worst hangover callout days of the year, the company began its annual ritualistic two-month torture of us minions. Changing every single display in the store, so much overstock you couldn’t move around in the back room, weird shifts, training and working with new seasonal employees who don’t know what they’re doing, scheduling nightmares, bad weather, turning the heat up high enough to roast us all alive, and overtime (which is good money, but too much overtime and you would get a written warning from the company – that’s fucked up, right? It’s not just me?). Oh, and a blackout on being able to ask for time off. So no holiday travels to see my family for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Good times, let me tell you. I still have a bad taste in my mouth about the holidays from working retail. Hopefully someday that will go away.

Meanwhile, let’s all make a pact, right here and now, to try and be nice to retail minions this holiday season. These people work their asses off every day, even more so at this time of year, and they get paid very little for it. As I’ve said before, your horrible shopping crisis is just one of many that they’ll go through in any given shift. They may not know the answer to your question, but there is always someone available who they can ask. If the item you want is not in stock, they’ll do their best to get you what you need or at least come close. If you’re shopping at the last minute and you’re in a hurry, know that this person, too, has eight thousand things they need to be doing at that moment. And on top of that, they probably need to go pee and get a cup of coffee and maybe eat something at some point today. Everyone has bad days. Computers will fail. Credit cards will be declined. Special orders will fail to show up. The things you buy will break or malfunction. Cashiers really do need management’s approval to do certain things. None of these is that retail minion’s fault. And, most importantly, the person standing in front of you is not the whole company. They’re just trying to do their job under pretty heinous circumstances, like you would at your job. Which, by the way, is no better than theirs. Just because someone works behind a counter or sticks things on shelves for a living doesn’t mean that they’re dumber than you or less of a person than you. Maybe they’ve got two other jobs and a bunch of kids who are running wild while they’re out of school and probably won’t get the expensive presents they want. Maybe they’ve got a final exam this afternoon or a paper due tomorrow. Maybe they just got chewed out by their boss for being late because they couldn’t find a parking spot either and had to walk half a mile in the snow to get to work. Maybe they just had three horrible asshole customers in a row right before you and they’re trying not to cry. So be patient. Be kind. Be understanding. Maybe cultivate a bit of holiday cheer, yeah?

A couple of tips to make this easier on you: Don’t shop when you’re in a hurry. Your agro does not make anything go faster. Carry cash. If your check or your credit card won’t go through, it makes everyone’s lives easier if you can just hand over cash instead. The cashier and the people behind you in line will thank you. Be nice while you’re standing in line. You’re all in this together, and communal bitching doesn’t help the line move. Put things back where you got them. Half of a retail minion’s job is cleaning up after people. They’re there putting stuff away for two hours after the store closes. And if they can’t find the thing you want because it’s not where it’s supposed to be, that’s probably because someone else decided they didn’t want it and just set it down in some random place. Do not snark at someone because they told you “Happy Holidays” instead of your particular holiday of choice. This is not this person’s personal religious or political stance. It’s company policy put in place to avoid offending customers, and it’s designed to be inclusive, not exclusive. Keep your receipts or get gift receipts so the horror of January returns is easier on everyone. Tip your gift wrapper. Tip your barista. Tip the hell out of your bartender.

Or, skip the whole thing altogether. A couple of years ago I imposed Homemade Christmas on my family. Because I’d rather get one present that someone put a lot of love and effort into than a stack of corporate-funded shit that I don’t need or want and that some little brown kid got paid ten cents a year to make. That kid doesn’t get awesome Christmas presents, does he? No, because he has to work. (And maybe doesn’t celebrate Christmas anyway, so the point is kind of moot, but you see where I’m going.) So, Homemade Christmas rocks. If it’s the thought that counts, I like to know that my family knows I put real thought into something. Or buy local. Those little businesses need your money so much more than giant corporations do. And those are the people you know, who are a part of your community. You go to church with them, or your kids go to school together. You should support each other. Or buy used items. Things like books and movies are no less awesome just because they came from the thrift store, and that locally-owned thrift store probably needs your money. Or donate to charity in each other’s names. Do your research and pick a good one (here’s my vote), but use that money to actually help someone out who needs it rather than lining the pockets of some rich toy-maker asshole who probably doesn’t need another yacht. Or do something creative like buying a Christmas dinner for a poor family who doesn’t get to expect a feast as a matter of course. Maybe go take some firewood to the little old lady who lives down the road. Fix your neighbor’s broken-down car. Pay off someone’s medical bills or start a secret bank account for a kid who wants to go to college. And really, we should do these things year-round, shouldn’t we? But we put aside our money and our goodwill and save it up for this time of year. That makes me kind of sad. I’m not religious, but that feels a bit like bad karma.

So, yeah. Enjoy your turkey and your pumpkin pie. Really enjoy it. Be thankful for it. Say, “Thank you, turkey, for giving your little bird life so I can eat the best sandwiches ever for a week.” Be thankful for this world we live in, the dirt under your feet and the sky above your head. Be thankful for your family and the eons of time and genetics that stacked up just right so you could all be in a warm room together while it’s cold outside, enjoying each other’s company. Or if you’re spending Thanksgiving with friends (as I am), be thankful that the universe put these people on your path so you could love them. They’re family, too. Continue to be thankful tomorrow, while you’re shopping (or not). As we get closer to Christmas, remember that it’s not about the hassle, it’s about shared experience, and keep being thankful. When New Year’s rolls around, be thankful that you got this past year to live and breathe. Be thankful the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that…

Retail Minions Unite!

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This weekend was my one year anniversary of quitting my job at the Giant Evil Bookstore. That’s weird, man. I don’t think I’ve ever been this stress-free for this long. I live in California now, where things are blissful and it’s gorgeous anywhere you look. Unexpectedly, I enjoy digging in the dirt. Being tired at the end of the day, but saying “Hey, look at this thing I accomplished.” That’s pretty great on a lot of levels. And the husband is the happiest monkey in the world out here. The other day he yells at me from across the living room, using his excited voice, “You know what we should do? We should make a wood stove that looks like R2-D2!” I sigh. He continues. “No, wait, no, we should make one that looks like Darth Vader’s helmet mask. And you put the wood in through his mouth? Nothing says ‘nerds off the grid’ like a Darth Vader wood stove.”

I’m not sure anything actually says “nerds off the grid.” But if anything could, it would, in fact, be a Darth Vader wood stove.

That’s like a Twilight Zone sentence, right? I’m not imagining the weirdness?

Anyway, I digress. I always had mixed feelings about the bookstore. It was books, and I love books. It’s like a little kid getting to wallow around in a pit full of kittens all day. Sort of. I do miss my peeps, good booknerdy folks who knew their shit and with whom I could comfortably commiserate about the horrors of minimum-wage shilldom. I liked knowing what books were coming out before anybody else. And seeing the ridiculous furor over best sellers or weird fads (thanks for that, Oprah). But the zombifying, soulsucking, spirit-crushing nature of a retail job definitely outweighs all of that.

But the best thing about working in a bookstore was definitely the customers. Also the worst thing. We had some fantastic regulars whom I adored. But most everyone else…hmm, there aren’t really words. But there are examples! (I’m the one in italics. I look great in italics.)

“You guys had a book on a table up front about six months ago? It had a blue cover.” It’s always the book with the blue cover! “Do you know where it is now? Why isn’t it still on the table?” Do you understand how marketing works? No? Ok.

“Where’s your nonfiction section?” Well, I can show you were my fiction section is, and then there’s the rest of the store, which is nonfiction. “What’s the difference?” Sigh.

“It’s a novel, but it really happened.” Novels are not nonfiction!

“I want something with wizards, but not like Harry Potter.” Urm. Good luck with that.

“Where’s your Harry Potter section?” Seriously?

“Where’s your Twilight section?” Fucking seriously?

“My kid really likes Twilight. Do you have anything that’s like that?” Everything’s like that. Can you be more specific? “Well, she’s ten.” Holy shit, lady, why did your kid read Twilight at ten? Or at all, for that matter?

“My kid’s a really good reader so it’s hard for him to find books that are challenging. He loves science fiction and fantasy.” Ok, great, let’s go over to the Science Fiction and Fantasy section. “Oh, no, I don’t want him to read adult books. He’s only a teenager.” This is why America is crumbling.

Kid with a giant stack of books she’s pulled out of the shelf and practically destroyed. Her mother: “Oh, no, honey, don’t put those away. That’s what she’s here for.” Point that finger at me again, bitch, and I will eat it.

“Why aren’t there any new Hemingway books?” Well, because disembodied dead spirits have a really hard time getting publishing contracts these days.

“I need these eighteen books as quickly as possible.” They’re out of print. “What do you mean?” I mean they don’t make them anymore. You’ll probably have to look at a used bookstore or order them online. “What do you mean?” When books stop selling they stop printing them. “What do you mean?” Are you stuck in a logic loop, Borg person?

“You can’t find it? Obviously your computer is wrong.” Obviously. Can we maybe think of more than one vague word out of the title with which to search? “Well, it should pop right up. It was ‘The’ something.” Can you think of any part of the author’s name? “Bob or Dave or John. Maybe.”

“I really like this author, but I’ve read all his books. Can you suggest something similar?” Sure, try this guy. “Oh, no, I don’t think so. I’ve never heard of him.” That was kind of the point, wasn’t it?

“I can’t find it. Can you just show me where it is?” Yes, ma’am. It’s right there on that shelf next to your eyeball.

“This place is so big. How do you find your way around?” A nauseating degree of repetition. And a basic understanding of maps and the alphabet.

“I ain’t never been in here before.” You don’t say.

Ok, ok. I’ll stop. I do tend to go on and on sometimes, don’t I? I don’t mean to sound so negative. It wasn’t all bad. Sometimes I even liked my job at the Giant Evil Bookstore. It taught me a lot about how not to run a business. Like not treating your employees like useless idiots. And refraining from most kinds of corporate scumfuck douchebaggery. What blew my mind the most about working there was how ignorant people were about books in general. I was endlessly fascinated by it, honestly. It’s like there’s a blind spot in their cultural awareness, you know? So often people would come in and say things like “I need that book that was on the news last night.” At which point I’d tell them that I don’t have a television and they’d look at me like I had three heads. And of course they didn’t remember the title or the author because they assumed that everyone at the bookstore would know exactly what they were talking about. Because it was on tv. Why wouldn’t everyone know exactly what they were talking about? It’s tv. Why have we gotten to a point where this is the norm? I’m upset and icky-feeling over it.

The other interesting thing is the way that customer service folks are looked at as subhuman. Like those types of jobs make you less, somehow, than other people. But you’ve got to pay the bills. Stupid capitalist society. For the record, we’re not in these sorts of service industry jobs because we’re too stupid or lazy to get a “real” job. Every single person I worked with either had a college degree or was in college to get one. Bookstore employees are pretty knowledgeable, if just by virtue of being forced to hang out there all the time. Don’t assume that they won’t know the answer to your question because of where they work. It’s their job to know the answers, and it’s a thankless job most of the time. Your shopping crisis may seem like the end of the world to you, but it’s only a few minutes out of their long-ass day, a day filled with all kinds of interesting shopping crises. So be nice. And be patient.

Story Time!

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Alright, kids, I hate to let life get in the way of my blogging responsibilities, but sadly it does happen from time to time. I’m in the middle of moving so I’ve got to keep this short and sweet this week. No deep insights! Very few ridiculous analogies! Plain old ordinary anecdotes! Possibly even typos. It’s so haphazard and exciting. Sorry. Next week I’ll try to be a badass. If I’ve got my shit together by then. Onward and upward. (Cue campfire ghost story voice. Ahem.)

Our story begins in a dim and dreary bookstore in the rainy depths of coastal California. This particular bookstore has pretty damn satisfactory scifi and fantasy sections (Tin Can Mailman in Arcata – I always leave happy and broke, check it out if you’re close and need a bookstore, plugplugplug). And the scifi section faces the front door so everyone who comes in has to walk right by you, right? I was standing there with (I’m not even fucking kidding) Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Piers Anthony, and Frank Herbert in my hand. In those great old 1970′s-looking mass market paperbacks? I love those. I looked like a walking cheapskate scifi 101 class, though, for real.

In walked these two gentlemen who were clearly on a mission to find a particular book. Which should’ve been right where I was standing. But wasn’t. Of course. And it’s a used bookstore and they’re usually kind of busy and they’re by nature a little disorganized so I usually look two or three times and try random leaps of logic to try to look in other places that it just might have possibly ended up through some twist of fate. But these two gentlemen were being extremely thorough, even by those standards. And they were all up in my space, you know? I suppose at some point my comfort bubble got a bit bent because myopic, fucking overly polite me, I stepped back and started squinting at the books from afar so as to give these dudes the prime scifi section real estate, goddamn it. Because clearly they felt that their used bookstore experience was of a higher priority than mine.

One guy gave me the thank you nod (manners props to Dude #1!) and the other guy. Ooh, the other guy. Homeboy looked like Comic Book Guy’s, geekier more UV avoidant cousin (can you make fun of Simpsons characters for being pale? Does that even work? Fuck, I’m brainfried, just let it go). And you know, I don’t give a shit what people look like, I really really don’t. But sometimes you can just spot them from a mile away. Those haughty kind of LARPier-than-thou sorts of guys. They fall within a bell curve. They usually resemble the bell curve, as a point of interest. So this walking fucking stereotype, this caricature of a human being, gave my books the “I’m obviously being nosy about your books but it’s ok because we’re in a bookstore” head-tilt eyeball situation. And giggled. More of a giggle/scoff, really. A gloff, if you will.

At this point I should’ve asked him “What the hell, bro?” And just intimidated the shit out of him with my meaty social prowess and skillful altercation-starting skills. But those things aren’t real, you see, so I was left in this weird state of not knowing what had just happened or how to feel about it. Which is how I feel most of the time when I deal with other humans. Also why I moved to the middle of nowhere to a county that literally has more bears than people. That’s statistics. Look it up.

Because that gloff had the stink of superiority to it. And I don’t know why. I’m bothered by this not knowing (grammar what?). Are these four really important scifi classics not good enough for Dude #2? Because that’s bullshit. Maybe he was just a fantasy geek who scoffs at scifi in general, but then why the rudeness trying to get past me to the scifi books? Or was he laughing because he assumed I hadn’t read them (three of them I had, I just didn’t own my own copies, for the record)? In which case the proper etiquette of nosy bookstoreness would be to say “Hey, those are really good books” not “You mean you’re in your thirties and you haven’t read those yet?” Or maybe (because we need at least one optimistic prospect) he was thrown off by my being a girl in the scifi section at all and couldn’t think of anything to say that was polite so he opted for the idiot gloff instead. Any of these things is possible.

Anyway. I guess it’s just a mystery. Damn, there’s really no good way to end that story. It was a frustrating nerd moment, you know? I’ve let it roll off my back. After I stopped myself from chasing him down the street screaming “Why?! Why?!” Then I let it roll off my back. I’m not particularly good with people. So, if we need to find a moral here: be nice in bookstores, ok?