Eccentric Flower:200003/Guesses in the Dark

It's been a rough few days. Not only has the work load been long and generally frustrating, but the primaries yesterday showed that, once again, America is determined to shoot its own foot off in every way possible. Oh, and when I showed you my letter to the TG_Fiction mailing list, I forgot to forestall the obvious response ... so I got several of them. I'll deal with that in the next entry, later tonight when I can muse at leisure.

(Okay, and I'll admit something selfish: I was hoping at least one of the TG_Fiction readers would see my various posts and ask me where they can find some of my work. They have not. Oh, well. That's my method of advertising, you know, since I feel that just announcing the availability of one's prose is egotistical: Sit around and be scintillating, and hope that someone will ask to see your etchings. It has about as much success as you'd expect, but at least I'm not bragging.)

I seem to have a little enforced downtime today, as the code has hit a design impasse and my personal Simon Legree insists that we have a meeting to solve it. So no further work can be done until we all get together to determine the way the screens will flow, and getting this crowd together for a meeting is akin to a labor of Hercules.

Unfortunately the text of the J story isn't here or I'd work on it. I am tempted by Shmuel's survey, but the first eleven questions are useless, the advertising question probably requires more creativity than I can muster right now (come to think of it, that would apply to the J story as well), and the Hitler question ... well, I could write a whole'nother entry about just that.

Oh, what the heck, it's not like I have the energy to update mouthorgan or anything .... That's the problem, you see. I'm tired all the time. Soon I won't be able to do anything but lie around and stare at the ceiling, like Inu.

Preliminary Exercises
You'll need to read the questions on his site, I'm too tired to copy them.

1. The Simpsons.
2. Root beer.
3. '80's. There were no arcade games in the '90's worthy of the name. Only these multi-person extravaganzas where you ride around on Motocross tracks or some such. They've all gotten full-body. Arcade games are supposed to exercise about three muscles in each hand and nothing else.
4. I favor existence whenever possible.
5. With butter and cinnamon, or with marmalade. Oh, you meant how dark? Nonelvis' retarded toaster-oven never gets it right anyway, so the point is moot. I keep threatening to buy an actual toaster, but I eat toast about three times a year, so it hardly seems worth the trouble.
6. My name is seldom misspelled, but I do have to explain to people that my Legal First Name and my Actual First Name are two different things. (And then there are the explanations about the name I use here ...)
7. I'm partial to the orange ones on the back side of the block, behind the jail, because they're the most-often-landed-on spaces in the game. But I also like having all four railroads.
8. Favorite mailing list? Isn't that a bit like asking which circle of Hell you'd rather be sentenced to? (Hmm. Actually, that's a pretty interesting question ...)
9. I'd want to read minds. It would cure my self-confidence problems and my paranoia. As I've said before: I don't care if someone loves me or hates me, I just want to be sure which it is.
10. Depends on what I'm writing and how well it's going. The more trouble I'm having, the more silence I need.
11. Oscar or Cookie Monster - the only two creatures on Sesame Street I really love and empathize with. Choice of song is irrelevant.

And Now For A Word From ...
Advance warning: This is in rather poor taste. Then again, so is AOL.

(Title card with central logo: AOL Makes It Easy!)

(Inset face shots of people giving testimonials appear one by one and shrink into corners of title card when they've finished speaking. All the people are female.)

Face #1: I never realized it could be so simple!

Face #2: I always used to hate that time ... you know ... but now I don't worry about it anymore.

Face #3: They say 'easy-to-use'. They're not kidding!

Face #4: AOL has literally changed my life!

VO: If you're one of the many women nationwide who gets nervous about her monthly sanitary needs, Applicators Online can help YOU! No more fumbling around in cramped bathroom stalls. No more worrying whether you remembered to carry "extras" in your purse. Just strap on our special peripheral, plug it into any supported personal computer, log on to your personal AOL account, and two hours later, you're done!

Face #4: It couldn't be easier!

VO (Low, very fast): AOL client software must be installed on computers before use. Software not available for all platforms. Peripheral is compatible only for women within normal ranges of weight and height. AOL is not responsible for delays in connect time, or failures due to incorrect peripheral attachment or maintenance. Women with heavy or irregular menstrual flow may experience inadequate coverage. Consult your physician before applying for an account. Some assembly required.

Tagline: A joint venture of Tambrands and Steve Case Holdings.

That Hitler Question
Oh, this is going to get me pain, I can tell.

So. I can travel back in time and give Hitler crib death. Do I? No, I don't, but my reasons why may surprise you.

I've been reading a lot about World War II in recent months, and I've come up with a rather depressing conclusion: We needed it to happen. Yes, there was a huge price tag, not just for the Jews but for everyone. But I am reasonably convinced that World War II - assuming our victory - was an event whose repercussions were necessary for the world.

(And I agree with Paul Fussell that wars such as Vietnam probably would not have happened the way they did if America, in particular, had allowed itself to fully LEARN the lessons of World War II - lessons it has only grudgingly accepted.)

Among other things, World War II fulfilled World War I's broken promise as "the war to end all wars," in that it showed that war had become a battle of attrition and manufacturing - a battle of production, men and machines. That strategy was almost irrelevant. This is not the kind of war leaders like to commit to. That's a good thing.

World War II ushered in an age where war became so dangerous that no one really wanted to fight one. And since then, war has been very limited in scope by comparison.

Oh, and World War II was the only thing that could have successfully pulled us out of the depression.

I'm open to dispute on any of those - these are my impressions, but they're not necessarily well-informed ones. I'm still learning.

The one thing we didn't learn from World War II is the inadvisability of trying to meddle in other people's politics. We never did get that one, and now quite a bit of the rest of the world EXPECTS us to play policeman, when the sensible thing to do in some cases would be to stay out of it.

But wait, you say, we can't just sit back and let the Serbs and Croats and so forth Balkanize and genocide themselves into oblivion! Well, perhaps not. But the solution to that is to make something like the UN more impartial, and give it more teeth. (In a country that can't even be trusted to pay its UN dues, this is obviously not a popular solution. Much as our leaders dislike being policemen, they distrust letting someone else take the reins even more.)

What's all this got to do with Hitler? Well, unlike Shmuel, I believe that if Hitler HAD been killed as a child, World War II would not have happened. Hitler was not just anyone. He was very charismatic, in his way, very driven, very inspired. He had A Vision and that made him dangerous. Sure, in the depressed state that was late-thirties Germany, someone would have come along with their equivalent of the New Deal ... and it would have stopped there. Or possibly the powder keg would have built up much more slowly, and we'd have ended up fighting the Big War in 1962 instead of 1942 - which would have been disastrous.

No, I believe Hitler was necessary for World War II, in the form we know it. And I believe World War II was necessary.

Everybody mad at me now? Remember that I'm writing this in 2000. I wasn't there and I don't have the same perspective. There's no way I can. And - except for the unlikely event that you're in your seventies and experienced it firsthand - you are writing from a false perspective as well.

So we're all guessing in the dark.