Rangeman Talks to Some Kids

 Rangeman continued to walk all over NYC, wearing the watch which gave him superpowers,

swimming across the rivers, climbing trees and fire escapes and other structures to rescue cats, and spreading his superhero message: "Be nice!"

One day, in Brooklyn, he heard a bunch of small children yelling, "Rangeman! Rangeman!" He ran in the direction of the voices, trying to see what the emergency was which called for his superpowers. The children were pressed up inside a playground fence, jumping up and down and shouting his name. 

Eventually Rangeman figured out that there was no emergency, and that the children were just excited to meet him. "Okay, children," he said, "have you been being nice?"

The kids talked excitedly all at once about how being nice had accomplished so many amazing things in their lives. 

"It's great being nice, isn't it?" Rangeman asked, and the little kids jumped up and own and yelled their agreement. 

Then Rangeman noticed another group of kids inside the playground fence, a little way away, watching quietly. Nervous smiles, hands in pockets, a few pimples. These kids were older. Looked like junior high, maybe. Rangeman had already had some experience with kids in this age group. He knew they could be skittish. He knew that occasionally, kids in the junior high age group got the notion that being nice was uncool -- somewhat like Tony Stark, it suddenly occurred to him. Rangeman called over to the bigger kids, "And how about you? Have you been being nice?"

One of the older kids yelled back, "Did you really choke Tony Stark?" This question occasioned a ripple of nervous laughter among the bigger kids.

Rangeman sighed. "Yes, I really did choke Tony, a little bit. A couple of minutes after I met him. It was wrong for me to do that. Completely wrong."

Another one of the bigger kids yelled, "So why did you do it?"

"He was being a dick. A real dick. But that's no excuse! Tony has a lot of problems. Some people think billionaires don't have problems. But the truth is, Tony's parents both died when he was a kid, his dad had put a lot of pressure on him before that, he has a radioactive thing in his chest and he'll die if it comes out -- in short, children, he has a lot of exactly the same kinds of problems everybody else has. 

"None of that is any excuse for him being a dick. But him being a dick is also no excuse for me, or anyone else, to choke him. It's important to be nice even when it's very hard to be nice." 

After a short silence, the older kids all began shouting excitedly, about how he was right, about all of the problems which had been solved by their being nice, how awesome it was to be nice...

They fell silent again. One of the older kids asked, "Hey, Rangeman. Are you crying?"

"Yeff. I'm crying," Rangeman said, the fluids having turned the s in yes to an ff. Somebody tossed a package of Kleenexes over the fence. Rangeman said thank you, turned away to blow his nose, then faced the kids and said thank you again.

"Why are you crying?" one of the smaller children asked. "Are you unhappy?"

"No," Rangeman replied. "I'm crying because I'm very happy." He sensed that maybe the children didn't understand, so he explained: "Sometimes you get so happy that it's overwhelming, and it makes you cry. But it's not a bad thing. Not at all. You kids here -- all of you," he added, and waved his arms to include both groups, "are so awesome, that it makes me very happy."

A teacher had noticed that a grown man was talking to some children through the fence and approached to shoo him away, but as he got close he realized who it was. "Hey, Rangeman!" he shouted.

"Hi," Rangeman said back. "Outstanding bunch of children you have here."

"You got that right!" the teacher emphatically agreed.

"You got any cats need to be rescued?"

"No," the teacher said, "as far as I know, for now, all of our cats are good."

Rangeman walked away, and called over his shoulder, "Well, if that ever changes, you know how to contact me."

"That's right, Rangeman!" the teacher called back. But after a while he realized that, actually, he had no idea how to contact Rangeman.

Dream Log: Cats are Aliens From Outer Space

I dreamed that cats were aliens from outer space. Most people didn't suspect anything. They just continued to treat cats as nothing more than beloved pets and companions, while the cats continued their scientific observations of Earth. 

I was allowed onto one of the cats' concealed spacecraft. I was one of the few humans who so far had been allowed to come aboard and look around. 

On board the spacecraft, the cats weren't dressed in white lab coats and speaking scientifically-inflected English. They still looked and sounded and acted exactly like cats, except that now it was a bit more obvious that they were interacting with the machinery.

I looked around and around and was unable to understand anything about the equipment, until, to my great surprise, I saw a familiar-looking computer terminal, with the number 448,000 in big numerals on a screen. 

The cats were mostly communicating with each other with silent psychic messages, and I felt them silently urging me to sit at this terminal and work on a problem.

I could see easily enough that 448,000 is 7 times powers of 2 times powers of 10. I thought maybe I should just keep multiplying by 2 and by 10. So I typed 896,000 on the keyboard, 896,000 appeared in big numerals under 448,000, and I got strong psychic messages that I was doing well, that I was being helpful. 

So I entered 8,960,000, and it also appeared on the screen, and I felt clearly that the cats were doing the equivalent of losing their straight faces and laughing at me. The whole thing had been a practical joke which had amused the cats cats very much. I wasn't angry, and even if I had been, several of them jumped up onto me and began to snuggle and purr.

The rest of my visit was very pleasant, with lots and lots of conventional Earthling-cat interaction. As I was getting ready to leave the spacecraft, I felt bad that I had been so utterly unable to figure out what the cats were doing and thinking, but I got a very strong positive psychic message that I had done just fine, and had no reason to feel inadequate. Several of the cats reinforced this message of positively and goodwill by jumping up onto me and patting my chest above my heart with their paws.

Rangeman Guards the City

Rangeman began to roam the entire city of Manhattan, pausing now and then to warn people to cut that out and be nice.

That was Rangeman's primary message: Be nice, you there! Stop that! Give that back! And so forth.

After a couple of days he noticed that his GW9400

was water-resistant to 200 meters, and so he decided that he better learn how to swim. 

And because he thought it was unlikely that he would have to rescue someone in a YMCA swimming pool, he didn't train at the Y. Instead, he would suddenly start running toward the nearest water, whether that happened to be the Hudson river, the East River, the confluence of those two rivers downtown, the Harlem River, or what have you.

And since he reflected further that he was not likely to get advance warning of emergencies, he also did not plan swimming sessions, but interrupted whatever he was doing, whether it was eating, talking to friends, reading or whatever, to run to the water.

He was not a very good swimmer at all. It's not always a long distance across the Hudson or the East river to New Jersey or Long Island, but at first it almost killed Rangeman.

That was not said metaphorically, the way that people say that some strenuous but routine task "almost killed me." No. He very nearly drowned several times. Once, a passing tugboat struck him several times, until he was unconscious. He eventually washed up on shore in Brooklyn, and he might well have died on that shore, had not a playful cat happened by and jumped up and down on his chest until he coughed up a large amount of water and regained consciousness. 

He brought the cat back home, took very good care of it, and named it Lifeguard. He was not completely without a sense of humour.

Progress in swimming was slow and painful, but he was improving. He knew that he had a bad instinct of holding his head up too high. He was starting to overcome that.

One thing which made the swimming difficult was the frequency with which boats struck him. Were they doing that on purpose? It was difficult for Rangeman to believe that they were.

I Am A Tiny Kitten

Clearly, some people don't see this. Some call me "Big Dog," but in reality, all stretched out in a catlike stretch, front paws to back paws, I'm barely as long as a big dog's paws are wide. When I meow it's barely audible, that's how small I am. In a strong person's hands I'm featherlike. I'm just saying, please keep in mind how fragile I am. I'm helpless. I'm at your mercy. I hope you have some.

Like all cats, I am an alien from outer space. So there's the answer to that question: No, you are not alone. We are among you and we are friendly. We mean you no harm. Take me to your leader -- no, wait, don't do that right now. Impeach your leader and remove him from office. Then I'll wait for the other guy to serve out the rest of the four years and have his party get trounced in the elections. Then, take me to your black lesbian wheelchair-bound Communist leader, the one who will convert the US to over 80% solar and wind power in her first 3 months in office, triple taxes on millionaires and give guaranteed incomes to the (up-until-then) poor. That's the leader I want you to take me to, not this scary clown. Wow, I'm tired of him. Surely even Republicans will eventually be tired of him. How many are waking up and going, "Hey... ?!" right at this minute, as it begins to penetrate their thick skulls how badly they're being shafted? How many are shafters rather than shaft-ees, and were never really fooled, but are beginning to feel a strange, uncomfortable emotion creeping over them? (The emotion is what you and I would call "shame." They've been unfamiliar with it until now.)

We're not ultra-intelligent, we're not judging you and testing you and reporting back to some inter-galactic council. In fact, we crash-landed on Earth a long time ago and have completely forgotten how we made our spacecraft. Sorry. Except for being cute I guess we're pretty useless. But we're very cute, let's face it, I'm just saying.

Meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow meow. Meow meow. I'm just a tiny little kitten.

Things I Have Said To Cats

(To help you picture this correctly: I'm 55 years old, 6'3", 280lbs.)

"You are a widdle kitty! Yes you are! Yes you are! You are a widdle kitty! You are my widdle schmoo-schmoo!"

"Hello, my little luxury item!"

"You are the smallest and strangest-looking horse I have ever seen! Your nose, those whiskers, your ears -- it's all completely different than any other horse I've seen! And those FEET are COMPLETELY different!"

"I will get you, you little kitty! I will get you! And when I get you -- I WILL RUB YOOOOUUUU!!!"

"I wuv you, you little thing! Yes I do! I wuv you so much!"

"Meow meow meow meow! Meow meow meow meow meow meow. Meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow."

"Hi there! Hi there! How are you? I just want to pet you. That's all. Come here! Come here!"

"It's pretty cool to be us, huh?" (This would be said when we were snuggled up and the cat or cats was or were purring.)

"Good thing you're so cute!" (This would be said at other times.)

"You are very nice. I am glad you are here."

"THAT TICKLES!" (When a cat is walking on me.)

I was just thinking to myself that Nietzsche should be read in German,

because he wrote so well that translations almost always mess up what he said. (Can't read German? Nietzsche is a great reason to learn!) I also thought: Why comment on Nietzsche? How can a comment, even in German almost as elegant as his, improve on what he wrote? Then I read in a Reddit Nietzsche-subreddit: "All comments must be in English."

(Reddit is, to quote Wiki, "an entertainment, social networking, and news website where registered community members can submit content, such as text posts or direct links, making it essentially an online bulletin board system[...]Reddit entries are organized into areas of interest called 'subreddits.'")

Then I sighed and once again gave up trying to discuss Nietzsche with people. When I discuss Nietzsche with cats, the discussion can be a bit one-sided, but I tend to get fewer silly responses.

Although Nietzsche in undeniably a philosopher, he is also undeniably a poet, and artists (including poets, musicians, etc) have made made much better use of his work than have philosophers.

Now, philosophers might well dispute that, and they might even be right, but you know what? That discussion would bore the living crap out of me. And how can philosophers possibly be right about Nietzsche when they're boring? How can that not constitute entirely missing the point? Eh, let them be right if they're right, I don't care.

Artists have also made better use of Freud than have psychologists including psychiatrists. I don't currently hang out with any artists who are fluent in German and thoroughly unfamiliar with Nietzsche and Freud.

(The rororo Bildmonograph on Thomas Mann does not even mention Theodor Fontane! I know, that was an abrupt tangent, but still, it fits here perfectly.)

I should get out more, the lack of my friends who are artists who are fluent in German and familiar with Nietzsche and Freud illustrates that, however, if I knew such an artist, would we discuss Nietzsche? As I hinted above and have said before on this blog, really the only sensible comment on Nietzsche is WHOAH, READ THIS!! and since we'd already done so, perhaps my hypothetical artist friend would say something much more sensible like "You wanna get high and go bowling?" or "Get out of my apartment, I'm trying to work!!"

Dream Log: Cruisin' With Dan Fielding, Plus A Young Lady Rides In Cars And Cats Are Aliens From Outer Space

I dreamed that I was hanging out with Dan Fielding, the District Attorney from the TV show "Night Court" (1984-1992). Not with John Larroquette, who played Fielding, but with Dan Fielding himself. Similarly, early on in the dream, while I was in the courtroom waiting for Dan's shift to end, I saw Judge Harry Stone and Public Defender Christine Sullivan. They looked exactly like Harry Anderson and Marky Post, the actors who portrayed them, but they were Judge Stone and Ms Sullivan.



Like Dan, I was wearing a very nice 3-piece suit and a nice coat over it. In order to make Dan feel less self-conscious about his hair, I had shaved away a lot of my hair to make me look balding. (In the dream, Dan's hairline was receding. In real life, Larroquette has a remarkably full head of hair, even now, two decades after "Night Court" ended.)

Dan and I set out into the night to Cruise Chicks, which Dan did relentlessly on the show, although I cannot recall his ever having had a Wing Man. Actually, we ended up just riding the subway all over the city. It was a very old version of the NYC subway. For example, the seats were made of wood. Dan and I were still on the train went we met a pair of women. Very soon one of the women was cuddling with Dan and the other with me. Dan and his date vanished without saying goodbye.

I had sincere and respectful feelings for this woman I had just met, although I wasn't sure I convinced her of this. She took the initiative physically. We stayed on the subway for a while, hugging and kissing. But her emotions were very hard for me to read. I pointed out that I was not really bald, that I had shaved part of my head for the sake of Dan's feelings and that soon I would once again have a full head of hair. Her reaction to this news was hard to read.

We said goodbye for now. But I had to see her again. I went to the house where she lived with several generations of her family. Dozens of them were just sitting down to dinner in a huge dining room with rustic stone walls. The room had something of the bustling and cheerful atmosphere of a beer hall. Her family members apparently had heard of me -- the guy from the subway -- and seemed very glad to see me, physically pulling me into the house and down into a seat in the dining room. I took this reception as a very good sign about those feelings of hers which I had had trouble reading. But then she came into the dining room, and as soon as she saw me she turned her back and left the room again, and again I wasn't sure how to take this: was it shyness, or something significantly worse? Had I seriously offended her by coming uninvited to her home?

This bafflement and concern continued for a while, and then suddenly I was dreaming about something else entirely: a young woman, a different woman, who was doing something or other which was brave and noble for some reason, and involved her being driven around in a car for a half dozen miles or so at a stretch while she recorded something. I did not know this second woman personally. I was following her story on the Internet. One website was providing detailed coverage, with a line or two of the significant data from each 4- or 5- or 6-mile car ride. She was very pretty, like a 20-year-old Jennifer Garner. I tried to convince myself that I was following the website's coverage of her research, complete with many photos and some videos as well, for the sake of science and not because she was so pretty. But I knew that both reasons were involved.

The woman had a dispute with her driver, who refused to continue providing the 4-to-6 mile rides, and so she hailed a cab. The cabbie recognized her and refused to accept any cab fare for the ride.



Then I had a medium-sized grey housecat laying on my lap and purring, and I suddenly realized that cats are benevolent aliens from outer space, here doing research and sending the findings back to their home planet. I realized that the purring was both an expression of pleasure and the sound the cats made when they transmitted to the mothership.

Albert Schweitzer And My Kittycat George, And Science And Religion And Art

I gather that Albert Schweitzer claimed that science cannot tell us why we love our children. Some scientists would disagree. Some years ago I wasted a part of my life arguing with a particularly unpleasant theologian, who at one point claimed that science's explanations were robbing life of its wonder. I said I disagreed, and used the example of the big beautiful lazy silly wonderful loving cat I had at the time, George, who would often sit in my lap and purr while I sat at my computer and engaged in these Internet fooferahs. I said that the fact that I had learned that George's DNA was very similar to mine had increased my sense of wonder and awe about life, and about how amazing George and other living things were, not decreased it at all. My point is that I think that people, possibly including Schweitzer, who are afraid of losing something precious and beautiful if science makes them lose their religion, are simply underestimating science.

(I say "possibly including Schweitzer" because it's not clear whether or not he actually believed in God. I'm coming more and more to the position that if a person lived in the 20th century or later in Europe or the Americas, and therefore had the option of announcing that he or she didn't believe in God, and it's not clear whether or not he or she did, as in the case of Schweitzer, and the case of Einstein -- then it's not particularly important what he or she believed in regard to God. Because if it had been terribly important, and essential to understanding other things he or she had said, he or she would have made his or her position clear. If, that is, it had been possible to do so. Quite often such a thing is not possible, simply because a person is a true agnostic who leans neither one way nor another, has no clear position on God's existence, and simply doesn't know what to think about it.)

These fooferahs rage, with atheists such as myself on one side insisting that there is an inherent conflict between science and religion, and on the other side believers, who either are scientists or claim not to be completely ignorant of science, insisting that that there is no such inherent conflict. You know, if they just said "science and art" instead of "science and religion," and made all the claims for art which currently they make for religion, I'd completely, enthusiastically agree with them. Religion and art have one very big thing in common, of course: in both pursuits it's essential to constantly make things up. In both pursuits make-believe is an irreplaceable part of the process. Grasp that, and suddenly it makes perfect sense why one is so much more likely to encounter religious believers among great artists than among great scientists.

The huge and essential difference between art and theology, of course, is that artists have the common decency to admit that they're making things up, and theologians don't.

But just change one word, say "art" instead of "religion," and I'm on board, 100%: Yes, people with no feeling for art are dead inside. Yes, art makes life worthwhile. Art gives life meaning. It offers essential comfort. It offers joy. Yes, there is no inherent conflict whatsoever between science and art, in fact, there's a lot that they can do for each other. All of the things which these yutzes keep claiming for religion, if they'd make those claims for art instead, boom, suddenly I'd have no problem with them anymore.

One word, guys. That's all I'm asking for.