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The Shoveler's Lesson

A project log for TinyTyper (Stage One)

One REALLY lousy, 26char/line "typewriter", from a PS/2 keyboard, an old IBM receipt printer, and a bit of Arduino magic...

starhawkStarhawk 06/30/2021 at 02:150 Comments

Forgive me getting philosophical for a moment.

One of my favorite movies is "Mystery Men", which came out in 1999 alongside a massive number of other really great movies -- most notably, "The Matrix", the James Bond film "The World is Not Enough", "Notting Hill" (hi, Dad... /groan ), the second installment in the "Toy Story" franchise if you were a kid at the time and cared (full disclosure: I was a kid but didn't care), and "The Mummy" and "The Sixth Sense" for horror genre lovers... and "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" if you're into fart jokes and double entendres maybe a little *too* much.

"Mystery Men" didn't really get the attention (or budget) it deserved, but that's not the point. It's a tired, old storyline -- a ragtag group of not-very-super-"superheros" saving the day after the really famous one goes missing, but it takes a somewhat different tack from the typical approach to the genre, and although it gives in to cliché and cheesiness at the end (you could tell they were running short on budget) -- you should really watch it. While the effects suffer tremendously, the story really doesn't... and the cast throughout is a remarkable highlight reel of A-List names -- Ben Stiller, Hank Azaria, Geoffrey Rush, Greg Kinnear, Paul Reubens, Tom Waits, Eddie Izzard... I'm pretty sure it was one of Janeane Garofalo's earlier roles, even -- she was "The Bowler" ;)

However, there's a particularly notable scene with "The Shoveler" (William H. Macy!), who is in a biracial marriage (!!) with a woman named Lucille (Jenifer Lewis) and they have two kids. He's portrayed as an otherwise pretty normal suburban Dad... but after the first fight with the villain of the movie (played by Geoffrey Rush, who looks WORLDS apart from Capt. Hector Barbossa, ha!) he comes home with a limp and a pained attitude, and has a minor argument with Lucille. It's obvious that their relationship is heavily strained by the 'superhero antics' (as she sees it) that he goes on, which she quite clearly does not approve of.

There's an interesting line in that exchange, though, where The Shoveler says, "God gave me a gift, Lucille. I can shovel. I can shovel real well." -- to which Lucille counters that he's "just a father" and that he should strive to be a better one, in her opinion, and quit cavorting about with the whole shoveling business.

There's a lesson in William H. Macy's line. He's "The Shoveler". He shovels, and he shovels well. He doesn't need to do other things. That's his gimmick, that's his trick, that's his trade. He's good with a shovel, to the point that it's part of his identity.

It's an embodiment of a major part of what once was called "The Unix Philosophy" -- "Do one thing, and do it well."

I have learned, throughout my life, that I'm good at certain things and bad at others.

I also know that I have a history of trying to expand myself into areas where I'm fantastically awful at something -- eg handling rabbit-hole or stupid-difficult tasks, or trying to be an electronics hobbyist where I simply don't have the gift -- and failing spectacularly in each and every attempt to do so. In each case, I'm simply trying to be better at it than I have been -- but what I'm really trying to do is expand beyond my limits. I'm trying to be something I'm not.

This is a maxim I've learned in my own life, and here I am trying to contradict it...

"You have to be who you are. You can't be anyone else. If you try, all you'll get is misery and frustration."

...and here I am bashing my head against the wall, yet again, trying to be more than I am.

It's time that I was honest with myself. No more "if only". No more "maybe if". This is who I am, and it's enough. I'm an artist, and a writer, a retrotech and weird-computer enthusiast, a PC tinkerer, and a cyberdeck builder. Those are my skills and my passions. I don't need to be more than this, and I need to stop trying.

Judges, please give the $200 to someone who can use it to create more than shorted circuitry, lifted pads, burnt chips, and frustrated hopes. I'm done here. This project is over. I know who I am, and that's enough... and so am I.

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