I want to write about someone I don’t know personally, but yet I feel an obligation to them.
This is hard to do. If you don’t carry it off right, you come across as a creepy stalker. Of course, I am not a creepy stalker. At least, not of this person; my creepy stalker exploits are reserved for Kate Winslet (I have been a proud member of the “Kate Winslet Creepy Obsessed Stalker Web Ring” since 1994). I also do hire out my services as a stalker to certain people I know personally. Writing about Marc Randazza made me feel strange and kind of stalkerish, but in his case I had some public accomplishments that I could point to.
More seriously, I’m not saying anything profound by pointing out that electronic interaction is weird. I can have friends I see rarely, and who I communicate with only through the Internet. (There’s a person I know who I would jump in front of a bullet for without hesitation. She lives in London, and the last time I saw her in person was in 1997. Much of our friendship has been mediated through electronic interaction; email, chats on the old Delphi network, and things of that ilk.) There are people I’ve come in contact with since I started this blog who I consider friends, but haven’t met – yet. (But the NRA convention is in Houston next year. Just saying.)
So. Anyway.
A long time ago there was a blogger called the Cranky Professor. I don’t remember who first pointed me in her direction, though I remember the topic that sent me over there. You see, some folks were discussing the properties of Gold Bond Medicated Powder. Particularly certain…properties…that were relevant to those of the male persuasion.
Oh, what the hell. Gold Bond keeps your testicles from getting all sweaty and sticking to your clothes and skin and stuff. Which is important if you’re in an environment where your testicles get sweaty: for example, flying fighter aircraft. Cranky Prof found and linked to a very funny video that a couple of fighter jocks did (on their own time) extolling the virtues of Gold Bond; the video became infamous, and supposedly the two pilots were nearly kicked out of the military for producing it. (Sadly, all the links I can find to the video are broken; if anyone has a working link, please drop it in comments.)
Anyway, that’s how I found Cranky Prof originally. I stayed around and started reading her stuff every day because:
- She wrote like a house on fire.
- She was damned funny. Maybe not quite as funny as Great Mambo Chicken And The Transhuman Condition
or the CSI furry episode, but she gave me a lot of laughs when I needed them.
- More seriously, she was writing about things that were in the front of my mind at the time; the academic life, the students she was dealing with, the struggles she had with both, and things like that. I remember thinking to myself after reading some of her blog entries: “Damn. Dude, note to self: do not be like that guy.”
As time went on though, I started to go beyond “do not be like that guy”. I found myself sitting down, writing assignments, finishing revisions, and saying to myself “Is this the best I can do? Would Cranky Prof be proud of me? Would she give me an ‘A’?” More often than not, I answered that question “No”, and ended up going back for another round (or two, or three, or five, or seven…) of revisions until I felt like I could honestly answer that question “Yes, I think Cranky Prof would be proud of me.”
Cranky Prof took her blog down and disappeared shortly after I started mine. But I still used her as a pole star to guide my way through these last couple of years of writing and revising. Every assignment I did, I asked myself “Would Cranky Prof be proud?”. And if the answer was “No”, I worked on it until the answer was “Yes”. I do not think I would be where I am today, and where I will be on Saturday, if Cranky Prof had never existed and blogged. I can’t answer the question of “would Cranky Prof be proud” of me for sure; a small part of my motivation for posting completed work is a hope that she would comment and say either “yes”, or more likely, “You eeediot! You bloated sack of protoplasm!” in her best Ren and Stimpy voice. (Which would be weird in blog comments, but, you know, some people just have a voice like that.)
(Spoiler alert!)
There’s a story by Kim Stanley Robinson called “The Lucky Strike”. I didn’t care much for the story at the time it came out. (Robinson’s politics and my own do not intersect in many places.) But there’s a section towards the end that has stuck with me: the protagonist of the story is about to be shot by a firing squad (he didn’t drop the bomb on Hiroshima and has been convicted of treason), and he’s talking to the chaplain about how things are going to work. The detail that one of the guns will be loaded with a blank comes up. And the protagonist points out that this is done so each man can deny to himself that he fired the fatal shot. The chaplain agrees with this. And the protagonist says, “But I know.”
(End spoiler alert!)
One of the things I struggle with is the question of whether what I do really matters in the long run. Some days, it seems like all I am doing is shoveling out the stables, or at best holding off entropy for another day. Does what I do really make a difference to people?
I suspect that perhaps Cranky Prof, wherever she may be, has the same question. Cranky Prof, if you’re reading this: now you know. What you do matters to this someone.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.