Whatever

Gawker, that great engine of social egalitarianism, points us to an article in Toronto Life about the Canadian 1% and how they try to get by in Toronto, Canada’s largest city. The implication is that even with $196,000, which is the income line for the 1% in that far northern country (and that’s Canadian dollars, mind you!), it’s sometimes difficult to make ends meet in that nation’s largest city.

Then you read the article, which does things like complaining that after you subtract “wardrobe refreshes” and “the cost of sushi, pad thai and butter chicken” ordered in three nights a week because of being too tired to cook, $10,400 a month doesn’t go very far, and then drops this bomb:

Aaaaaaand that’s then I want to start pressing the “It’s time for the goddamned revolution” button. By the time we get to the breakdowns of the monthly expenses of the seven 1% households profiled for the article, which features line items like $800 a month on wine and $1200 for the vacation house on the lake, I’m vaguely surprised Toronto isn’t on fire. The only people I feel any sort of commonality with are the immigrant family, who pack their own lunches for work and aside from the hair salon line item seem to have some perspective on their cash. The retired couple who invested well and are living off the proceeds also gets a pass, because, hey, that’s the goal, right? Otherwise: Purification by flame.

The problem here is that once again we’re confronted with the interesting paradox of “the 1%,” which is that the incomes of within the 1% are surprisingly heterogeneous. It’s a category that encompasses both people with six-figure annual incomes and people making nine-figure annual incomes; likewise, it’s people with seven-figure net worths and people with eleven-figure net worths. The 99% of the 1% do not have helipads and supermodels and dormitories or libraries named after them at their elite school alma maters; they have mortgages and expenses and their kids’ educations will be a non-trivial percentage of their total net worth. So if you’re on the bottom rung of society’s topmost ladder, you’re going to feel you have more in common with the middle class than with the stinkin’ rich, because as a practical matter you do.

But that doesn’t mean you’re middle class, or that your problems are middle class problems; it also means that when you complain about how hard it is to make ends meet and yet you’ve got the lake cottage and you spend $1,000 a month on clothes, the people who really are middle and lower class are going to look at you like, would you please just shut up, you arrogant rich bastard, before I put you and your whole family up against a wall. This is especially true when, as is the case of the Toronto Life article, the heart of the “problem” is that apparently it’s harder today than ever before to maintain and display the overt social cues of your petit bourgeois status.

Speaking as a member of the petit bourgeois, dear other members of the petit bourgeois:

1. Please learn how to budget, because no matter where you live — even in the US! Even in most parts of expensive cities! — $200,000 should be sufficient for a very comfortable lifestyle without much stretching.

2. If you’re in competition with your neighbors about who can live the better lifestyle, you’ve already lost and you’re just embarrassing yourself. Status anxiety is for the betas.

3. When in public, please shut the fuck up about how difficult your life is, economically. It just pisses off everybody else, and there are more of them than there are of you.

4. If your life is genuinely economically difficult, see point one. If necessary, take your wine budget for a month or two and hire an accountant or financial planner and then actually listen to them.

This is not to say that those on the bottom rung of the 1% should not complain about their problems, ever. I’ve noted before that for most people their problems with money is not having enough; for the well-off the problem is managing it well. It is a real problem, and it’s useful to talk to people with the same sort of problem and figure things out. It’s also worth remembering it’s a problem most people would like to have, and will not feel entirely sympathetic toward you for having it, just like you are not entirely sympathetic about the money problems of, say, Alex Rodriguez, or he entirely sympathetic to the money issues of Mark Zuckerberg.

Now, you might say, hey, the people of the 99% are as clueless about my financial issues as I am to theirs, so why is it that I’ll get crap for it and they don’t? Because they have less money, stupid. They are suffering every other economic penalty imaginable; it’s not unreasonable for the social penalty for economic cluelessness to be just about the only thing that vectors upward. The fact you can brood about this at the lake house over the weekend should put this problem of yours in perspective.

So, as Gawker puts it, the 1% most stop insisting they’re not rich, right this instant. They are, or close enough to it for statistical work. If you’re at the bottom end of the 1% you might not be as rich as some, but the ratio of people you are richer than, compared to those you are less rich than, is roughly 99:1. Keep that in mind. Recognize it and be grateful. And rather than asserting that you are not well off, figure out how you can manage your money in such a way that at the end of the day you’re not wondering where the hell all the money went. Because that’s a lot of money. You should be able to live well and still have some of it left over. Even in Toronto. Or anywhere else.

Here it is:

The cover art is by Dan Dos Santos, who is the Artist Guest of Honor here at Boskone. It and the book are quite nice looking. One thing you can’t tell by looking at this picture is that underneath the dust jacket, the book itself is silver. It’s really quite a thing to look at. And the content is, as noted before, a collection of my science fiction film columns from AMC/FilmCritic.com.

If you’re at Boskone, you’ll be able to get it starting tomorrow. If you’re not at Boskone, it will be available for you to get staring early next week. There are only 1100 hardcovers in the first printing, so if you’re a collector, you’ll want to hop to it. It’s worth the getting.

There you have it.

In other news, here I am in Boston, a little early for the Boskone convention, which starts tomorrow. If you live in a hundred mile radius and are not there, we will have words.

Also, for those wondering what I’m doing with myself while I’m at Boskone, here’s my program schedule:

Reboots: Refreshing or Depressing? (Panel), Fri 19:00 – 20:00, Harbor I (Westin) SFWA Eastern Regional Meeting (Other), Sat 12:00 – 13:00, Carlton (Westin) Guest of Honor Interview and Portrait Painting (Panel), Sat 14:00 – 15:00, Harbor I (Westin) Release Party — New John Scalzi Book From NESFA Press (Other), Sat 15:00 – 16:00, Galleria-Demo (Westin) H. Beam Piper Retrospective (Panel), Sat 16:00 – 17:00, Burroughs (Westin) Kaffeeklatsche: John Scalzi (Kaffeeklatsche), Sat 17:00 – 18:00, Galleria-Kaffeeklatsch 1 (Westin) Boskone Saturday Night Award Event (Other), Sat 21:00 – 22:00, Harbor II&III (Westin) My Top Ten Tips for the Prospective Author (Panel), Sun 11:00 – 12:00, Harbor II (Westin) Reading: John Scalzi (Reading), Sun 13:00 – 14:00, Lewis (Westin)

Yes, they’re keeping me busy. I’ll also be doing an autographing in there somewhere. The new book listed in the schedule is 24 Frames Into the Future: Scalzi on Science Fiction Film, a collection of my AMC/FilmCritic.com columns. I’ll be posting a photo of it as soon as I get my grubby mitts on the thing, I assure you.

Anyway: Hello, Boston. You have to deal with me for a whole weekend.

Oh, stop screaming. It’s not that bad.

My pal Mark Nevin (former guitarist/songwriter for Fairground Attraction, now solo artist) has a video out for his song “Oh Mama.” It’s a sweet song about how moms are pretty great, so that’s nice (and true!), but I have to say that the element of the video I fixated on from the very first moment are his shoes. Because, wow: Pink with thick waffle soles. I’m vaguely terrified. He threatened to get me a pair. I fear he might.

In case you were wondering. I explain it at FilmCritic.com this week. Go — and may the Force be with you. ALWAYS.

Happy Valentine’s Day, you crazy kids.

(The band, incidentally: First Aid Kit. The song is off this album.)

For all of you waiting to hear if I have Big Idea slots through April:

I have your e-mails and will (hopefully) do all my scheduling through April tonight and tomorrow.

Don’t panic!

Yours,

JS

I use Flickr to host most of the pictures that are here on Whatever, and one of the nice perks of Flickr is its integration with Picnik, an online photo editing suite with some nice features and filters. Unfortunately, Picnik is going away soon, a victim of integration with its parent Google, and now I’m left to find a replacement suite for quick-and-dirty photo filtering. I use Photoshop for serious photo editing, but a lot of the time I don’t need serious photoediting, I just want something to make the picture look different. It’s been ironically easier to find apps for that that on a cell phone (I use Vignette most of the time) than it has been on the computer proper.

A couple of days ago I stumbled upon Camerabag 2, a photoediting suite that has filters, frames and editing tools, with a relatively simple scheme for mixing and matching each. I have to say I’ve been pretty pleased with it. The mix-and-match aspect of it is especially nice; some of the other photo filtering programs I’ve played with have not made it as intuitive to put one filter on top of another and tweak both. The program fulfills my need to fiddle with the look of a picture without making it a drag to do so, and I like that a lot.

In addition to a set list of styles (filters) and borders, Camerabag 2 has a category of filters called “Favorites,” which are basically preset macros of various combinations of filters/adjustments/borders. You can use them as they are or tweak them by adjusting the individual components. You can also create your own (as I did above with the picture of me and Dave Klecha) and then save them for future use. As noted before, it’s pretty easy to figure out and catch on. My one complaint is that the various “smudgy” borders don’t seem to auto-generate variations, so all the smudges/creases/whatever will be the same across all the pictures. But that’s a relatively small gripe (and seems to suggest using those borders sparingly, which I think is probably a good thing, anyway).

I’ll note that I don’t think this sort of filtering necessarily makes pictures better — we could nerd out for days about whether the Instagramming of Photography has been a bane or a benefit. I think if you start off with a crappy picture, putting an ironic 70′s Instamatic border around it isn’t suddenly going to make it good, and if you have a good picture, you can filter it down into hipster mediocrity without much effort. That said, there’s something to be said with making a photo what you want it to be, and if fiddling with it with filters and effects gets it to the emotional space you want it to be in (or, to overthink it rather less, makes it look cool to you), then why not. I think it’s a little silly to get bogged down with concerns about authenticity when you’re taking pictures of your cat.

In any event, if you like tweaking your photos on your computer but don’t want to have to break out Photoshop for every little thing, I can recommend Camerabag 2. So far, it’s been making me happy, and it gives me lots of options to play with. And it’s $25 at the moment, which doesn’t suck either. It appears available for Mac and PC; check it out.

Well, I had fun, in any event. I’ve already detailed my DJing experience, so I won’t go over that again, except to say it was Friday and today is Monday, and I’m still sore, and, clearly, old. But the rest of it went over pretty well, too. I moderated a panel about the Occupy movement and the Tea Party movement, which was well-attended in part because I think there was an expectation that the panelists (which included Cory Doctorow and Michael Z. Williamson) would eventually start stabbing each other, but as it turned out everyone played very well together and instead of a ideology battle we had a substantive conversation on popular protest movements and the impact of modern technology on the same. In other words, they came for the blood but stayed for the nerd. And that was cool by me. I then also did a reading, at which I threatened to bring my ukulele and play it; as you can see from the photo above (by Michael Johns, who gave me permission to post it because he is awesome) I made good on the threat. And I sang! And hit at least half the notes! So there’s that, too. And there are genuinely lovely people who both put on the con and attend it. It’s a very friendly con, and I always felt at home.

And now I have a three-day work week, because next weekend I am at another convention — Boskone, in Boston, where I am the author guest of honor, and at which I will be debuting my latest book, 24 Frames into the Future: Scalzi on Science Fiction Film. Unfortunately I have five days of work to fit into those three days, which is my way of saying that, hey, this week I may not be updating as obsessively as I usually do, on account of pay copy. Yes, life is terribly unfair this way. We must all try to move forward anyway.

I’m gonna put on my “President of SFWA” hat for a moment (it’s a beanie!) to remind SFWA members that there’s only a couple of days left to get in your nominations for this year’s Nebula Awards (as well as the Norton YA award and the Bradbury screenwriting award, which SFWA also presents). So if you haven’t voted yet, now is the time to get it done; the nomination ballot closes Wednesday, February 15, at 11:59pm Pacific time.

If you’re a SFWA member and you want to be reminded of some works you may have read but missed, or works you still have time to peruse, remember that in SFWA’s forums there is a recommendation area, with works suggested by your fellow SFWA members (please note that the recommendation list is not a preliminary nomination ballot — you have to nominate by using the actual nomination ballot). Also, here’s a thread from this site of works suggested by their creators, and another of works suggested by fans.

Don’t worry, we’ll also be reminding you via e-mail about nominating, complete with links to the nominating ballot. But a reminder here doesn’t hurt any, either.

Just had a long day traveling back from Chicago. See you all tomorrow.

It went pretty well. I DJ’d for four and a half hours and danced for almost all of that time, and as a result that the moment my knees are sending me angry messages that they want a trial separation. However, I rejoice in the fact that I am not the only one with this problem; people last night were saying that the dance had entirely worn them out. Yes, well, that’s what dances are supposed to do. I’m looking forward to seeing how many people will be hobbling about today because I made them hop about like bunnies last night. In all it went better than I thought it might, and people for the most part seemed to have a pretty good time. When you get the complaint that you’ve played too many good songs, which makes it hard to leave the dance floor, you know you’re doing your job.

Now people are asking whether or not I’m going to DJ the CapriCon dance next year or if I’m going to DJ a dance at Worldcon, and my answer to both is: Man, I don’t know what I’m doing with myself next Tuesday, let alone a year from now. We’ll see. That’s my official response.

I’ve been told that Tor has offered up an ARC of Redshirts for Con or Bust, the fundraiser to help fans of color attend science fiction and fantasy conventions. So if you’d like to bid to try to get that copy for yourself, the auction is going on here. If you’d like to check out the other auctions going on for Con or Bust, try here.

Hey guys:

As you know I’m DJing an 80s dance tonight. I’m pretty well situated for 80s dance music (500 tracks on the playlist) BUT there’s always a chance I’ve completely blown past a “wow you should really have that in the mix” track.

SO: Suggest one of YOUR favorite songs from the 80s that you would want to dance to. The “that you’d want to dance to” part is important, because it’s a dance.

Any genre works.

Do me a favor and focus on no more than five songs. I don’t need laundry lists; I need awesome 80s songs I might have overlooked.

Got it? Good. Go!

It may be too late to use it for Redshirts. A pity, that.

As you all remember, and in the wake of the Susan G. Komen thing, last week I and Subterranean Press pledged the income generated by one week of sales of my SubPress eBooks to support Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screening and education efforts. I’m delighted to say that in the end we raised $5,200. (Well, $5,196.30, but then I tossed in $3.70 to even it up). As promised we’ll specify that the funds go exclusively to Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer-related initiatives, which help poor and underserved women in early detection and treatment. $5,200 is a relative drop in the bucket, but you put enough drops together and you’ve got something useful.

Thanks to everyone who picked a SubPress eBook in the last week; I hope you’ve enjoyed what you’ve been reading. And thanks for helping women learn about, detect, and fight, breast cancer. You’ve done good, and you’ve done well.

There’s a writer named John Mierau who asked me to retweet his campaign to crowdsource a novel:

I retweeted, he made his goal, and he ate a Bolivian Rainbow pepper while reading The Eye of Argon. If you want to go straight to the pepper eating, it starts at about 9:30. At about 10:24 he bites into it. Watch his face. Just watch it.

Eventually he starts rubbing his eyes with the hand he’s holding the pepper in. I’m not sure about the wisdom of that.

Anyway, yeah: The Bolivian Rainbow causing this poor man’s tongue to melt? My doing. What can I say, I’m a jerk. On the other hand, it’s the spiciest reading of The Eye of Argon, ever.