Impact Zones

Writers are weird. I think most writers concede this—especially fiction writers. After all, we spend long spans of time with imaginary people, listening to them and giving them as much credibility—and maybe more—than an actual person.

So we’re weird on that level.

Another thing that contributes to our weirdness are the rabbit holes we explore while researching a book or character. I can’t speak for other writers, but I spend at least as much time researching as I do actually writing. If I were writing romance novels maybe this wouldn’t be the case. Maybe all I would need then would be my imagination and latent knowledge, but I like adventure. I like urban fantasy. I love history that happened B.C., myths, legends, and gods.

So I research. And while I may like to focus way-way back, sometimes I also need to learn more about technologies and ideals of current day. So I learn about that. Then, once I learn stuff, I forget that not everyone knows it—that when I see things play out on the news I am considering things that some people are not.

For that reason, I submit this blog for your consideration. And I do it because I see people are confused on a subject: the number of civilian casualties in the Middle East due to targeted US bombings. I have discussed this subject firsthand intelligent people, elected officials, news anchors, and others—all with the same response:

A confused shrug and eventual dismissal of the subject as a whole. They have nothing, or little to say, and they don’t want to talk about it either. And when you mention the studies that claim that the US has a 2% desired casualty rate for its targeted missile strikes no one really believes it. Not really. After all, it only takes elementary math to get to the statistic that 98% of the casualties in the Middle East this year from US bombs were civilian casualties. Children. Women. First response workers. People who rushed in to help people impacted by a first missile strike only to be killed by a second strike on the same area a few minutes later.

These are not narratives the average American believes. That is not who we are. That is not what we stand for, or what we pay our taxes to support. Besides, we know our technology is crazy good!! Our missile systems are too-the-inch accurate. If they are targeting a known terrorist and end up killing civilians around him, how innocent could those people really be?

With unanswered questions like these in our minds, we chock the statistics up to anti-American sentiment and conspiracy theories and move forward.

But for those who dig a bit, moving forward with a blind eye becomes a little bit harder.

On my side, researching missiles was not politically motivated. I’m doing it for a book. And I’m a big believer that when a person picks up one of my books, if they fact check me they should land on a legit trail. It doesn’t matter if I cite a gadget or a study on Magnesium supplements. It should check out. So if I want to write a story about someone surviving a missile attack, I need to know which missile does what and how people have actually survived in real life.

Now all that was the big preamble to the picture I’m going to draw for how that statistic of 98% of undesired casualties does not baffle me, and to illustrate how, I will use the fertilizer plant explosion in Texas.

Why?

Because serendipitously enough, that explosion matches the description of a Tomahawk missile well enough to illustrate the casualty statistic.

According to my (admittedly limited) research, the impact of a Tomahawk missile is as follows

• Pinpoint accurate targeting with controlled explosion
• Absolute kill zone of 50-100 yard/meter radius
• Anticipated kill zone of up-to 1 mile radius

That one-mile potential-kill radius seems a little unfathomable until you see something like this.

Actually seeing the power of the explosion makes the statistic of civilian casualties a little more fathomable, doesn’t it? The impact of the explosion does not necessarily kill people from its flying debris, although it can. It can be just as common, however, for the shock waves to rupture weak blood cells in the brain or other areas that are not strong enough to withstand such a fierce, sudden percussion. Needless to say, this puts children at high risk.

The other day a reporter finally had the guts to ask the press secretary of the White House if the most recent casualties of civilians due to US bombs counted as terrorism. This is the picture released with the story (click on the image for story, article, and audio):

To all of you who find this picture heartbreaking, trust me, I do, too. It's hard to look at, and even harder to post. But as you can see, none of these children have physical injuries. In fact, most of them look like they are asleep. Such a picture can seem like propaganda until you pair it with the power of the explosions they experience and their probable cause of death.

It is a hard subject to talk about. As Americans we’re taught that we’re the good guys. We help people. We’re the people who run past the finish line at a marathon to give blood to those who might need it. And because that’s who we are, a situation like this can be very easy to dismiss or even rail against.

I understand that. But now maybe you can also understand why some people can’t dismiss it… and why some people think we should be discussing it, at the very least, and stopping it immediately, at best.

On my side, I just wrote this so that people who know me might have a better understanding for why I care. It's because I DO believe in the propaganda of American ideals. I DO believe we are mighty. And I DO believe we have the power to stop this if enough of us dare to actually look at it. Or we can be the other type of Americans many believe us to be... the self-absorbed ones that don't care about anything until it impacts us personally.

Personally, I believe we are all better than that.

Love to all, domestic and abroad.

Subtle Awesomeness

Music is amazing, and like people, it comes in a large spectrum.

For the most part, the majority of the people in a society will all recognize the same songs. For example, everyone reading this would know Canon in D if they heard it. We'd recognize Ode to Joy within a few notes. If the Jaws theme came on we'd all know both the song and the movie. We'd all recognize Beat It if it came on the radio along with thousands of other contemporary songs.

These songs are part of a culture--you can actually test if someone has a shared cultural history with you by their common recognition of them, or their ability to sing Mary Had a Little Lamb or Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star on cue.

Then there are other songs--songs you hear, but you don't actually know. Music that lives on the fringe, even as it reaches in and strokes the culture from time to time.

These songs fascinate me. They don't have the power to hook into the minds of people like a John Williams  or Danny Elfman theme. Yet when you hear them, they touch you somehow. You like them, even as something about the song fades from your mind like a dream upon waking. When it's playing, you're in it. You like it. You feel it. It's kind of a little perfect.But when it stops, it somehow filters back into the white noise of life and you can't hear in anymore. Maybe if you really think about it, but if you don't then in a day or so you'll forget about it entirely until the next time it comes up.

A lot of artistic things fall in this realm--not just music. They are elements that are used to fill out new creations in a way that "creative stars" can't. The Superman theme song, for example, can't be used in any other movie. That's Superman's song! Just like any other horror movie would be ridiculed for using a Jaws theme. There is no flexibility in that.

Such is not the case for the creative elements that live on the fringe. They get to be reincarnated and play a part in many stories.

One song in particular that gets to do this is John Murphy's Surface of the Sun. The first movie it was in was kind of a sleeper movie that flew under the radar. Great cast, but with neither positive nor negative reviews, it kind of just disappeared into the sea of movie meh-ness.

Here is the scene the song was originally scored for (highly recommend watching):




The good-ish news is that the movie didn't make enough money to do things like pay for an official soundtrack, or pay to have exclusive rights to the music it had scored, so this theme (like many others) has kind of dandelioned into into other movies over the years. (And yes, I've just decided I like the word dandelion as a verb.)

The next movie to use the theme in an epic scene is Kick-Ass. And if reading that movie title offended you, I wouldn't recommend watching the clip below. For the record, I like the movie because it does what movie violence SHOULD do: It makes you ill. Yes, there is a lot of glam choreography--especially with Hit Girl. But the violence in the movie honestly makes you hate violence. It never truly lets you off the hook to celebrate something horrible it just choreographed. It leaves you sick and even chastises you for liking it.

That said, this clip is graphic, and if you watch to the last 5 seconds you will hear an f-bomb. So if that worries you, then just take my word that Surface of the Sun adds dramatic impact in this movie as well as a very highly trained little girl tries to save her father's life.



The song has slept a couple of years since appearing here, only to pop up again. This time it's in The Mortal Instruments trailer:


It's like homeless awesomeness just looking for a place to put in its roots, but something about it is still blowing on the wind. This is the state of 99% of creative ideas, I would guess--a perfect little seed just waiting for the right soil and the right synergy to become all it can be.

Until then, however, those ideas, like this song, just sneak around in the white noise, blowing around until they find their one true home.

And until they do, they can be fun to track :)

A Million-Something Minutes to Go...

For those of you who thought it was one of the meaner April Fool's jokes, here is verification from Ellen's own mouth.

Finding Dory is on it's way. Smart move, Pixar. (Although I have to say that I feel the director's pain. He wanted to make John Carter II... but there are certainly worse plan Bs in the world than having Finding Dory be your fallback.)