Author Archives: tacit

Polyamory: Some Thoughts on Rules

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I generally am not a fan of rules-based relationships, particularly in polyamory. I have found, throughout all of my relationships, that they tend to work best when not governed by a codex of regulations that would make a bureaucrat blush.

Often, when I say that, folks will look at me as though I’ve sprouted an extra head. “How can you have a relationship without rules?” I’ve been asked by poly folks. “I mean, sure, that’s all well and good if you just want anarchy, with people running around doing whatever they want with no commitment, but you can’t build real relationships that way!”

Which is a bit of a head-scratcher to me, because it sounds quite a lot like a monogamous person telling a poly person “How can you have a relationship without monogamy? I mean, sure, that’s all well and good if you just want anarchy, with people running around shagging whoever they want with no commitment, but you can’t build real relationships that way!”

It’s a normal human thing, I suppose, to see the world in polar terms: if there is no monogamy, then that means promiscuity and indiscriminate shagging; if there are no rules, then that means anarchy and chaos. But that isn’t really the case.

What do you mean, that isn’t really the case? Rules are how we set out boundaries. Without rules, there’s nothing to keep people from stomping all over us!

I tend to see a big difference between “rules” and “boundaries.” To me, a rule is something that a person imposes on another. “I forbid you to have un-barriered sex with any other person” is a common example. It is a statement of intent to assert control over the actions of another.

Boundaries are things we put on ourselves. “In order to protect my sexual health, I reserve the right to discontinue having sexual intercourse with you if you have unbarriered sex with any other person” is an example.

They might have the same outcome, but theiy’re very different in philosophy. To me, the key difference is the locus of control. With rules, I am assuming control over you. I am telling you what you must do or setting out what you are forbidden to do. With boundaries, I outline the way your choices affect me, without presuming to make those choices for you, and let you make your choice accordingly.

But without rules, how can I make sure that my partner will do what I need him to do in order to feel safe?

You can’t.

With or without rules, you can’t. People can always make their own choices. Rules, as anyone who’s ever been cheated on knows, are only as good as a person’s willingness to follow them, which means rules are only as good as the intent of the person on whom they’re imposed.

If a person loves you and cherishes you, and wants to do right by you, then it’s not necessary to say “I forbid you to do thus-and-such” or “I require you to do thus-and-such.” All you really need to do is communicate what you need to feel taken care of, and your partner will choose to do things that take care of you, without being compelled to.

On the other hand, if your partner doesn’t love and cherish you, and doesn’t want to do right by you…well, no rule will save you. The rules might give you an illusion of safety, but they won’t really protect you.

So what? Isn’t it enough that a rule makes me feel better? What’s wrong with that?

There is, I think, a hidden cost to rules, which doesn’t often get discussed in the poly community: the effect those rules have on other people.

Often, people in polyamorous relationships–especially people just starting in polyamory–seem to embrace the idea that whatever happens, as long as the original couple survives, the relationship is being successful. Regardless of its effect on anyone else who may be romantically involved with one or both of the original couples. Because of that, the rules tend to be created only between the original couple, with little or no input from anyone else, and more imprtantly, little or no thought to the impact on those rules on others. The viewpoint of any third parties is rarely considered.

Because of that, there’s seldom an acknowledgement that any rule which forbids person A from doing X is potentially a rule which deprives newcomer C from activity X. You see this most strongly in rules such as “I forbid you to have sex with any new partner in the Monkey with Lotus Blossom and Chainsaw position, because that’s my favorite position” or “I forbid you to go to Clayton’s House of Clams with any other date, because that’s the restaurant where we had our first date” or “I forbid you to sleep over at a partner’s house because I never want to have to give up sleeping beside you.”

Each of these is made without any thought to what it costs a third person–what if a new person happens to be quite fond of the Monkey with Lotus Blossom and Chainsaw position, or Clayton’s House of Clams? Why should the new person always be forced to give up sleeping with a partner simply because person A never will?

Because that’s the way it is! Why should some new person be allowed to trump my needs and stomp all over me? Why shouldn’t a new person respect my needs?

Ah. And there we get down to the heart of the matter.

People pass rules because they feel that those rules are necessary in order to meet their needs. Rules don’t get passed at random; I have yet to meet a person who makes up rules by rolling dice or drawing words out of a hat.

Whenever someone proposes a rule, I make it a habit to ask myself three questions:

1. What is the purpose of this rule?
2. Does the rule serve the purpose it is intended to serve?
3. Is this rule the only way to serve this purpose?

I can’t overstate enough how valuable it is to think about this.

Often, in my experience, people use rules as indirect, passive ways to try to get their needs met. Instead of clearly articulating the need, such as “I have a need to feel special and valued by you,” they will think of something that makes them feel special and valued, and then pass a rule to say “I require you to do this thing” or “I forbid you to do this thing with others.” We in the poly community often talk about “communicate, communicate, communicate,” but to me, communication requires the willing to discuss difficult issues, such as the direct needs that we have, rather than just second-order issues, like “Forbidding you to do this is important to me.”

Let’s take a non-hypothetical example of a rule that I’ve seen some poly folks do: “I forbid you to take any date to Clayton’s House of Clams.” And let’s look at it within the context of these three questions.

1. What is the purpose of this rule?

If Alice tells Bob “I forbid you to go to Clayton’s House of Clams with anyone else,” what is she actually saying? It could be “I feel like my value to you depends on exclusivity.” It might be “I am afraid that if you do the same things with someone else that you do with me, you won’t need me any more and you will abandon me.” Chances are pretty good, though, that Alice, in making this rule, is feeling so overwhelmed by her fear that her needs aren’t being met, she hasn’t spared any thought at all for Cindy, who she’s now denying the Clayton’s clam experience to.

2. Does the rule serve the purpose?

If Alice is right, if Bob doesn’t truly value her and there’s nothing special about her, then forbidding Bob to go to Clayton’s House of Clams with his date won’t actually ensure that Bob doesn’t abandon her. If Cindy turns out to be “better” (whatever that means) than Alice, then Bob’s gone, clams or no clams. If Bob genuinely DOESN’T see value in Alice, the relationship is doomed and no rule will save it. By saying “I forbid you to go to Clayton’s House of Clams,” Alice is–at best–buying herself a false sense of security that is masking her underlying fear of abandonment, preventing her from confronting it directly.

3. Is this rule the only way to serve this purpose?

If Alice is actually afraid that Bob doesn’t value her and will abandon her if he does the same things with a new date that he does with her, then it seems to me that Alice is actually better served by confronting that fear directly, and asking directly for Bob’s help in feeling valued. There might be a lot of ways that can happen…by spending more quality time with Alice for instance, or by letting Alice know how he values her, by setting aside “date nights” with Alice, all sorts of things. The underlying need actually has nothing to do with clams at all.

So what? I was here first. Why shouldn’t a new person respect my rules, even if there are other ways to do things?

“Respect” is a slippery, tricky word. It’s kind of like “freedom”–everyone thinks they know what it means, but when the rubber meets the road, few folks actually agree on a definition.

To me, respect has to be mutual. If Alice is demanding respect from Bob’s new sweetie Cindy, that can only come if Alice in turn respects the notion that Cindy is a grown adult with her own needs and desires, and she, too, deserves a shot at having a voice in the relationship. Imposing rules by fiat on other people and then demanding respect from those people is all the rage (I hear) among leaders of North Korea, but can feel a bit yucky when we’re talking romantic relationships.

But more pragmatically, because I try to be pragmatic, setting up a situation in which one person imposes rules which another person is expected to follow is often a setup for failure. At best, it leads to rules-lawyering; “Well, we didn’t actually eat AT Clayton’s House of Clams, we ordered our clams to go and then ate out on the lanai!”

At worst, it sets up a relationship with a certain amount of tension and conflict baked in. If you see your partner’s other partner as a source of stress, if you set up rules to govern that other person’s behavior, then already you’ve started out on a basis of conflict–because you’ve created an environment where if you want the newcomer never to eat at Clayton’s with your sweetie and the newcomer’s desire is to get down with those tasty, tasty clams on a date with your sweetie, there’s an irreconcilable difference there. Someone’s desire is going to get trumped, and you’re playing the “respect” card to try to make sure it’s not yours.

By talking directly to needs rather than rules–“I need to feel valued and special by you”–we create a framework where competition is less likely. If it’s about feeling valued and unique, and it’s not actually about the clams at all, leave the poor clams out of it!

Now, some cases are more clear-cut than others. Rules around safe sex practices are extremely common in poly relationships; in fact, I’ll warrant that exceptions are pretty thin on the ground.

But even there, it pays to be careful. Open communication is important, because sometimes, even seemingly clear-cut rules with reasonable, necessary purposes can mask deeper things.

For example, let’s look at a rule “No unprotected sex with other partners.”

1. What is the purpose of this rule?

If Alice tells Bob “I don’t want you to have unprotected sex with anyone else,” most likely there’s a pretty good reason for it. The purpose of this rule is plain on the face of it: to protect Alice’s sexual health, as well as the health of everyone Alice is involved with.

2. Does the rule serve the purpose?

Yes. The data on disease transmission and barriers is unambiguous.

3. Is this rule the only way to serve this purpose?

Oh, boy. Now we get into a pickle.

There are other ways that this goal can be achieved. STD testing is an effective one. Sexual health is not an issue if the people involved have no STDs to begin with; they don’t spontaneously appear out of thin air.

But sometimes, folks may insist on barriers not entirely because of STD concerns, but also out of a feeling that it’s a mark of exclusivity, or because they feel more special if they are the only fluid-bonded partner. And sometimes, concerns about STDs can be a cover that masks those feelings. (This isn’t a hypothetical example, by the way. It’s actually happened in my romantic network.)

It takes a lot of courage to admit things like this. Talking openly about what’s really going on below the surface is scary, and hard, and involves making ourselves vulnerable.

But we poly folks talk all the time about how important communication is. It’s even more important that we actually do it. Even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.

And sometimes, letting go of the notion that rules are important is a way to do that, as scary as that sounds.

Boston Chapter 8: A Rooftop Made of Awesome

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By this point in our trip, as we lingered in St. Louis, I believed I had seen the most awesome thing ever. Perhaps not the most awesome thing that could exist, mind you; but certainly the most awesome thing that did exist.

That was, I must confess, a failure of imagination on my part. I was, even now, still a little bit naive. We had not yet, you see, gone on to the roof of City Museum.

We also had neglected, in our eagerness to explore the awesome candy bar made of awesome (metaphorically speaking), to notice that our traveling companion Erica was not to be seen–a harbinger, as it turned out, of what awaited us in Louisville. But more on that later.

At some point–I think it might have been when we were exploring a tunnel made of mirrors whose entrance was an enormous clockwork bank vault door about twelve feet across–we got a text from our wayward traveling companion.

That tunnel is pretty cool, by the way.

So is the snack bar, which includes among other things a set of chairs made out of old bumper cars, and a lot of secluded little cubbyholes with unexpected furniture in them..

But I digress.

We met with her downstairs, between the gigantic fish sculptures whose mouths opened into tunnels up to the ceiling and the main entrance whose walls were decorated with antique circuit boards, and after some discussion, we decided to check out the wonders on the rooftop.

The roof to City Museum is accessed via an elevator whose shaft is filled with windows, which you get to via an entrance flanked with nude statues of women supporting the world atop their heads. (On these, I have little to say, as I had always been led to believe that that role was filled with elephants riding on the back of a great turtle…but I digress.)

Peering over the edge of the rooftop is an interesting experience. It is not often that one sees an airplane and a bus protruding from the side of a building, with tunnels made of rebar extending both around and through them.

Peering around the roof is even better. There’s a Ferris wheel, bolted to the highest point of the roof; and an enormous slide which towers from the platform with the giant metal praying mantis on it, that swoops down to the fountain that spits water at passers-by. The slide has a tunnel atop it, so those who eschew prosaic things like staircases can, if they wish, climb back up the hard way.

We ended up riding the giant slide by the praying mantis several times. It’s a mind-bogglingly terrifying climb up, at least for anyone with even a residual trace of the ancient fear of heights which lurks in the recesses of our dim collective unconscious. Which means, naturally enough, that it’s a total blast to do.

It’s so high that even sitting at the entrance to the slide can induce a bit of virtigo.

I have video of myself sliding down this slide a speed somewhere between “ridiculous” and “insane,” which I have not yet found the time to upload to YouTube.

We also spent quite a lot of time on the ferris wheel, which in addition to being bolted to the top of a skyscraper had also, apparently, been modified to spin rather faster than is traditional for this particular variety of carnival ride. Again, hella fun.

The view from the top is quite lovely.

The rest of the roof is decorated in a kind of “industrial wasteland meets Disney World” motif, only cooler. We scampered about for a time, like visitors in Kubla Khan’s domain.

Alas, our taste of the bliss which awaits the righteous in the world beyond was all too brief. We still had a lot of ground to cover, and the pet lesbians to reach before nightfall. So we made our reluctant departure. On the way out through the parking lot, I looked up, nothing with some sorrow an array of fascinating structures we hadn’t had the opportunity to explore.

We returned to the car and resumed our journey to Boston, on our way toward our next milestone with the pet lesbians and, before that, the Guatemalans who would abscond with one of our party. That story will be told next time.

Of Puppies, Favorites, and Why I Suck at Monogamy

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A couple of nights ago, zaiah and I were feeding puppies.

This is something we do every night. And every afternoon. And every morning. And…well, pretty much all the time, really. They hunger, you see. They have appetites, and their appetites must be sated, else our sanity will be destroyed, its shattered slivers sucked into the maw of the great dark beyond.

On this particular evening, she was making fun of me. Every time I took a puppy into my lap, I said, “You know, I think this one might be my favorite.” And meant it.

We’ve been calling them by the color of their collar. (We debated naming them after computer programming languages–“Here, Java! C’mere, Perl! Good boy, Python!”) but zaiah made the point that we don’t want to give them names which might unduly influence whoever adopts them.

And they are all my favorite puppy.

Purple is absolutely my favorite of the whole bunch of them. She is lovely; we’ve informally started referring to her as “sweet face,” because she has such a nice face. She’s affectionate and loving, nuzzling into you when you hold her. She gazes soulfully into your eyes when you feed her. For the first couple of weeks, she would sing herself to sleep after she ate.

My real favorite, though, is Blue. He’s the largest of the bunch, a gentle giant who is gregarious and outgoing. He responds strongly to people, coming over with his tail wagging whenever anyone walks near. He’s filled with energy and enthusiasm, and joy just radiates out of him.

But my favorite out of all of them would have to be Yellow. He is by far the most playful of the bunch. He enjoys rolling the ball around his pen, which is incredibly cute, and he likes playing with his imaginary friend, which is even more cute. He’s smart and companionable and loves wrestling with people.

When it comes to my favorite puppy of the litter, though, that would have to be Pink. She’s quiet and sweet-tempered, a cuddly and affectionate little girl who loves reaching up to kiss your nose. She is absolutely heart-melting in her trusting devotion to the people around her.

Though, to be honest, I think my favorite might be Green. He’s smart, strong-willed, and opinionated. He bounds around the pen wrestling with his brothers and sisters, and any human who will show him attention–“C’mon! I can take you! Let’s go! Arooorooroo! Isn’t this FUN?”

My favorite puppy would doubtless be Red. She is mercurial, one minute playful and the next minute snuggly. She also loves to gaze into your eyes while she eats, and her favorite thing in the world is to fall asleep with her head on your arm. She’s a master of the game “I’ve Got Your Nose,” which she plays with Blue, Green, Yellow, and any person who gets close enough.

And finally, I’ve saved my favorite puppy for last. Orange is sweet-tempered and loving; she bonds easily with people, to the point that she often prefers scritches and snuggles to food. Ever since the day she was born, one of her favoritest of all things is to snuggle into the crook of your neck and fall asleep there, making contented little noises the whole time.

This is, you see, why I’m rubbish at monogamy. Pick just one? Really? When there is a whole world out there, full of joy and love and life? Why would someone want to do that?

Signal Boost: Hellbender Media

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A bit more than a year ago, a very good friend of mine, edwardmartiniii, started a project to write a new horror short story every week for a year. The result appeared in a blog he called Tales from the Blinkspace.

He is, and I say this without reservation, one of the best horror writers I’ve ever read. His stories are quirky, unpredictable, occasionally Lovecraftian in feel if not in subject, and very often brilliant. Quite a few of them made me think, one of them gave me nightmares, and I even appear in one as a character (no, I won’t say which one, you’ll have to find it yourself).

And now it’s a book.

I highly, highly recommend this book for anyone who’s a fan of quality short stories. You can see more about it on his Web site, Hellbender Media, here or find the book on Amazon here.

Purity Bear: a creepy talking animal that preaches abstinence

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I wish I could say tat this is a parody, but it’s not. The folks behind the “Day of Purity” have released an unsettling video in which a creepy bear tells a kid “She may be cuddly, but look at me! I’m cuddly too!” to get him to say “no” to going in the house with his girlfriend.

Will the day ever come when these folks realize that preaching abstinence doesn’t work? How high do the rates of teen pregnancy have to get in the Bible Belt before folks figure this out?

Personally, I’m waiting for the inevitable: a newspaper runs a story involving Purity Bear being caught on videotape doing the nasty with PedoBear in some seedy Detroit motel bathroom.

Some thoughts on SOPA and Copyright

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Anybody who’s tried to use the Internet today is no doubt aware of the “SOPA strike.” A lot of major Internet sites, including places like Wikipedia, WordPress, and Reddit, are blacked out in protest of proposed US legislation called the Stop Online Piracy Act. this legislation, which has been intensely lobbied for by powerful interests such as the Motion Picture Ass. of America and the Recording Industry Ass. of America, propose to stop copyright infringement by non-US sites and protect rights holders. It and its companion the Protect Intellectual Property Act were drafted by people with little technical understanding of the Internet in ways that circumvent normal due process of law. Each contains provisions by which purported rights holders can order the wholesale removal of sites from the Internet, without judicial oversight or review, and each requires ISPs, content hosts, and Web site owners to police user-generated content and remove it if they believe it might infringe on someone’s intellectual property rights.

Needless to say, both pieces of legislation are deeply flawed. They amount to prior restraint on expression, which is not permitted by the US Constitution, and they threaten to undermine the domain name system that’s central to how the Internet works. All that is a given.

The Recording Industry Ass. of America and the Motion Picture Ass. of America have both demonstrated themselves to be clumsy, arrogant, and hamfisted in their approach to copyright. The movie and recording industries are both firmly wedded to business models that are rooted in last century; neither has shown any inclination to change as technology changes. (The Motion Picture Ass. of America has, rather comedically, published a statement in which they say that anti-SOPA protests are a “gimmick” that will “turn us all into corporate pawns.”)

Robert Heinlein perhaps put it best when he said, “There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.”

But… but… but…

In all the debate about SOPA, there is an elephant in the room that nobody is talking about.

The elephant in the room is that people who create things deserve to be rewarded.

The current crop of Internet users is in many ways incredibly entitled. There is a very deep vein of hatred for the idea of intellectual property throughout the Internet generation. A surprisingly large number of people seem to feel that if someone created it, they deserve to be able to have it.

I have often made the mistake of wading into Internet conversations about copyright, and been astonished by the viciousness and entitlement that I see there. A lot of the arguments are based on a profound ignorance of what copyright is, but even more arguments are based on a hatred of the entire concept of intellectual property that seems to be rooted in the notion that anything I want, I should be allowed to have, as long as it isn’t made of physical atoms. It’s amazing, terrifying, and sad in equal proportion. And I can see why content creators get exasperated.

For example, in a recent debate about copyright on Facebook, one person made the assertion that a person whose work is copied without pay should be flattered by it, and “enjoy the fact that what you have written/drawn/painted/shot has moved so many people that they wish to pay you the compliment of forwarding your work to others to enjoy.” Another person made the even more astonishing claim that “copyright is a tool of privilege” that “keeps art away from the poor,” an opinion he followed up with “Art shouldn’t be sold, it should be shared and traded.” He then followed up with the notion that “talent is a birth-given privilege,” artistic ability and creativity can not be learned, and selling an artwork or a song is inherently a tool of oppression because it’s a way for privileged creative people to exploit those who lack the ability to create by denying them art that can improve their lives unless they pay for it.

The amount of entitlement these arguments reveal can scarcely fit in a double-decker bus. It turns the idea of privilege on its head (what of the poor, disadvantaged person who has invested a great deal of time and effort in learning a skill; should she not be allowed to be rewarded for that effort?); it demonstrates a breathtaking level of entitlement (if I like some bit of artwork and I think it makes my life better, I am entitled to have it no matter what it cost to produce and no matter how much work went into its creation); it relegates the production of art to only those wealthy enough to do it as a hobby, and that any creative person who isn’t wealthy should, I don’t know, work at McDonald’s or something rather than creating; it spits in the face of the notion that people whose work benefits society deserve some measure of benefit themselves; and it cheapens and degrades the considerable effort that artists put into acquiring and building their skills.

And this is, amazingly, not an isolated opinion. It’s a worldview I see reflected again and again and again, everywhere the subject of copyright comes up.

People who hold these ideas can not, I think, be persuaded otherwise. A person who feels entitled to something will construct rationalizations about why his entitlement is justified, whether it’s by imagining creativity as some inborn thing like race or sex, or inventing a moral system whereby anyone who does something that could make another person’s life better like create a painting or, I don’t know, haul away garbage is ethically obligated to do so for free. Such people will often spout platitudes like “True artists do it for the love of art, not for money,” setting up a false dichotomy that ignores the fact that creative people also have to eat. This argument also creates a system whereby an artist’s merits are judged not on her technical proficiency or her ability to illuminate the human condition, but rather on how much stuff she gives the speaker for free.

Other arguments against copyright are based on simple ignorance of what copyright is.

Some of these are as inevitable as arguments like “Oh, so I should tell my partner every time I take a crap?” which I have heard, without fail, every single time I’ve ever seen a discussion about whether or not willfully withholding information from a lover is lying, or “So if someone asks me if her butt looks fat in these jeans, I should say yes?” that crop up as sure as night follows day in any conversation about the value of honesty. I have, to date, never once seen any conversation about copyright in which some person doesn’t say “Well, you better not use the word ‘copyright’ because I have a copyright on it!” or “There’s no such thing as an original idea.” These people don’t understand even the most basic principles about copyright; they simply don’t know that a word or a sentence can not be copyrighted, or that copyright covers only a particular expression of an idea rather than the idea itself.

Other ideas about copyright that are just as common and just as wrongheaded include such notions as “If it’s been posted in a public place, that means it’s legal to copy it,” which is approximately as inane as believing that if a car is parked in a public lot, that means it’s legal to drive off with it; and the idea that as long as you credit the person who made a particular piece of art, it’s permissible to copy and redistribute it at will.

These ideas are the Creation Science of copyright. They’re firmly woven into the fabric of beliefs held by a very large number of people, and they’re absolutely bogus. An emergent view that comes from these mistaken ideas is the smug, self-congratulatory notion that by copying someone else’s work, the person copying it is doing the creator a favor; after all, it’s giving the creator more exposure, right? (One has to wonder what good it is to have this “exposure” if we accept the notion that it’s wrong for someone to want to be rewarded for creating things of value, but that’s a subtle argument that’s generally lost on the caliber of debate one normally sees surrounding the idea of copyright.)

People who create things of value deserve to be rewarded for that creation, no less than people who build cars or make computers or cook McDonald’s burgers. This is a fundamental axiom without which there is no benefit in creation for any purpose save as a hobby. If we do not accept that idea, then what we are doing is we are saying that as a society we do not want the contribution of talented, creative poor people who can not support themselves in some other way; only the independently wealthy with plenty of time on their hands and the means to support their creation need apply. If I intend to invest in a camera, or canvas and paint, or studio recording equipment, I better do it without any expectation that my investment will be rewarded in any tangible way, and so I’d better have enough money to do so without the expectation of return. This idea is, I think, self-evidently horseshit.

Copyright matters. Intellectual property is important. This is not something that will go away, and because of it, the issues that drive dismal piles of misbegotten dreck like SOPA and PIPA aren’t going to vanish tomorrow.

SOPA and PIPA are at this point almost certainly dead in the water, and that is as it should be. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Internet is swarming with poorly-informed and entitled people who sincerely believe they have the right to have other people’s work for free, and so we can reasonably expect to see proposals for more legislation like SOPA and PIPA to appear tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. This. Is. Not. Going. Away.

It is absolutely, undeniably true that there is more than a little hypocrisy at work in the attempts of organizations like the MPAA and RIAA to take the moral high ground about copyright while lobbying for legislation that does an end-run around protected speech. It is unquestionably true that, to a large extent, the copyright problems they face are a monster of their own making, the result of hanging on to antiquated business models that simply no longer apply. It is also true beyond a shadow of a doubt that both of them, the RIAA in particular, have long histories of treating the actual creators they employ very poorly indeed, giving their artists only tiny dribs and drabs of money while executives profit obscenely on their work. All of these things are true.

But not one of these observations is an argument against the idea that people who create novel things deserve to be rewarded for them. We would not say that an inventor, a creative person who applies her talents to solving practical problems, should do so merely for the love of inventing, nor that “true” inventors would never charge for their inventions; and most of us would probably find it quite laughable if someone were to say that an inventor who sold her invention was an oppressor, using her innate privilege to deny other people of things that can benefit their lives unless they pay her.

So why is it that we are willing to accept these ideas when they are applied to someone who uses her talent to create photographs or paintings instead of widgets?

SOPA sucks. But the notion that people are entitled to benefit from others’ work for free also sucks. We are, or we should be, on the same side here; our lives are made richer by the artistic expressions of others, and so we should want to encourage creative people to create. Even if they’re not independently wealthy.

OMG puppies!

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As folks who casually read this journal, or anyone anywhere who’s seen my Twitter feed, is no doubt aware, shortly before Christmas we had a litter of standard poodle puppies. zaiah‘s dog Emma had seven teensy little puppies, three brown and four black…and by “teensy little” what I mean is “approximately the size of a monster truck.” To this day, it still boggles my mind, and creeps me out a bit, that she was able to store them all inside her body. (To be fair, though, there’s quite a lot about biology that I find somewhat disconcerting, the less said about that the better.)

I love kittens. I am very happy to have a life through which kittens pass on a regular basis. I do have to admit, however, that it is at least theoretically possible that tiny little puppies might–just possibly might–be even cuter than kittens.

The proud father found the whole thing quite fascinating. He’s actually been a pretty good dad so far, albeit in fairness the bar is set fairly low; in dogs, “being a good father” seems to stop at somewhere around “not eating your own young.”

Newborn puppies are quite possibly among the most helpless forms of multicellular life ever given birth to by this fantastic universe They come factory-equipped with only two abilities, “eating” and “sleeping.” And when I say those are the only two abilities they have from the start, I’m not kidding; “breathing” isn’t a capability installed at the factory (it takes a bit of work to get them to do that when they’re born,” and neither is “peeing” (the mother has to prompt them to do that after they feed–like I said, biology is disconcerting).

However, the sleeping is very sweet. The snuzzle up against whatever warm surface is available and go all limp, and when they sleep, they dream.

They turned out to be rather a lot of work; for the first several days of their lives, they needed to be tended to and to feed every two hours. Since I work from home, it fell largely on me to take care of them; for about three or four days, I set my alarm to go off every two hours on the spot, and slept only in snippets between. In the wild, of course, dogs don’t have human beings to look after them with this kind of diligence; but then again, in the wild, a dog might have a littler of eight or ten pups, two of which survive.

There are lots and lots more pictures and commentary below. Click here to see more pictures of puppies and go ‘Aww!’ a lot. Caution: Management not responsible for diabetic attack.

Boston Chapter 7: Squeeeeee!

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There is a place that is the embodiment of all that is good and wonderful, where those who are virtuous–those who have, through the diligent and conscientious effort to right thinking and a proper attitude, developed an innate sense of what is worthy and good for the soul–can one day hope to go. And it’s in St. Louis.

Upon fleeing Meramec Caverns, which according to a little-known tale was once used as a hiding place by Jesse James (or so I’m told), we made our way to the city of St. Louis, where we stayed the night with some friends of Claire’s. The next morning, while we had breakfast on the back porch and scratched a large and patient poodle behind the ears, they said “You are going to City Museum before you leave town, right?”

At that moment, I was still naive. I vaguely recall saying something like “Yeah, we talked about doing that.” Enlightenment was, for me, still several hours away, which explains the casualness of my reply.

After we had finished our buttered muffins and bid farewell to Claire’s friends and the floppity-eared dog, we traveled in a meandering fashion through downtown St. Louis. The museum wasn’t terribly easy to locate, even with the aid of a GPS gadget whose synthesized voice makes an amusing phonetic mess of the word “Washington,” or as it says, “Waaaaaashingtorn,” as in “In five hundr’d feet, turn llleft on Waaaaaashingtorn Avenue.” But we eventually wiggled and woggled our way there, and parked in a small nondescript parking lot on a small nondescript block.

At this point, enlightenment was mere minutes away.

We rounded the corner, and the entrance to all that was good and wonderful stretched before us, as glittering and magnificent as the pearly gates of myth, only cooler–poetry written in curved rebar and patterned steel.

I still was not quite aware of what lay beyond, but at this point, I was beginning to have a dim sense that this would be an experience by which all future joy could be measured.

Part of that dim sense was sparked, no doubt, when I looked up. It’s not every day that one encounters a building with a hollowed-out airplane glued to it, with tunnels snaking around and through the superstructure.

We passed through the gates and gave money to St. Peter, who turned out to be significantly less expensive than the more traditional depictions might lead one to believe. From there, we passed through a wide stone hallway, cast-iron lamps mounted to its walls, and out into a vast, tiled chamber decorated with sculptures of all sorts of strange and bizarre sea monsters. The ceiling was entirely hidden by strips of–I don’t know, foil of some sort?–which moved constantly in the air currents, in ways this image can not convey.

Enlightenment was roaring toward me like a freight train whose engineer, coming off a four-day bender of cocaine and a bevy of Brazilian hookers, had fallen fast asleep at his post, his hand firmly on the throttle, urging his great iron horse to an exuberance of speed far in excess of what was safe or sane, and…oh, god, that sentence got away from me a bit there. Sorry.

What you can’t see in the picture above is the ceiling, or more precisely the tunnels in the ceiling.. Most of the statues are hollow, and there’s a network of tunnels fastened to the ceiling which you can get to by limbing up, around, or through the fishy sculptures. It’s awesome.

Above the ceiling is a crawl space, about four feet tall or so. The crawlspace itself, accessible only through the tunnels, is a warren of more tunnels, strange spaces, sculptures, pipes, and little little maze-like things that bring the explorer out abruptly into unexpected metal balconies.

By now, the eight-year-old inside me, who as I have probably mentioned really isn’t all that different from me, was just absolutely singing with delight And we hadn’t even started to scratch the surface of awesome yet.

City Museum is like a candy bar made of awesome. Beneath the milk chocolate coating of awesome is a creamy center of nougat filling made of awesome, with a rich caramel layer of sweet, sweet awesome carefully folded on top. No matter how far you explore, something even more awesome is awaiting the next…um, bite.

Upon crawling down out of the ceiling, we found ourselves in another huge room, dominated by an awesome staircase of awesome up to the second floor, which was made all the more awesome on account of being flanked by a gigantic slide coming down.

A gigantic slide! Running all the way down the stairs!

“Giant slides” is actually something of a standing theme at City Museum. At one point, we discovered a narrow space on the second floor with a small trap door that descended into darkness. Claire hopped into the hole and found a long, dark slide that drops down into the basement, where a narrow slit in the wall brings one back up into the Land of Weird Fish Sculptures It’s hard to imagine, even with all the faculties of the human mind, anything more fun.

But I digress.

The top of the slide that hugs the stairway looks like this:

Midway down the slide, this is the vista which presents itself to the rapidly descending visitor.

I want that giant round cage, oh yes I do. The things I would do with it would contravene at least sixteen international treaties. Oh, yes. I even have the perfect padlock for it…

We spent a couple of hours running (and sliding) around with glee, and then we decided to head up to the rooftop, which is also part of the museum.

And were blown away. As cool as everything we’d seen so far was, the rooftop was even more awesome. If the inside portion of City Museum is a candy bar made of awesome, the rooftop is a candy bar made of awesome being fed to you by a gorgeous houri dressed in nothing but awesome while you recline on a bed of awesome while being fanned gently with fans of awesome that stir the sea breeze of awesomeness all about you. If paradise is a place of joy unimaginable by mere humans, the rooftop of City Museum is that place.

That bit, however, will have to wait until next time.