Because this is something I’ve been thinking about lately whenever I see the news:
“‘HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.’
“‘Tooth fairies? [Santa Claus]? Little—’
“‘YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.’
“‘So we can believe the big ones?’
“‘YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.’”
I want to share with you a cinematic pet peeve, one which disproportionately affects fantasy and science fiction movies, and that is the opening voiceover narration.
A good example of this is the classic Sean Connery monologue: “From the dawn of time we came, moving silently through the centuries, living many secret lives, struggling to reach the time of the gathering, when the few who remain will battle to the last. No one has ever known we were among you… until now.” Aside from the fact that it kickstarts an awesome Queen song (also, it showcases that sexy, sexy Scottish brogue), it serves no purpose to The Highlander whatsoever. All of the information contained within is shared with the audience over the course of the film.
Can you imagine what it would have been like to see The Highlander for the first time, watching wrestling, followed by Christopher Lambert straight-up beheading a dude, getting struck by lightning, and then appearing in sixteenth-century Scotland, sporting a nearly incomprehensible accent? You’d be all like, “What the fart? I’d better stick around for answers!”
But since you’ve had a ton of spoilers dumped on you right away, you don’t ever get that chance. If the first few minutes of The Highlander were a post on Twitter or 4Chan, it would be berated, openly or passive aggressively, until it was taken down.
The opening narration assumes that the audience won’t get what’s going on, and doesn’t have the intelligence or patience or trust in the filmmakers to stick around and find out.
Here’s an example of how the opening narration could go horribly, horribly wrong: Imagine a movie that starts out with the “Warner Brothers presents…” card, followed by a panoramic view of a dark, devastated city. Words in a green font crawl up the screen, and the deep voice of Lawrence Fishburne reads them. “In the future, war raged between man and machine. Machine won. They enslaved mankind, taking from them their homes, their freedom, their bodies, and even their very minds, trapping them in a virtual reality world called ‘The Matrix,’ patrolled by sinister Agents whose sole purpose is to keep mankind from discovering its ultimate fate. But all hope is not lost, for there exists in this world a band of freedom fighters … and they are fighting back.” And cut to Carrie Ann Moss ruthlessly slaughtering four regular Joes just doing their low-paying civil-service job.
So, Hollywood, if you’re reading this, knock it off. Trust your audience for once.
As you may know, I, along with ten others, am being featured in a crowd-funded fiction anthology. More than enough money was made to get it printed and pay the authors, and so The Editor got the idea to hire illustrators to do their takes on each of the stories. The talent works with each other at their own discretion, because really, it’s the publisher and not the author who contracts and pays The Artist.
There appears, in my story, a small “twist” that feeds into what I believe is the overall theme of the work; the problem is, it’s actually kind of a challenge not to spoil that twist. I reached out The Artist and mentioned that this was something I was worried about. The Artist didn’t respond to me … well, The Artist sort of did respond, but only sort of … more on that below, in the text of the letter.
The completed piece arrived, and it was a snapshot of a scene, with a major error, as well as a flagrant blowing-off of that request I’d sent off a day or so earlier. I sent an e-mail that reads (edited for secret content):
I like the style of the piece[*], but I have two problems with it. 1) the first scene takes place [not in the setting you’ve presented]; and 2) I’ve gone through a lot of trouble—including the story description I wrote and the short excerpt I picked out for indiegogo and my Facebook campaign—to hide [the spoiler]. [This] is a very important part of the story for me.
The first half of the response I got from The Artist consisted entirely of quotes from my story—not even a hello—followed by an explanation of why I was totally wrong about [spoiler] and the setting of the scene that I wrote. In the story. That I wrote. The letter wrapped up with: “Lastly the editor is the person who contracted me on this project and she has given the final stamp of approval and paid me for the work.”
This really upset me, like, a lot. I told The Editor that I refused to work with The Artist, and I demanded that this piece not be associated with me. The Editor handled it like a boss, so it’s not my problem anymore. However, that e-mail pretty much ruined my day, so I wrote a letter I have no intention of sending to make myself feel better. And it worked.
***
Dear Artist;
I’m a freelance illustrator. I get what it’s like when you turn in a piece and the client isn’t happy with it. I get that I’m not your client. And I get that this is a work-for-hire piece that doesn’t pay very much.
Clearly you don’t care about the piece you just completed. It was a paycheck. This much was expressed in the way you answered the email I sent you while you were still working on it, in which I made a request about the content—a request I considered “very important.” Actually, you had your spouse answer the email by asking if I was being sarcastic, and letting me know that both of you had barely read my story.
Here’s the thing: I care about this project, and I care a lot. I spent countless hours writing it, and I am personally invested in how the art turns out. It’s not your job to care, but you could at least pretend.
You had three options to respond, all of which could have made you look like a professional: you could have changed the art in some way to reflect the concern I had expressed to you before you turned it in (from a freelancer’s perspective, this is the least desirable option, but it still is one); you could have explained that we had different interpretations, but the art was approved and you can’t make any changes; or, if my criticism pissed you off enough, not respond at all. You chose a fourth option, which was to behave like a thin-skinned tween.
I don’t expect this letter to affect you in any way. You have a business, and it has somehow continued to function despite your communication skills. More importantly, your response to criticism leads me to assume that you don’t like to consider the perspectives of others. I don’t think you’ve even made it this far, unless you’re rage-reading.
I’m writing this for me, because my feelings were genuinely hurt by your thinly veiled contempt for me. I’m trying to soothe my anger at your behavior by spelling out just what it was about your email that pissed me off. And now that this is out of the way, I can express my initial reaction much more succinctly:
Grow the fuck up and be nice to others for a change, you narcissistic prima donna.
Sincerely,
Jeremiah Murphy
Writer and Artist
_____
* I actually didn’t, but I wanted to work with the person, because The Editor seemed to think it was a good match.
I want to get something off of my chest: I don’t believe that state or the federal government should recognize gay marriage. I don’t believe that state or the federal government should recognize straight marriage either. Marriage is a religious institution and should be handled only by churches, synagogues, mosques, covens, what have you, in accordance with the First Amendment.
What government needs to do is institute a system of civil unions, which are contracts that carry all the health, financial, housing, insurance, and child-rearing benefits of what we currently call marriage. If your church won’t marry you, find a new church. If you are repulsed by your church marrying a man and man or woman and woman, find a new church. Congress, the Supreme Court, and the president have no business defining how we the people express our love for each other. It does, however, have business in codifying secular agreements between two people, regardless of their gender. This is equality.
This way, the State has no say in how people interpret the Bible, Torah, Koran, Big Book O’ Witchcraft, etc., and can’t be penalized for their beliefs, and, at the same time, religion can’t be used as an argument against these unions either, thus confining them to secular arguments—many of which are based on junk science.
My idea, I realize, isn’t perfect, because I barely know what I’m talking about.
I don’t want to get shot dead, at random, in a parking lot, or at a movie theater, or in church, or in a mall, or at a school, or anywhere for that matter, by someone who just wants to shoot bullets at a lot of people for reasons that have nothing at all to do with me. Off the top of my head, I can think of more than two dozen people who felt this EXACT way when they woke up this morning.
And the funny thing is, it doesn’t matter whether or not I’m a gun owner*, or whether or not I have a concealed-carry permit** what my stance is on gun control***; if a mass shooter decides to open fire on a place where I happen to be, it means that he or she acquired a gun and used it. It doesn’t matter how it was acquired, or what the laws were. It just means that someone got a gun and fired it a lot.
This scares the shit out of me.
* I am.
** I do.
*** I’m not telling.
I highly doubt any artists are going to agree with me on this, but I don’t think for one minute that Before Watchmen is the worst thing ever, nor do I think that anyone is actually getting screwed by it.
Full disclosure: I am an artist who co-created a comic book that, to this day, I receive no credit for. I am currently doing some work-for-hire cartooning, using a character I co-created for a marketing company that periodically thanks me for the drawings, but owns every single one of them. The folks involved in the former are ethically justified in blowing me off (despite my feelings being really hurt by their behavior, words, and attitudes); and the latter is doing me a huge, unnecessary act of kindness with their behavior, words, and attitudes.
Two things set me off about this topic today. The first was some stupid hyperbolic rant on the Internet.
The second is that the marketing company I work for has informed me that they’re going to institute a huge change of direction for their brand. They’re asking for alterations to the character that I may not be able to pull off. And, that being the case, an option they may have to take is to replace me. This would make me [understatement in 3 … 2 … 1 …]very, very sad[end understatement]. If they did have to replace me, they are under no obligation to utter my name, ever again, even though I breathed life into this guy and am in no small part responsible for their blog’s success.
And here’s something that might surprise you to hear me say: I don’t have a problem with that. Yes, it would piss me off a little, but ultimately they’re not wrong. Because PPC Hero is the property of Hanapin Marketing. Period.
Likewise, Spider-Man is Marvel Comics’ property. The Avengers are the property of Disney/Marvel. Superman is DC Comics’ property. These characters are commodities that have been traded for money. Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, Joe Siegel, and Jerry Schuster brought with them to the table amazing creativity and, especially in the case of Jack Kirby, a willingness to draw and draw and draw.* And then, they sold the fruits of their labor to corporations and publishers.
Now, Jack Kirby is to Babe Ruth resurrected as super-serum-juiced cyber-deity as I am to the Pee-Wee League player consigned to right field where he can’t do any damage; but we’re both baseball. More accurately, we’re both artisans. Hell, I put the same amount of concentration, skill, and dedication into editing as I do into PPC Hero or the occasional logo design or portrait that I also get paid for. Because they’re jobs. The only thing I’m owed for these jobs is the money the client and I agreed to.
If we’re talking about giving work-for-hire artists credit where credit is due, then where’s the demand for recognition for the musicians who wrote and performed that goddamned ad jingle or TV theme you can’t shake from your head? Where’s the cries for justice for the designer of that car you drive? Come to think of it, who created the original featureless pants-or-dress-wearing people who tell you which restroom to use?
Who developed the iconic font that is as much a part of Watchmen as Dr. Manhattan’s penis? Is he or she getting residuals? Just curious.
And this brings me back to Sorcerer Alan Moore of the Holy Gnostic Order of the Wooly Hill People.
When Watchmen was published, DC (allegedly) made a promise to Moore that it would not use the characters again. Dan Didio is breaking that promise. And I say, “So?” DC paid Moore. He cashed the checks. They don’t owe him anything else. He wants to pitch a fit and tear up the checks that Warner Brothers sends him for the botched movie adaptations made of his work, that only means more money for their shareholders. And most importantly, Alan Moore worked for DC; DC doesn’t work for Alan Moore.
Look, as much as I hate that pompous fuck-bag, I won’t deny the amount of skill he put into his original, sprung-from-his-mind creations like From Hell (with the help, of course, of countless Jack the Ripper researchers), or Swamp Thing (with the help of Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson, of course), or The League of Extraordinary Gentleman (with the help of Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker, Jules Verne, et al), or …
Okay, fine. That’s hardly fair. It’s not like he’s pretending to have made up the Whitechapel Murders or Masonry or these awesome literary figures. But he and Dave Gibbons did make up the Watchmen … Except they didn’t. The names and certain details have been changed, but the characters are from Carlton Comics. This is hardly news, by the way, so don’t think I’m trying to shock my reader with this clever information or anything. On the other hand, I’m still waiting for the Bearded One on to go on one of his self-righteous screeds on how much Steve Ditko deserves credit/apologies for how Moore’s paranoid, trench-coat-fedora-and-full-face-mask-wearing detective, Rorsach kind of tarnished the artistic intentions of Ditko’s paranoid, trench-coat-fedora-and-full-face-mask-wearing detective, the Question, with the former’s homophobic racist sociopathology.**
In The Killing Joke, the Joker shoots Batgirl through the spine and strips her naked so he can torture her father, Commissioner Gordon, who is also stripped naked after having been beaten. The conclusion of this involves the Joker telling Batman a joke and both of them laughing their asses off, while ambulances haul off the broken minds and bodies of the Gordons. (Hilarious.) I don’t recall Moore asking the permission of Bill Finger or Bob Kane (or, in the case of Batgirl, Sheldon Moldoff) to do this to his characters. Hell, in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Mr. Hyde rapes the Invisible Man to death. I throw up in my mouth every time I think about it (twice, because Robert Louis Stevenson isn’t around to join in). And then there’s Lost Girls … I wonder what L. Frank Baum thinks about what Dorothy Gale is up to these days.
So, try as I might, I don’t give a flying fuck about Moore and his disgust and his lectures on how to respect the works people like him have expended so much energy on. I will not, for one minute, disparage the amount of talent and skill and literature he has brought to my favorite entertainment medium. As loathe as I am to admit it, he is kind of a genius. His pedestal and soapbox are still, however, built on the backs of Steve Ditko and H.G. Wells and Bill Finger and those I mentioned above, as well as those I haven’t even thought of. Also, it’s in a glass house.
Before Watchmen is a bad idea. Really, the only thing that it has going for it, businesswise, is the controversy (thanks, Moore and all of his followers!). Although … J.M. Straczynski. Len Wein. Adam Hughes. J.G. Jones. Darwyn Cooke. Amanda “leave that Palmiotti schmuck and make art with Jeremiah Murphy until the end of time” Conner. Hm.
I’ll let Dave Gibbons, co-creator of the Watchmen, show us out: “May these new additions have the success they desire.”
* Don’t, for one minute, think that I am not utterly appalled by the way these writers and artists, except for maybe Stan Lee, have been treated over the years. National Allied Publishers and Warner Brothers deserve a special room in hell for what they did to Siegel and Schuster, who invented the modern superhero. I respect that a contract is a contract, but some things are just morally wrong.
** If such a credit/apology exists, I would love to see it so I can mark this off of my list of grievances.
Yesterday, I came across a photo of this bumper sticker: 
Taken aback, I posted a link to it on my Facebook wall while making sure to specify that this does not reflect the views of all conservatives. I got quite a few responses, which can be summed up by the following comment: “WHAT?!”
Inevitably, as it is an issue on the minds of many, someone made an off-topic remark about how the Right is trying to restrict women’s liberties. A friend of mine (the post has since been taken down for mysterious reasons, meaning this person now exists anonymously) replied: “As for the reproductive ‘rights’ thing, do you mean women’s ‘right’ to have me pay for them to have sex…and not with me?”
I, in no way, expect to change the mind of the person who wrote this. I did, however, in the interest of civility, send him a private message (which lacked the reflexively tempting snide comment about him having to pay for sex): “Um, so what you wrote about ‘women’s “rights”‘ on my now-removed post was kind of disgusting, the implication being that my wife and the vast majority of my female friends and family are prostitutes.’
The thing is, people really feel this way, and it kind of makes me want to throw up. So, let me explain how this works, and I will leave out the parts about the health of women with conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome so I can focus on the real issue, which is sex. And, because I don’t want people rolling their eyes at me, I will also leave out the word Viagra, despite its pertinence here.
The word I won’t leave out is vasectomy. I have had a vasectomy. My insurance paid for it. My insurance is Federal Blue Cross, which means it is covered by the taxpayers. I had a vasectomy because I have no desire to impregnate anyone. By this logic, taxpayers are paying for me to have non-reproductive intercourse. Until the same pious men (and, occasionally, women) decry the use of private and public insurance funds to cover such a procedure, then I will not take seriously their claims of religious freedoms.
Besides, what’s to stop those of certain religious convictions from going to a private insurance company that did refuse to cover contraception? Instead, they want government to do that work so they don’t have to. Just them, of course. Religious freedom and all.
But let’s leave out the word hypocrisy here, because, as an arbiter of morality like Newt Gingrich have demonstrated, or as craven opportunists like the pro-choice-when-it-suited-his-political-ambitions Willard Mitt Romney has demonstrated, or as all of the people who support and believe them while trumpeting values have demonstrated, they don’t give the slightest shit about hypocrisy.
Let’s focus on the sex, and why it matters. People like to have sex, because it’s fun. There is absolutely no correlation between crime and pre-marital sex. There is no correlation between self-identified Christian believers and pre-marital sex either. Regardless, those are the beliefs and values of one portion of one religion. Why should I do as I am told by someone who follows a different set of laws and commandments—laws and commandments that have nothing to do with the country in which I am a citizen?
Let’s focus on the money, which is what the argument comes down to. The poster above feels that private, employer-based insurance should not have to cover the birth-control pill, because that is tantamount to him purchasing the pill (Never mind that the person who wants to purchase birth control is paying premiums for such a service). Those of this mindset say that anyone whose birth control is not covered by an insurance company can just find an insurance company that does cover birth control. Never mind that the out-of-pocket costs of birth control and private insurance are prohibitive, something I can tell you from experience.
If companies feel that there is money to be made covering birth control, they will cover it. This logic justified segregation, under which no place that refused service to African Americans ever suffered businesswise. It took the federal government to correct that.
Under this logic, there is nothing to stop any private insurer from not covering my Attention-Deficit-Disorder medication if they don’t believe it exists. And many don’t. There is nothing to stop a Scientologist-run insurance company to deny me coverage for my psychiatric medication, without which I may have literally killed myself long ago. There is nothing to stop a blood transfusion being paid out-of-pocket if the owner of your insurance company is a Jehovah’s Witness.
For those of the religious/business freedom mindset, is this okay? If you don’t say yes, then your contraception bullshit is meaningless.
In the South, after the Civil War, came the concept of the poll tax. The poll tax did not technically discriminate against African Americans. What it did was charge a fee to anyone who went to vote. See? Not racist. This, of course, eliminated newly emancipated slaves who had no money to begin with from having a say in their own government. But there were many poor people in the South of all colors. See? Not racist. To help out the poor, an exemption was made for those whose grandfathers could vote. The exemption didn’t specify that the grandfather had to be white—it just said they had to be your grandfather. See? Not racist. If your grandfather was actually a slave, well, that has nothing to do with race as it does with bad timing.
I wonder why I don’t have to pay for my vas deferens to be cauterized. Is this a kind of Grandfather Clause (or, in my case, a Smolderingly-Attractive-and-Virile Young-Man Clause) because it was a one-time thing? Or should all men in the future be denied this as well, because of bad timing?
In conclusion, tell me, do you really believe that insurance coverage for birth control medication is the same thing as prostitution? Do you really believe that every single woman I know who has used hormonal contraception, like most of the women in my life—and likely yours—are whores? I don’t even know what to say to that.
The homophobia of Dick Hafer is not for the faint of heart. In fact, it’s pretty vile and disgusting. I’m not sure how or why I read all the way through one of his books, but I did. Mostly I was appalled by the tone, and frankly kind of amazed as well. It’s a lot of hate to cram into such a small paperback, but I’ll be damned if little Dick Hafer didn’t pull it off.
In shock from having made it through, I skimmed through the comments section of the first part (comments sections, by the way, are a good way to give yourself an aneurysm), and one poster had the nerve to challenge other posters to refute the facts and statistics presented in the twenty-four-year-old book. I think he missed the point. And the point is this: you might think the gay agenda is bad, but I promise you that the straight agenda is much, much worse.
How, you might ask?
Well, for starters, heterosexuality has undermined the traditional family values that have made this country strong. For example, nearly 100 percent of divorces are between heterosexual couples; likewise, the vast majority of deadbeat dads are straight.
Some of the foulest sex crimes have been perpetrated by straights. A significant majority of pedophiles are heterosexual, and most rapes—even prison rapes are committed by heterosexuals.
The “Straight Agenda” has also rotted our political system. Not only are there are senators like David Vitter, who have broken laws in pursuit of their heterosexual desires, but a number of legislators, including but are by no means limited to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and his chosen replacement Bob Livingston, and at least one governor, Eliot Spitzer, have lost their jobs as a result of their pursuit of straight sex. Most shockingly, of all the presidents who have been impeached in since Article I of the Constitution was written, a whopping 50 percent of them have been so because of heterosexual activities.
Mind you, I haven’t researched the exact facts and figures to back up my conclusion of his man/woman plague infesting our nation, but there are two important numbers you need to know about: 95 percent of all statistics are made up; 100 percent of them are twisted to fit the agendas of the people using them. It’s true.
This is just the beginning. I encourage you to help me find other examples of this disease.
* Oh, yeah. Totally forgot to mention: Sixty percent of states in the U.S. have amended their constitutions to limit marriage to one man and one woman. If that’s not evidence of a nefarious Straight Agenda, I’d like to know what is.
This week my wife and I watched a documentary about the Oklahoma City bombing and Tim McVeigh, and I had a … moment.
As you probably know, I was ridiculously close to the World Trade Center on that sunny, beautiful morning in 2001 when everything changed. Eight and a half years later, I’ve nearly forgotten how it felt. Maybe it’s because a lot of time has passed. Maybe it’s because the imagery—whether it be from “Never Forget” bumper stickers, news stories featuring video of the second plane smashing into the tower, or movies like War of the Worlds and Cloverfield—has become so ubiquitous. Maybe because it’s been used as a tool to justify things that are morally and politically questionable, or things not even remotely related (see Glen Beck’s “9/12” anti-tax rallies). Everything I saw that day has been so mixed in with everything that came afterward that I’ve become numb to it.
But then this documentary reminded me of something the news and the movies and the chest-beating had all but forgotten: that sound.
My most vivid memory of the day is not the ashes or the falling office supplies or those boring buildings that housed so memories on fire. It’s sitting in a mostly empty room with no computer, earning twelve bucks an hour for stuffing envelopes, and hearing a loud, deep boom that rumbled through my cheap aluminum desk. It’s going to the window to see what could have caused it. It’s thinking that it couldn’t be that big a deal, and five minutes later believing that everything I knew had come to an end.
I suppose I could be forgiven for forgetting that. It’s been a long time.
But then I heard survivors talk about how they thought it was construction or something, or just how flat-out confusing they were for that one moment between the time they heard that sound and the time they realized their lives had been forever destroyed. It reminds me why I flinch whenever I hear any sudden, low-pitched, loud noise.
I’m reading this fictional tale of an old woman fondly remembering her life, and I’m hating it. This is causing me much distress, as the author’s intentions are truly noble. She believes that the folks you see staring into space in nursing homes have lived full, rich, eventful lives that must be shared. I cannot agree more. These folks have lived through the bloodiest war in history, the Civil Rights movement, Elvis, and the Beatles. A decreasing number of them lived through the Great Depression, and because the collapse of the financial institutions of the world without the FDIC didn’t suck enough, history also threw in the Dust Bowl and the rise of fascism. Because history is an asshole. They witnessed our culture shift from manufacturing and production to service and entertainment. And the best part about it is, they didn’t even realize they were living through history, because twenty-four-hour news networks weren’t constantly telling them that they were. The experience and humility of these passing generations is a resource that we must respect—and we, for the most part, do (except when they’re driving—no respect there).
But then there’s this book. Maybe I’m just not the audience for this book. There will always be people who want to read this kind of thing, where everything is happy and pastel, and the hardships people have to endure are vague and not at all related to mistakes. Mistakes are things other people do. It’s one of those we-worked-for-everything-and-were-grateful old people stories, but without the amusing crankiness and condescension. It relies overly on the words perfect, lovely, friendship, enjoy, and family It is this last word that gets to me, like a pebble in my shoe.
She only upsets her mother twice (once was because she was picking blackberries for Mommy and her dress got stained). One of the old lady’s family members disowns her child because of a marriage on the wrong side of the tracks—but that’s an excuse for a tearful reunion and learned lesson later. When the old lady and her husband go on a cruise, they bring their children and spend the vacation watching them as opposed to, I don’t know, having fun. This is a family without its own hopes and dreams—just affection and learning. This isn’t family that I know.
My family is far from perfect. We love each other, but half the time we would have loved to run each other over with a car (which happened once, but I was only four. Sorry, Dad!). There was a lot of shouting and frustration and confusion, because my parents had no idea what they were doing. That’s why they screwed up so much. And this isn’t just my family. This is most normal families. Some are the Cleaver family, and some are the Manson family. Behind every person is a parent—mother or father; biological or guardian—who questioned themselves and wanted that child to go away forever.
This book reminds me of an email meme that goes around about how the mother does all the chores in a family’s life, like cooking, cleaning, laundry, sewing, and working full time, and she does it all thanklessly, while the father brings home a manly check, eats the food, and goes to bed. My mother (no offense, Mom) couldn’t boil a chicken if she had to, and threading a needle was something other people did. She supported our family and came home, cranky and worn out. My father worked some of the dumbest, most demeaning odd jobs in history (I know because I worked some of them too) until he could get to his own dream job. I don’t know what they gave up to raise me and my sisters. So reading these emails and these books is a slap in their faces, diminishing everything they’ve ever done by holding it up to a standard that they, or most of us, can never achieve.
My parents worked hard, and often rewarded themselves by going out—without us!—like they damned well deserved to. From them I’ve learned from them the value of making shit up as you go along and trying to enjoy yourself at least some of the time. They taught me that it isn’t easy, and it never will be, but that doesn’t make it bad. Yes, my parents and grandparents had to climb uphill both ways in bare feet in the snow, but their lives were more than hardships; they were hard choices. I want to learn about how to do those things. I want to learn about their mistakes, because I want to learn how they fixed them or endured their consequences. Hearing about their victories may be uplifting, but it’s not useful.
Remembering the good-parts version of life is something I am guilty of. Scratch that: the word guilty is inaccurate. There’s nothing wrong with it. I recall seeing the sunrise as I rode home from a party, without the thoughts of sleeping alone that drowned my joy half the time. I can remember why I fell in love with every one of my exes while leaving the reasons we are exes. I smile every day to memories of friends whose last words to me were the kinds of things I shout to my cats when they throw boxes at my head. I remember drinking without hangovers; smoking without coughing; summers without sweating. But I never forget these things, and any history of me without them would diminish everything I’ve ever done.
This goes for my family, and your family too.
Jeremiah Murphy 