Brian D. Buckley

This Pi Day, embrace the joy of circles in whatever way makes you happy.

Yeah, that’ll work.

Trump’s wisdom is deep. Like, really deep. So deep that it might sound like stupidity to the untrained ear. What it is, in fact, is revolutionary.

Take, for instance, the infamous comments he made about John McCain back in July of last year. Trump was at a rally, talking to a Republican pollster named Frank Luntz.

Trump: “…I supported him [McCain] for president. I raised $1 million for him. That’s a lot of money. I supported him, he lost, he let us down. But he lost and I never liked him much after that ’cause I don’t like losers. But, but — Frank, Frank, let me get to it.

Luntz: “He’s a war hero. He’s a war hero …”

Trump: “He’s not a war hero …”

Luntz: “He’s war hero.”

Trump: “He is a war hero …”

Luntz: “Five and a half years in a Vietnamese prison camp …”

Trump: “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured. So he’s a war hero …”

Luntz: “Do you agree with that?”

Trump: “He’s a war hero, because he was captured, okay? I believe, perhaps, he’s a war hero. But right now he said some very bad things about a lot of people. So what I said is John McCain, I disagree with him that these people aren’t crazy.”

(source)

To summarize: John McCain (1) is not a war hero, (2) is a war hero, and (3) is only technically a “war hero” because he was captured, like a loser.

Some might call these statements contradictory, confusing, petty, disrespectful, cynical, self-serving, small-minded, misleading, unnecessary, ridiculous, and absurd. Such people aren’t grasping the deeper wisdom.

The point is simple. Labels like “war hero” don’t really matter. What really matter are labels like “loser.” And if you get captured, you’re a loser.

This deep insight upends centuries – nay, millennia – of conventional wisdom, which says that enduring enemy capture is difficult, harrowing, and often ennobling. Obviously, the conventional establishment logic is misguided. After all, if you get captured, aren’t you a loser by definition?

With that in mind, for the edification of all, I present:

A List of Losers (i.e. people who have been captured or arrested by opponents)

• Jesus Christ
• St. Peter
• St. Paul
• John the Baptist
• Samson
• Daniel (Old Testament)
• Joseph (Old Testament)
• Socrates
• Julius Caesar
• Joan of Arc
• William Wallace
• Queen Elizabeth I
• Galileo Galilei
• Napoleon Bonaparte
• Paul Revere
• Thomas Paine
• Henry David Thoreau
• Fyodor Dostoevsky
• Susan B. Anthony
• Anne Frank
• Rosa Parks
• Alan Turing
• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Winston Churchill
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Nelson Mandela
• George Takei

Such a long list of losers may give pause to even such a venerable sage as Mr. Trump. If he can’t rely on any of them as role models, then who can he turn to?

That’s something the philosopher must decide on his own. But I may be able to offer some guidance, in my own small way.

A List of People Who Have Never Been Captured (to my knowledge)

• Judas Iscariot
• The Prophet Mohammed
• Hillary Clinton

Mr. Trump, you’re welcome.

You may recall that last Halloween, the sedulous Benjamin Trube challenged me to write a romance novel for NaNoWriMo – 50,000 words, finished by November 30. If I managed it, he would personally record an audio book of whatever I had written.

Well, I didn’t make November 30, and we ended up dropping the word requirement to 25K. But I did, in the end, cross the finish line.

A few weeks ago I handed Mr. Trube a copy of my “romance” “novel.”

“Novel” is in quotes because 25K words is pretty damn short for a novel. And “romance” is in quotes because the book is pretty damn ridiculous, as you might guess from the title: The Desirable Man Who Entered a Relationship with the Heroine Despite Occasional Setbacks Described Herein.

I took the liberty of mocking up some covers.

Direct image links: front cover, back cover.

Early reader feedback has been positive and incredulous. It’s not publicly available yet, but I’ll keep you posted.

Not to be dramatic or anything.

That’s right, people. A thousand blog posts. A kilopost, if you will. 1111101000 for you binary types.

It’s party time.

My first post was on March 30, 2011, which means I’ve been doing this for 1,793 days, a little under five years. That’s about a post every 1.8 days, even with the months-long hiatus I took because of that whole depression thing.

Granted, some posts were more impressive than others.

Assuming each post took, on average, half an hour to write (a conservative estimate), I have spent 500 hours on this blog, or 20.8 days. In other words, imagine somebody writing blog posts nonstop 24/7 for three whole weeks, and that’s how much time I’ve spent on this.

If I had a nickel for every post, I could buy a TI-36X Pro Scientific Calculator.

If every post were a digit of  pi, this one would be 8.

If every post were a word, I’d have a picture.

If every post were a paper crane, I’d have a wish.

If every post were an island, I’d have a bottle of salad dressing.

If every post were a mile, the Proclaimers could fall down at your door.

Judging by my tags, I did 11 posts on philosophy, 12 on Avatar, 13 Ask Brian Anything posts, 14 Transcendence posts, 25 about Buffy, 27 on artificial intelligence, and 38 Postmortems. I did 52 posts’ worth of my own fiction and 53 of poetry. And a total of 184 Friday Links posts.

My all-time most popular post, by far, no contest, more than all others combined, is 28 Words to Use Instead of Awesome. The people want what they want.

WordPress liked Staring at Rectangles enough to give it the Freshly Pressed award, which basically means “Hey, you didn’t suck!”

My own favorites include You Do Not Even Have to Believe in Yourself and Sixteen Simple Rules for Writers.

Of the short stories I’ve posted, my favorite funny ones are probably Scissors With Running, the Mars Rover Diary, and The Afflicted. (Admittedly the term “story” is a bit of a stretch in some of these cases.)

My favorite serious stories include Marva, Wine, and Everything But Rachel. I had completely forgotten that last one and only rediscovered it this morning, but I was pretty pleased when I reread it.

I did a four–part series on fractals.

Oh, yeah, and this.

A thousand posts. As the Romans say: “M-pressive.”

See, because –

Right.

Anyway. I want to thank each and every one of you (except you – you know who you are) for coming along on this eclectic, eccentric, enlightening journey. It’s been fun. At least, it’s been fun for me – I strongly suspect some of y’all are just masochists. But I’m okay with that.

And another thousand? I wouldn’t say no to that, either.

You may take it as an axiomatic truth that I have too many books. I look at my bookshelves, which occupy an entire wall, floor to ceiling, and I say things like, “I should really go through these and get rid of some. I’m never going to read them all.”

But then I begin some feeble attempt, and immediately I’m spouting excuses. “But this is a classic.” “But I promised myself I’d read this someday.” “But so-and-so gave this to me.” “But I loved this and I might want to read it again.” “But this is a memento of that time we…” And in the end I toss out one or two, and life goes on.

Not this time. On Saturday I decided I was really for serious going to do it. And do it I did. Here’s what I’m banishing from the house:

[image link]

In case you’re wondering, that is about 150 books, and that’s after I invited my friends to come over and take what they wanted. So these will probably all be going to Goodwill.

And no, you still can’t tell much of a difference when you look at my bookshelves now. And yes, I have heard of eBooks, thank you for asking.