The vast majority of time, whenever we read a book or watch a movie or TV show, we sympathize with, if we don't actually like, the protagonist. This is because the writer controls our exposure to the character and can present the character in a sympathetic way, even when the character has attributes we don't like.

Some other stories deliberately make the protagonist unlikable or unsympathizable. But again, the writer is controlling our perspective, only now they're presenting the character in an unsympathetic way.

But once in awhile, a storywriter will intend to write a sympathetic protagonist, but fail. That's what this post is about. This post is a list of fictional sympathetic protagonists I hated and actively rooted against.

So, thanks to this nice little pandemic, I have a little more free than usual, and I thought it would be a good time to take in a long series. So I chose Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. Big mistake.

It actually wasn't bad as far as quarantine fodder goes. Quarantine books don't really need to be good so much as they need to pass time well. Wheel of Time was absorbing, read easily, and wasn't mind-bending or too disturbing. But the characters, my God the characters.

I hated just about every character in the book. My favorite characters are the ones I only disliked.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, is abjectly stupid. Almost always when someone did something smart is when some kind of magic overwhelmed their intentions and they ended up doing the right thing reluctantly and often now knowing how they did it. Furthermore, few of the characters were credible; their personalities were malleable to the needs of the story. The one thing you could trust about the characters is that if their personality changed it was only to make them stupider. It's like Jordan had no idea how to create drama other than for people to fall into ridiculous traps or refuse to believe people who were trying to help.

I pushed through to about a fifth of the way into the fourth book, giving it a chance to get better, but finally I read a chapter so awful I had to stop. Though in truth it had been coming for awhile.

Since I didn't finish, I do wonder about the future books in the series. I lost all interested in finishing (especially given the reputation of the books to drag on as the series progresses) but it's possible, especially once Sanderson took over.

• Do any of the main characters make a single good decision on their own in the entire series?
• Does any character ever, even one time in the whole series, give a straight answer to a question? (I've heard that this is the main difference with the Sanderson books.)
• Does it ever happen, even one time in the whole series, that a main character staying at an inn just checks out the next morning and moves on? (On screen, I mean; I know it happened a few times off screen.)

I'm exaggerating a little, but not much. The problem with these books isn't that characters make stupid decisions, it's that they make nothing but stupid decisions. It's the sheer relentlessness of these simpleminded drama devices used over and over again.

It's regrettable, too, because apart from the characters there was a lot of good stuff in these novels. The worldbuilding was fantastic. The different countries and their cultures were interesting. The backstory was very interesting, and the way details of history were revealed, and how it affected the present-day plot, was great. The mythology was terrific; if they hadn't been terrible characters for the most part, the Forsaken would have been great villains just due to their circumstances. I didn't even mind when Jordan went off on long descriptions (they weren't that long).

Even the characters had their moments. I was amused how often Nynaeve (who I disliked and therefore was one of my favorite characters) resolved problems just by punching people, for instance. But all in all, the characters were just so awful I couldn't read on.

Last night I had a dream, and I don't remember why but at some point in the dream I uttered the word "mathish".

In the dream, it occurred to me that the English suffix "-ish" might be descended from the same root as the Greek suffix "-ικος" (aka, "-ic", a suffix which we borrowed into English and use extensively). In the dream I recalled a linguistic rule that causes k sounds to turn into sh (softening: a k or g sound followed by a vowel where the tounge is forward in the mouth often ends up turning into an s, z, sh, or th). I recalled that in our word mathematician, the "ic" is pronounced "ish", so this process still happens today. And, still in the dream, I wondered if Latin had a similar suffix, and recalled the word amicus ("friend").

When I woke up I looked up the origins of those suffixes and sure enough I was right.

My only mistake was, there was a minor wrinkle I didn't anticipate: "-ish" actually descends from a composition of two suffixes, but one of them was indeed the same one that became "-ic" in Greek.

Some people make schedules. I say, hah. (I also say, that'd be great if I could ever manage to stick to one.)

However, I have something better. Take a look:

That's right, I've installed an issue tracking system for my life. Some of you, my Faithful Readers, might recognize this as a Trac page. (I've blurred out the actual tickets because they're kind of personal.) Now, I organize my life by creating tickets and as I accomplish the tasks, I close them.

The best thing about this is that it leaves the schedule open. The onerous list of stuff I need to do sits there waiting for me, gently guilting me and reminding me, but it does not demand action. I get to it at my own pace. It works for me.

Someone sharp-eyed and good at reading blurred text might notice that I list my anxiety level about the task in ticket's Severity field. (Column two to the right of the blurred one.) That helps keep me grounded and in perspective.

Yeah, I spent an entire Saturday upgrading this blog to use Python 3. What a great use of my time.... This includes about 5 hours I spent switching the site to use FastCGI as the entry point instead of Passenger, only to switch it right back to Passenger. (Kind of glad I did, actually, as the FastCGI required a delicately tuned set of mod_rewrite rules. However, it can cause an annoying delay when first loading my page because Passenger has to spawn a new interpreter to use Python 3, and to make matters worse my hosting provider kills the interpreter after only a few minutes.)

Anyway, there's (kind of) a reason for it. I have a separate need to host a different web application, which would have required me to set up a new Python environment, so I figured I might as well take care of the blog while I was at it. (I'll cover the new app in a later post for my Faithful Readers.)

Another good thing: I diagnosed an issue where every page load was sending upwards of 50 queries to the MySQL database. Now it sends only a few. That usually makes it faster even if it has to spawn a new Python 3.

Some people who know me may realize that I have an odd diet concerning sugary foods. Basically, for 2/3 of the year I don't eat most sugary foods; for the other third I do. The point of this diet is not to give up sugar, but to eat less of it.

This has worked well for me. I generally stick to it, and as a result I think I've at least halved my sugar consumption. I regard it a permanent part of my life, and have no plans to ever go off it. In this blog post I will shares the intricate details of this diet.

The main rule of the diet is that, for the most part, I can only eat sugary foods in the following months. (These are called the Allowed Months):

• March
• June
• September
• December

I don't officially limit my sugar consumption in any way during Allowed Months. Unofficially I don't really drink sugary beverages any more. (Maybe the odd milkshake, or a craft soda once in awhile. I almost never drink juice.)

All other months (which I call the Limited Months), my consumption of sugary foods is limited. In general, I think of these as sugar-free months, but they're really not. As I said, this is not to prohibit sugary foods but to reduce. In practice, I allow myself certain exceptions.

Here are the exceptions I allow myself during all Limited Months:

• I can eat fruit that isn't too sweet. For me that means mostly apples and bananas, but canteloupe and watermelon I sometimes eat too. Maybe even grapes. This applies to fresh fruit only. Not juice, dried fruit, or anything like that.
• I can add honey or jelly to a peanut butter sandwich.
• If someone offers me something sweet, I can take one piece. So, for instance, if someone sticks a plastic bowl full of cookies in my face, I'm allowed to take one. But it has to be a deliberate, active offer from someone. If there's just a bowl of cookies or candy sitting there, I can't take one. If someone just mentions, "Hey there's cake", I can't take a slice of cake. But if they said, "Hey Carl, I made a cake, why don't you have a piece", then I can.
• I can eat Girl Scout Cookies with impunity, but only if I bought them myself from an actual Girl Scout. (So no second hand cookies, and no buying them from her mother, or from a box at work.)
• I can take a single breath mint from a bowl after eating dinner at a restaurant.
• Cough drops with sugar are ok. (Though I prefer sugar-free in any case; the sugary ones make my teeth sticky, moreso than candy. Sometimes sugar-free cough drops are not easy to find, though.)
• I have a rule that I can add about a tablespoon of honey or syrup to yogurt, which I did a lot when I first started this diet, but I don't eat as much yogurt as I used to.

In addition to these permanent rules, I usually also give myself a monthly exception. The monthly exception is usually a broad category: "ice cream", "maple syrup" (unlocking pancakes), "12 ounce bottles of craft soda", or something like that. Sometimes, if I feel like I didn't do well during the previous month I won't give myself this exception, but most months I do.

Here's the thing about the monthly exceptions: I won't simply shift all the sugar consumption to that one item. What I try to do is consume the exception at the same rate as I would during an Allowed month, and drop all other sugary foods. (At least that's the theory; I'm sure I end up at the upper range most months.)

And finally, I waive the limits for sugary foods on major holidays.

In spite of the numerous exceptions, I have not stuck to this diet perfectly. I have eaten sugary foods for comfort here and there. I've waived the diet in certain situations (like when travelling). I used to not bother at all when I visited the family, since they always used to leave all kinds of chocolate and candy laying around the house, and at that point it's hopeless. (Though they don't leave chocolate out so much any more, no idea why.)

However, by and large this has been successful. At least for me, the exceptions give me a bit of an outlet and allow me to be strong in the face of temptation most of the time. It's a lot easier to give up something when you know you'll be able to take it up again soon.

I've been doing this in some form since 2011, about eight years now.

When I first started, I was like a statue of stone. I gave up the sweet foods absolutely during Limited Months, did not cheat at all, and gave myself fewer and narrower exceptions. Then, when Allowed Months came, I went crazy. I'd eat as much sugary food as I could, knowing that soon it would be a Limited Month again. I ended up eating more sugary foods than I otherwise would have during Allowed months (although it was certainly still less overall when you averaged it woth the Limited Months).

But as time went on, a very interesting thing has happened. I started adding new exceptions, and also ended up cheating more. But during Allowed Months, I got less and less crazy. Temptation had a smaller and smaller effect on me over time.

Now, I hardly eat more sugar during the Allowed months than I eat during Limited Months, and I eat a lot less sugar in any month. About the only difference now is that I might buy a candy bar while visiting a convenience store during a Allowed month, but won't during a Limited month.

Basically, by sticking to this diet, I gradually learned to moderate.

I have a few tradtions associated with this diet. The first sweet I eat on an Allowed Month is always a King Size Kit-Kat. The last sweet I like to eat before I go back to Limited Months is an ice cream sandwich from Diddy Riese, but I don't do that all the time (especially since I moved away from the Westside). And on holidays I usually limit myself to thematically appropriate sweets, so for Halloween I'll only eat candy, for Thanksgiving, only pie.

Ok, its 2016, time to reveal my ballot.

The ballot proposititions were actually pretty intelligent this year. Only two of them were retarded (and misleading), and one more was dubious. The rest were actually decent, not that I agreed with all of them, but at least they were well thought out and addressed actual perceived issues.

I didn't pay any attention to any races except for President of the United States (more on that below), so I only voted on the propositions.

My general strategy on propositions to vote no unless I feel like there's a good reason for yes, especially for constitutional amendments (since they can't be overturned by the legislature), and there were a bunch I of them this year where I fell back on them.

• Prop 51: School bonds, Funding for K-12 Schools and Community College Facilities: NO. Ok, so one of things I'm always skeptical of is when politicians need for funds for schools. I feel like it's a dubious way to bring in more money. They think, correctly it seems, that people will approve it if it's for the children. I voted against all the education propositions. This one was the closest I came to voting Yes. But I'm sure why there needs to be a $9 billon bond release now, rather than smaller bonds as facilities need upgrading, so I fell back to a No vote. (Though I can see the logic of getting approval all at once.)
• Prop 52: Medical Hospital Fee Program: NO. I almost abstained from this one since I couldn't even follow what it was supposed to be doing. I pieced together what is was and ended up thinking it was pretty useless and maybe slightly worse, so I feel back to No.
• Prop 53: Revenue Bonds. Amendment. NO. I have mixed feeling about it, actually. $2 billion is a lot of money, and it would seem that having voters weigh in on projects that large might not be a bad idea. I ended up voting No because it is an amendment, and also because it lacked an obvious mechanism to raise the limit as inflation happens.
• Prop 54: Legislation and Proceedings. Amendment. NO. This is one of two retarded ones, and it's deceptive as well. It requires bills to be published for 72 hours before the state legislature can vote on them. Which pretty much cripples the legislature. It also requires legislative sessions to be televised, which is reasonable enough, but the literature covering the proposition emphasized that part and downplayed the retarded 72 hour requirement. Prop 54 ended up passing, and I feel like the state legislature is going to spend a lot of time finding a way to overturn it.
• Prop 55: Tax Extension to Fund Education and Healthcare. Amendment. NO. The legislature could have done this, without an amendment, so I fell back to a No vote.
• Prop 56: Cigaratte Tax to Fund Healthcare, etc. YES. I don't smoke but smoking is addicting, so this statute basically exploits people who smoke, who will pay more money for smokes because they are addicted. I am fine with that. This might also convince a percentage of smokers to stop, as a bonus.
• Prop 57: Criminal Sentence, Parole, Juvenile Criminal Proceedings. NO. Honestly I thought it went too far, and let some of the non-violent criminals off too easily.
• Prop 58: English Profieciency. YES. This repealed the stupid requirement that English acquisition classes be taught in English, while keeping other reasonable requirements. Some people evidently thought that if you allow classes to be taught in another language you are eroding English as the national language or some naive thing like that, so they passed a different proposition years ago to prevent that. This reverses that proposition.
• Prop 59: Political Spending, etc. Advisory. YES. This is the one that advises the state government to purse an US Constitutional Amendment overturning the Citizens United decision. I never liked that decision though (for a slightly different reason than other people disliked it) so definitely worth pursuing.
• Prop 60: Adult films. Condoms. Health Requirements. NO. In essense just a way to try to get that industry out of California, since no one wants too see porn with condoms. I figured it would just drive that kind of thing underground and make it more dangerous.
• Prop 61. State Prescription Drug Purchases. Pricing Standards. NO. This is the dubious one. It has good intentions, I believe, but uses a naive socialist approach to the issue that's likely to backfire, as socialist approaches often do when no account is taken of how the price fiat is going to change things (and this prop didn't). Bernie Sanders was vouching for this one, figures.
• Prop 62. Death Penalty Repeal. YES. This prop repeals the death penalty. I voted for it because as, a practical matter, litigation lasts too long and costs too much, even in the rare cases (and there are some) where the death penalty might be appropriate.
• Prop 63. Firearms. Ammunitions Sales. YES. I thought this was mostly reasonable restrictions on firearms. There was one thing about limiting magazine size in there that I thought was both silly and slightly concerning as a precedent, but I thought it was not concerning enough for me to vote No.
• Prop 64. Marijuana Legalization. YES. This was a better proposition than the last time they tried this. I'm not going to lie, I don't use marijuana in any form and don't spend any time around people using it. I don't believe most of the promises they are telling us about legalization, and I definitely don't believe it's as safe as they say it is. If marijuana had not been illegal, most of the people cruelly incarcerated for dealing marijuana would have been selling other drugs, not running responsible dispensaries. Finally, stoner types are some of the most hilarious people to troll. Based on these points, I was tempted to vote no. However, it's clear society has made its decision, and full legalization is merely a matter of time. It's not like society will collapse if another vice is allowed.
• Prop 65. Carryout bags. Charges. NO, I think. This diverts all funds collected from sale of carry-out grocery bags to environmental causes. I actually left this blank on my sample ballot, and am not even 100% sure I voted for this at all. Right now I'd vote no because I mainly remember thinking that if retailers were able to keep the fees then it might save me a few cents on bread.
• Prop 66. Death penalty procedures. NO. This eliminates some frivolous litigation in death penalty cases, with the intention of making it possible to carry out some of these people's sentences. I thought this Proposition went way too far, though. Solid no.
• Prop 67. Ban on single-use plastic bags. YES. This was actually a referendum, the legislature voted to put it on the ballot. Because of this, I didn't fall back to my "No" default (at least not as hard as I would have an initiative proposition), and just voted for what I wanted. It might be a case of environmentalists blowing a relatively minor environmental problem out of proportion, but I'll tell you something, nothing really looks worse in nature than those bags. For that reason alone I voted Yes. Also, reusable bags are way better anyway.

There were some measures as well for Los Angeles County and the City of Santa Monica.

• LA County Measure A. Tax increase for parks, etc. YES. This was fairly harmless, the tax was something like 1.5 cents per square foot per year. Local taxes are bit more palatable than state taxes, because the state caps the amount localities can tax (although I am not sure there's a cap per square footage). If a tax is earmarked to something good, like maintaining parks, it makes it harder for them to use taxes on stupid things.
• LA County Measure M. Transportation Improvement Plan, YES. This is probably the happiest I've ever been to have a 0.5 percent raise in sales tax. It's a thorough, well-thought out plan that includes funding for all different phases of transportation (bicycle infrastructure, too, but I never said it was perfect). That's the problem with a lot of these kinds of measures, they forget that people still drive, and focus on a single approach (a railroad usually). This is a practical multi-faceted approach to the transporation in Los Angeles. I almost can't believe a government could come up with something so reasonable. And, once again, that's less money available under the sales tax cap for stupid stuff. This measure had to get a 2/3 supermajority of ballots to pass, and it did.
• Santa Monica Measures GS and GSH. A 1/2 percent use tax increase. I'm always scratching my head over these. Santa Monica is a very wealthy community and I wonder why they keep needing these nickle-and-dime tax increases. I'm quite sure there's some shady business going on. It's a well-run city so I'm not going crazy over this, but I'm still not voting for it. Also, this will bring back the days of the government guilting me into self-reporting. The main place where use tax is charged is out-of-state online sales. Online retailers are now required to collect this, and most retailers are up to the task. But I doubt most retailers are going to be collecting use tax for cities. Which means now I have to self-report, blah.
• Santa Monica Measure LV. Require voter approval for developments higher than 32 feet. NO. This has got to be the most retarded ballot measure I've ever seen. I'm somewhat sympathetic to the idea (I think the city is moving a little too fast on redevelopment) but this is draconian beyond all reason. It's also the one of the most heavily contested. I got flyers in the mail every single day for weeks on LV, most of them against. It failed.
• Santa Monica Community College Measure V. Bonds for College improvements. NO. Again, for the children. As with the high school, it's kind of ridiculous that a wealthy school like Santa Monica College has leaky classrooms, such that they need to sell bonds. Perhaps instead of building a bunch of crap they could have fixed the classrooms instead. You got it backwards, guys, you're supposed to fix classrooms with general funds and sell bonds to build new buildings. But if you do that you don't get all the votes for the children, do you?

Anyway, voters have approved all of the tax increases and bond issues on my ballot, which I think is pretty weak-minded of the electorate. Geez, citizens, I'm not saying all taxes are bad, I voted for a few myself, but push back a little. And don't be duped into thinking the school districts in Santa Monica need to sell bonds to keep classrooms in repair. Come on.

President of the United States

Clinton or Trump, talk about a bad choice. In elections for people, my philosophy is that a person who's got a big advantage in votes will tend to be too secure in their jobs, and so will not be all that afraid of doing shady things. Worse, an official might think they have a "mandate" of some sort, which they argue gives them the freedom to take whatever measures are necessary. This scares me. As such, whenever the outcome of an election is not in doubt, I prefer to use my vote to reduce the margin of victory. No matter who it is, or which party it is, the closer the vote is to 50-50, the better they'll behave.

The presidential election is bit different for two reasons. One, the electoral college. Two, the candidates.

There was no question that Clinton was going to carry California. However, when it comes to behaving, I'd expect the electee to pay attention to national vote counts more than state vote counts, and at national level Clinton only had a few percentage point lead in the polls. In a normal election, based on that small percentage, I would have reverted to my standard practice for elections that are in doubt: to vote for whoever is most likely to defeat the worst candidate.

Unfortunately, that meant Clinton. Trump is probably not going to be the anti-Christ everyone says he's going to be. Proabably. But there is a small chance he is the anti-Christ, and I didn't want to take that risk. So I was hoping--well "hoping" is too strong a word. Let's just say my carefully considered decision was that it was preferrable for Hillary Clinton to win.

But this was not a normal election. Because of the electoral college system, that small percentage lead she had was apparently good enough for a decisive victory. That's what all the pundits were saying. And because I lived in California, which had no chance of not choosing Clinton, my vote was not going to affect the election. Which meant that reverting to my in-doubt strategy was unnecessary. In fact it was actually good: because Clinton, the person who I'd decided was preferable to win, was going to win both California and the electoral college handily, I was free use my vote to reduce her vote totals. So my plan was to vote for Trump.

Day of the election, I walked into the ballot box and had a thought: what if Trump does win? Then I'd be voting to increase his margin of victory, and I don't want that either. I knew that the pundits had all but handed her the election. I knew that "everything had to go right" for Trump to win, and that he had to carry all those tossup states, and even if he had a 50/50 chance of winning those states (and he didn't) then he'd still have only about a 1/30 chance of winning. But I also know Hillary Hate. I know because I have it. I can't even utter the words, "I am rooting for ---", she is so odious. But I am a rationalist, and if I'd been living in a state where the electoral votes were in doubt I would have given her my vote to help defeat Trump, in spite of how I feel about her. But not everyone is like me. A lot of people vote with their guts, and an awful lot of people hate her guts. I decided in that ballot box that Clinton is not the shoe-in everyone was saying she was, and the election was in doubt after all.

I ended up abstaining.

There. I said it.

Food trucks are as supposed to be as much a part of LA culture as hot dog stands are for New York. Well, New York wins this one. My experience with food trucks is that they: 1. are slow, 2. serve tiny portions, and 3. aren't any better than a walk-in eatery. Also, lately, they 4. are expensive, and 5. have incredibly long lines because every hipster thinks they're the greatest food in LA.

I suspect a lot of the older food trucks that serve the neighborhoods actually are very good. Certainly they filled an important niche, since they served food in places and at hours that people otherwise couldn't get food. They were operated by people who were from the areas they served, had native knowledge of great ethnic foods, and rapport with their customers.

But now that food trunks have become trendy, the experience has become diluted with mediocrity. I'm not saying that trendiness, by itself, leads to medocrity. But in this case the thing that became trendy was a bad way to serve food. Food trucks have tiny inefficient kitchens. They aren't designed to serve a lot of people quickly, and they aren't designed to serve a wide variety, but that's exactly what people are trying to use them for.

For now, people are impressed enough by the "experience" to not notice they've stood in line for twenty minutes to get a small portion of food that's not very good at a high price. If the food was actually good or unique, as with the old neighborhood food trucks of yore, maybe it'd be worth it, but these days most aren't. So how long will this trend really last?

Ok, so A Feast for Crows ends and it reveals that it and the next novel are divided spatially rather than chronologically. Fair enough.

As Martin started wrapping up the threads it got marginally more interesting. For the first time a character who I was pulling for and who had significant converage was snuffed out (or so it seems; more on that below). This was something I was expecting to happen once or twice per novel, based on the reputation of series, but this is the first time it happened with me. Since I thought Ned, Catelyn, and Robb were all stupid, I wasn't really too attached to them. We had a scare with Bran but I wasn't a fan of him either. Renly's death was disappointing but since we didn't have a lot of time to build sympathy it wasn't as hard-hitting as it could have been. However, though I wasn't exactly enjoying the Brienne chapters, I was certainly pulling for her, so this is probably the first death that had impact.

Jaime's aunt, from a position of knowledge, all but told him that he and Cersei were not Tywin' children. This didn't exactly blindside me; I had always thought there was a connection between the Lannisters and the Targeryens but I kind of felt like it was more of a "they go way back". But now that I am told Jaime and Cersei are illegitimate a bunch of things (dramatic story elements) fall into place, or seem to.

So quick prediction: Jaime and Cersei are the children of Mad King Aegon. Thus making Jaime both a kingslayer and a kinslayer. So much is explained: why Cersei and Jaime were into each other (it's a Targaryen trait), it explains Joffrey's madness (although that could be just be a random result due to incest, but it seems that Targeryens madness goes beyond that and that Joffrey had that particular brand of it). It explains a lot of the drama behind Jaime's appointment to the Kingsguard. Aegon didn't just want to screw over Tywin, he wanted his own son around. It kind of explains Tywin's animosity toward Tyrion and coolness to Jaime: Jaime wasn't his son, and the Imp was, highlighting Tywin's own inadequacy as a sire.

Not regarding who J&C's actual father is, some people have got to know they're illegitimate, if his aunt knew. Who? Jaime obviously had no clue. Cersei doesn't seem to know (I can think of no situation where she belies anything). Predictions:

• Jon Arryn knew, and that was the truth he actually discovered and was killed for. (In the interests of dramatic irony I'll predict that Arryn had no idea that Joffret and co. weren't Robert's children.)
• Margery Tyrell knows. That's the trap she's setting. Her grandmother knows.
• Maester Aemon knew figured it out and it was part of what he was ranting about in the end.

Ironically, this strengthens Tommen's claim (relative to before). This may suggest Margery has it in for Jaime too, who of course has prior claim over Tommen.