Carv's Thinky Blog I'm an author with a focus on satirical science fiction.

If Not Now, When?

I want to be better.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do in the wake of a tragedy is to look inward. As Friday stretched into the weekend, many of us logged onto Facebook, our twenty-first century church house, to commune over the loss of twenty-six innocent lives. We responded the best way we knew how, saying, in a thousand ways both trite and original, that a.) our hearts were broken, b.) we wished we knew how to help, and c.) there must be a silver lining. Well, there is no silver lining. There's nothing we can do that will bring those children or their doomed protectors back. There's nothing you or I could say or do that would make even the slightest dent in their community's unfathomable pain. That's a hard truth to write. It was an even harder truth to feel. We sure felt it, though, didn't we? And we hoped, in our self-comforting way, that at least maybe this horror would bring us closer together as a country.

And then within minutes we were arguing over about how to be more caring, meaning holier or smarter or righter. I say "we" because I did it, too. Please don't take this as a lecture. It's a confession. I want to be better.

The debate this weekend focused on two issues. First, some people claim God abandoned our schools because we abandoned Him. Well, I'm probably the wrong guy to point this out, but the U.S. has the highest population of Christians of any country in the world. True, we're probably as agnostic as we've ever been these days, but that's not saying much. And if you're willing to suggest, even suggest, God allowed twenty children to die because we decided not to make a daily ritual of prayer in our schools, then you're describing a Deity Who deserves none of your affection. I don't believe in that God. I'll bet you don't, either. Not that God. You shouldn't. That God would be worse than any Devil ever imagined. And please don't hand me that business about free will. You have the "free will" to let a killer get away with shooting a child in front of you, but if you do, especially if you have the power to stop a mass murder, you'll be indicted as an accessory, as well you should be. You can't inject God into this discussion without opening...

Well, obviously this is one of those "can of worms" topics that is bigger and deeper than any of us, and I probably shouldn't delve into it further, especially since it's not the real meat of my comments. Suffice it to say I refuse to believe God allows people to die simply because of their political or even moral choices. That's magical, medieval thinking, and we need to outgrow it.

The other hot topic this weekend was gun control. In any sensible republic, this would be the time, maybe long past the right time, when we had a sober, mature, adult conversation about how to keep insane people from getting their hands on automatic weapons. But we can't seem to have that conversation, because the assumption is "gun control" = "the government is coming to take the guns you bought with your own money to protect your home and family or at least feel like you could if you had to." That also is medieval thinking, because I know very few people--I can count them on the fingers of one hand--who suggest any such thing. As for me, I don't want all your guns. I don't want the government in charge of such a program. I believe in the right to bear arms.

Having said that, I believe in the right to bear arms the exact same way I believe in freedom of speech or car ownership or religion or any other freedom. When your freedom gets in the way of children's safety, your freedom must bend. That's called being a grown-up. You can certainly own a car. You can even drive it. You can't drive it at eighty miles an hour in a school yard.

Now wait just a doggone minute, you say. I own a gun, and I'm no danger to children. How dare you? I know. I know many of you own guns, and I know your kids are at more risk driving to the store than living next to your duly locked gun safe. I know because my mom has a small arsenal locked in a gun safe. I know because I've been trained in how to use guns by people who understood the level of danger they represent. I know my friends are good people, sane people, who can be trusted with a weapon. I want you to be able to protect your family. I know you're hunters and you enjoy that, and I like free venison. We have no difference of opinion on any of that. But if you believe, if you genuinely believe, it should be easy for average people to buy and load semi-automatic weapons, then I really don't know what to say anymore. Does it have to be all or nothing? My friends, can we not even talk about this?

Because really, in almost any moral question in life, isn't the truth somewhere smack in the middle? Isn't it possible, for example, that freedom of speech has its limits? I raise that example because freedom of speech is my own pet right. I believe in it body, mind, and soul. But when I hear the Westboro "Baptist Church" plans to picket the funerals of children, I realize my favorite freedom can be abused, so even freedom can benefit from limits. (It sounds paradoxical, I know. C'est la vie.) Should freedom of religion be extended to even those Westboro monsters? Is that how anyone wants it? Is it possible, even probable, that in order to keep our civilization functional, we may sometimes have to compromise around the edges of even our most cherished "rights?"

I ask because I believe, even more than God or guns, our American hatred of compromise is the biggest obstacle to preventing another Newtown. And we must. We simply must. I don't want to hurt like this anymore. Do you? I thought not. So why can't we just talk about things? Why is the word "compromise" seen as a negative? It's basically the foundation of any working civilization. Don't we know that, in our heart of hearts? So why do slogans like "never give an inch!" and "no quarter asked, no quarter given!" resonate so happily in the American psyche?

I saw a lot of people blaming the media this weekend. It's the news, people said. It gets us so worked up we can't even think anymore. Well, I used to work in TV news, and I can promise you, whatever you may have heard about the "liberal media," it's owned by incredibly rich people. The media may not always agree with your preconceptions, but believe me, the media has only one bias: it wants to make money. And in order to make money, it needs your attention. It tries like hell to go wherever you're looking. If everyone started watching calm, clearheaded summaries on PBS, that's what every other news program would look like before the week was out. This isn't about how the media presents us with information. It's about the kind of stimuli we seek.

We're a thrill-seeking nation, short on patience and long on extreeeeeme! We like monster trucks and fisticuffs and 'splosions and silicone and yelling and crying and colors and sound. Our national anthem crescendos toward "rockets' red glare" and "bombs bursting in air." AC/DC, once decried as "the devil's music," now accompanies Walmart commercials. We pretend to declare wars on things like poverty and drugs that aren't aware they're in a war. We use pronouns like "us" and "we" to refer to the 'roid-raging athletes on our favorite football teams. We even burst into sobs when they lose, as if people we don't know losing a ball game somehow affects our lives. We use inflammatory rhetoric like "George Lucas raped my childhood!" to complain about silly children's movies about light-swords and robots. We can't seem to talk about anything without raising our voices or leaping to doomsday conclusions about every eventuality. There are people in my family we can't even mention the duly elected President of the United States around because they will literally start screaming and their hearts will explode.

My friends, I ask you in all sincerity, what is wrong with us? Aren't we better than this? Why do mundane budget sessions have to end in "fiscal cliff" and "armageddon" scenarios? Why can't we say "snow" without adding the suffix "-pocalypse?" When did vitriolic anger addicts Sean Hannity and Bill Maher acquire the status of journalists? How did we get so worked up? Don't we know we have each other's best interests at heart? Are we so wedded to our insane American drama junkie personality that we can't take a single step back and reassess, even if it means risking the lives of children?

It's so hard to look in the mirror and realize we've gone crazy, but that's what we've done. We've allowed ourselves to degenerate to a place where we can't even look each other in the eye and discuss our mutual future, or that of our children, in good faith. We can't take steps to minimize global warming, because even admitting there is such a thing is decried as anti-business. We can't resolve our budget woes, because the rich will be damned if they'll pay the same tax rate they paid under Reagan. We can't let more people get married or the End of the World will be upon us. We treat everything like the magic trigger that'll somehow undo the fabric of our society. But the sad thing is, we're the trigger, and even worse, we're all trigger happy. I'm as guilty as you, Gentle Reader, perhaps more so. I want to be better.

And They’re Off!

The cast and crew of Sherlock's Last Case enjoyed four solid and amply-attended performances over opening weekend, with four more weekends remaining. We also received our first review, overwhelmingly positive, from Michael Dresdner. I'll keep you up to date on the production as it continues. In the meantime, here's my director's note for the program:

Sherlock's Last Case is not part of Conan Doyle's canon. Far from it. It's a story he would never have written; but though he might've abhorred it, he might also have admired it. After all, it features mysterious ladies, cunning traps, hairbreadth escapes, and diabolical villainy, yet there's always time for a witty bon mot and a full pipe.

As a Sherlockian of long standing, I think much of the charm of Conan Doyle's classic yarns depends on the relative harmlessness of their crimes. The Master battled murderers, sure, but he was a long way from our world of al Qaeda and weaponized anthrax. Many commentators express wonder that Holmes and Watson never sought Jack the Ripper in any canonical story, but that would've been too grim by far; we prefer the minor threats of an amoral college professor or supernatural hound. Yet even in 1897, darkness was falling, and the London of gaslights and hansom cabs was about to give way to the blood-soaked twentieth century. This is a story about Watson and Holmes in their twilight.

I'm a theatre critic part-time, so it should've been nerve-wracking to direct or act in the same community where I've reviewed the labors of my peers. Lakewood Playhouse rolled out the red carpet and continually inspires me with its competence, passion, and imagination. Sherlock's cast and crew surpassed my fondest hopes, and I'm grateful to them and my long-suffering wife for helping me stage one of my dream shows. It's theirs now, and I know you're going to love it. The game is afoot!

Hello, I’m a Name Brand

A few years ago, when my novel Lightfall was about to street (we cool kids use "street" as a verb), my publisher advised me to cultivate a web presence, starting with this site. Suddenly I morphed from Christian Carvajal to ChristianCarvajal.com, and I've had mixed feelings about that ever since. My publisher wanted me on Twitter, so there I am, @carvwriter. I went out and pressed the flesh and splattered comments about Lightfall all over my Facebook account and made a public nuisance of myself; but unfortunately, it turns out that's a vast, inescapable component of being a professional writer. I don't like being a name brand, but I sure can't afford to not be one.

So hey, may I take this opportunity yet again to invite you to download, read, and review my new ebook, Rereading the Bible, by using that convenient link in the menu to your right? I like the book, and I think it compiles and crystallizes many of my thoughts on the Bible effectively, but I didn't self-publish it merely to release another book. My larger goal is to remind you that I'm an author.

A month or so after Lightfall was released, it was already clear it wasn't on its way to the New York Times bestseller list, but it was successful (and lucrative!) in ways I didn't expect. Being an author gave me the credentials needed to land that job at Cengage. It aimed me straight at the Weekly Volcano, if only by boosting my self-confidence enough to apply there. Heck, I even found myself delivering motivational speeches, which is bananas. I've been a professional writer--meaning paid, in money--for two and a half years now. Not too shabby. It's one of a handful of careers I always wanted.

Look, I'll be honest, I'm not gonna earn squat from Rereading the Bible. I'm selling it for cheaper than McDonald's sells an order of fries. Why? Because the goal isn't to make money on book sales, it's to launch a new enterprise I call Carv's ThinkyWorks. If I can write a novel or an agnostic Bible commentary, it's a safe bet I can write about your company. If I can write, record, and edit an amusing vlog before lunch, maybe I'd be a good fit for your corporate video project. Maybe you need a public speaker, or a technical writer, or a teacher. I've been all those things...and I'm good at them.

No one likes a braggart; but then again, isn't bragging the whole point of a resume? My name is Christian Carvajal (TM), and I run Carv's ThinkyWorks. I'm the brain, hands, and heart behind this site and everything on it. That's my brag for the day. I feel grody publicizing myself and my writing, but I vastly prefer it to false modesty from me or anyone else. As my old-school text resume says, I tell great stories. That's my purpose, my identity, and my brand. You should put me to work.

Or at least read my book.

“5 Phrases I Think Christians Shouldn’t Say”

I want to turn your attention to a thoughtful blog post by Pastor Tim Brown, aka "the Reluctant Christian." I agree with everything he says here. His reminder that "Christian" is a noun in the Bible rather than an adjective is particularly insightful.

Have you said any of these things? Your heart was probably in the right place, but was your head?

Check it out.

5 Phrases I Think Christians Shouldn't Say

Thinking Locally, Selling Globally

So I was eating lunch with a friend of mine--Kitzel's corned beef, delicious--when my friend mentioned a company called MerchantOS. Ever heard of it? If you're looking for a "No" button to click, don't bother; I assume you haven't. That's because the company is based in Olympia, Washington, and I live in Olympia, Washington, and I'd never heard of it until just that moment. A search of the Olympian newspaper's website reveals exactly three references to MerchantOS, all in reference to a college startup workshop the company supported and attended. MerchantOS has one of those generic names that could refer to an open source Windows 7 competitor or, just as easily, a Russian Mafia front. In fact, one must scan its "About" page to learn the company has already handled a billion U.S. dollars in business transactions.

Uhh, excuse me? Say what?

See, that gets my attention. Now, most of you aren't fortunate enough to live in Olympia, so I should tell you a bit about our disgustingly livable environs. (I dig that word, "livable," by the way, as if the less "livable" city of Houston, Texas were slathered in poisonous gas. Which, let's face it, it kind of is.) Olympia is our state capital, a college town full of highly educated, mostly liberal people. Education doesn't always enjoy a one-to-one correspondence with intelligence, but in our case, it usually does. What we loosely call Oly is really four small towns: the west and east side of Olympia proper, the eastern workaday community of Lacey, and the southern, decidedly middle-class Tumwater (where my wife and I happily reside). Together, they contain about a hundred thousand citizens. We enjoy a somewhat bohemian reputation, thanks to a mostly defunct brand of beer, the Evergreen State College (aka Berkeley North), and our place in rock history as the birthplace of grunge and its distaff cousin, the riot grrl movement. Things you expect to find in Oly: sleeve tattoos, deep-fried vegan burritos, "Coexist" bumper stickers, and people who smell like Woody Harrelson's man-cave. Things you don't expect to find in Oly: haut cuisine, Rick Santorum, and multimillion-dollar business security outfits.

MerchantOS created and sells an online service for handling POS (point of sale) transactions. For about fifty bucks a month, each card-swipe transaction handled by a small business is processed over an Internet-based service that also keeps track of purchase orders, inventory, daily batches--all those boring essentials. It's a pretty nifty way of solving a variety of everyday problems, and while online POS may not be as sexy as Near Field Communications or Google+ (ah, Google+, you were cool for a week), MerchantOS has attracted a surprising flow of dinero in less than a decade. It was started in 2004 by Ivan Stanojevic and Justin Laing, two San Jose bicycle geeks who set out to code a POS program specifically for bike shops, including their own. The product worked so well that it escaped into the wide world of small businesses, so MerchantOS set up a full-time operation here in Thurston County, staffed largely by idealistic young Evergreen alumni. But don't be fooled! For an unpretentious company you'd need GPS to find, MerchantOS is surprisingly secure: its defensive protocols include 128-bit encryption, Level III explosion resistance (take that, Hans Gruber!), and what the company website calls "multiple mantraps"...which are really just hardened airlocks, but sound awesomely like pits full of Malay curare spears, or perhaps giant rolling boulders to chase intruders from the server farm.

Now, if you happen to be someone who runs a small business--say, a bike shop with half a dozen employees--you might desperately need a POS transaction system, but know relatively little about POS transactions. It may surprise you to learn, for example, that there are dozens of vendors offering POS software, the best-known being the impersonal software giant QuickBooks. A company called Imonggo offers a web-based POS system free, and with very high ratings. MerchantOS, like many of these companies, succeeded by targeting a specific niche first (in this case, small bike shops). Soon, however, thinking locally morphed into selling globally. The free edition of Imonggo, while certainly first-rate, has some significant limitations: it can only handle one store with less than a thousand product items, it doesn't offer tech support by email, and vendors are unable to download sales data to their in-store computers. These features are available in Imonggo's Premium edition, but its cost is comparable to MerchantOS's standard cost per month.

What MerchantOS sells first and foremost is a quality product, but it does so by conveying the scrappy, idiosyncratic personality of Olympia at every level of service. Local flavor is all over the company website, from pictures of its founders' vacations to mild profanity to beer pong at the office Christmas party. Don't get me wrong, the MerchantOS product itself is entirely professional, but potential clients get a feel for the people--not just the product--they'll be working with. When vendors sign on with MerchantOS, they don't feel like they're buying a boring Firefox add-on and getting a generic product and email receipt; rather, they're forming a relationship with Ivan and Justin and the whole support staff on a personal, multidimensional, first-name level. Not every small business owner runs a bike shop or even owns a bike, but potential customers learn Ivan and Justin ran their own small business so they know what vendors need. When you scan the About page on Imonggo's site, by contrast, pretty much all you get is a stamp-sized PNG of a featureless office building in the Philippines. Yikes.

It occurs to me that MerchantOS is a web-based service that greets the world by using a web-informed approach. The company has a personality that's been crafted for Internet social conventions. Twenty-first-century customers respond positively to quirky, individual elements that would've seemed unprofessional in the old business model and atmosphere. This actually hearkens back to a pre-corporate mentality, when the local barber was a hit because a.) he cut hair professionally and b.) (this is just as important!) he told wonderfully off-color fishing stories. I may not be able to get my hair cut by a charismatic barber in Trenton, New Jersey--I'd need a true local business for that particular service--but cool vendors in Trenton can buy quality, scalable transaction services from two laid-back dudes in Olympia. The day will come, I think, when we all need and expect every vendor we do business with, for any service or product at all, to feel like our "friend" via Internet social media. I can tell you from trying to sell my novel that the only way to interest potential readers (aka buyers) in a no-name, first-time author was to put my individuality out there. It's not about becoming a name brand. It's about establishing a relatable identity. If I told a few bad jokes and put my book in someone's hand, chances are, that person would decide whether to buy my product based on what they knew about me. Not my publisher...not my credentials...not even my product (which, after all, he or she hadn't read yet)...but me. You can offer the best product in the world, but trust me, someone out there has a product very nearly as good. If you're reading my site, you should be reading hundreds of other authors whose books are comparable, perhaps even (dare I say it?) superior to mine. But you read me first. Why? Because, whether you like everything about me or not, you have a feel for who I am. I suspect that's how every product will be sold in the brave new web-life world.

The greatest benefit of all this is that nothing has a necessary, inflexible center anymore. "Things fall apart," Yeats wrote, "the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...Surely some revelation is at hand." The poet wrote these lines in 1919 to commemorate the War to End All Wars (sigh), but they apply more happily to the Internet Age. Thanks to digital technology, one needn't be Spielberg or even an L.A.-based slicko to be the auteur of a visual effects movie. Peter Jackson works out of distant Wellington, New Zealand, Battlestar Galactica (the good one, I mean) was made in Vancouver, and Sin City was shot in Austin, Texas (an arts capital not unlike Olympia, Washington). Writers need no longer relocate to New York or Los Angeles to find publishers or readers. And yes, a small startup in Olympia, Washington can be a hidden money fortress bristling with intrusion monitoring, mantraps, and (for all I know) the zombie Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang.

I realized this would happen way back in 1994, but I was too broke and busy (I was just starting grad school, among other personal crises) to take advantage of the opportunity. I remember asking my then-boss if I could teach "electronic mail" as part of an Intro to Microcomputers class, and although he was a bona fide genius who wrote the book, literally, on the Ada programming language, he predicted it was a minor diversion that would never catch on. I knew the Internet would generate superficial celebrities, which it did a la Rebecca Black and Antoine Dobson, but also that it would decentralize other glamorous professions. The Internet, for better or worse, is the great democratizer, and if you, my friend, want to make metric crap-tons of money without leaving your parents' basement, this is still a pretty great place to do it. The web is a functioning meritocracy, so one good bike shop POS transaction system can generate a global empire.

There's a song from the musical Title of Show that goes, "I'd rather be nine people's favorite thing than a hundred people's ninth favorite thing," and that used to be my whole raison d'etre. But it occurs to me that what we used to call, aptly, "the World Wide Web" is now a place where the best and brightest among us can make exceptional cake and sell it, too. The next Great American Novel will be written in hypertext. Some kid who's now directing Star Wars fanfic videos will one day oversee the next Pixar. And a couple of GORP-scented bike geeks from San Jose can juggle billions of dollars from a nondescript bunker in Patchouli Town, USA. It could happen to you, Gentle Reader. We live, work, and dream in unprecedented times.

Be Gentle…

What you're about to see (should you choose to hit the white "Play" triangle below--you know how this works) is my very first ever video blog. It was recorded in one ad-libbed take and then edited by a total newb (me) in about half an hour...so please, manage those expectations accordingly.

Brahms: You’ll Like It!

The title above is a lame pun only my Oklahoma friends will get. Everyone else, please accept my apology.

I find devotional music beautiful, ironically enough. I enjoyed singing in my college chorale, and I missed it over the years. My wife, a trained alto who sang with Opera Pacifica, inspired me to audition for their choir director, Claudia Simpson-Jones. Much to my surprise, I was accepted and "cast" as a bass. Now, almost two decades after my last choir experience, I find myself belting Brahms's Requiem along with Amanda and about 150 other voices. Not to brag, Gentle Reader, but cold-reading Shakespeare comes easy to me. This fancy belting stuff is hard!

Singing choral music isn't like crooning along with Bruno Mars on the radio. It requires a wider range, for one thing, and it helps if one can read musical notation. I can't. The last two months have been a desperate crash course in picking through a splatter of flags and dots, struggling through my "role" while keeping track of the tenors, altos, and sopranos. Then, a few rehearsals ago, we blended our efforts with a full orchestra. It's incredibly difficult, even for the trained opera singers who surround me. It feels as if I'm trying to prepare a gourmet meal between Anne Burrell and Bobby Flay. They're awfully supportive, but I'm sweating all the same.

So how can I persuade local readers to come listen to us sing? Choral music is achingly lovely in a way popular music seldom achieves. We admire the harmonies of the Beach Boys or Shins, but ignore an entire body of work devoted to much more complex melodic intertwinings. I don't claim to know more than the basics myself, but even my untrained ear can process Brahms's awe-inspiring fugues; oh, I can hear what he's doing; I just can't imagine where he got the talent needed to accomplish such a thing.

In film soundtrack composition, when a melody references onscreen action directly, they call it "Mickey Mousing." For example, in classic cartoons, if Mickey took a spill, the tympanist played a thump of percussion. Similarly, choral music often "speaks the dialogue" of the poem or verse that inspired it. You can imagine which instrument accompanies the Requiem line, "We shall all be changed ... at the sound, the sound of the trumpet." When the text promises, "Yea, I will comfort you, as one whom his own mother comforteth," the music swoons into a low lullaby. "Here on earth have we no continuing place," sighs the verse, and the alto voices pun on that text by "continuing" past all the other voices. "The righteous souls are in the hand of God!" the Requiem vows, with what can only be described as a superhero's fanfare. It's too, too clever, but more than that; it's as glorious as music gets, from any genre.

Generation after generation, people rediscover this stuff, so it plays to packed houses after centuries. We'll fill the main auditorium at South Puget Sound Community College. You should give it a shot. For a requiem, it's awfully lighthearted. There's a baritone soloist in our ensemble who has a voice like warm honey, and he's only an undergrad, still in the first bloom of his abilities. The choir is made up of folks from Opera Pacifica, SPSCC, and St. Martin's University, along with overreaching posers like me. The Olympia Chamber Orchestra joins us. Chances are, you Olympians will know someone on stage--but even if you don't, I can promise you no MP3 will ever hold a candle to such a live musical performance on a grandiose scale. It's like hanging out in God's media room.

Our next choral project: La Traviata, by the incomparable Giuseppe Verdi, quite possibly the greatest Italian composer of all time.

Hey, no pressure, right?

[South Puget Sound Community College, Brahms's Requiem, Saturday, March 3, 7:30 p.m., $15-$20, 2011 Mottman Rd SW, Olympia, 360.753.8585. This shameless self-plug was reprinted courtesy of the Weekly Volcano and its editor, Matt Driscoll.]