Last night on CSI, there was a child who supposedly had an IQ of 176 (though they don’t say what IQ test–for outlying scores, it matters, but I’m assuming SB-LM is pretty much the only one possible; it is still used for both the very high and low ends because newer tests deliberately ignore outliers). Aside from the fact that A) the high school set up was just plain silly, B) the teachers would not have all been taken in if the victim were really that vicious, C) the “brilliant girl”’s behavior and attitude mirrored that of the UNACCELERATED, not the accelerated child, there was a reference to “Indigo Children.”

Most people probably went, “What?” I would have, too, two years ago, but I’ve now run into a mother of a PG child (IQ of 180+ on SB-LM) who buys into that crystal-rainbow crap. Yeah, smart people can be really dumb, too. Worse, they tend to be so good at arguing a point that they can convince themselves of really stupid things because few people they meet are able to come up with objections they can’t shred.

Anyhow, the “Indigo Child” movement started way far away from the gifted community. Basically, a charlatan…er…PSYCHIC named Tappe wrote a book about classifying people through their auras in 1982. She claimed that every age had a color associated with it, and that we are moving from the Blue or Violet Age into an exciting new Indigo Age, which will be characterized by a new energy pattern belonging to people of “evolved consciousness”–a new angelic race that will supercede all others. In its original form, 95% of all children born since 1982 are Indigo Children, with “unusually large, clear eyes” who are “extremely bright, precocious children with an amazing memory and a strong desire to live instinctively” and they will, of course, bring peace to all mankind and Mother Earth.

After this, a man named Lee Carroll took the idea after a midlife psychic crisis and ran with it, writing a book called The Indigo Children as the channeler for an entity he calls Kryon. (Summon cheesey original Star Trek sound effects…) From there, it’s only gotten more off the wall! Indigo Children are etheric being–angels from another dimension. They are the next step in human evelotion. They are our connection to an alien consciousness. They are the forerunners of the Crystal Children, who are even more evolved!

The #1 target of Indigo Children hucksters are the parents of ADHD kids. Now personally, I’m quite supportive of using environmental and educational changes and lifestyle alteration approaches as an alternative to medicine, especially given the side effects that are now know. But telling people that their kids aren’t ADHD, they’re Indigo–special, better, more evolved–is unconsciable. Really. Talk about preying on people who are at the end of their rope.

Since part of the Indigo Child’s specialness is supposed to be “spiritual giftedness” as well as high intelligence, Indigo Children proponents have gone after people in the gifted community, trying to convince them that their kids are not just abnormal but inhuman. Yeah, that’ll give them a complex. It is easy to believe in some ways because even professionals who are accepting of large differences in intelligence tend to like to gloss over the ramifications. For example, Indigo Children are supposed to be more “spiritually developed”, more “sensitive”, more, well, good. And the higher the intelligence of a child, the more likely he is to be preoccupied with abstractions like social justice, inpersonal relations, and theological ideas from a young age. And they are often more emotionally and physically sensitive as well, for neurological reasons and also because of their analytical tendencies. Psychologists, even many who are familiar with gifted children, don’t like to make those comparisons because it makes them uncomfortable because ideas like having a concern for justice are innately value-laden. But value-laden or not, when the psychological community is mute about something that affects the lives of gifted kids so profoundly, they often look elsewhere, to a place that acknowledges those differences and even celebrates them. And the Indigo Children community is one such place. Unfortunately, it also imbues parents with the idea that their children are being from other planets, come to revolutionize the world with peace and beauty and whatever else, which gives the kids themselves a very unhealthy combination of a sense of superiority over mere mortals (including their over-indulgent parents, who are encouraged to pretty much spoil them rotten) and a feeling like they must forever prove themselves worth of their Indigo-ness.

Anyhow, there was a discusion about the Indigo fruitcake on a list I was on, and one person forwarded this link which will only link properly for a short time before it’s replaced but that I found hilarious.

For a walk on the fruitcake side, check out the other link.

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Off topic here: Speaking of abnormal children, the Bear has just discovered how to make a glass make farting and and burping sounds by blowing into it while pushing it against his face. And he’s doing it right next to me, trying to get a reaction. It won’t work.

Now he’s given up and is trying to see if the dogs will give him any better reaction. Nope. They’re sleeping right through it.

A great deal is made over Hollywood movie stars, who are portrayed as fabulously wealthy, glamorous, and, well, wealthy. For that reason, I was rather startled to discover what people in Hollywood REALLY make. Don’t get me wrong–it’s a LOT of money. But there are more authors raking in this kind of dough than there are actors and actresses, yet their lifestyles are almost always much, much more modest. In fact, considering what these actors and actresses constantly pay for their super-glamorous lifestyles, one wonders…how much money do they even have in the bank?

Just as an example of incomes in 2005, here are the top actors and actresses:

Will Ferrell 38 $40 million
Johnny Depp 42 $37 million
Ray Romano 48 $36.5 million
Will Smith 37 $35 million
Tobey Maguire 30 $32 million
Tom Cruise 43 $31 million
Denzel Washington51 $30 million
Adam Sandler 39 $28 million
Brad Pitt 42 $25 million
Drew Barrymore 31 $22 million
Jennifer Aniston37 $18 million
Jennifer Lopez 36 $17 million
Matt Damon 35 $17 million
Nicole Kidman 38 $14.5 million
Jennifer Garner 33 $14 million
Cameron Diaz 33 $13 million
Naomi Watts 37 $11.5 million
Sandra Bullock 41 $10.5 million
Patricia Heaton 47 $9 million
Julia Roberts 38 $8 million

By the time you get down to Julia Roberts, you get into the realm of what many NYT bestsellers placing in the bottom half of the top 10 list earn in two books in a year. Really. And there are about, oh, say 30 of those in the U.S. In the top half of the NYT lists, income varies even more dramatically than in the top half of this list. Dan Brown made $76.5 million in 2005. JK Rowling made $59.1 million. La Nora made $28.8–though I suspect that’s off somewhat, actually. James Patterson? $27 million. And there are many, many, MANY more who flew under Forbes’ radar as just plain not being sexy enough to make a celebrity list. But how often do authors show up to an event wearing even $50k jewery or clothing, nevermind $200k? (And I mean stuff movie actors and actresses acutally buy, not just wear at an awards show as a walking advertisement.) How often do they jet around the world in privately chartered jets? I’m not saying that authors tend to be rich. In fact, most are dirt poor and a huge percentage of the rest, like me, are just bobbing along. But those who are rich seem to take a much quieter and less spendy approach to life than equally well-off actors. Is it an ego thing? An expectations thing? A personality thing? I don’t know. But it’s interesting to think about.

I almost never watch CSI: NY, but after dropping a tree on my head earlier today, I decided to be a couch potato tonight. Anyhow, there’s a shot of the Empite State Building, and right in the middle of it, the Bear strolls in, looks at the screen, and announces, “Empire!”

Okay. He’s picking up radiowaves with his teeth or something. *crosses eyes*

When you cut down a tree, no matter where you are standing or how you are cutting, the tree will fall on your head.

Or at least on mine.

I value accuracy. A LOT. I value complex human characters. I value a tight, meaningful plot. I value good writing. But I’ve discovered something. I’ll like a book that completely fails in any one of those categories–if the others are strong enough.

This was brought home this week when I read a book that I thoroughly enjoyed and would thoroughly recommend that had the worst research I’ve read in several years. It wasn’t just historical research. It was things like not knowing that a parent’s cousin is YOUR cousin, not you uncle (or aunt). Like being capable of envisioning what would happen if a horse starts bucking–no, you can’t wrap your arms around its neck because you’re thrown backwards. Like knowing the names to the parts of a saddle. Like knowing that a gun with the safety on is not “locked” and that Regency-era guns had no safeties. And there there WERE the historical research problems–like not understanding how servants behaved and masters behaved with them, like not realizing that a person couldn’t just bring a preschool child into society and raise him as their own without anyone questioning or the child even knowing that he’s not the person’s legitimate son, like it not occurring to the author that an engaged girl would already have her dowry set aside at the time of the engagement and can’t be revealed to be penniless, to everyone’s shock, days before the wedding, and like a noble heir (and only son, at that!) being in the army. It just doesn’t make SENSE.

Yet the book was well written, and except for one section, it contained wonderfully true-to-life, complex characters that were a joy to read about. So despite noticing errors every few pages, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I liked the world, adored the writing, and couldn’t wait to see how the characters would change and confront their own fears, grow out of their shortcomings, and fall in love.

There have been several books recently that have contained thoroughly ludicrous plot points or research or whatever that I have enjoyed a great deal anyhow. One contained huge amounts of a cute little trick that will always drive me up the wall–short little one-sentence paragraphs, all bunched into little groups. And yet all of these books I loved.

Why? Well, I’ve decided that I have a metric for loving books that goes something like this:

I love any book that scores 100 points. I rate books on writing between 1-85 points, on plot between 1-75 points, on accuracy between 1-75 points, and on characters between 1-90 points. So if a book is good ENOUGH in any two categories, I’ll love it. It’s not that I wouldn’t love a book that scored 200 more–it’s just that it’s scored high enough that I’ll still love the book for its strengths and recommend it highly to other people.

If a blog reader thinks that I’d like or recommend books that are a great deal like my own…she’d be quite disappointed. Because my tastes certainly overlap my writing voice, but I appreciate things that I deemphasize in my own writing and can ignore a lack of things that I tend to emphasize. If I like a book, it means just that: I like it. And no more.

Everyone has natural, inborn limits in which we all must function. I will only be so good at running, or so good at drawing, or so good at writing, even. Everyone suffers from luck, good and bad, or fate, or whatever. But where we fall within our limits is still largely up to us. Really. My priorities and choices determined how fast I can run a mile today–yes, despite the fact that I developed exercise-induced asthma (luck) and I have a weird muscle condition (inborn), I could run a mile several minutes faster if I trained, or many minutes slower if I let myself get entirely out of shape. It is stupid for me to look at Jackie Joyner-Kersey and whine, “I will never be that good because I was just cursed!” and then use that as a justification for how slowly I run a mile now. How fast she runs is irrevelant. The fact is that *I* don’t have control over her–I have control over me. And if running well were really a priority, then I would run much better than I do now. I might LIKE to run faster, but unless I’m really out there busting my butt every day, eating right, doing appropriate training, etc., etc., the fact is that the reason that I don’t run faster is that I really don’t care that much however much I might blabber about it.

This is true for most people about most areas in their lives for most time in their lives. People talk about wanting to have more money. Fine, then. Make different choices. Look for a better job. Go to school after work. They might say, “But I have to do XYZ! I don’t have enough time for that!” Fine. I respect that. But if you’ve made that choice, don’t whine that the world won’t change its course just because it isn’t fair that you didn’t grow up in a wealthy family or go to the best schools or whatever. Yes, life ain’t fair. Yes, sometimes things are out of your control. Yes, sometimes you make choices you don’t want to face–like having to take care of an ailing family member instead of finding that higher-paying, more exciting, more lucrative job. Yeah, that sucks. But it’s your choice. Your values. The responsibility eventually returns to YOU. It’s ADMIRABLE that you choose to take care of your dying mother instead of going to night school. But that choice is yours to make. So take responsibility for it. Hey, maybe you might want to try to gain support for legislation that would give tax rebates to caretakers of adult invalids or provides them with care beyond what Medicaid/Medicare provides or whatever. GREAT! Go for it. If there really is an injustice–an injustice of opportunity, not outcome–there’s no reason to not remedy it. But don’t going around saying, “I deserve, I’m a victim, gimme what I’m owed!” Here’s the cold, hard truth: Life doesn’t owe anyone anything. Period. So get over it.

That’s what cheeses me off so much about many people who identify themselves as activists of some sort or another. If someone describes herself as a feminist, I tend to be very wary. Why? Because most of the people I’ve met who would immediately label themselves in such a way are the “gimme” types. It’s not like sexism doesn’t exist. The second closest time I’ve ever come to hitting someone after I turned 18 was actually my boss in a paper mill in Alabama, who wouldn’t knock off the barefoot and pregnant jokes. I’ve had a test graded down, too, because I was female by an Indian professor who seemed to resent women in engineering–never called on me in class even when I wsa the only person out of 250 with my hand in the air, even though I was always right. So it’s a force that’s alive and well. But too many self-named feminists see everything in term of gender and blame things that are rightly the fault of their own incompetence upon men, so they never learn from their mistakes and they never get better. Many of them simply hate men–yes, the stereotype is true–and try to pin everything wrong in their lives on them. In fact, through their cringe-inducing rhetoric, “feminists” of that sort do more to hurt the cause of equal rights than help it.

It’s the same with racial and ethnic activists. THE closest time I came to hitting someone after I turned 18 was when a drunk guy started hurling racial slurs at my then-boyfriend. I was almost completely blind to race growing up until middle school, when I didn’t change but many of the black kids started forming race-exclusive tables (whites and Hispanics NOT welcome) and the ones who didn’t join and had white friends were called sellouts, Oreos, and wannabes, and some of the Hispanic and black kids started joining the Aztecs, Latin Kings, Crips, and Bloods, who would periodically murder each other. (There were also white gangs in my community, BTW, but they were in the neighboring town, not mine. And there were some white-exclusive tables at my school, though many fewer of those, among the “kickers.” As in shitkickers, or hicks. Yep. Everyone gets a label and a pigeonhole. Isn’t school so NICE?) It was in middle school that some girls I didn’t like started claiming that I didn’t like them because I was RACIST. I’d coolly inform them that even if they were pink with purple polkadots, I wouldn’t like them if they didn’t stop being such horrible, hateful bullies, which shut them up pretty effectively. It wasn’t until college that I really came into close contact with people who really saw themselves as ethnic activists, though. One was a roommate. I has two non-100%-Anglo roommates that semester. The one I’ll call Anne had a white father and a black mother, and she flatly refused to be “black” alone because she, understandably, didn’t consider her father and his background to be insignificant. The other, whom I’ll call Melissa, hated her for it because she believed that anyone who wasn’t white enough to “pass” was either black or a race traitor. She also hated me because I was white. She needed no other reason. Her family probably made three times what mine did, BTW. She grew up in a super-exclusive gated community in Chicago, super-privileged and super-spoiled. How spoiled? She had two siblings, but she had never shared a bathroom with anyone and thought the idea was disgusting. She took up the entire freezer with her food (and her family was into some sort of weird get-back-to-your-hertitage thing because she ate fried soul food almost exclusively, which stank up the apartment and coated everything with grease, but if Anne or I had said anything about it, it would have been because we were RACIST, though I’d swear that I’m culturally closer to the soul-food type than her family has been for generations). Everything was about race to her. I mean EVERYTHING. Every time she made a bad grade, every time a professor disagreed with her, every time another person didn’t like her, it was because she was black and PROUD OF IT. It never occurred to her that the fact that she’d never had a single roommate she could be civil enough with to last the year might have to do with the fact that she was a total selfish bitch. Nope. It was because all her roommates were racist. They had to be! Everything bad that ever happened to her was because of race! Everyone was out to get the black man…er…woman! Anne and I finally called in our RA for mediation, and when Melissa said, “Well, THEY aren’t my friends,” and I said, “I never had a chance to be your friend because I am white and you would never be friends with a white person,” she didn’t disagree. (You could have scraped the RA’s chin off the ground, BTW.) But, you see, that isn’t racist because only white people can be racists! If you’re not white, it doesn’t matter if you see everything in terms of color because, by definition, you’re not racist! I also had an instructor that year who was even worse. Again, only white people are racist, according to her. Black people are coloristm which is bad if they judge other blacks but totally justified if they hate whites. (Hispanics and Asians simply don’t exist.) Cosmetics companies didn’t make cosmetics for blacks for a long time because they are racist. No, not because cosmetic companies are motivated solely by greed and until they started to feel the squeeze and sought out smaller markets, it wasn’t financially worth it to them to produce the many, many shades that would be necessary for a much smaller percent of the population. No white student in her class could hope for more than a B. No black student could get less than one. The instructor hadn’t gotten tenure, according to her, because everyone at the university was racist–no, not because she didn’t have the required PhD and was the second most incompetant instructor I ever had in the department. (And the first one was added back when universities were giving women in the liberal arts tenure to make their numbers look good, *sigh*. Yep. That’s the way to convince society that men and women deserve to be treated equally. Hire a freakin’ moron just because she’s got tits instead of a penis!) My now-DH heard a presentationfrom her in the required session for all new TAs about differing cultures. As he put it, “First this guy came in and told us about how different cultures answer questions and regard authority and interact with others. Then this woman came in and told us how all black women deserve special treatment.” In fact, when Anne needed an easy good grade, I suggested she take the class. She just didn’t do THE major report, and so she wrote a coversheet entitled, “The Invisible Black Man in American Culture,” stapled 6 blank pages to it, turned it in…and got a B+ for the stunt.

And I will admit something here. Dealing with this two women, and being in such forced close proximity to one and all the racist, hateful propaganda she constantly spewed AND FELT JUSTIFIED in spewing, made racism something that I had to fight in myself for the first time in my life. I saw their bigotry, their incompetence, their patterns of behavior, their insufferable attitude of entitlement and began to look for it, warily, in others solely because of the color of their skin when I never had before. And it took me several YEARS to get over it. This is why women who play the “female-therefore-put upon/entitled/whatever” card aggravate me so much, because I know that their behavior can have the same sort of effect on men as those women’s behavior did on me. There are certain places on the web I avoid because they are so hostile towards certain groups–so, well, bigoted, and so self-justified in their in their bigotry that going there would make me into the kind of person they might accuse me of being already by virtue of my genetics.

Yes, there is racism. Yes, there is sexism. Yes, it is something to fight. But that doesn’t mean that bigotry or hostility toward an entire group is even remotely justified, much less than anyone is OWED jack. People who shove race or gender into every single stinkin’ issue, no matter how farfetched, are probably one of the largest causes of continuing racism and sexism today. And do you know what? They see race or gender in every issue not because they are actually put upon but because they are bigots themselves. If you have to give the “unconscious, underlying judgment” line, it’s because you’re looking for a way to justify your own bigotry. If you can’t see the world in terms other than color or gender, projecting that worldview upon other people is an attempt at giving yourself the excuse for having it in the first place–and for your own failures. Can’t move up on the corporate ladder? It’s because you’re female. Can’t get a date? It’s because you’re not white. Yeah, the world’s injust. It’s unfair. But today, in our culture and in our country, if a person fails, a huge helping of the blame belongs in their own laps, because of their choices, attitudes, and behavior, not because of gender (or race or weight or age or background or….). Whining about things we can’t change makes no sense. Instead, we can prove our worth to the world by our success through adversity–our knocking down of barriers, not standing in front of a freakin’ wide open door and bellyaching.

This isn’t restricted to those two issues, though they are big ones. It goes for other things, too. Like weight, for example. Which is why this whole thing came up in the first place. *G* We’re the color we were born, and we’re the gender we were born (with a few exceptions), but we aren’t even genetically programmed to be a certain weight and are helpless against it. If it is truly important to you to be fairly slim–not size 2 or even 4 or 6, but fairly slim–then you will be. You will make choices in your diet and lifestyle to stay trim, with a few exceptions of rare medical complications. If you aren’t, then it isn’t important enough to you. Maybe it isn’t that you love to eat a dessert every night or can’t give up certain habits or emotional eating or whatever. Maybe it’s more important that you spend what would be your exercise time with your kids or husband. Maybe you just hate working out or you show your love for you family by making calorie-heavy meals. That’s fine. That’s your choice. But there’s no sense in calling other women names or in insisting that you are a victim of your weight or blaming men for not finding you sexy as often or your failure in whatever other area of your life upon the weight that supposedly controls your life. I’ve already mentioned money as well, another one. While there are many ways one can be born at a disadvantage to someone else–by being born poor, or homely (yes, being unattractive affects success in life–unfair but true), or female, or a minority, or with a tendency to obesity, or with a tendency toward heart failure, or whatever–that’s life, and it ain’t going to change just because it’s unfair. What you have control over, though, it your own attitude and behavior. There are some people who were born so unlucky that they don’t have a chance to succeed in a “normal” life, but for more than 95% of us, this isn’t the case in our country today. Yes, we have obstacles, yes, we could have bad luck or barriers or whatever, but for the most part, life is what we make it to be.

As a result, most people have exactly the life they deserve. That could mean that we’re poor, fat, and happy, that we’re poor, fat, and unhappy, that we’re rich, thin, and unhappy, that we’re rich, fat, and happy…whatever! There is no great cosmic balance, ensuring that everyone gets exactly the same number of positive points and negative points so that everything is precisely fair. But this isn’t entirely a bad thing, either because it means that life is not just what the stars decree but what you make it. So, regardless of what the universe does, a large part of your satisfaction in your life is up to YOU. And as long as you blame other people–for not giving you a free education, for being sexist, for being racist, for being anti-fat or anti-short or anti-whatever–you’ll probably be miserable. Because you’ve ensured that you’ve made yourself that way.

As for me, though, I will choose differently.

It’s scary what can happen to you when your realtor is an idiot. We bought this house with officially 3,200 sqft.

The house actually has 3,429 sqft, as is.

That’s a lot of money the realtor’s mismanagement caused the previous owner!

It seems that our culture is becoming so PC that we can now say with an absolutely straight face that it is not fair that people cannot fly when birds can or that fish can breathe water when reptiles cannot…and expect that to have some sort of effect on the world just because we’re so very vehement about it.

To counter this kind of illogic, I’ve found an interesting and insightful article.

Life ain’t fair. So quit trying to change life and change what you actually have control over instead.

Novel thought. *makes face*

I was SO proud of myself. I’d found nice, thick, through-body porcelain tile for a very low price–and it was very attractive and neutral stuff! Porcelain is harder, less absorbant, and more resistant to damage than other tile, and through-body porcelain shows damage and wear less than other tile because the color under the glaze is the same as the surface. However, it is also HEAVIER.

60 boxes at 65lbs each is 3,900lbs. Out of the car, up the stairs, through the house, and into the workshop.

My arms will hurt tomorrow.

I’m safe in New Mexico now…and neck-deep in house renovations! ACK! The house will look awesome, but the amount of work needed is STAGGERING.

I’m avoiding the problem of getting stuck without some critical piece and waiting 6 weeks for it to come in by buying all my materials ahead of time. This is scary yet exciting!