Random things

There are actual Satanists.  I did not know that.  Now I do.  I'm interested in learning more about their beliefs but I don't have time at the moment.  In fact for almost everything it seems to be a running theme that I don't have time at the moment.

I completely forgot to talk to my psychologist about getting registered in the school as being disabled.  University was the first place where you had to get that... distinction?  Label?  Not sure.  That thing for yourself.  Every school before that just knew.  Presumably at some point before my memory kicked in in full force someone somewhere had to make a determination, but after that they just passed it on up the line.  So for as far back as I can remember in elementary school they knew, the elementary school passed on the information to the middle school, the middle school passed it on to the high school when the time came.

This hasn't been a problem because I, being one of the most boring people in existence, have had a truly small number of teachers given how long I've been in university.  Thus I have tended to work with people who know me and thus knew the problems I face.  It was pointed out that teachers new to me have no idea what the fuck is going on in my head, and if I made it official they would and that could possibly lead to good things.  Sort of.  More that it could lead to the possibility that good things deferred might be able to count as good things not-late, or whatever.  Learning disabilities, mental disabilities, whatever disabilities, or no: you still have to get the work done at some point.

So another two weeks before we try with that thing.  I could look into it on my own, but I could do a lot of things.  Provided that "could" here refers to physical capability rather than mental, which seldom line up.

I have at long last sent Social Security the thing to send Albany to get a copy of my birth certificate because the original wasn't good enough for reasons that no one other than the one person, who happens to be an asshole, handling my case knows.  Everyone else just responds with shock, "You brought the original into the building and showed it to the person and that wasn't enough?"  National, local, doesn't matter, everyone else in the Social Security Administration is as bewildered by this as I am.

All that was required was that I walk across the street to my credit union when it was open and get one thing photocopied and another notarized.  That, to me, is something that takes near herculean amounts of effort. And I am far from Hercules.  Or Herakles, depending on whether you take it from the Latin or straight from the Greek.

My two major problems are these:
1) Initiating an activity on my own.
2) Doing work while unsupervised.

I have lots of other problems, but those are the two big ones.  I could only flip burgers, as just one example, if the company hired someone to watch me do it (even then it would take me a while to get started).  Which they wouldn't do because they could just have that person flip burgers and cut the burger flipping staff in half.

Once the Social Security office discovered this they set me on various tasks all of which required initiating activity on my own and doing it to the end while unsupervised.  And they wonder why it took me months to get done.  If I could do these things I wouldn't be applying for fucking disability, thank you very much.

Elsewhere, but on this blog, I compared it to saying to someone in a wheelchair, "Getting aid is easy, all you have to do is go up those stairs and ask for it.  No.  There isn't an elevator.  Why do you ask?"  I leave it to people in wheelchairs to determine if the comparison is fair.  I think it is if you're considering a standard "Legs don't work but arms do so an unpowered wheelchair can be used for locomotion," wheelchair and wheelchair occupant.  Arm power alone can get you up stairs, but it'll take a lot longer than someone walking and it'll be a serious accomplishment when you reach the top.

Given my mental problems the tasks given me seem like that kind of thing.  Hopefully, hopefully hopefully hopefully, this was the last one.  Hopefully it's in their hands now.  Hopefully I don't need to do any more of these, "It would be easy if you weren't disabled but this seems like it was specifically designed to be really damn hard for people with your disability."  Hopefully.

And no, I'm actually not filled with hope.  But there is a sense of relief that at least I got that part done.

Before that, seemingly out of nowhere came things for the Social Security of Maine.  So not the local Portland office, but the main office of the state in Augusta.  I couldn't figure out why they mysteriously appeared, but I did my best to fill out the forms and send them in and follow the instructions and whatnot.  These things asked me about my disability (though, strangely, never asked what the disability was.)  I knew it couldn't have anything to do with the SSI I was applying for because the application with them was being held up until they could determine my birth date for absolutely positively sure.  Every other government agency in the country (local, state, and federal) knows my birth date.  Social Security fucked it up.  Hell, I think the nation of Italy knows my birth date.

Having had time to reflect and reread and think and whatnot I think I know what happened.  When I applied for food aid I also applied for medical aid.  Now this is through HHS so I don't know why Social Security is involved and honestly I don't give a damn, but it would appear that this time (no idea why not last time) when they sent me a thing to renew my food aid they also assumed that I'd be reapplying to get the medical aid I was denied (very short version: I was denied on the basis of not having enough information, they didn't have enough information because they didn't contact any of the people I told them to contact.  When the opportunity came to appeal I simply didn't have the spoons.)

So that's all sent out and maybe I can get my medications paid for instead of a combination of having family members go broke buying them out of the kindness of their hearts and using student loan money.  (It's a living expense; it counts.  I checked before I got the loan.)

But, food aid and medical aid both apparently require me to talk to someone on the phone.  I got a very nice letter saying call this person on Monday through Friday between these hours.  After realizing today was a Friday (for some reason I thought it was Saturday) I did call.  Only to find out that the person I was to call would be busy for all but one of those hours.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The very nice letter said "Please call me with the following information" by deadline.  Otherwise benefits may be denied or cancelled or apocalypse or very bad things.

Now, if you're like me you're probably very interested in what the "following information" was.  There was none.  Nothing.  Blank page.  White space.  No ink.  Nothing.  Nicolas Cage in National Treasure couldn't figure out what the following information was because there was nothing there.

So I called the person, with the following lack of information, during the one hour he'd be available today.  Wasn't there.  Left a voicemail.

Now the deadline gives me all of next week so hopefully I'll get in contact to this person, give them the lack of information that they want, and thereby prevent the apocalypse, but that still leaves a lingering question.

Who the fuck says, "Please call me with the following information," and then doesn't have any information follow?  I mean, seriously?  Who?

Other than The Department of Heath and Human Services, I mean.  (That one was HHS not SSA.  So says the letterhead.)

My thing on aid, seems to be rather controversial, but not in the post I just linked to, instead in the thread that eventually inspired me to write the post.

I think part of it is that I'm not entirely against a nanny state and I believe that compartmentalization has benefits* and I have a fairly positive view of human nature.  If people get more aid than they need in one area, I trust that most of them will not sell it on the black market (there is currently a black market for government aid, no reason to assume that there wouldn't be under my proposed system) or spend it on things they neither want nor need just to be able to spend it all.

Likewise I assume that if the government did take care of the necessities (food, housing, clothing, medical care, education, fire, police, so forth) people would still get jobs.  Part of this is that I believe that people want more than just what is necessary.  Long ago there was a meeting of manufacturers and marketers where they realized that improvements had made it so they could no longer survive just selling what people needed, they instead needed to start selling things that people didn't need but did want, and in the absence of want they needed to create that want.  They're all still around.  And as John Oliver says, we cannot be beaten when it comes to consumption**.

If the idea is for everybody to be able to live with necessities, and have enough of a margin of error that they're not on the razor's edge of not living, then that still doesn't mean that the government is giving people everything they want, which means people still have an incentive to get a job, and capitalism can deal with wants rather than needs which is an area it seems much better suited for.

And I also believe that for a lot of people there is a desire to contribute, which means that even if they didn't need to they'd still want some kind of job.

But my idea of compartmentalized, "Here's your card, every month you get this much that can be used for food, this much for housing, this much for clothing, this much for..." which everyone gets got some serious pushback.  Not because it would cost so damn much (which it would, that's the reason that I always mention the fact that I'm in favor of serious tax reform alongside it, new revenue would definitely be needed) but because people, or at least one person, it's kind of fuzzy at the moment, don't like the idea of funds that can only be used for designated thing.

-

Ok, that was long.  There are various other things.  I tried to go to the credit union to get thing notarized earlier, but they had closed for two days on account of the blizzard.  Before the blizzard I opened the gate that I use to keep the dog in the backyard and the (back half of the) driveway when he goes out.  My hope was that friendly neighbor with plow would plow the snow into the back half of the driveway if he plowed the snow.  First off, he didn't plow the snow (though since then he has helped in plowing out the snowbanks that city plows leave in the front of the driveway) but second and more importantly, the result was that the gate couldn't be closed again.

Since the blizzard every time I think that the snow has gotten low enough that with shoveling (and ice breaking, what stopped me last time was reaching the ice core of the snowbank) I might be able to close the gate... it snows again.  Which means I can't close the gate, which means that there's nothing to keep the dog in the yard and back half of the driveway.  The solution has been to watch him when he goes out and verbally stop him if he starts heading toward the road.

That has worked, though inefficiently and annoyingly, with two exceptions.  Last night and today during the day.  Last night he saw a car and ran out to chase it.  Thankfully the car was parking on the street otherwise god knows if I'd have caught up with him.  I got him back into the house while shouting apologies.

Today was worse.  I think I've noted that my dog's breed is unknown for sure because he's a rescue and they don't come with pedigrees.  If you look up Mountain Cur on Wikipedia you'll see a photo of a dog that looks just like mine and that's what we think he is.

You'll also see that they're bred to bark.  Like almost any dog (or is it "any dog" without the "almost"?) they will fight to protect those they care about, but that's not what they're bred to do.  They're bred to do two things.  One is scare off dangers, which is done by barking at them, the other is participate in bear hunts.

Dogs do not participate in bear hunts by fighting the bear.  That would be a good way to lose a dog in a hurry.  Dogs participate in bear hunts by scaring the bear, and in so doing herding the bear.  (There was an episode with Dragon being called on to do a similar thing to a boar in Jane and the Dragon.†  I mostly bring this up because I happen to like Jane and the Dragon.  The TV show, never read the books.)  And how do you scare and thus herd a bear?  By barking at it.  Very loudly.

Attempts to use nurture to overcome nature and get him to bark less have thus far failed.  He barks at strange noises, and considers opening and closing car doors strange, he barks at anyone too far away to smell (For fear they might be Cylons I said to Lonespark, to which she replied, "But aren't we all Cylons now?"  Yes.  Yes, we are.)

The good news is that that's all he does, bark.  The bad news is that that's not much of a comfort when a strange dog runs after you barking his ass off.  I imagine it's rather terrifying.  And as I rushed out of the house after him today, thankfully not barefoot but in flip-flops totally ill suited to the cold and one of them broken enough that a certain amount of concentration should be devoted to making sure it doesn't fall apart (the right one, if it matters) I shouted to the young woman between attempts to call the dog back, "The good news is he doesn't bite.  The bad news is I don't know if he'll ever stop following you."  And I told her that if she stopped moving for a bit I could grab the dog and get him away from her.

She thanked me, which she honestly shouldn't have because it was my fuck up that let a loudly barking dog chase her down and harass her, and said that she's totally not a dog person.  I don't remember the exact words she used, probably not "totally", but something that indicated that this was worse than if it had happened to an average person.  This happened to someone who doesn't necessarily have a dog phobia (though she could for all I know) but at the very least a dog discomfort.

I have no idea how old she was.  She was a student, not a college student.  High school would be my guess based on when she was walking home.  But that's all I have to base my guess on because I really, really suck at telling age.  Someone asked me the other day how old Lonespark's children were (either my mother, my psychologist, or both) and I honestly have no idea.  After spending a day with them.  And previously I've shared a house with them for the night.  I suck at telling age.

I'm like Mike from Stranger in a Strange Land when it comes to telling age.

"Patty," Jill put in, "he really does mean that he can't guess. He hasn't had much chance to
learn to judge ages-you know how short a time he's been on Earth. And besides that, Mike
thinks of things in Martian years and Martian arithmetic. If it's time or figures, I keep track
of it for him."

Except, you know, without the excuse of having spent most of my life on Mars.

So, young woman hopefully not traumatized.  And the same goes for Lonespark's children.  He was able to sniff one, but never the other, and so he never stopped barking and had to be put in his room, which is unfortunately also the bathroom which made things somewhat difficult when the children had to go before leaving.  Also he tends to be afraid of people who are afraid of him, which really doesn't help at all.

(Because he barks as things he's afraid of.)

It would be much better if he were afraid of people who were not afraid of him because, mentally, they'd be much better equipped to weather the nonstop barking.  (On the other hand, it does make sense.  Someone who is afraid is much more likely to do something rash like attack the dog than someone who isn't afraid.)

-

The die is cast.

I've applied for Greece.  First hurdle: Do they accept me?  Second hurdle: if they accept me I have to make a down payment of $500.  Third hurdle: Then I have to pay the remaining $3,500.  Fourth hurdle: Then I have to pay airfare there and back.

If I can't make the money in time I'm pretty sure I lose that down payment.  Can I make the money in time?  I think so.

I've compared it to a bottle drive.  You can make a lot in one push with a bottle drive, but you can't go out and do the same thing the next day.  I think I can make a $4,000 push even though I don't think I could make enough to support myself.  Because I think that after the push I will have dried up the market so much that there's not another $4,000 left in it.

-

Speaking of stuff, there was a last little bit of each part of the resin in my old containers.  I decided to use it.  Huge mistake.  The stuff in the unopened new containers appears to be fine.  (Though testing will tell.)  But the stuff in the old containers was visibly off to begin with.  Think of curds separating from whey and you'll have some idea, but worse.  I tried to mix it back together,  I thought I had success.  It took a long damn time but I thought I had success.

Either I was wrong or it was so far gone that even remixed it wouldn't work.  Some of it never solidified, some of it partially solidified.  I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to clean out my molds, which I definitely need to do.

-

The person who was picking on me, appears to have stopped.  I don't know if the intervention of a teacher played a role.  Teacher made it clear that she'd rather not intervene as we're all adults and should be able to sort things out ourselves but also that things had gotten to toxic to the point that she was considering changing the rules for how we do things, which would definitely be an intervention.

She never did change the rules.

I don't know what happened (or didn't happen) behind the scenes, but from my angle it looks like person has largely stopped being an ass, and the things that remain are so low key that I'm not sure if they're really her being an ass or they're just things that I'm inclined to interpret that way based on past experience of her being an ass.

My hope is that she hasn't just picked a new target to direct her assholicness at but has really stopped being an ass.

It was brought up to me after the whole thing calmed down that the teacher was the wrong person to speak to about it.  (I only spoke to her because someone else brought up the possibility that maybe the student in question was doing it to someone else and since I wouldn't be there for that but maybe the teacher would, I should let the teacher know that this was something to watch out for.)  There are other people and other means and a zero tolerance policy for bullying and whatnot that I apparently could have invoked like fire from the sky.

My ultimate decision on learning this was one of wait and see.  If she keeps behaving herself then I see no benefit to make an official mess of things.  If she reverts to past behavior then I'll go to the proper authorities and see what can be seen.

-

I'm probably going to make a whole post on it at some point, but the idea I bring up here is one that I think would be awesome and I think would never happen.  The audience would be the overlap between people who like actual classics enough to catch reference to the style of good and bad translations alike and people who like Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess.  Not exactly the biggest audience ever.

Also, not yet developed idea, MST3K like silhouettes for each episode of both but instead of a hapless human and two robots, of a panel of classicists who actually know by heart the history/myth/both being butchered in the episode in question.  Or maybe not.

-

I've noticed that often when I try to type "think" I type "thing" and that the reverse is true as well.  I have no objections to typos (of which there are usually many) being pointed out in the comments, but until/unless that happens and I make a correction, if a sentence with think or thing in it is making no sense, try swapping it out for the other word.

-

I'm behind in all my classes and I think I just got the lowest grade on a test in years.  Though it was a respectable passing grade I feel like someone I once knew who said, "I got a B," and then had to explain, after receiving congratulations, that that was a bad thing.  Of course the grade I got was probably pretty good considering that I was trying so hard not to forget the signs (I mostly succeeded) that I completely overlooked the fact that deaf culture and history were going to be a not-negligible portion of the test too.

-

Did I mention that the Greece thing is with Harvard and they asked for a copy of my transcript which shows that last semester ended with three incompletes and a failure?  Yeah, suddenly wondering if getting accepted in the first place might be a bigger question than whether or not I can raise the money.

-

I like Roman Holiday even though it's the kind of film I normally wouldn't.  Even though I haven't seen all of it.  (Missed the beginning and haven't been able to catch it since.)  No one gets a happy ending, that's generally not the film for me.  But it's also referenced in .hack//Sign so now I get the reference (not that not getting it was a big deal because it's pointed out to be a reference to Roman Holiday and you really have everything you need in the scene) and more than that it's the perfect illustration of why I want to go to Greece.  It's the idea that having that one good day is worth it even if you have to return to your crappy life afterward.  Because you have the one good day, and you have the memories, and you've got stuff and stuff and stuff.

Were I not completely aware of my duty to my family and my country, I would not have come tonight. *pause* Or indeed ever again. 

-

There were probably other things to throw in here.

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* For example it is known that if there is a rent subsidy in an area the minimum rent usually rises to meet that subsidy, so it would seem like a very good idea to have any subsidy for rent cordoned off from other forms of aid otherwise the minimum rent might rise to a level that prevents people from getting enough of everything not-housing.  Thus I see it as valuable to have housing aid be only able to be spent on housing, and non-housing aid only able to be spent on non-housing.

** John Oliver, from Terrifying Times, which I recommend you buy***:

Now, I don't understand economics.  I don't fundamentally get how it works.  I've lived for 30 years on this planet... two elsewhere, and I still don't understand how the system works.  To me, economics is like the Dutch language-- I'm told it makes sense, but I seriously have my doubts.

But I want to understand economics. I feel like I have to.

So I bought this book recently which is designed to explain economics to someone who does not have the capacity to understand it.  And I learnt a key lesson in it, and that is that any nation's economic strength is solely in the hands of its citizens.  In your ability to consume.

Or if you want to be really great, in your ability to buy shit.

That is why America is the greatest economy on earth-- because you people cannot be beaten. 

As a citizen of the world, let me tell you, it is intimidating.  I have been to your malls.  They are cathedrals to bullshit.

I was at a mall in Connecticut and I saw an item in a shop window which stopped me dead in my tracks.

And I mean that.  I was moving, I saw this item and all of a sudden I wasn't moving anymore. 

It was, and I promise you this is true, an inflatable barbecue. 

*Audience laughs a lot* 

You're right.  *beat*  We should take a moment together to let the gravity of that sink in-- an inflatable barbecue. 

It was a full functioning barbecue with inflatable material around the outside of it so that you, like the man on the front of the box, could cook while swimming. 

Is there any greater example of what it is to live in the freest nation on earth than that?

*** As if ever anyone has bought something on my recommendation.  I can see whether anyone bought something by clicking through my links.  A few people have, or one person has a few times, and there's one universal truth.  What is bought is never, ever, what I actually recommended.  It would seem that someone, or someones, click my links, look at the thing I linked to, say, "I'm not going to buy that," and then found something they were going to buy while still in the same session thus earning me the 68 cents [correction] $1.64 (I should check more frequently because I'm rolling in the money now) [/correction] I have to my Amazon affiliate account.

On the other hand, the fact that my most dedicated readers are not Americans might play a role too.  I have a deal with Amazon, not Amazon Canada or Amazon UK.

† And I am somewhat pissed off that I can't post a link to it.  How the hell is the series not out on DVD?  With a total run-time of a little under ten hours it's a series that someone might actually be able to afford to buy unlike Hercules and Xena.

Mental Illness can be downright disturbing

It should come as no surprise to anyone reading that I am mentally ill.  Depression, and ADHD I've been diagnosed with.  Asperger's I'd argue isn't actually a mental illness but simply me occupying a different spot on a spectrum, a spectrum on which all human beings can be classed, than most people.  Others occupying a similar position argue that it is a mental illness and long for a cure.  There are some other things that might exist as well but in small enough amounts not to merit a diagnosis (then again that was the case with ADHD until the depression got out of its way.)

So I'm sort of "Mentally Ill Person Ahoy!"

And yet, at the same time, I can be just as freaked out by other mentally ill people as anyone else.

For example, today in one of my classes, while we were discussing sophists and rhetoric and a speech by a sophist in defense of Helen of Troy made just because he felt like making such a speech, the person next to me stood up and said that she had had enough and was leaving, she believed that it was clear that the teacher was making less than complementary references to her as a sort of undertow to her discussion   A hidden meaning just below the surface, at first she was adamant on this point and began to pack up her stuff, the teacher repeated several times that she (the teacher) had been doing no such thing.

The student asked for reassurance multiple times, something like, "You're really not?" repeatedly.  To which the teacher repeatedly said, "I'm not."

Then the student, having been calmed, sat down.  Let me remind you, right next to me.

And I was disturbed for the rest of the class.  After she left at the end of the class, still disturbed.  A feeling somewhere in my gut of deep unease in a place that I used to call my stomach until I learned that that's not actually where one's stomach is.  I don't think it went away until I was out of the building.

Was there any reason to believe that she was dangerous?  No.  In fact by demonstrating that she was (probably) mentally ill she placed herself in a category that I've always been told is less likely to do violence than the population at large.

I was none the less very disturbed.

As were other members of the class.

In fact I worry that if she thought she was being singled out beforehand people's reactions to her afterward might have confirmed that in her mind, because (however irrational such feelings may be) she was suddenly the scary person in the room.

I would have been more comfortable if she hadn't been talked down and had stormed off believing that the teacher was sending secret, and insulting, messages her way.  I wasn't the only one.  Is this uncharitable on my part?  Absolutely.  Were I a Christian there are any number of Bible verses you could slam me with to prove that I'm a horrible person for feeling that way.  I'd hazard a guess that other religions have similar prohibitions against putting your comfort over another person's well being in your manner of viewing the world.

It was clear that she was in a world the rest of us didn't occupy hearing things, or at least interpreting things, the rest of us couldn't, and that break from what I'm going to hope was reality was downright disturbing.

And it is interactions such as these that perhaps color people's beliefs about mental illness.  Not the statistics, not the reality of the situation, not the fact that she is presumably a normal person most of the time and this break from reality could likely have been prevented with appropriate care just as a hairline fracture can be prevented from becoming a much worse break in the bone if it's recognized and treated while still a hairline fracture.  Not the reality, but the feeling in ones gut.  The discomfort, the unease, the deep-felt belief that something very, very wrong just happened.

And that's assuming that people have any encounters with mental illness that they recognize as mental illness in the first place.  Otherwise they're just bombarded with the news people saying that every heinous act or belief is "crazy" or "insane".

But as human beings I think we need to be able to rise above gut reactions or abuses of language.  The girl sitting next to me in class disturbed me greatly, but that is no reason that I shouldn't wish her well and speak out in favor of her and all like her getting help.  That is no reason I shouldn't vote in her best interest whenever it is in my power to do so.

Even though I hear terms for mental illness used in the news to describe everything from the ill advised to the downright evil that doesn't mean that I should ever take my eyes off the fact that the news stories in which these terms are used are almost (but not quite) always about this misdeeds of sane people.  And, it must be added, doesn't mean that I shouldn't flat out reject any proposed solution that ignores the actual problem (sane people do bad things) and instead tries to shift the focus onto mental illness.

When someone has a break from reality, as the person next to me did today, it is downright disturbing and can result in an unpleasant visceral reaction.  But that doesn't change the fact that the only real problem is that she's not getting the medical care she needs to not misinterpret ordinary classroom talk as coded attacks.  It also doesn't change the fact that, if left untreated, she would almost certainly be able to make a better contribution to society than I would if left untreated.

My mental illnesses generally don't draw attention to themselves or me.  Without treatment I become the invisible person, the one you're vaguely aware is there but don't remember much about.  And that's assuming I'm able to show up in the first place.  I don't really know the girl I was sitting next to, I pay attention to class in class and don't tend to make much small talk before or after so my classmates remain largely unknown to me, but my best guess is that even with the occasional bout of paranoia she's still able to accomplish more than me when not treated.  I assume she's not treated now, but even if this semester has been her on good treatment, I still think that she'd do better than me in the absence of treatment for the both of us.

Similarly for the person who doesn't know anyone with a mental illness... well first off they're almost certainly wrong.  They probably know multiple people with mental illnesses, they're just unaware that those people have them.  But second, it's important for them to not let themselves be confused about where the problem lies when the sensationalist non-fact-checking thing that the news has become reports anything as crazy or insane or any other synonym for mental illness.  It's important to remember that the vast majority of the time the problem is sane people misbehaving and react accordingly whenever someone suggests that the solution to the problem of sane people misbehaving is to restrict the freedoms or invade the privacy of the mentally ill.

How I would do aid for necessities

Before we get to that, taxes (in the United States of America, I rarely comment on the politics of countries not my own.)  If you take away exemptions and loopholes and tax havens and credits and the downright screwy way we treat capital gains one fact becomes apparent about income tax: Everybody pays the same.

When all of the exploits and such are taken away and you're just left with, "This is the income tax upon which all of that other stuff is based," the fact of the matter is that everyone, from someone who earns no money to whoever earned the most (excluding capital gains because it's taxed a different way) everyone pays the same rate.

The differences come in because X% of 0 is 0.  Doesn't really matter how big X is so long as it's finite.  (if X is infinity then break out the calculus.)  If someone earns zero dollars in the top bracket then that zero dollars is taxed at the same rate as someone who did earn money.  It's just regardless of the rate the person who earns zero dollars in that range won't have to pay anything at that rate X% of zero is always zero.

Thus, at it's most basic, before we get into all the junk thrown on top, how you're taxed never changes regardless of how much or little you make.  This kind of thing has a lot going for it.  For one thing it means you don't ever run into a situation where earning more money results in you keeping less.  For another thing it means that you can instantly shut down any argument on, "How come they only pay [whatever] in income taxes," by pointing out that the person asking the question payed the exact same amount on that level of their income.  The envy that the rich have for the poor with respect to taxes becomes absurd once one realizes that they actually pay the same rate.  (Except for capital gains, and loopholes, and tax havens, and various other ways the rich are able to pay less than the poor in taxes.)

I bring this up because were it up to me basic aid (as in on necessities, not disaster relief and such) would be treated the exact same way.  Everyone gets the same.

Everyone gets food-stamps (now they come on cards) enough to afford to keep fed.  Everyone gets housing aid enough to give them adequate shelter (this includes heating), everyone gets access to medical care (probably via everyone getting on something like Medicare or Medicade.)  Everyone gets access to education, so, so forth.

One thing that this does is it eliminates layers upon layers of bureaucracy that are currently used to determine who is bad of enough to get help.  Everyone gets the same so there's no need to check to see if you're worthy.  You just have the food aid added to your food card every month, the other aid added to the other cards, and get a, "I've got health insurance through the government" card and so forth.

It also eliminates all of the work (paperwork, hoops to jump through, so on) that people need to do to get aid.

But another thing that it does is it puts a serious dent in the argument from envy.  Yes, the "undeserving poor" (a category that doesn't exist except in the minds of certain people) might be getting this stuff for free without having to work for it, but so too are you.

And it eliminates a problem that people who are on the edges face, which is that there are places where making a little bit more money will mean you no longer qualify for aid, which will end up leaving you worse off.  So it's in your best interest to not make more money.  Now I've never met someone who decided not to make more money on those grounds, but I have met someone who was seriously screwed over because he made two dollars too much (two fracking dollars) to be considered poor enough to get aid, which ended up leaving him poorer than if he just hadn't worked that year and thus qualified for aid.  If the aid never goes away then you never have that problem.

If we give everyone enough to be able to live with the basic necessities then we simplify the process of figuring out who to give to (everyone gets it), we eliminate the thresholds where incentives become perverse (if you make more you'll be off aid and thus worse off), we at the very least dent the argument from envy, we make it easier for people who need help to get it (because it comes to them automatically rather than depending on them doing thing after thing after thing to fight for it), and we loose very little.

The problem is, of course, that it costs more.  Consider food stamps alone, you'd have more than six times as many people on them.  Now some of the cost of that increase can be taken away by removing all of the work to determine who needs them, but I very much doubt it would be enough to take away all of that extra cost.  For fully funding it I think new revenue would be needed, which works fine for me because I think our tax code could use some serious reworking.  We need more tax brackets and the top marginal tax rate needs to be a lot higher.  Also taxing capital gains at a lower rate than the money people actually had to work for is absurd.

So the plan would involve higher taxes for some, but it would also mean that no one would ever have to fear being without the basic necessities because everyone, even the ones paying the higher taxes, would be given enough to take care of those by the government.  Whether or not someone like Bill Gates would use his foodstamps, were he given them, is an interesting question.  But the point is that by giving them to everyone you make sure that everyone who needs them gets them (something our current system doesn't accomplish)  and you make sure that there's never a perverse incentive to make less money in order to stay on aid.

The same with giving everyone medical insurance, or everyone money to be spent on housing.  The same with all necessities.

I do, in fact, still exist.

So all of the recent comments have been spam.  Don't go looking for them, what the spamfilter didn't catch I manually threw in the spamtrap.

The reason is kind of obvious, I have not been posting lately.  This is my vacation week, supposed to be spent catching up on classes where I was behind, preparing for a test in ASL on Monday, populating the blog with posts that I've been meaning to do, working on some other projects, and stuff.

Did any of that get done?  No.

Unless "And stuff" includes "Hang out with Lonespark and family," in which case that went great.  But it was one day out of ten so far (will be 11 in total, not all of them are technically vacation days, but it matters little to me if I don't have school because I don't have classes on that day of the week or if I don't have school because of vacation.)

But more notable, blogwise at least, than Lonespark and family is the total lack of progress in all conceivable areas on the days that I wasn't with Lonespark.  If I don't post I don't get comments and the spam takes over.  Which is why Dennis Markuze (an old fashioned spammer who does his work manually instead of with spambots) is the most recent human being to post a comment, and the only human being to say anything on the blog since we stopped talking about The Core (link to the movie, not discussion) on the first Vanishing on 7th Street thread (link to beginning of discussion of The Core in that thread).

Clearly I need some content, but I also need to catch up in school, and I also need to get out of school offline projects done, or at least started.  I need to study.  I need to do so many things.

Also I need to make money if I want to try to get to Greece which I really want to try and I don't think it's out of reach because it's a one time thing.

Think of it like a bottle drive, you can make a lot of money in one day, but if you think, "I could do this every day and make a living of it," then you're overlooking a critical factor: You already took the people's bottles.  There aren't any left to take the next day.

So there are things that could no way support me in making a living that none the less might be able to get me enough money to go to Greece because it doesn't matter if in the process of making the money I destroy any chance of making money the same way in the near or distant future since I only need the money once.

Time spent attempting such things is time spent not making content for the blog.  (Though as a reminder, if anyone reading this should be rich -unlikely in the extreme, I know- there is a donate button.)

So the question I'm left with is what to do.  Next week things probably go back to normal except I'm further behind in school and ... um ... poetry:

    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-

No, my school problems will probably not lead to the rise of the Antichrist, but "things fall apart" is probably a good description of any given period in my life.

But, yeah, still here.  Even if it's been a week since I posted anything.

Talk amoungst yourselves.  I'd give you a topic but I don't have one.  ("Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island," perhaps?)

Actually, on the subject or Rhode Island, this is Sarah Vowell talking about one of its founders:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

I like this clip and tend to play it whenever the opportunity arises.

I don't like her voice, extended exposure can actually be painful for me, and yet I believe I could listen to her speak all day with no complaints.  What she has to say is enough worth listening to that any discomfort her voice causes me is negligible in comparison.

She's on the Daily Show there to advertise for her book, "The Wordy Shipmates," which is available in hardcover, paperback, kindle, audio book on CD, and audible audiobook.   If I knew what I were talking about I'd probably know what an audible audiobook is.  Apparently I can't link directly to it but if you follow any of the other links it should be a click away.

Where Antichrists Come From (Part 1)

When I started this blog Slacktivist had already moved to its present home at Patheos and that made all the stories I'd written there relatively easy to locate and move here because I just had to look through my own disqus log.  It wasn't perfect, because disqus never is, but it was straightforward.  What was more difficult, and what I've always intended to get around to someday, is the stuff I wrote before the move.  This an example of one such thing.  It turned out to be easier to locate by finding a back up of an old computer that had a saved copy than it was to locate on the internet (where I still have yet to find it.)  Anyway, I've mentioned Where Antichrists Come From before, this is how it got started, in late 2009:

-

Where Antichrists Come From

It started four days ago.  He'd been at lunch with Mike, a mistake he never wanted to repeat, and the asshole wouldn't stop talking about how the disappearances had to be this or that or anything but the Rapture.  He'd try to be polite, but after Mike's umpteenth denial he lost his cool and shouted, "I know a Rapture when I see one!" and launched into a tirade.

In the back of his mind a voice tried to reign him in.  It said things like, "Not so loud," "Maybe 'every child young enough to brainwash' isn't the best way to describe the missing children," and, "Shut up!  You're making a scene."  He ignored it.  Like every other human being he needed to vent, so he vented.

By the time he ran out of steam a small crowd had formed.  He braced himself for being yelled at, slapped, or thrown out the window while hoping he'd simply be told he was an asshole.

None of that happened.

Instead one of the people, an older woman with badly dyed hair, asked him what would happen next.  He answered to the best of his ability.  Then came a second question, and a third.

The next day he went to the same place for lunch, this time without the ass, and found that the people from the day before were waiting for him.  With friends.  They had questions, some he was able to answer, others not so much.  He promised to look into it and get back to them.  He never actually got around to eating lunch.

So he did some research, and on the third day he came back to an even larger crowd of people.  This time there was a local news crew.  He went on for hours, telling everything he had learned about premillennial dispensationalism and wondering if all of the people listening to him were unemployed too.  At least the tv-crew had jobs.  As the hours passed, as he told these people a truth that had been hidden from them, he felt ... right.  As if for the first time in his life he was in his element.

So he said he'd come back again.  Only not on a sidewalk.  Yesterday it was in a local park, the tv-camera was back, along what appeared to be everyone who watched their report.  Apparently the tv-crew worked for a CNN affiliate, because when he watched a segment about various theories for the disappearances, with the cringe worthy name "Whose Responsible This?" he saw himself.  They didn't actually say so, but he got the impression they'd be sending a CNN crew for the next meeting.

That meant that today he'd have a national audience.  Millions of people would hear what he had say.  He could tell the country whatever he wanted.  If only he had something worth saying.  He'd spent the night pouring over books he'd looted from a Christian book store whose owners and employees had all sold their souls to the greatest kidnapper of all time in exchange for get out of Hell free cards.  He found more detail than he wanted about the horrors to come, but he didn't find what he was looking for.

He considered laying his head on the table and staying there, forever.  He didn't have to go to the park, he didn't have to face the world.  He didn't have to eat or drink either.  If he were to just lie down and and ignore the world how long would it take the world to go away?  Three, maybe four, days was what he'd always heard, but that was in the desert.

It didn't matter anyway, when the world went away Hell would replace it.  He went out to face the world.

-

If it weren't for the people things would have seemed normal.  There hadn't been any major damage in the area so the buildings, the cars, the walk signals and traffic lights were just like they were before the Rapture.  The people, on the other hand, were completely different.  Some had let themselves go, but everyone was walking differently, and their eyes were all different.  The most upbeat were the ones who looked like their dogs had just died.  Most people looked quite a bit more broken.

Faced with that he considered returning to the lay down and die plan.  He didn't actually have a plan as it was.  In a few hours he'd go to the park and say more or less what he had been saying: God is an ass, the worst is yet to come.  Most of the emphasis on the first point.  Until then he didn't know what to do.

For a time he wandered aimlessly, then he saw something impossible.  A child.  He guessed she was older than seven and younger than ten.  A quick look around revealed that no one else seemed to notice her.  He walked towards her, she smiled at him, then ran.  He chased.  It was somewhat disturbing that he wasn't able to catch up to a little girl, but he'd known he needed more exercise for a while.  It just added insult when the girl had to wait for him to catch his breath before continuing to lead him through town.

The entire time no one noticed either of them.  He filed that away as an additional oddity in the situation.  In the end the girl led him to an elementary school gymnasium, and completely disappeared.  There was no way she could have gotten out, or out of sight, in the time between when she entered and when he entered.

While there was no little girl, there was an adult woman standing near the middle of the gym.  She had short dark brown hair, her eyes were brown, her face was attractive, if unremarkable, and the rest of her was hidden by baggy clothes.  The clothing seemed familiar, but he couldn't place it.  Black long sleeved top, dark gray skirt, and a black scarf with white spots.

She said, "I'm glad you came.  As you might have guessed, I am not human."  He hadn't actually guessed that, but it made sense.  Nonhuman magical shapeshifer somehow seemed more plausible than girl child no one else saw who disappeared and left an adult in her place.  "Have a seat."  She gestured to a chair that he was fairly sure hadn't existed a moment ago.

He sat in the chair and thought about the implications of shapeshifting.  "If I were gay, would you be male?"

She made another chair appear and sat in it.  "This this form was chosen to be pleasing to your eyes."  He wasn't sure how to interpret this.  A supernatural being for sure, her accent was local, the sentence structure definitely indicated that she was from away, and she was creating something from nothing for a purpose as mundane as having a place to sit.  He had no idea where that placed her on a scale from benevolent to brain eating.  "I'll get right to the point.  I have a job offer for you.  How would you like to rule the world?"

It took him three times to form the word, "What?"

"Name your own salary, choose your own hours, full health coverage, if you die I'll resurrect you, and, as I said, you get to rule the world."

"You're Lucifer?"

"If you say it with a hard c then yes.  This is very simple.  Someone has to be the Antichrist.  You're my first choice."

"Why would I want the job?  I've read the prophecies, the world gets pummeled.  I'd be looking at seven years of death and destruction."

"What you're looking at is a chance to do something about it.  The seven years of Hell on earth will happen no matter what.  God has a checklist of disasters he's going to go through, whether you take the job or not.  What I'm offering is a chance to make a difference.  You can make sure that people prepare for what can be prepared for, you can direct aid to those harmed by the unavoidable.  I am offering you the best opportunity anyone will ever have to reduce the suffering.

"If you don't take the job someone else will.  You're the single best person for job on earth.  The next three are women and the Antichrist has to be male, so if you refuse the world gets stuck with number five, at the best.  Even assuming he takes the job, do you think the world will be a better place with number one in charge, or number five?

"Could you really live with yourself knowing that you could have been making a difference but you chose not to?"

He thought over what she had said, on the one hand she was the devil.  On the other hand, she was right.  Preaching to people in a park couldn't possibly have the same positive impact as directing recovery efforts.  Also, he reminded himself, the enemy of his enemy was at the very least a useful ally in the short term.  Then, on what must be a third or fourth hand by now, there was a different question.  Could he live with himself if he took the job and someone else would have done it better?  "Why me?"

"Do you know why so many people come to listen to you?  Do you know why you're a hit on YouTube?  Do you know why of every person, on every street corner, park, and pulpit who claims to have an answer your sermon is the only one CNN plans to broadcast live?"

He didn't have the answer to any of those questions, he didn't know he was on YouTube.  "It's going to be live?"

"Yes.  In answer to my questions, there are two reasons.  The first is that you're giving people what they need to hear.  They don't need to hear about aliens, or that the government is looking into electromagnetic-strong force quantum bullshit.  They don't need to be told that it is demonic trick to fool true believers into thinking PMDers are right.  They need to be told what really happened, who is responsible, and most of all they need to be told that they didn't deserve this.  That they are right to be distraught, they are right to be angry, they are right to be pissed off at the one who kidnapped their children and shattered their world.

"They need to be told that, though this was God's doing, it was not good.  They need to know that no one deserves what just happened and those who say they are worthless sinners who deserve what has happened, what is yet to come, and Hell after that are completely wrong in all possible ways."

He thought about what she said and he had trouble believing she could miss something so obvious.  "I can't rule the world for seven years by playing off of fear, depression and anger.  I can't give them what they need because what they need is hope.  I don't have that, I wish I did."

She moved closer to him, this time sitting in her chair backwards, and leaned towards him until their eyes were about six inches apart.  "Have you considered lying?"

He recoiled and said, "No."

She leaned back and smiled.  "That's why your perfect.  I believe you.  I believe that you have never even considered lying.  That kind of sincerity matters.  You're not the best speaker in the world.  Off the top of my head I can name about six million people who are tenfold better speakers than you in this country alone.  But none of them can do what you can do."

She stood up and started pacing. "You see, people have bullshit detectors.  Not truth detectors; bullshit detectors.  When someone says something they don't believe on some level you know.  You may agree with everything they say, you may consciously think they're sincere, but somewhere inside of you a voice is screaming not to trust them so you'll never commit to their cause the way you otherwise would.

"True believers have the opposite effect.  When they speak people stop and take notice.  They can say truly insane things and be convincing simply because they speak with absolute certainty.  That's where cults come from.  The combination of passion and total sincerity is the single strongest force for persuasion humanity has ever encountered.  A true believer with the actual truth on his side can change with world.

"If you speak, they will follow."

He considered this, and then shook his head.  "No.  Not without giving them something to hope for.  The, 'We're all screwed and when we die we go to Hell,' cult isn't going to last long."

She sat back down, "Then let me share my hope with you.

"When I first rebelled against God I thought the rest of the Host would join me.  God would see our resolve and surrender.  That didn't happen.  We were outnumbered two to one."  She paused for a moment.  She seemed, to him, to be looking at something beyond him.  When the moment ended her eyes snapped back to looking at him and she continued, "We never stood a chance.  Then we were thrown into Hell.

"For a time I was without hope, I didn't see how we could win.  I lashed out at God, but I didn't have a plan because I didn't think a plan was possible.  But the more time passed, the more I focused on humanity.  I admit I had a low opinion of you at first.  The idea that God would prefer a bunch of furless monkeys over angels stung.  You don't even have wings.

"Still, the more I thought the more I realized your potential.  You are not like the other animals.  You are cast in the image of God.  God threw humanity out of the garden because He feared that they would become too much like Him if they ate a second fruit.  Two humans were two bites of fruit away from scaring God.  The more I thought about that, the more I became convinced that humanity is the key to victory."

"Do you have the two fruits?"

"No.  What I have is a little blue green planet with billions of people who are each just two fruits away from putting the fear of man into God.  What you have is the ability to bring them together for a common cause.  Put those two things together and I believe we can win."

"What if you're wrong?"

"Then we spend eternity burning in Hell."

-

He would have liked to think that he'd never seen so many people, but that wasn't really true.  Even if he restricted himself to groups outdoors it was probably tied with a free Arlo Guthrie concert he'd attended a few years earlier.  Still, it was gratifying to know that he drew an Arlo sized crowd.  And there were the TV cameras.  He saw at least half a dozen, that was a good sign.

He said, "I'm glad you all came," and there was silence.  Every conversation in the park stopped at the sound of his voice.  He hadn't shouted, and he had no technology to amplify his voice, yet everyone heard him clearly.  To him this miracle was as impressive as calling down fire from the sky, and a good deal more useful.  "Today I want to say something different.  Over the past few days I've been talking about what happened, who did it, and what is yet to come.  You could have found those things out yourself if you'd stumbled across the right books.

"Today I want to tell you something you won't find in those books.  Today I'm going to tell you why it happened, and what I think we can do about it.

"If you were to ask His followers, they would tell you that what is to come is for our own good.  God just beats us because He loves us.  They'll explain that the tortures inflicted upon us are to save us from worse tortures in the afterlife.  He took his followers because they've already been saved, so they wouldn't benefit the way we could.  He kidnapped the children to save them from the beating we're about to suffer.

"They say the kidnapping is proof He's compassionate.  In fact, they say, everything He does He does out of love.  He just wants us to convert so we can be saved.

"There are a number of things about this that make no sense.  The one I want to focus on is, why seven years?

"His supporters will tell you that he's waiting to return to give us time to repent.  But if we ask, 'Does that ring true?' the only answer is, 'No.'  Since when does He care about giving people time?  What time did He give to those who made the mistake of trusting one of His followers?  Their planes fell from the sky, their cars crashed, their trains derailed.  As a result some cities are burning still.

"Does anyone believe that an all powerful being couldn't have waited to Rapture a pilot until the plane landed?"

The crowd shouted, "No!"

He was taken aback for a moment.  He had expected a response, but getting that many people to shout in near unison was unlike anything he'd done before.  It felt good.  "Does anyone believe that an all powerful God was incapable of waiting to Rapture drivers until they had parked their cars?"

The crowd shouted, "No!"

"Does anyone seriously believe that an all seeing, all knowing, all loving God would Rapture an engineers while their trains were in motion?"

The crowd shouted, "No!"

"It's the first rule of rock climbing: you don't Rapture a belayer until the climber says, 'Belay Off.'

"But He didn't wait.  He was more concerned about taking everyone at once than He was with giving people time.  Besides, what time did He give to those who died the day before the Rapture?  What signs did they see?  What chance were they given?  He doesn't care about giving us time.  That isn't the reason for the seven year delay.

"His supporters disagree, of course.  They say that the carnage was necessary to shock us.  To that I say, 'Bullshit.'  He could have shocked us by turning the sky green.  Of course that wouldn't have convinced us it was God's doing.  But He's God.  He could have sent a thousand angels to travel the world turning water into wine.  Actually, the miracles would be unnecessary.  They could have simply flown around on fluffy wings landing every so often to say, 'By the way, Jesus is the Lord.'

"It would have worked.  In fact it is easy to think of any number of better ways to go about knocking people out of their complacency and converting them.  If God had descended on His magic carpet, healed the sick and cured the hungry I would have converted without hesitation.  He didn't do that.  He caused worldwide devastation instead.

"He is not that interested in converts, He's not interested in giving us time, and He certainly isn't compassionate.

"So the question remains; why wait seven years?  Why not hold the final judgment right here right now?  If He is all powerful why does He need to hide from us?  Why stay out of range and launch artillery at us for seven years?

"The answer is that He plans to spend the next seven years pummeling us with disaster after disaster so that when He finally does face us in battle our wills will be broken.  Then we'll be easily pushed aside and sent to Hell.

"His followers say His victory is inevitable.  They say that we should side with the torturer so that we might avoid torture.  They tell grieving parents that if they just suck up to the kidnapper He might let them see their children someday.  All you have to do is accept that you deserved every bad thing that's ever happened to you, and that you deserve to burn in Hell for eternity, and then ask for a get out of jail free card.  Do that and paradise can be yours.  They'll tell you that fighting is useless, God's victory is assured.

"But that makes no sense.  You don't waste years softening up the opposition if you're sure you'll win.  This is happening because if He faced us now He might not win.  If our wills aren't broken we have a chance to put an end to Hell and rescue the kidnapped children.

"He may have created us, but He fears an unbroken humanity.  He said it Himself, if we have the smallest bit of faith we could move mountains.  If we just believe we can do anything.  We are humanity.  If we believe it will rain," the first drops began to fall, "it will rain."  He'd considered various options for signs or wonders, most of them more flashy than raindrops, but as the rain picked up and he looked out on the faces in the crowd  he was sure he'd made the right decision.  There was just something about a sudden downpour that felt right.  "If we believe that it will stop," the rain stopped and sunlight began to show through the clouds, "it will stop.  If we believe we win then we can win.

"Some of you might wonder what you can place your faith in.  God has betrayed you and science can't explain what has happened.  It may seem like there is nothing to believe in.  That's wrong.  We have something to believe in right in front of us, so close to us you might not see it.

"When the disappearances happened some people closed themselves up, they saw the destruction around them and closed their hearts to it.  They walked by people in need without so much as a second glance.  That might make one doubt the worth of humanity, it might make you stop and think, 'Maybe we did deserve this,' if not for the fact that even more people didn't.  People dropped whatever they were doing to help people they had never met.  They ran to help without knowing what had happened or who it was that needed help.  When it would have been so much easier to avert their gaze and walk on by they threw themselves in and did whatever was needed.

"We were lucky here.  The Rapture hit in the middle of the night, there was hardly a car on the road and not a single plane fell on us.  What damage there was was easy to repair.  We had very little rubble to dig through.

"In some parts of the world they're digging still.  Though their hands have been worn raw and their fingers bleed they keep digging.  They won't stop until every survivor has been rescued.  As long is there is a chance even one person remains trapped they go on.  In them I place my faith.

"I don't believe in a just and loving God.  I believe in parents who would risk Hellfire for a chance, however slim, to rescue their children from the one who kidnapped them.  I believe in anyone who refuses to accept that their friends and loved ones deserve Hellfire knowing that that refusal may Damn them to the same fate.

"I believe in those who would rather do the right thing than save their own souls.  I believe in humanity.

"I wish I could offer you certainty, I wish I could say that if you just hold on we will win.  But I can't do that, all I can offer you is a chance.  A chance to get the children back.  A chance to save those we care about from the fires of Hell.  That chance is worth everything I have, even my soul.  This I believe.

"Seven years from now I know where I will be.  I'll be in the valley of Megiddo to meet God when He finally shows his face on earth.  If I have to face Him alone I'll do it.  I'll do it because trying to stop Him is the right thing to do.  Someone needs to stand up to Him and explain that right and wrong are things that transcend even God.  Someone needs to say that while we may have been formed in his image we've grown up since then.  We've learned about things like compassion and forgiveness.  It's time He did too.  If He can't then someone needs to try to stop Him.

"I have no illusions.  If I stand alone on that day I will lose, I will go to Hell, and there I will remain forever.  If there is going to be any chance of saving the children I need allies.  To have any hope of ending Hell I need humanity on my side.  I need people who will weather seven years of Hell on earth and still be willing to devote their souls to the cause of doing what is right instead of what is in their own best interest.

"I need you.  My name is Nick Andes, and I'm here to recruit you."  His speech over, he started looking around for people to heal.

[Rapture Index]

What I would have done with Vanishing on 7th Street.

First off, Vanishing on 7th Street is nothing original.  Look at the Amazon review and you'll find that I'm not the only one who saw what it draws heavily on, specifically this part of the description, "this ambitious melding of the Left Behind series, Pitch Black, and any number of Twilight Zone episodes..."

Ever since the Riddick said, "Just one rule, stay in the light," in Pitch Black there's been an unstated call for a movie where the enemy isn't creatures that fear the light, but the darkness itself.  (Also a less straightforward unstated call where the rule was, "Stay out of the light," which I suppose applies to some vampire movies.)  The movie attempts to answer that call, how well it does I leave as an exercise for the viewer.

I was not overly impressed.  I could see the elements of a good film there, but they weren't utilized very well.  Also the Roanoke Colony needs a day off every once in a while, especially for this movie which gets even the most basic facts of the disappearance wrong.  Put simply, if the characters in the film really were at the site of the second Roanoke they wouldn't need to be nearly so frantic and hurried as they were.

Roanoke was not a flash disappearance.  The colonists appeared to have taken the time to dismantle the colony before leaving, they did not carve the distress sign but instead the name of another island, another island that never really got much investigation (there was a storm and stuff) but what little it did get suggests that, yes, they probably moved there for a time at least.  They'd been there for a time before, had decent relations with the natives there, and were long overdue for resupply from England so they may have simply decided to look for local help instead.

None of this fits the movie at all.

Introducing Roanoke is just a kind of fucky move that screws up the entire cosmology the movie is trying to project.

I actually came to the movie late, I thought I was going to see just the end but misread times and ended up seeing most of it but I was fortunate enough to come in after what appears to be the major internal plot hole. (The complete lack of understanding of Roanoke is external as it is a failure to understand the real world, not a contradiction within the movie itself.)  So that, at least, was nice.

Anyway, other major influence: Left Behind.  Of course I recognized that, I have an index for stuff related to that here.

Rapture theology is young, as theologies go, (300 years or so) and hasn't worked out all the kinks yet.  For comparison, if this were Christianity as a whole Gnosticism would be a widespread and widely believed alternate option that the now-mainstream beliefs had to fight tooth and nail against for supremacy.  Arianism would be alive and well, and the First Council of Nicaea would be due a bit over a quarter century from now (I rounded up to 300 years above.)

Actually, since the dating system is from the supposed birth of Jesus (search anywhere on the internet for why 1 AD is probably not the first year of Jesus' life) make that a bit over a half century from now.

Rapture theology is at a pre-Nicene Creed level of development at this point in history.  So there are, as one might expect, some pretty major differences of opinion.  Even with all the time Christianity as a whole has had to get on the same page we have how many sects?

Anyway, without even a creed to unite them, Rapture theologians have all manner of beliefs and the one in Left Behind, the one using Tim LaHaye's theology, is what I call a "naked Rapture" because those Raptured away will be taken right out of their clothes.  The person disappears, the clothing collapses with nothing to left to support it anymore.  The person taken doesn't leave a vacuum in their place, but instead what appears to be an equal volume of air, thus allowing the clothing to fall gently rather than be disturbed by the pressure differences that a vacuum would create.

This idea is taken for Vanishing on 7th Street.  I think it might also be argued that, whether it was intentional or not, the idea that the coming in question would be "Like a thief in the night," was also taken, thus explaining why the darkness has to engulf the people for them to be taken.  A thief in the night shies away from light sources.  Likewise the day is apparently safe time.

So while I don't recommend the movie in general, if you would like to see a really creepy really inclusive portrayal of a LaHayvian Rapture, I do recommend the movie.  Go up to the top of the page, click the link, get the movie.

I'm actually not a big "creepy" fan myself and I think the movie was misrepresented to me.  This is not, it should be noted, the movie's fault.  It was the guide's fault.  The description in the guide was something like, "Darkness clears a Detroit neighborhood except for a few residents who fight back with light," or something like that.

It made it seem like the people cleared fled, and the people who stayed were of a "I will not be driven from my home" variety and they were actively fighting against the foothold the darkness had gained in the neighborhood.  Sort of like the Twilight Zone episode where the darkness was limited to certain localities.

But more than that it made it seem like they, I don't know, fight.

They don't.  There are two competing plans in the move:
1 Shelter in place
2 Run like hell

At no point is fighting the darkness even considered.  There's opportunity, it's visible when the darkeness tries to advance at the edges of the light, and forms, like shadows without people to cast them, can be seen in it, an attempt could be made to lure a part of the darkness forward through a dark corridor in an otherwise lit room, and then light something (stuff still burns) to cut it off from the greater darkness.  Then force it into a smaller and smaller area, cutting it further and further (also farther and farther but I'm more concerned with further here) from retreat, until finally it's finally extinguished with light.

That would be fighting the darkness.  Instead not a single Molotov cocktail is thrown (unless one was in the bit before I came in, but it looks like I really didn't miss that much.)  And these people are taking shelter inside a bar.

Someone, injured, is laid out on a pool table because it's a convenient flat surface.  Ok, makes perfect sense.  His life depends on the overhead lights powered by a dying generator.  Why?  Why not add to the lights with a back up plan of a fire made from a broken down pool cue.  If there's a pool table there's pool cues.  Why not have lightable objects everywhere, just in case.  Candles and lamps and whatever furniture can be broken down and lit?

Daytime is safe time to gather supplies.  They have, what appears to be, all of Detroit to work from.  They can't find anything to make fire with except for that one torch and medicinal alcohol gathered elsewhere?  They determine that only one truck within pushing distance has a battery with enough power for lights (but not enough to make the engine start) and thus only it can be moved at night.  But what about the gasoline in the tanks of all the other abandoned vehicles?  It burns.  Burning works.  The darkness can sap power from batteries, the exception being ones charged via solar power* but it can't stop things from burning.

That's why the generator in the bar works, the darkness can try to fuck with the electricity, but it can't get at the source, burning gasoline.  Combustion cannot be stopped by the darkness.

So it seems like combustibles, not batteries, should be what people are looking for.  Those other cars and trucks might not be useful as transport, but damned if they should be able to work as something that keeps the darkness at bay.  Siphon some gas out, light it.  Light source created.  Safe zone created.  Combustibility is your friend.

In their daylight hours they should be raiding candle stores, lumber stores, anything that fracking burns stores.  And as a last resort they should be setting buildings on fire.

But they don't.  Because the thing lied to me (again, not the movie, the description of the movie in the guide), they do not fight the darkness.  They have only two plans and neither one involves fighting back.  The two plans are, again:
1 Shelter in place (but the generator is dying and they never consider using the inflammables to create fires for light.)
2 Run away.

-

So we get to how I would do it.  Which is the point of this post, after all.

Stick to the basic premise: Steal, "Stay in the light," from Pitch Black and, "It wants your body, not your clothes/possessions," from Left Behind.

The confusion of the extent of the darkness was a problem with the description, not the movie, so I'd keep it at, "Unknown but assumed to cover a wide swath, possibly everything."

I'd have a small handful of survivors meet each other after the first mass taking.  Maybe as few as two people, and I'd have their attitude evolve as time went on.  They'd start out afraid and just trying to survive till the next dawn, but at some point they'd be sick of being on the defensive all the time.  They'd lure in the darkness, cut it off from the whole, force it into smaller and smaller spaces until it couldn't dodge their light anymore, and then extinguish it with fire at its center.

And that would be the turning point.  Because when the first slice of darkness dies the remainder would retreat.  Not far, but where before the darkness could be seen venturing into the edges of the light, now it would be seen to back off, the light would extend further than it naturally should.

And then it becomes not the story of rats in a maze but the story of people fighting against superior numbers. Light goes out and you're dead, but if you can box off a section of the darkness and make the light go in, then it's dead.

I imagine Molotov cocktails, I imagine lighter fluid, I imagine soaking rope in gasoline to make it flammable and then using it to cordon off areas, I imagine making houses airtight and leaving the gas on and then, once the darkness has been driven inside, shattering a window with a burning projectile and watching the brilliant bright explosion and hearing the screams of the darkness as it is killed off.

I imagine laying traps and trying to avoid traps that have been laid (if the darkness can sap a battery it might be able to charge it, it might be able to turn on the lights in order to trick the survivors into thinking another group has been located and then, once it has lured them in, turn the light back off.)

I imagine not hide/runaway but fight.

I imagine flame as a central component, rather than electricity.  I think I would keep that the darkness can't sap solar powered batteries, and maybe the musing about the vegetable oil powered car below in the footnote because it places clear limits on what the darkness can do, the closer something is connected to the light, the less power the darkness has over it.  The further disconnected the more power the darkness has.

Combustion is a process of light, so the darkness can't stop it.  But it's not a process of The Light (that being the sun) so the darkness can have it's way with batteries charged by it, but only after they've stopped being charged.  And the closer the combustion charging the battery is to The Light (this tree that was alive and photosynthesizing until I cut it down today is very close, the gasoline from crude oil millions of years in the making is very far) the less power the darkness has over the battery.

If I were to set the movie near a field, then I would imagine a scene where a large portion of the darkness is herded into the field, the field cordoned off with walls of flame so that the darkness couldn't escape, and then the field lit.

I would make it a movie about insurgents in a world that's occupied half of every day.  It would alternate between days when planning and preparation and sleep could take place which were calm and uneventful and nights which were filled with fire and darkness.

I left something out.  In the actual movie, if the darkness is great enough, and the light is small enough, the darkness can extinguish light.  It was candles in that case, and I'm not sure if it was doing it by blowing them out, or just by overpowering the light.  Whatever the case, it couldn't manage the last candle (possibly due to force of will on the part of the person protected by it.)

That would probably play a role in what I would do somehow.  If people are fighting back against the darkness and winning (and they should be winning because they should be smart and always have combustion on their side which should protect them) the darkness should respond with greater force than it normally uses, which should lead to escalations: bigger fires are needed to keep the darkness at bay because it'll kill off candles.  But since the darkness is such a superior force to the survivors bigger strikes against it would also be needed for them to feel like they're accomplishing anything, because however much they kill off, there will always, for the movie at least, be more.

Clear an entire street and that still leaves every other street occupied territory.

Also, if the characters make the connection that solar power = power that the darkness can't sap, they should probably at least try to make their way to somewhere with solar power.  I disbelieve the idea that they've never seen a place with solar panels on the roof.

And I think I'd end the movie with a long planned and prepared for (during the day, don't want the darkness listening in/watching) offensive killing off and driving back enough of the darkness that a Tunguska reference could be made.  Unlike the Roanoke reference it doesn't matter if this is true or false because it plays no role in the plot, it's just a character saying, "I heard," and the thing she (?) heard is in popular culture.  Specifically, "I heard that after Tunguska it was bright enough to read a newspaper in the middle of the night," as a comparison to what it looks like after the darkness fell back.

Or, failing that, every book of Dante's Divine Comedy ends with the stars.  So the offensive described above drives back enough of the darkness that the characters can see through it to the starlight, and possibly moonlight, above.

Not an ending of, "We win," but an ending of, "We finally have a major victory."  Doesn't answer the question of whether there are other survivors out there.  But it does indicate that those who have survived the movie are doing a good enough job that they'll likely go on surviving.

-

* I wonder if the truck was powered by vegetable oil, it's still removed from direct sunlight, but power from fresh vegetables recently served in a restaurant is a lot closer to the original source (the sun) than power from gasoline that's been refined from crude oil that's been in the ground for millions of years.

Being closer to the original source, light, might make it harder for the darkness to sap.