Bring a Pencil

A Club Where You Don't Want to Be a Member

2021-12-04T23:38:00.000-05:00

I recently purchased a major purchase, and it was a bit scary. It was a computer, and though I have yet to regret it (it’s been several hours), I have had a bit of buyer’s remorse in that I didn't know if it was the right decision. You see, when my Chromebook died (RIP) after 3 years, I just…sort of…didn’t buy a new one. I didn’t see the need. I hadn’t been writing, really. I hadn’t been writing and though it was breaking my heart, I was getting pretty resigned to it. I was understanding on a wholly new and fundamentally depressing level that I was about to turn 40 and I hadn’t written anything I liked in years, years, years!

It was a dark time. I had long ago reached the conclusion I wasn’t going to write the great American novel, I had compromised with myself that I was not going to be interviewed by the New York Times for my opinion about Stephen King’s legacy to millennials. I had walked up to that door that says “Cheesemonger” instead of “Writer” and walked through it, letting myself be okay with that fact, letting myself believe it was going to be all right. But I had also met a beautiful person that made me think that I wasn’t insufferable, that I was worth trying to be with for long periods of time. She loved me, and suddenly life was okay. It wasn’t just her, it was my getting older, less angry, less outraged at the developments of my little piece of the world. Things seemed like it would be okay without the writing. Things could move forward for me without carving into the wall every childish idea about pop culture and art and whatever skittered across my cerebellum.

But then, after about two months, I started to itch way back inside of my skull where the thoughts grow and flow, fester and boil, tumble and toil. I started thinking about all those stories from my past that I had left drying in the sun along with the cut-too-short grass that feels like hard spikes when you lay on it. The itching got worse as the sun began to slide under the horizon earlier and earlier in the day. The itch got bad enough to try and write something on a tiny pad of paper during a beach visit with my girlfriend. It got bad enough to try and patch together a piece on google docs on my phone, hacking it out with swipes and thick fingers that changed every third word into something totally wrong (who sucks a duck?). By the time Autumn (well, Late September I guess—it was 70 degrees, but the sun was down by 7pm), I was actively complaining about not writing and everything else. I had no release for it, not artful content, no one who wanted to hear it (“how about coming up with solutions?” my girlfriend asks of me). I had to do something.

And then my Aunt died, I turned 40, and my grandmother died. It’s been an ugly year so far, though it had its happy times, it’s seemed to end with abrupt confrontation that all those things that made me feel that I would be fine without writing become like so much gravel on the soft shoulder of life. My Aunt died suddenly, unexpectantly, and though I don’t think I handled it well, it allowed me to reach some sort of understanding with her husband, my uncle, who I had been somewhat estranged from for years. We didn’t talk much, we didn’t really have the gift of gab when it came to conversation yet, but we connected a least a little over the tragedy.

My grandmother was a different story—we had known she was beginning to loosen at the seams a few years ago, and talking with her at the end didn’t get traumatic until the very end, but something about her passing combined with my aunts made the itch grow. It had grown in pressure, the needle starting to get into that orange space before the red. That she died on my birthday didn’t help. I did what I needed to, I called my cousins and brother, talked it over with them, cracked a few morbid jokes, and went to dinner with my favorite person. We stopped at an apothecary and then walked home in the cool dark air, laughing and loving and reveling in the beauty that the season can give you in the city when it’s still too warm to hate the outside and still cool enough to walk holding each other. I thought of my grandmother and my aunt, who had seen their last sunrise, seen their last dark sky, had finished. I thought of how my Aunt had taken me to the movies, made me dinner when my homework woes had led me to the house she and my uncle shared, quietly loving me and caring for me when I had become too much for my parents. I thought of my grandmother reading my first real story, my first published piece, and her congratulating me for being a “real writer,” and looking at me with that strange proud love that costs so little but feels so good. I remember the practical love she had for my cousins and I as we shared beers in her kitchen, helping where we could, but mostly dodging her as she whipped up dinner in the way only someone who knows every inch of a place can.

I think of them now, the last two members of the secret club of people who cared for me and hoped I did good and knew me enough to want to see it. I don’t want to think of the club, and all those people left to join it, but it’s getting to be a longer list than I think I ever anticipated. And though I can’t say that their passing led me to get back on the wagon train of Writing (and this always has it’s spurts and sputters) but shit man, I’ve got to at least admit that it made me realize that I had to at least try.

So here I am, trying. I'll keep going as long as I can, I don't believe they'll know it, but if I can keep trying, maybe it'll show somewhere in there that I loved them, I love them, and will love them as best I can.

Grass & Concrete

2016-05-12T19:56:00.000-04:00

There is a small outdoor bar near the Brooklyn Bridge shut in a little grove of trees and shrubbery with only pockets of sky and river and bridge and city to peer in like voyeuristic neighbors from a distance. The green encapsulates and invigorates while the dusty brown of long-spent brick and mortar stares at you and reminds you that you are in New York and not some other place with sandy beaches.

The booze is too much and the food even more so, but I can kind of see why some would pay such unseemly prices to have lunch here--the place is set up like a beach-side cabana in some British or French-owned colony from the 1800's still populated by dark-skinned natives. It's a bit other worldly--if you stay long enough to go blind to the inane New York squabble from tourists, locals and babies, not to mention the shouting of class-trip children who march endlessly South past the bar towards the higher Piers and then back again an hour later, still squabbling and screeching but with less energy, having been filled with chea ready-made sandwiches of PB&J, egg salad or chicken salad, or maybe makeshift burritos filled with brown rice and pinto beans. Who knows? I don't make lunches for grade school kids.

The whole of Brooklyn Bridge Park is laid out over 1.3 miles of river side, but really grass only inhabits the first third--the rest is mostly concrete and pretends to make sense in a beach-community kind of way if someone who was born in the middle of the Bronx was to describe a two-home island off the shores of Nantucket during a fever dream. Most of what I assumed were water features, including a closed boat ramp and a swirling water area I forgot to write down but essentially looked like a closed, windy boat ramp, seemed to be untouched since the year prior and most of the trees were too young to be of any good for shade. However, despite it's clear lack of understanding of whatever it was going for, Brooklyn Bridge Park still manages to have a few moments of the surreal honesty that a lot of new York parks seem to pull of. It is a weird sensation that starts with the thought "only in New York," as a detriment, the aforementioned boat ramp and spiral boat ramp being obvious notes toward this idea. Namely only a New Yorker would think that someone would launch a boat there. Only a New Yorker would fence in a lawn on a manufactured hill that runs for 200 yards and have one entrance on one side and expect no one to hop the wire fence, and only a New Yorker would not hop the fence when that gate over there is clearly open. But over time, and the further I got away from actual trees in favor of marsh-grass and concrete tide pools and is that supposed to be a beach? it started to feel more legitimate, more proper, more like a fenced in beach that just needed time to grow into its new shoes. You've got to give this stuff time, Wes. Relax a little.

Suddenly someone puts music on and though it doesn't ruin the mood, we could do with something more timeless than whatever it is, something sweet and quiet and uneccesary but I get it--any music will help keep the bubble going, keeping the place to it's own even when the sky gets dark and the tiny bulbs strung across the patio wink on and shed their orange glow.

The guy who I assume is the proprietor is a gruff, sunglasses-indoor kind of guy with an Irish cap and gym shorts and high socks in running shoes and despite his toolish exterior I have to commend him--if he's owned this place more than 12 days he knows what he's got here and hopefully won't fuck with it too much. Part of me wishes he was twenty years older and wearing a straw hat with a white suit jacket , drinking endless mojitos at the end of a nonexistent bar but the other part of me know that would ruin it--it's as if I like that this place has an other-worldly vibe but doesn't try too hard to pin down whatever world that is. No straw on the tables, no giant margarita bowls, nothing served in coconuts. It is already perfect without these things--no pretentions and no need for concrete whirlpools. It is the precise place to get a drink on a quiet Thursday afternoon while your legs rest, a breeze wafts in from down river and the problems you've had over the last few days feel mostly out of sight, over there on the other side of that little grove of trees.

Jimmy Cliff Ain't Got Nuthin on Me

2016-05-07T10:18:00.000-04:00

There is an apartment a block away (or is it two? I'll have to check) that can probably see into my room right now. My windows are huge in this apartment, all the windows are except the bathroom's, and I wonder if it's so you can get out of them if there is a fire or if it's a carry-over from the days before plastic and the windows had to be bigger...for some reason? No. That doesn't make any sense. Perhaps it was the style of apartments at the time (1920's? 30's? I forget. I think 30's. So far I'm batting about 0.000 for knowledge about anything around me) but the point is this: these windows are huge, and you can see through them.

The windows in that other apartment building are bigger, though, and holy hell that building is like 4 or five stories higher than me right now (I'm on the second story) and if they wanted to on this dreary Saturday morning, someone could walk right up to their window over there, remove the elephantine curtains they must have, sip their coffee and look through binoculars and probably watch me talking to all of you over there. Makes me think if anyone ever saw me having sex. The answer is "No" there, buy the way. I don't leave my "drapes" open for potential voyeurs. In case you were wondering.

There are videos taken with cameras with crazy lenses on the internet where people are zoomed in on some innocuous thing--a guy mowing his lawn, a couple on a bench, some boat on a canal--and then they zoom out and you find that the person with the camera is like half a city away looking down from a high building or hill, spying on this other persons doldrums and completely aware that they are going to put the video up on line, people are going to view that, and then that person is going show other people, and then there is the potential for millions of persons looking through several screens and time and place to watch some guy picking his nose and reading a book too blurry to read.

This makes me think of what I can see, and share with others, and my first thought is that I live across from a pre-school, which is closed (it's Saturday, again, for those of you who aren't paying any attention), they have a fenced-in playground that just got new wood-chips (the truck woke me up trying to park the day before yesterday) and all the cars are smattered with what must have been an early morning rainfall as they look slightly wetter than they did when I got home last night (1am) but too dry to have had significant rain in the last 2 hours.

Which reminds me, this week has been hard for people who like the sun and the light it brings to warm your face or heart or existence. It has been a low, grey, wormy kind of week and it's been hard to get up every morning knowing that though the weather is starting to finally warm-the-fuck-up we're still dealing with cool nights, wet afternoons, and just low, ready-to-burst cluds that make going outside without an umbrella a treacherous plan. I plan on doing that today, though. Because reasons. Also my friend is coming by. But also because I need to get out and move, look at and listen to strangers, look at the world again and see it from a new perspective. Because listen: I'm kind of a doom-and-gloom kinda guy. I am not always glass-half-full. In fact, I rarely am. But I do understand the strength of perception, and I do understand the depth or perspective. I know things will get better. I know they can get worse. I know that life makes you eat shit, and I know that sometimes you still come out on top. But to me, what becomes important the more I see it and the more I'm aware of it, is that perspective and perception are related and that what you see and how you see it now isn't always how you'll see it in the future, or even exist as the same thing. I guess my point is that that person over there who can look down into my apartment may never een notice they can, and if they do, they might not write a blog about it.

Presented by Clearchannel

2016-04-28T18:56:00.001-04:00

I need a new phone. Or maybe I need a better phone. That's it. The second one. The phone I have now seems to do whatever the fuck it wants and it's driving me nuts. I've spent the last twelve minutes trying to send a text message, but since the piece of shit decides to download whenever I actually get active on my phone, my text messages won't send. But thank God Lyft, a program I've used exactly twice, has patched itself. PS--all my other apps (why don't we call them programs anymore?) updated yesterday. Why isn't it coordinated? Why isn't it programmable to download at, oh I don't know, a period of LOW activity? Like 2 am?

I'm a bit media-saturated right now. I finally watched the new Ep of Game of Thrones (more on that later), got a Hulu account and started watching 11.22.63 (more on that later), I'm on my second badge in Pokemon Ruby and now I'm watching Seinfeld while I write this. It's the pilot episode, because I haven't seen all of them and didn't really watch it when it was popular (I saw it many, many times but I didn't watch it if you know what I mean) and so I had to start at the beginning. And it's helping me realize how distracted I am. If I pause it, I wonder what happens next, if I turn it off, I lose the ability to stop and start and drift off. The idea is to have something in the background that I can kind of ignore, roll out on to every now and again, then come back in and do what I have to do.

The other "problem" is that I'm distracted by successful shows and projects around me that seem to be compelling and not totally out of the reach of someone who can string a couple-three ideas together, but for some reason I can only watch for a few hours before I have to change the show/do something else. Game of Thrones, now almost completely out in the woods beyond the "hope-it-gets-finished-before-he-dies" George RR Martin plotlines seems to be cramming a whole bunch of stuff into the season, just like the last. I predict lots of cliffhangers and no conclusions. 11.22.63, though, when it's not cramming exposition, is pretty interesting so far. I'm not all the way through it yet, but it's pretty great so far. James Franco is kind of awesome in it--which is hard to swallow since he's such a fucking goofball whenever I see him in anything else. Every now and then he crinkles his eyes a bit like he does in The Interview and I can't help but laughing out loud. To myself. In my empty apartment. I feel like a weirdo.

The thing is too that I am watching commercials again. Between Youtube and now my Hulu free trial, I now get some of the advertisements I see on the subway--it's almost like the posters now are designed to remind you of a commercial you saw on TV. That way you get the same message twice worked into your brain. Not subliminal, mind you, more hiding in the open. Still feels pretty much like advertisers have no idea how to reach their audiences. It is weird coming back to it, though, even in the small way that I have (what, 12 commercials in an hour? Most less than 30 seconds? I just realized that it's probably more than that--by a lot--oh no) and it's so strange how easily I've come back into it when it's in small doses. The last time I left my apartment and got a real spike of television into my head-vein the commercials were more numerous than the show and four-times as loud. Here on Hulu (the one where I can't skip the commercials) if they're louder I haven't noticed, and for the most part I just do something else while they run. Sometimes I think I don't notice them, but then I start thinking about my insurance premiums or eating at Applebees while listening to Spotify.

There's a clinical name for it, isn't there?

2016-04-26T11:36:00.001-04:00

I don't know why the formatting is fucked up It's driving me nuts looking at it. Sorry...

"To begin... To begin... How to start? I'm hungry. I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee. Coffee and a muffin. Okay, so I need to establish the themes. Maybe a banana-nut. That's a good muffin." --Charlie Kaufman, Adaptation

I haven't given up, but starting is difficult. And every time you stop and start it's like going back to school, going back to the start it feels like its a taller hill, mountain, cliff. Whatever.

I haven't watched the new Game of Thrones, but I have watched The first episode of Horace and Pete (twice, technically), Breaking the Maya Code and the first half of Jaws (again). Is this why I don't write? Overabundance of Media? Or is it lack of idle time? Or is it lack of gumption, or some weird mellowing of my dreams? Or have I given up? Let's talk about something else.Pancakes are great, aren't they? Out of all the things I can have for breakfast, pancakes are definitively up there, though I must be honest in my old age I enjoy scrambled eggs and a good western/Denver omelette better on most days because they're easier to make at home. Omelette is a funny word--theres at least 1/3 more "e"s in there than I think rightfully belong there, but it's French, so it kind of makes sense that the "e"s are a bit excessive. French is an interesting language--I tried to take it as a kid (mainly because everyone else was doing Spanish and fuck that--an opinion I later pooh-poohed with the same self-satisfaction [God, I really am a monster--look at all these dashes and half-self-effacing declarations, who do I think I am, anyway? I'm so deep in this segue I'm using BRACKETS for Christ's sake!]) but mainly what I learned was that learning other languages is harder than I really want to try. Even now I make jokes about how I've flunked Spanish a bunch of times (I'm still churning my way through Duolingo and dropping it after two months only to pick it back up once the mood strikes again). Wow, this got depressing, lets back track a bit before I get too deep in this wall of self-pity.

Honestly my most normalized breakfast at this point is a bagel with cream cheese a couple times a week with a coffee. My favorite breakfast is probably the breakfast sandwich, which isn't my favorite sandwich, which I don't even know what that would be. Bacon cheese steak? Turkey Club? Cheeseburger? I mean, sandwiches probably entail a good bit of my chosen food type, but I would think most people would consider a cheese burger a cheese burger and not necessarily a sandwich (though technically, we can all agree that it is, and that the question is unarguable). I also like making grilled cheese, and would prefer that you learn how to mix your goddamn cheese when you make it, and for the love of christ use butter, you're already eating literally a fat sandwich coated in fat, why the hell would you use whole-wheat bread? Healthy eating is ridiculous when it comes to grilled cheese. For realz.

But making a real sandwich takes time and love. It's not like chasing bluegills or tommycocks. You have to toast the bread, use crisp lettuce. Get a real tomato for crying out loud--something local grown local, certainly not one of those rose-colored shitty-chemical-colored tomatoes you get everywhere else. And maybe that's why so many people just go to shitty places and let some slack-jawed idiot slap fake meat onto the cold bread they pulled out of a fridge that was loaded with wilted produce. What I mean is maybe it's also why I put it all off--the writing, I mean. Maybe it's my desire for perfection that hold me back. Maybe I'm afraid that I'm just going to make a bad sandwich.

Hi

2016-04-22T19:50:00.003-04:00

What's missing?

I wrote something earlier, deleted it. Will I delete this one? Right now I'm reading Mysteries of Pittsburgh--debut novel of one Michael Chabon--probably one of my favorite writers. I haven't read everything he's got, but I read a couple and he's fucking good. I don't know what it is about him that fascinates me, or why his prose is so easy for me to gobble up like cheeseburgers straight from the grill (with those little squares of american cheese laid oh-so-perfectly upon their tops). But every time I start one of his books I feel like I have landed inside a strange bubble of reality and time--usually one that is almost my own but not quite. This one is less maddeningly confusing as the first I read, The Yiddish Policeman's Union but not as epic as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay, but that's okay, because it's about being drunk and confused in college. I know that undersells it, who cares? If you want to read it, go do that, or you can borrow my copy, alright? If you're reading this than maybe my opinion matters to you. Either way, this isn't a book review.

On the other hand, I'm listening to Anderson.Paak's album Malibu and I kinda dig it but I don't get it. It's weird and unruly and not repetitive and I haven't changed it. This following a week where I listened to Minor Threat by Dave's suggestion as well as Arcade Fire's Funeral which of course which's genius I am only now discovering like 10 years after the fact. It's usually how it goes.

I'm not trying to structure an argument here, I'm a little too self-aware that I haven't written here in three years and the last things I wrote were for my friend teecozee's blog called "theoretical Thursdays" (found here) and the last thing I wrote for myself was a little over a year ago. Can't let it get me down though, gotta power through the weariness and the nightmare of self-effacement before it unspools into whatever that other article was about (don't worry, it's gone now. Shhhh, shhhh, I'm here now, all will be okay and the mean truths can again go unspoken).

Before I read Mysteries of Pittsburgh I read Unknown Man #89 by Elmore Leonard, who is an author every single person (especially aspiring authors) shoud read. His dialogue is spot-on and I like that his charaters are visceral and give absolutely no fucks about anything else but what they're up to.

There is a fire-siren going off every forty seconds or so, starting low and reaching a crescendo within seconds and holding there, right on the outer edge of steel-blade slicing evil, mind-numbing, wriggling excruciation before dropping down below the line of hearing. And then of course it winds right.the.fuck.back. UP. If it goes on for another hour it will drive the entire neighborhood insane. I'll have to cordone off the stairwell as sound-induced zombies crawl up the banisters and toss molotov cocktails up onto the foyer, parents will overturn carriages, skip over the baby formula for the hard liquor and hand soap, drinking both with fevor only matched by the way the children throw chunks of the torn up street through the windows of local businesses. Fire will start in the corner of the gas station and the whole thing will go up, engulfing the whole block, and probably half of the next one, an M conductor traveling past with be inundated with sound, drive the train too hard and fast and whip through the station and rattle the bridge until it collapses onto the street, filling it with wrecked debris and cars and train parts and lives and then they'll call the locals, and they'll come in, go mad and start gunning down the innocent, then they'll call in the SWAT and the same thing will happen, and my normally mild, boring street will fill quickly with warring factions of madness driven by a sound that holy fuck it finally stopped. Whew. That was trouble.

I am 8 songs into this album and still haven't changed it. I think that is a good sign. I don't really know how to listen to music anymore, or how to find good shit. I don't even know if this album I'm listening to is any good. I do know it's not shitty. So I like it. I recently tried to discuss how I am an album person with Dave (after he called himself "an album guy") and realized that it's a topic that doesn't really warrant a conversation. We're the new Old, aren't we, Dave? Give us another fifteen years and our children will draw comics about us gumming our food we're so old.

In conclusion, this is my conclusive paragraph. In it, I will make vague references to my earlier statements and try to tie them together in a conclusive way, so that I may conclude this paragraph as well as this group of paragraphs that couldn't be called an essay even if I wrote it in double-spaced type in 14 pt font (Times New Roman). With any maybes, I will be back soon to put more thoughts into your heads. Hopefully with more, "you know"s and long-winded extrapolation of what I really meant earlier when I said. Not to mention the unmentionables and the way sometimes you just want to write something and say it instead of having to have a real point. It's nice.

Rant #738, Appendix B: Notes in the Margins

2013-11-11T13:18:00.002-05:00

I have always abhorred writing in books. Not the typesets or the fonts or anything, but the physical writing in books. I don’t deny that there can be completely justified reasons for writing in books, especially by teachers and students--why take the time to write notes on a post-it or whatever and put it in when you can just highlight and/or underline, put a word or phrase, a question mark, an exclamation, whatever, especially in text books which really aren’t books at all in a sense, but are really just instruction manuals on some aspect of life--be it History, Biology, etc. In these instances it makes sense for future discussion, homework, tests, etc.

But, for a moment, let us consider literature and fiction and figure out what writing in a book is actually doing and why I don’t do it. I don’t want to argue my opinion is correct--I think a lot of people who think about things way deeper than I DO write in books, and freely without ever even questioning it, but I want to say why I don’t, and why I can’t fucking stand it when people do it.

First off we’ll hit the subject the easiest and most “who cares?”--it’s ugly. I know that ugliness is a terrible reason to avoid doing something to anything--especially if you’re the only one who cares. If you’re doing it to your own book, why should anyone give two shits whether or not you tagged the margin with this comment about the meaning of the candlesticks in Les Miserables or Holden’s hat in Catch in the Rye or whatever? It’s your book, do what you want with it! I am a supporter of doing whatever you want to your own things--like George Carlin said about cars--flip switches, turn dials, etc etc. and if you must break out your pen to write “Clearly adversarial to other’s opinions” in the margins, well, I’m not telling you you can’t but do yourself a favor and look at it after you’ve done it.

Besides a few Literature books from school (The Odyssey and Dante’s Inferno spring to mind) I know of two notes I wrote in a book I was reading recreationally. One was in a Chuck Klosterman book where he was arguing about Superman and Batman being adversaries (Nemeses?) and one where I pointed out an annoying anachronism in The Body (made into a movie called Stand By Me) that I considered a plot hole because I was too self-assured that I’d found a flaw in my hero’s work that I had to shout it from the rooftops. Both of these notes are in blue ink and are written in the upper left corner of the page where there is significant space to write a note of semi-importance to absolutely no-one but myself. These notes are tragic for a couple of reasons I’ll get to later but first and foremost they are UGLY. The page is set in neat, squared paragraphs and here comes my notes in jumbled, teenager/twenty year-old handwriting sloping across the page like a slug-trail, loped and sliding, slick and rude, fucking up all the symmetry and neatness of the page. It’s like when you’re painting a wall and you slip of the ladder and grab the wall to slow your fall--a big ugly swath of original color down the middle of your new, improved color. I hate it.

Not to mention the comment itself. It’s never anything really life-changing or surprising--and even it it is or was, then what was the point? Superman and Batman didn’t get along? No WAY! That changes their whole dynamic, doesn’t it? No, wait, it’s practically the only reason they ever work together! To promote drama! It's the thing that makes The Justice League interesting in the early days. Batman vs Superman is seriously the reason the end of The Dark Knight Returns is so good--Klosterman wasn’t trading new or even interesting ground here, and my note (which points this out in my neatest handwriting, as if to make sure anyone else who ever read this book after I died or gave it away or sold it at a yard sale in 2025 knew that I was, like, totally as smart or even smarter than a guy who wrote some very well-thought out and sometimes very blind pop-culture commentary about the 90’s in the 2000s) only points out that I know it. Even if it was a life-changing note (none of mine were)--then I’m pretty sure I’d remember it. If anything, the actual writing of the note makes me remember it that much more--and so now I know that, for instance in page one-hundred-whatever in The Body, the pistol is discussed, and then on page three hundred whatever, everyone acts surprised when it’s there, nothing has really changed. It’s not a story about who knows about the gun, it’s a story about growing up and losing your friends and feeling ashamed of who you are and having friends who want the best for you even when you can’t see it. The Body is a great book--and yet I had to--HAD TO write that little flaw in it to prove to no one but myself that I had read that book so deeply that I could point out fuck ups no one else had ever noticed. Little did I realize that someone probably saw the flaw--and said “fuck it. What’s it matter--this is a great book.” Who the hell did I think I was?

My point being that whatever is buzzing through your head when you grabbed your pen and started scribbling notes in the margins aren’t really that important, and if they were, you probably don’t need to write it down. I have had several teachers and professors tell me I should “read with a pen,” writing all kinds of things down in the margins--how this part relates to that part, underlining turns of phrase, writing grocery lists, I don’t know--but most of that stuff turns out to be useless anyway, especially if you re-read the book. If you re-read the book there you are, reveling in your private mode, perhaps seeing things differently this time since now you know the end and can see how well the thing was put together, how tightly wound the plot is (or vice-a-versa--it’s rare but I have definitely been underwhelmed on second reads of books that were great on the first run) and then all of a sudden, you-from-four-years-ago extrapolates a point that is either totally wrong, inherently meaningless against the greater scope of the work and/or distracts you back to whatever stupid shit you were doing four years prior when you wrote that ugly note in off-color pen in the margin. And to anyone who thinks re-reading a book is meaningless--to that I say simply that you’re wrong. Books are not rides on the subway--books are vacations into other peoples thoughts, feelings and emotions, they are escapes into places that are filled with the meaning that life sometimes lacks. Because of this, they should be experienced several times, to get the points and nuances, the rhythm and the cadence, to re-experience the experience and see it from a different view. All books should be read twice--even Dune.

And this, I think, is the crux of the biscuit--When you write a note you ignore the context of the book, you ignore the forest for the trees. The rhythm is tampered with when you have thirty words written sideways on the page and it will bring back the formerly important things that you thought of before and ignore the stuff you may have missed. It pulls out four notes of the guitar solo in your favorite song and brands them as Important when really the whole song needs to be experienced from the first clang to the last note that stretches into the end of the track. When this context is lost the whole meaning of the book can be thrown into the bushes. It’s like those jokes about professors needlessly pointing out that the “Curtains are blue because the character is sad.” Though I agree that many times the curtains are “just fucking blue” I can’t argue that they are ALWAYS just fucking blue--Holden’s hat DOES mean something--the Candles-sticks DO mean something--but when looked at alone they mean much less than when the book is looked at as a whole. Holden’s hat only means what it does in the context of the book, and to point it out somewhere in the middle of the book when your 16 year-old self finally figured it out there’s no need to mark it on the calendar. Who cares when you discovered it? It's the fact that you discovered it that's important. The discovery is less important than the doors it opened. Finding the dinosaurs was great, knowing that they existed is AMAZING.

If I make one last note before putting this overly-long rant to bed I want to say that it’s not an advocacy for ignoring great moments in a novel, or a place you can go back to. It’s not even to say all defacing of books is wrong--I’ve always been a page-folder and always will be (except with other people’s books, of course). And so when I find a line I love, a paragraph, or simply a setting that speaks to me in a voice that I rarely hear and opens up the floodgates to something in myself I hadn’t seen in awhile, or ever, I fold the page. It’s ugly, sure, but not that bad, and for me it builds an anticipatory feeling that knows I’m about to get to something that’s really good. On re-reads I sometimes land on these rare moments and I revel in their beauty and others I wonder what the hell I thought I was doing folding that page, but either way I can come to that line in a new way, and the difference can take your breath away.

Send Lawyers, Guns and Money

2013-09-08T16:23:00.000-04:00

I've lived in New York for awhile now and theres a few things I've learned about the people here that is causing some concern. Well, perhaps that is a little harsh, but there is something that makes me know that when I planned on living here "for awhile" I was correct in assuming that it would eventually tire me out and though I don't think I've reached that point, I do notice that I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned about what it takes to live here, and how up to it I really am.

They say that when God closes a door he opens a window, and despite my feelings on God being completely moot, I do think that it works the other way around, as in when a window opens, a door closes. If I take anything away from this New York thing, I think, if I had to pin it down it would be that there is a part of your soul that gets eroded away here over time. The people who live here are not soulless, I don't mean to say that, but I think when you emigrate here you are born with a worldview that will eat away at you until you conform or leave.

My cousin and my friends went to Florida a few years ago for a Spring Break that turned into an adventure for all of us, some more than others, but there was a moment when My cousin and I hadn't even gotten there that was telling about how the world sees this place. Our flight was scheduled out of New York during a heavy Nor'Easter that was systematically dismantling street signs all across New Brunswick (where we lived at the time). Our flight got cancelled and the next day was mostly going back and forth between terminal and service counter trying to chase down two seats on a plane to get us to Florida. I remember we had slept the night on air vents and gone to like 7 different flights which were then delayed or cancelled completely, and in a desperate last try we got a flight to Nashville which would then transfer to Florida. I remember distinctly when the woman told us that we would have to run to catch our next plane because we had five minutes to go like 30 terminals or something. She described it as "you're going to have to run." So we made the flight (my first first class experience--paid for through 20 hours in an airport trying to salvage a vacation I could barely pay for before and almost thought I was going to die on at least twice after) and tried to sleep (impossible, despite drinking two free Heinekens), knowing we had five minutes to check in at another airplane in a place we had never been surrounded by people we did not know. Finally the plane landed and we looked at each other--tired, hungry, desperate for the whole fucking mess to be ended--and sprinted off the concourse and charged through the terminal. I remember dodging old people moving entirely too slowly in our paths and pulling suitcases piled higher than they could stand upright, soldiers with their pants stuffed into their black boots, silent as they watched us scramble around them as they waited to get on board. Finally we got to the check-in desk and tried to explain to the woman through giant, rasping breaths why we were there and how we needed to get on the plane because we needed to get to Florida by any means necessary. She looked at us, sweating, tired, haggard, wide eyed and frightened for our "adventure" and said with a kind, understanding smile: "Oh, Sugar, we held that plane for you. You're not in New York anymore." Stunned faces stared back at her and I remember thinking "they held the plane? With all these people waiting? That's so...nice!" We looked at her, thanked her, and sat down on the carpet near the water fountain and waited for them to start boarding. It wasn't so much that I didn't understand why they held the plane, but that they actually did it.

Those word stuck with me, and living here now there is a certain understanding that has completed the circle: I know what she meant by her statement but I also know how she profoundly missed what it was that caused it. She thought (or so I assume) that New Yorkers are heartless, cold and are so uptight that we always leave on time--that New York in general does not give two shits if you are going to miss your flight or how missing this connection fundamentally ruins all the stuff you've looked forward to for the last three excruciating weeks, the time between when Finals were eons away and then POW right-here-right-now-c'mon-it's-everything. But really the issue with New York being seen through that lens is that it ignores that there are too many fucking people here. The only way to truly understand a city where 45 people live in a small apartment building in Brooklyn that occupies less acreage than my father's front yard is to understand that no one could function here without completely ignoring the needs of some of the people around them. It's this fundamental difference that comfounds tourists to American cities and City people when they visit the suburbs and rural areas. It's not that things are slower, it's that there are less people, so you don't have to shove anyone (or at least as many) out of your way to get where you're going.

Living this close to others and going out amongst them every single day is an experience that I think everyone should have, if only to understand your place sometimes in the world. For every person who knows you, there are 243 who do not know you exist, and 45 of them want to shove you when you stop to check Google Maps at the top of the escalator (.002 of them want to stab you and throw your body down an elevator shaft, but those people are waaay rarer than you'd think). This becomes obvious when you see entire crowds buff and wobble when a homeless guy starts freaking out in the middle of a sidewalk. People make a face and run away (tourists, newbies) and the others just move a little faster and stare off into the distance like vietnam soldiers walking past burning villages. This is because this isn't the first, second or 23rd time this has happened, it has just become part of the mentality to ignore the part of your brain that simultaneously shouts "Run away!" and "I should help that other human being." When a person understands that stepping over a homeless guy laying on a vent in the middle of the street will not be viewed as antisocial, or rolling your eyes at someone begging for change, or planting your feet in front of a baby carriage because fuck-you-lady-I-was-here-first-and-the-subway-car-is-almost-full-and-I'm-almost-fucking-late is not wrong, especially in the wider scheme of things. The world is hard and demanding and we have to take it as a fact that not everyone cares about you.

However, open your window to this reality for too long and the door to compassion and understanding, fairness and concern may swing shut. During me and my cousin's endless airport day I can't imagine how many times the same customer service person had to say "I'm sorry, sir/ma'am, I can do nothing to help you." Imagine how many suitcases were lost, how many family reunions were ruined, how many Spring Break shitheads never got to where they wanted to go. And this, I think, is the crux of the biscuit. There are people in my life now that I have had drinks with, had long conversations about the natures of reality, religion, education, politics, reason, logic and philosophy that I counted among my friends, who have become just another rat in the maze after the same cheese I am. I do not find them to be less than people, they are not the homeless man on the sidewalk screaming at traffic, but they are other mice in the maze. And in order for me to get my cheese, sometimes I have to swing some hinges and those hinges may effect others, and sometimes in negative ways. This may not be the state I am in presently, but I know that there are people whom I have come in contact with who do think along these lines, and do so because that is the way you have to live sometimes. Sometimes you have to draw a blade to stay in contention, and sometimes you have to use it. Ask those poor suckers who tried the stock market and had their lives eaten up by better, more ruthless players.

But to do so is to become inhuman, I think. Ethics is a strange thing, and when all the winners are the ones who were quick to draw their blades, everyone learns the game to survive just that much longer. New York is like that--a city of people who have learned to draw their blades, and have learned the game better. But because of that, certain things get missed. The kind touch, the "have a nice day" while meaning it, the not just being an asshole because "hey, this is New York, get used to it." Things are done half-assed here like it's no one's business, and I think it's because no one ever says "Jesus, what if that air conditioner falls on someone?!" There's a lot of "fuck it, it gets the job done." Most of this mentality comes from there being so many people that no one will notice, but also from being in that mental space of "well, the job fell on me to get it done, it's done, let's move on," which is how a city full of 8 million people are bound to feel when if you don't return your bottles the old asian woman down the street will do it for 5 cents a pop, where you can see piles of trash on a roof that just happens to be near a subway exit, where barbed wire surrounds empty lots. People who move here know about these things, but experiencing them is different on a wholly new level. In the end it comes down to the real nature of things: adapt or die, stay or go, repel or become. Evolution of your mind--am I a mouse in a maze or am I a man who needs to eat? Are these really all the same things? Conundrums like these always fuck with my head because they boil down to what I am made of as a person, and the decisions I make always alienate some of the people I have in my life. Send Lawyers, Guns and Money--get me out of this.

Hurdles

2013-06-25T19:46:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I am asked what I am writing currently and sometimes I have an answer and sometimes I don't. Right now I do, and this causes a few hurdles to appear: 1) my creativity comes in waves, 2) Sometimes working is like rolling a big fucking rock up a goddamned hill and 3) I get bogged down in the details and that shit kills the whole mood and sets me into the last and worst part, 4) This isn't working, this is fucked, I should just sell shoes.

Right now I'm at three and deathly afraid of four, holding it back with a sweaty forearm as it tries to gnaw my face with great big pointy teeth. The last day I worked was Sunday, and I was off yesterday and today and that means that building up to this lag in work duties I said to myself "you will write during that time, make some ground, get the ball rolling on this idea before you lose it, set it before you forget it," which of course means that I actively avoided doing any writing Sunday after work and yesterday. Yet today I felt like writing. I thought about it throughout two conversations this morning, a re-watch of the Avengers, and some basic reading and videos that reminded me of why I like writing (they were incidental, I don't have a video bank or reading go-tos to get me motivated) and so I took a shower, blasted The Faces and started writing.

Well, I say I started, and I did, but the basic plot I had before me (I felt) demanded that I describe the town layout. I'm not sure why, but I wanted to get it straight because later it might come in handy to not have a thousand street names flying around. The town setting is really basic (it's not even really a town, more like a neighborhood) and only has four or five streets and one feature that is intrinsic to the plot later (way later) in the story. So you're thinking, "draw a map and get on with it." Good advice. But I didn't want to draw it on paper, because I have a habit of losing paper left around anywhere, so I tried to draw it on the Outline I wrote for the story. And since I'm me, I used this opportunity to try and familiarize myself with the drawing function in Pages (my current text editor for my Mac). This ended up taking waaaaaaay too long and became a bit extravagant as I looked up names for the streets that had some sort of group meaning (because I named the first street Wyatt, I named them after other gunslingers. Of course I know a bunch of them but could think of exactly zero past the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday when I wanted names). It took me a few minutes but eventually I got the names, and tried to set them to the roads I had drawn. Yeah. That didn't really happen. Eventually I became super-fucking-frustrated with the map I was drawing, how I couldn't write sideways, how there was some sort of layer issue that put text boxes over each other and wouldn't allow me to write IN a circle I drew. In other words, I got bogged down in the details. My second roadblock came when I had a group of soccer players practicing for a game the next day, but my brain immediately thought "What day is it (in the story?)" and since this is a pretty important detail (only because of the fucking soccer team I just invented and how they wouldn't have a game on a weekday) the whole thing spiralled out of control into "you don't know what the fuck you're doing, do you?" thoughts that are always ridiculous and a sure-fire sign of me giving up. And that is the dangerous area right in front of 4).

The biggest problem with ANY of this is really that they aren't even important. What is important are the characters, the situations they get into and how they squirm out of them. It doesn't fucking matter what the streets are named, it doesn't matter if the events happen on a Sunday, Saturday, or some made up day like Misurgsday, just that they fucking happen and make sense. But my brain gets caught in a loop on the "make sense" part of the equation, and in the summer, most soccer games happen on a Sunday, and all towns have street names. So these things must be addressed, but unlike the feelings, thoughts, movements and processes of humans and their interactions with each other, I cannot just pluck them from the air and make them real. I get bogged down in them* and the whole process shuts down.

So my plan is currently to decompress and relax a bit. I've got the ball rolling, I just need to figure out the stupid day-of-the-week thing and move on. And there it is, moving on. The simplest solution to the heaviest of problems. Ugh.

The answer is keep truckin, I guess. I can't say it'll get better because I've walked away from stories because of these seemingly tiny issues, if only because it takes me out of the story and then I'm done. I cant get the flow of storytelling when I'm worried about Soccer games not happening on Wednesday--it sticks in my mind and just rusts out everything I think about. SO I'm going to go eat something and figure out the day of the week, fix it if necessary or ignore it if I can, and get back to work. I'm 760 words below my daily minimum, and since I skipped the last two days, thats really more like 2,760 but I'm okay if I can make 1,000 today. So that's it. that's the plan. Okay. Let's do this.

*The worst thing is names. I can't name my characters anything without long-winded conversations in my head about how I don't want them to be named after people I know, but can't all be named Oswald and Elwood and George. Luckily, this time names were cake, somehow.

In Medias Res

2013-05-16T11:22:00.001-04:00

Okay, I know it’s been a very long time since I wrote anything here, and I’m pretty sure it started as a slight lapse in time or effort to continue writing here, but after awhile it also became an issue of embarrassment: how long can a writer not write before he has to tell everyone (and more importantly himself) that he is no longer a writer? How long can one have a blog and not add to it, how long can he say “Yeah, I have a blog, you should check it out” when he hasn’t added anything on it forever. One of the first jokes I ever heard about blogging was how everyone has one and they only ever have updates twice a year and they all start with “Hey guys, I know I haven’t been writing here, and I promise to write more...” and I know that I’ve made similar (if not wholly equal) statements in the past for this blog and others. But fuck it, man. I never start these blogs with any real intention of every-day or once-a-week use, I try to, but when push comes to shove I’m a really lazy guy who has bursts of energy and activity and slumps of inactivity and boring-ness. This is a thing I do not say with pride, and it probably has a bunch of reasons no one cars about, so we’ll just skip the pyschoanalysis for once and dive right into what I came here to talk about.

I’m a media junkie. It’s becoming kind of an issue. I found myself thinking today about a scene that I only know from clips and such of Dustin Hoffman whacking a taxi cab (?) and screaming “I’m walkin here! I’m walkin’ here!” when it nearly runs him over. When I thought of it at first, I thought it was Kramer vs. Kramer, which was probably way off. I spoke that guess out loud, because my co-worker hadn’t any idea what I was referencing (there was cab who was doing a rolling stop while we were crossing the street), and then had to explain it. THEN I had to explain (because my brain does whatever the hell it wants anymore, but we’ll get to this later) that this incident (Dustin Hoffman yelling at a cabbie [wait, was it a cabbie? Shit.]) was actually ad-libbed, because some guy drove through the shot and almost ran Hoffman down. So I basically made a reference to a movie I have NEVER SEEN and then explained it, and then added more superfluous information to this already annotated story in order to explain why I made the reference. And it may have been Drugstore Cowboy (another movie I’ve never seen) and I’m also not sure it was a cabbie. In a second, I’m going to go onto Youtube and find out because, as previously mentioned but not discussed, I have officially lost control of my brain.

Okay, so the verdict is one of three: it was a cabbie, but the movie is Midnight Cowboy, not Drugstore Cowboy (what is that, I wonder?) or Kramer vs Kramer (was Hoffman even in that movie? Fuck I’m losing it. Concentrate, goddammit, you’ve got to get through this). The important part of this ridiculous anecdote is that I am a media junkie that does things like identify with a scene in a film I haven’t even seen and try and use it to relate to people in real life. This can’t be a healthy exercise. Really. And not only that, but that I haven’t seen Midnight Cowboy (What the hell could it be about?) or Kramer vs. Kramer (probably a court movie, which went out of style around the time Dick Wolf started making television shows) actually makes me want to see them, just so I know the context of my own references and to know why the hell Kramer vs Kramer is famous enough to be in my brain. And here’s the fun part: I will probably watch one of those movies, and I have no idea why. Wait, back up, I do know why: it’s because my brain does whatever it wants because I am a fucking junkie for media and information.

I don’t know when it started, but I think it may have to do with embracing curiosity about the time Wikipedia became a thing. I remember back in the forum days, trolling along in the interwebs, we used to talk (write?) about the interesting places we’d start on wikipedia and the crazy places they’d take us. I can’t remember specifics, but the thread was not unlike the Kevin Bacon connect-the-people game where you can line up Charlie Chaplin to Emilio Estevez or whatever. Say you start with World War I and somehow end up on the breeding habits of red squirrels or the shelf-life of pine nuts. It doesn’t matter, the point was what a long strange trip it was getting from one link to another, starting at one place or subject and then, simply because of curiosity, being taken to another just as interesting (if not more so [who doesn’t love pine nuts?]) and never going back, or having to close 45 tabs or, at the very best, spending days going back and reviewing them after spontaneously being inundated with new information (never happens except for ALL THE TIME).

So I’ve decided that this is and may be and definitely has been a bit of a problem that effects not only me, but the things I want to do and the things I have done and not finished. Did that sentence make sense? There’s sometimes I feel like what makes sense to me doesn’t exactly make sense to others. And that’s why I am here now doing this. Trying to finish something. Trying to make a thing whole and maybe small but at least something to be proud of, something I can point to and go, “there it is, that’s the start of something and the finish of something. It’s not pretty, maybe, but it’s mine and fuck you if you can’t handle it.”

So there are a few things that I’ve been working on, and they seem stupid sometimes and (my all-time favorite reason to stop something) too big to be real things that I can make exist. Writing projects. Like, sit-down-and-spend-some-fucking-time-writing-godammit-projects. One, I think, I want to finish before the end of November (yes, novel-writing month or whatever). I think it will be the “religion” project, as a story that I am absolutely afraid of because it deals with beliefs and madness and death and heartache and pain and somewhere, hope. It’s a story I’ve been sweating for a year? two years? Doesn’t matter. It needs to be done because I started it. The other project I have in mind is a compilation of stories based around a deli (I know, I’ve kicked this around a million times), but this would be more of a collection of short stories with a mild framing story to hold them together, like the early Treehouse of Horrors, and the stories usually have nothing to do with the deli at all, just because fuck work, it’s life that’s interesting.

So anyway. This is the plan: write. The only issue I have (other than confidence or my finishing-things issues) is fucking media. My constant cycle of switching channels, flip to Jamestown, history of; Pocahontas: Reality vs Legend; Disney movies I’ve never seen, The physics of lifting a house with balloons, That Penn & Teller Bullshit! when they take on the Boy Scouts, The Republican 2012 Platform, skip-a-few Hoovertowns and the Great Depression. I’ll do my best to keep my internet bullshitting to a minimum, but we’ll see what happens. Fingers crossed.

New Story on Amazon.com

2011-07-04T09:27:00.002-04:00

So in case you missed this already (which I can imagine you have since it's only 9am on a glorious July 4th Monday where you don't have to get up early and slave over a hot PC and reddit your hours away while attempting to look like you're working), I have another story up on Amazon.com. You can click the cover picture below and go straight to the page where you can purchase it for the measly amount of $0.99. I know you're thrilled!

I know a lot of you bought my last story, and I'm hoping you will continue to read not only my work but also some of the other cheap stories on amazon and other sites. This isn't really just about supporting your relatives, it's also about tapping into the resources of the thousands like me who don't have the connections or money to publish in the classic fashion (in an industry that has been losing money since the 90's and even more so now that the Kindle and other devices are about). The best part about the Direct-to-Reader publishing is that it cuts out the money pit that is distribution and advertising, but these are also the drawbacks. So I have to depend on myself and you, my friends, to read this story (or even the first one) and tell your friends about it.

So if you plan to purchase, have purchased, or thought about purchasing my story, I thank you honestly from the bottom of my heart. I only ask that you read it and review it on Amazon to help get it's rating up and get it noticed by strangers who don't know who I am. I know it's kind of a pain but it honestly can't take more than ten minutes to write what you thought about the story you just read.

Also, my plan is to publish a collection of short stories in the near future, probably for about $10. This will include at least 7 previously unpublished works as well as some published that are about to be deleted from the websites they are hosted on (not my decision).

I'm also working on a novel idea that has me in it's grips right now. For the first time I don't think I can NOT write the thing. Hopefully I'll have it out by the end of the year, but no promises.

That's it for today. Thanks again for your continued support and love.

Wes

Being Boring

2011-06-30T18:25:00.001-04:00

I have a confession to make: I am boring. It's not something I like about myself, but it is something I've noticed from time to time while cutting my toenails or watching a movie or even when I'm talking about something that I've clearly overstated or haven't completely understood. This isn't to say I'm no fun, or even useless, but I can no longer say that I am a truly fascinating person. That's okay, though. Neither are you.

Teddy Roosevelt--now that was an fascinating guy. Killed animals for fun, went with his son Kermit and explored the Amazon Basin, became president, fought in a couple wars, got shot and yet still continued his speech--this is the kind of guy that people watch with their mouths hanging open and write books about and argue about and try to find out what made him tick. He's a fascinating guy. Other fascinating guys include (but are not limited to) Hemingway, Lincoln, Gandhi, Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Da Vinci, you know, all the people that get posted on elementary school bulletin boards.

There is a difference in fascinating people, though, and people who do interesting or fascinating things. Frank Zappa is an interesting guy, and I think that some of his ideas were great, and he was an awe-inspiring musician, but I can't really put him up there with Lincoln--maybe you can, I don't know, but I don't think that he's so good that you'll see his name in elementary school textbooks. Another interesting guy is Julian Assange--I don't necessarily want to read a biography of him, nor would I really like to know everything about the guy, but I do find him interesting in the work that he does, why he does it, and his ideals concerning privacy and transparency.

My dog used to make this same noble face when he was watching me eat tomatoes.

But I was just really looking at myself and I find that it's very possible no one will ever write a book about me, no one will ever want to sit me down and interview me on my ideas of the world, no one will probably ever really be interested in everything I say. I'm not going to have fans like George Lucas or have my biography eagerly anticipated like Mark Twain. I'm just not that special.

Here's the rub, though--it's okay. Who fucking cares? there's really no point to trying to be any of those people, and they would be the first to tell you that. They became famous and interesting all on their own by just doing the things that came naturally to them--Teddy Roosevelt was an adrenaline junkie and couldn't sit still if he wanted to. He had to be off being the champion of...whatever. Julian Assange leaked files because he knew in his heart that was the right thing to do, even if others thought it was wrong and others still thought it amounted to treason (PS I have a definite opinion on this guy, but I have no desire for politics). These guys didn't do things because people were watching them or because people might be watching them--they did them because it made sense. To them.

Yes.

So now I'm trying to write a book--I don't know if people will like it, I don't know if anyone will even buy it or read it. But to me, it's an important work, and may be the first thing that I've ever written that takes me to a different place as a writer--this isn't just a story, this is something I'm writing to figure myself out--I think that this book may change me fundamentally, and that can't be a bad thing. But there are moments when I doubt myself, when the animals in the back scream out "shut up, you're boring and no one cares what you say" and that may be kind of true--but this time it doesn't matter. I'm writing for me and I'm going to finish the fucker, hell or high water. And maybe that isn't that boring at all.

Twitter is Stupid

2011-06-02T14:29:00.000-04:00

Okay, fellow humans, let's start off by stating this knowledgeable fact: twitter is stupid. All twitter really does is allow fans to remain in pseudo-contact with their beloved celebrities. When Kelso from That 70's Show is eating calamari in Venice, you'll know about it; if Stephen Tyler is gawking at thirteen-year-olds at his local mall, you'll be the first informed. But really, the trouble with Twitter is that it's a lot of bullshit no one really looks at or cares about. Full discolsure, I have a twitter, too, but lacking anything clever to say most hours of the day, I don't use it terribly often. Mostly the reason for my only having like 12 tweets is that I don't really need to tell people that I'm eating a snowcone on a street corner that smells like garbage or that I've finally beaten Super Smash Brothers 64 on the Very Hard setting--it's just not pertinent information to anyone (hell, not even me half the time). So why the hell would anyone follow me on twitter? Good question, but for a better answer, it's because I want them to and of course because I think they might actually care.

The biggest problem with the Twitter mentality is that people use it to validate the bullshit they do on a daily basis. People want to feel good about their lives and want to feel that whatever they're doing is inherently right or good, or whatever, or they want to point out something that someone else does and call it stupid or whatever*. Think about it, why else would you tweet that you and your girlfriends are splitting two pepper steaks at P. F. Chang's if you didn't want either someone to ask about it or someone to be jealous? What's so special about you buying flip-flops at Hollister (other than you just paid $45 for something I can buy for $1.99 anywhere else)? Unless you have something clever to say or have figured out a way to cure cancer by tweeting about it, then it's pretty much useless. Oh, and for those who like to pretend it's a news source because of the tweet about the Miracle on the Hudson, that is the exception to the rule. Twitter has a million people using it--congratulations you found the one meaningful post. Well done--I have a needle lost in this haystack over here, I need your help finding it.

I think the strangest thing about Twitter is that it's basically set up like texting--and yet most of the people I've met who have a twitter have no idea how to send a text. Twitter, at it's best, is a conformity tool that forces you to pick the best way to say something in 140 characters. Not that very many people do this (Conan** does, but c'mon, of course he does), but really, at it's best Twitter could help people develop the English language in a short, concise way. Instead two things happen: people abbreviate words into indecipherable goobledegook consisting of capital letters and superfluous punctuation ("OMG! FB nt wkng WTF YO?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!) or three hour texting sessions after Kevin Smith got kicked off an airplane because he was "too fat to fly"***.

Really what should have happened was people learning to not ramble along like assholes with all the time in the world*. The direct opposite of this is the texts I get from social-media types that start off with "hey." "What's up?" and end with "k", "cool", and "bye". Do these people realize that texting costs money? Do they realize that every time you send a text it should have as much information as possible in it, that way it only takes three texts and 45 cents as opposed to the costomary cycle of bullshit you go through when you ask a favor:

These types of conversations happen all the time.

Not to mention that it costs less money and time to just dial the number and call the person than spend 45 minutes typing to your girlfriend about where to eat when you could just as easily argue about it over the phone or even better yet, let the subject go for a little while. Why are you worrying about it now? Couldn't you just wait until later when you're both in the same room instead of dragging it out and making it worse for everybody? At least in person you can know if your suggestion to go to Burger King is going to get you in trouble or not.

*This is the part of the article where I become a hypocrite.
**This is one of several Conan tweets: Team Coco
***I love Kevin Smith but I think that he should probably have taken this as a warning to exercise a little instead of a "hey, they're pickin' on the fat kid" whine-scape. Looks like ol' Kevin has really lost the Jersey in him.

"Tis the Season

2011-04-28T11:22:00.004-04:00

Ahh yes, the bright sunny season of Summer has sauntered it's salacious self into our schedules. No more are the whining masses bitching about the cold and the wind and the freezing rain, the snow and sleet, wearing too many clothes just to be cold AND uncomfortable. It's funny, really, how all winter long everyone bitches and complains about winter and the cold (I too am of this camp) and then stays inside on their computers when it's finally nice enough to go for a walk in just a shirt and pantaloons.
Unfortunately, there are responsibilities that come with Summer/Spring/Late Spring that cannot be avoided: namely, school is over and I'm out of money.
This is a bummer for me namely because I enjoy school, such as it is, and have tons of free time to do things like write in my blog (which I forget to do), write stories (which I do in short bursts separated by long washes of nothingness), and do all the other bullshit associated with trying to make it in this crazy-mixed up world (that part means literally nothing). In other words, I was free to laze about and do what I wanted, which for the most part was procrastinate.
Now, however, is crunch time. It's final/study time here in Weskerland and so the next week or so (well, two weeks) are going to be kind of filled with hateful studying and paper-writing. I say hateful only because papers are no fun. Literally. That suck the joy from a person like the vacuum of space (I don't think that made sense). I also need a job, I need income, I need to pay my phone bill, my rent, my utilities and I need it pronto.
What all this means is that until I get a job, the story-publishing thing is going to have to take a backseat. I have two stories I need to edit for the future, but for now I'm doing that after I get all my daily bullshit done (namely, searching for jobs, writing papers and studying). I still want to work on them, but for now they're not a priority.

I do have half-hopes that by the time the middle of May rolls around I'll have another story up on Amazon and I'll be well on my way through the third story and maybe even starting to figure out the coding process for the collection I wanted to put together (it'll probably be $9.99 for the book, so I can maybe pay a bill if five people buy it). There are a number of other hurdles with promotion that I have yet to even really examine--simply because I've been bogged down with this job search thing.

So, to make it short and simple: Though I wanted to publish another story this week, I can't because I have been doing other, more important stuff and this trend will most likely continue until the middle of May. I'll still try to publish a few things on here (at least one a week) as I do have a couple of things rattling around in my head article-wise, but the real stuff (my art if you want to be pretentious about it) my not be visible for a bit while I get my shit together.

So, if you're looking to talk to me, I still have the same old E-mail, the same old Facebook, the same old Twitter, all that bullshit. If you haven't bought my story and would like to, it's on Amazon. If you'd like to help out this blog you can click some of the Ads that are all over it (I want to set up a Donate/Paypal thing but again, this takes time). If you have a job opportunity, by all means let me in on it, and finally if you have just won the lottery and want to send me the winning ticket e-mail me so I can send you my new address.

Shelter Books

2011-04-12T00:26:00.024-04:00

I am a re-reader. I’m not ashamed to admit it, I’ve come to accept that I’m the kind of person who digs a little bit of the same-old, same-old sometimes. Though I can’t say I re-read everything (as there are definitely books and essays I’ve read that were terrible the first time) I do consider myself a person who re-reads.
There are also some books that I’ve read that were so great, but so HUGE that I could never re-read them simply because the first time was such an undertaking. The Stand for example: that book is so long that it actually exhausts me after the first act (what I like to think of as the “Everybody dies” Act). It’s hugeness is daunted only by Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace--Which I have been reading in a picking-it-up-putting-it-down way for the last two years. That book (Infinite Jest) is a mind crusher (it’s 1079 pages, with endnotes).

There are other books that I don’t/can’t/won’t reread simply because they were so heavy in subject. I may re-read them again someday, but not soon--it’s too much for my blood. For example: Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides (read in 2008) was an amazing book that pretty much retaught me what a book could do and what a book could be if enough effort, time, and talent were put behind it. It’s not the longest book, but holy shit does it cast a numerous bunch of characters that change, evolve, bulb off and spread anew into an ever-changing landscape of America. That’s a lot of words to say that Middlesex sorta-kinda rocked my face off, and though I’d love to go through it again, it wouldn’t do me any good to re-read it once a year--it just wouldn’t be the same. Same with For Whom the Bell Tolls--that book is crazy-good, but once. At least for now.
However, all this said, I do re-read books. Usually when I mention this to my friends they are in one or two camps: they don’t read that much (if at all), so they’ve only read the same one book twice or the same three books over and over again for however long they’ve owned them. I find that to be boring--why reread the same three books and never experience new books? But the other camp--all they do is read NEW books--like all they crave is new information, and never see the point in looking back on something to see what the hell it was that made it so interesting.
So the thing is this: I consider those books I’ve re-read a bunch of times (like over 4) “Shelter books,” i.e. books that I read when the storms are rough and I forgot what it was that made me who I am as a reader--what I like, what I hate, what defines my beliefs as a human--these books are the ones I’ve re-read for years. So these are them--some classics, some not-so-classics, most you’ve heard of (hopefully), and heavy Stephen King (it was the only dude I read for the first ten years of my reading-life), but at least they do something for me I can’t quite exactly put a finger on anymore except they make me feel at home.
(PS: These books are listed as they a)popped up in my brain and b) how many times I’ve read them)

I Lord of the Flies By William Golding

This is the best book ever written. Easily. Sure, I didn’t read Atlas Shrugged or whatever that other book is with the people or whatever--this book is truly the bees knees. If you don’t know the plot (bunch of boys stranded on an island trying, at first, not to kill each other), then don’t read the sentence I just typed, as it may contain spoilers. The subtle parts, the explicit parts, the anger, the sorrow, this book has everything (except a love story, but hey, we’re talking allegories here, people). If you haven’t read this book, go somewhere right now and buy it and read it. No one can hold a candle to this book. Sorry. Best book there is. By far.

II Misery by Stephen King (SK)

This replaced The Shining as my most read and most beloved SK book about four years ago, I think. I’m pretty sure, also that, like Lord of the Flies, I read this sucker every other year or so. It’s not just that it’s about a writer (most SK books are), but it’s about a writer who’s trapped in who he is, who notices him and his work, and therefore how he thinks about himself. Not to mention he's ACTUALLY trapped by a crazy woman who has an interesting set of ethics and sense of...justice? Don’t watch the movie--it’s not the same. Caan is amazing in the film, but captures a fraction of the torment a writer feels when he can’t escape his own name.

III Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman

I grew up going to a lot of funerals, and with hyper-religious family members coupled with anti-religious family members, I have thought about death a lot, and somehow this book (Klosterman’s best), captures images that link subtly together his three plots: one, being on a trip to the locations of famous rock stars deaths; two, his struggle to figure out what exactly he’s doing with the three major women in his life (which he captures about half-way through with a very Alanis-esque device that works on so many levels); and three, what it means to die as a rock star in America, where supposedly the best thing you can do is die young and leave a good-lookin corpse.

IV The Shining By SK

Mentioned before, this used to be my favorite SK book, but Misery won out somewhere. I think it was the anger. The Shining is a very angry book (SK calls it arrogant, but I think that’s less of a problem) and though it has some very good parts and is still top two/three of SK books in my mind--there are a couple problems I have with this book as a writer--the first and most obvious is the deus ex machina at the end that comes out of nowhere and the second is the magical black man who comes and saves the day at the end, not to mention the heavy-handed “I’m an alcoholic--get it?!” stuff that occurs in the book and whenever SK talks about it. It’s a good book, but Jesus Christ, man. I get it.

V The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

This is another book fascinated with death and the things it does to the living (so is the next one). Neighborhood boys are obsessed with the Lisbon sisters, who’s sister has just committed suicide. The book is somehow dreamy in it’s quality, and that’s what I like the most about it--the style. Everything from the most horrifying event to the subtlest gestures from Lux are told with a matter-of-fact quality that makes it sound as if someone is recounting a dream after waking.

VI Pet Semetary by SK

This is the most hurtful, most depressing, most insane book I have ever read, and it’s not because it’s graphic (it is), and it’s not because it’s scary (it is), but it’s because it is the story of a man who goes batshit insane and every thought till the end seems rational. This isn’t a “how can he do that? That’s so stupid!” book, this book pushes everything you have into the fire and then burns you when you try to grab it back. It’s SK’s scariest book, it’s the only one that he wrote and tucked away for a time because it was too dark, and it the only one that still scares him, the guy who wrote it.

VII Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The book everyone knows Vonnegut for, this is a tale, half-autobiographical, that explores reality on all fronts--what we believe, what we want to believe, what we discount, and what we wish for. Billy Pilgrim’s adventures after being unstuck in time carry with them a strange sort of truth hidden throughout--that your life is totally insane and completely hilarious (mostly).
Also: I don't have any idea why I used this picture for the book with all the white on the edges. I'm tired, I think.

VIII An Occurrence on Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce

This story is the king of all short stories (I think)--the treat is really the end, where things turn and twist and become suddenly very upsetting, but the whole thing is clear and perfect, truly taking the reader and transporting them to a bridge in 1864, the day of a hanging.

IX The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe

This story I’ve read hundreds of times simply because it is dark, mean and completely unjustified. It’s a quick read, and describes in perfect detail a man who has come to grips with exacting his revenge in the most ingenious way possible, and the methodical nature of the entire thing makes you smile the knowing, cruel smile of a cat with a wounded bird in it’s teeth.

X The Body by SK

This is the last one, and the last one is SK. That’s sort of annoying--I wanted to jam up my most read, not be an SK essayist. But these are the books and stories I’ve read most, and The Body is probably the story I most identified with growing up--sad, lonely, low self esteem--these things were very present in my life when I was young--as well as the fun, adventure and anger that also welled up inside of me and in the pages. I no longer wish I had been one of those boys in the carefree world of Castle Rock in 1960 walking up the tracks, but I do wish that I could someday channel so much of myself into a book that could mean something to someone else as much as this book meant to me. This was the book that made me feel like I was a writer and that maybe I wasn’t alone in my desire to put down on paper the things in my head. SK came out of the pages, talked to me, and made me believe that I could be whatever I wanted.

Note about Spoiler Warnings: If you don’t want to know about the plot/elements of a story, don’t read the article/paragraph or whatever. I think that that is the most simple, self-explanatory thing a person can do when reading any kind of review. Expect spoilers from ANYTHING you read about something you haven’t experienced. Spoiler warnings are crocks of shit. Also, none of these books were beyond you to read yourself--none of them came out this year so if you are planning on reading one of these books (no, you weren’t), then don’t read the reviews. Otherwise, don’t complain about it.

How I Learned to Like Blade Runner

2010-06-10T17:28:00.013-04:00

Forgive me, I'm a total movie person, so I'm about to geek out pretty heavily on the subject of Blade Runner.

I'm sure no one has ever talked about it before

So I was reading something by Philip K. Dick (This, actually) and suddenly, on a whim, decided to watch this "Science-fiction masterpiece" again. Now I already had very specific ideas and opinions about this movie, mainly about how much I hated it. It was slow, it was talky, it pretended to be Noir, but really wasn't, it pretended to be a mystery, but was really just a stupid action movie. Not to mention whenever anyone talks about it, all they can do is say how groundbreaking the special effects are. Not the plot, not the acting, not the ambition of ideas, not the reinvention of science-fiction priorities, just the special effects. 5 years after George Lucas dropped the weak-assed-plot-wrapped-in-eye-candy Star Wars, all people could talk about was how pretty the lights looked on the screen. But that's the whole thing. After watching Blade Runner again, I realized that the visuals (even by Star Wars standards) are okay, but the true merit of the film lies somewhere in the real meaning behind the movie, and not the movie itself.

For those unfamiliar who might still be reading, I have to spoil a part of the film to really talk about what I find interesting. The film involves androids who are true mock-ups of humans and only differ from us in that they cannot feel emotions. However, since the computers are so advanced, there is a theory that they can develop emotions naturally, and the androids in the film truly do. A set of four escape from a mining planet and sneak back to Earth (where they are illegal), and set out killing those who work in the company that actually built them.

Perhaps you're wondering why they're killing their makers, and I'm pretty sure I wondered this every time I watched it. Why would you want to kill your creator? What did he ever do but give you life, the ability to experience everything you do, every flower you smell, every steak you taste, every moment you ever live through can be sort of traced back to your creators responsibility (other than yourself, really [this isn't necessarily true with humans, but as an android, it is more so]. So why the hell would Roy Batty want to take on his creator?

Seems like a perfectly rational guy to me

Well, you see, Replicants (their name for the androids [assuming because the word Droid is Copyrighted by Lusafilms LTD. Really, go look at an add for the new Verizon smart phones and read the tiny print) can only live for four years. So he does what anyone would do when they find out they have a limited existence: he flips the fuck out. He tracks down his creators, kills them one by one, and then finds his "father"--the president of the Tyrell company--and drives his thumbs into his eyes while simultaneously crushing his skull, after it is revealed that he only has 4 years--no more.

Perhaps this seems a bit reactionary--after all Tyrell did nothing but create robots and make a slaying in the profit margins (to the point where he has God-like control and monopoly over the creation of fake people). But that's the catch, isn't it? Because Tyrell didn't create fake life--he created a consciousness that might one day learn emotions and can handle complex problems and fake a human life pretty easily. So in effect, Tyrell created non-biological life. But as an adult, shouldn't Roy Batty go through the normal 5-step process that most adults go through when confronted with grief? Well, no, after all, he's only 4. He is more intelligent, sure, than a 4 year old, but he hasn't reached an emotional capacity beyond anger, as revealed to us when he kills everyone he comes in contact with. Not only this, but he was built logically, his consciousness was built upon ones and zeros--the ultimate logical plane. So now that emotions have been developed after time, it throws those ones and zeros out the windows, or at the very least scrambles them quite a bit. So his only natural response is to kill and destroy.

[Stephen King Moment] Also, In Pet Semetary, Ellie, the oldest daughter, reacts pretty angrily when she finds her pet cat Church has died (based on a real reaction of SK's daughter when her own cat died) throws a bit of a temper tantrum (I think SKs daughter smashed some stuff in the garage), screaming "Church was my cat, let God get His own cat!" Showing even little girls don't react very well when the tenents of mortality leap up and smack us in the face. [/Stephen King Moment]

But what does that say about us? If you went to God tomorrow and said, "Look man, this Heaven place seems fine and dandy, but I'd really like a couple more years down there--I've got some shit to take care of. After all, I never made it to Ireland, I never found a woman to share my life with, I never got to see a live football game, etc," and he said "Sorry, Mate, but I've got bigger shrimp on the barbie than you," (for some reason God is Paul Hogan of Crocodile Dundee II fame in my fantasies), I'm pretty sure I'd be pissed. Maybe not drive-my-thumbs-into-your-eye-sockets-while-simultaneously-crushing-your-skull pissed, but maybe spray-paint-your-car-like-a-wife-with-an-adulterous-husband pissed.

Probably not, that's going to cost at least $350.

I guess the only real difference is that Tyrell, in his god-status to the replicants can't give everlasting life (or hell, a new battery) to Roy Batty, the story with us and God is...well, what exactly? That he won't? That we won't need it? That maybe he can't? The ambiguousness is the real lesson, as it usually is when Science Fiction takes on religion.

Anyway, these aren't my concerns (I'm cool with my beliefs as they are and aren't), but these are the concerns of the film, and somehow on this last viewing, I finally saw it. Wikipedia says this movie is multi-faceted, and I can buy that, but usually there are movies out there that mean nothing to me upon frequent viewings and then suddenly POW I get it like a lightning strike through my head, and I get the way I can think about the movie in a new way that makes it interesting whereas before it was shitty. Now if I could only do that with The Departed, I can die happy.

Wreckless Musings [ii]

2010-03-03T22:11:00.004-05:00

Written in phone whilst incredibly drunk:

There's a reason I came here. The reason is that i never do. I'm a pussy. I never hang thick with strangers. I never follow the[m] home and drink their booze and pretend i find their conversations compelling. I never do this. That's why I'm here. It's necessary. It's necessary to discover the person I always thought I was, the loose cannon, the weird stranger that sleeps on the travelers couch. I wanted to make no sense. and here I am. Living the dream.

Calvin, McCandless, and Me

2010-01-11T17:45:00.013-05:00

I've decided I'm going to walk the Appalachian Trail, and I'm pretty sure I want to do it in the next five years, otherwise I'll be older and smarter and full of the angst of unfulfilled dreams. Like most of the people I know.

It's really just because I love nature, and love being in nature, and pretty much sweat the whole thing. No, I'm not the guy that explores Central Park or the rest stop on the Interstate, I need to be surrounded by woods, and so far I've done decent jobs of it. Some in Alaska, a lot in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, some in Vermont (Green Mountain Range) and some in New York State (though not as much as I'd like). I've been around, but the Appalachian Trail is really what I want to do. I'm not sure when this fascination for nature came about, but I'm pretty sure it had to do with Calvin and Hobbes.

Probably the most famous of the comics from the eighties to the early nineties or whenever, Calvin and Hobbes was a mainstay in The Press of Atlantic City, my local paper when I was younger. Every Sunday (we only got the Sunday paper) I'd zoom outside and grab the paper, my feet clad in white socks with black bottoms from the wet driveway. On the way back inside I would shell the front page and sports section like a hard-boiled egg and run back into my room, to look at the only colored pages that mattered to me.

This was back before Nancy got reverted (badly) back to it's 1933 roots and when Charles Schultz was still churning out funny stuff from time time, before the Parkinson's got so bad none of the characters had straight lines. Beetle Baily still got stomped by the Sarge and Bloom County was still around (though hardly something I understood). I still read Family Circus, hoping for a funny joke here and there (although I think I mainly read them when Billy went on his adventures and a segmented line indicated his path).

But Calvin and Hobbes was the first one I read, every time, even when we started getting the real paper during the week (or at least Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays). It was the drawing that really got to me. Bill Watterson could really get trees down. I've always liked to doodle and draw myself, though I don't think I'd win any contests since mainly what I liked drawing was stuff I'd never seen before: Mountains. I liked drawing trees on cliff sides overlooking long, flat valleys and caves built into low foothills under the Rockies or perhaps an idle tower of rock poking up like a black tooth from a desert landscape in a lonely corner of Nevada (or Utah, or Arizona. Like I said, I'd never really seen any of those things, and the internet wasn't around).

order the book online

What struck me about Bill Watterson was that he could draw those things, did draw those things, and the best part was that he captured them the way my mind saw them: as funny shapes against a stark background, or a wealth of color on a blank canvas. Calvin and Hobbes (even with the limited colors at first) spoke of an imaginary world that mimicked our own so well that no one would ever be able to tell the difference. It wasn't Utah, it was Calvin's backyard, it wasn't the foothills of Appalachia, it was the long, endless forest behind Calvin's house that he'd go traversing through, his best friend at his side, in search of hills to ride his wagon down, hidden flags for Calvinball, and cool rocks to carry back home and put on his windowsill.

I wanted Calvin's backyard, I wanted the otherworldly feeling I got from those comics, and to be perfectly honest, I still do. I've been camping many times, I've lived without electricity and powered lighting and cell phones and television, without the help of the internet, books, or even a tent. For me it was always about communing with nature, always about being free from the things that other people could not see living without. They were my Calvin trips. Sometimes I was alone (though I was surrounded by people), sometimes with my friends, but always with nature and the world. It felt good to cast all the woes and worries of civilization away with the phone in my car, left to wander for a day or so, or to leave all those things at home and go camp out for a week with little to no amenities from society.

But Appalachian Trail, man. That's where it's at, really. That's the Holy Grail for me. For some it's Alaska, like Christopher McCandless. McCandless was a kid from the East Coast who (like me) resented modern society and most of the bullshit stresses and warrantless misunderstandings of human nature. He (unlike me) however, decided to ditch the money he had, hop into his Datsun, and bail. He lived for two years on the road, never staying in one place for very long, never stopping to think too long and hard about anything. When he was tired he slept, when he felt like moving on, he did, and he let nothing tie him down (including his car after a flash flood had killed the battery). He lived month after month as a vagrant, a hobo, living off the land and needing nothing.

However, McCandless was also a little too loose, not unlike Calvin when he decided to run away to the Yukon. McCandless's dream, his Holy Grail, was Alaska. He decided to get up there, probably for one last big adventure, but unfortunately he had been reading a lot of Tolstoy and Thoreau, and not a lot of survival magazines or books concerning the biggest frontier in the United States. Five months after being dropped off with little more than a couple of tuna fish sandwiches and ten pounds of rice on the Stampede Trail just East of Denali State Park, Christopher McCandless was found dead in an abandoned bus, literally walking distance from food or help, starved to death (although some think it may have been due to poison from eating moldy seeds). He made two errors in his great journey: no map, no research. There was a line of cabins near the site where he died, but he had never found them because he thought he was in the middle of nowhere, and his return up the trail was stopped because the summer run-off from the mountains nearby had blocked his way out. If he'd had a map, he'd have found those cabins, if he had done some research (or hadn't stuck to the desert for most of his other travels), he would have realized that tiny streams in April can become untraversible rivers when the snow melts. Even Calvin read a map (though he thought the Yukon was literally inches away, because he had no idea how to read one. I mean, he's six.)

I'm not mocking McCandless, though. I totally understand where he was coming from, and agree with him on almost all points. Living on the grid does suck, it's a nuisance and worrisome and a pain in the ass. I'd love to go off and live like Calvin in the woods, alone or otherwise, finding and expereincing the beauty in the world all around us. However, though I want to, I probably won't. I like writing, I'd like to get a book out some day. I'd like to have a wife and kids and all that shit that McCandless didn't want or understand (and that Calvin didn't want to understand). I'll probably do the Appalachian Trail, or at least enough of it to make me feel accomplished, and I'll come back to the world and pay my taxes like a good automaton. Does this make me a sell-out, a grevious wretch who's going back on his ideals, cashing in on those things that make me lazy, weak, and misunderstood? Maybe. But I know that when I come back from the Trail and see my family and go back to work or whatever that I did something I had always wanted to do, gone somewhere I'd always wanted to go, and that I had accomplished something worth doing.

I think Calvin would understand.

References:
"Christopher McCandless -." Wikipedia. Web. 11 Jan. 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless.
"Calvin and Hobbes -." Wikipedia. Web. 11 Jan. 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_hobbes.
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild (MTI). New York: Anchor, 2007. Print.
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Why I am Sick of James Cameron

2009-12-30T02:16:00.009-05:00

God am I sick of hearing about the Avatar "experience."

I don't care how special the effects are, or how groundbreaking Cameron's new explosions are, I don't care. And I'm certainly not spending 15+ bucks just to discover the CGI film of the century has a plot that adds up to an age-old hackneyed "walk in my shoes" plot that was old and tired after Dances with Wolves.

Tell me, why is it that movie-makers use the same plot point in ever fucking film featuring another culture? Dances with Wolves, as previously stated, is a good movie with a good message easily visible in every post-western Native American film this side of The Last of The Mohicans, not to mention shitty Tom Cruise samurai movies.

The bad guys are exploiting (or planning to exploit) an easily-offended, simple culture of (Native Americans, Indians, Aliens, Asians, Africans) wherever. Insert poster boy who is just another guy, doing his duty. He's sent into enemy territory and wait for it--turns sides! Just like every cameo, sidekick and rogue/good guy/bad guy from Rocky Sullivan in Angels with Dirty Faces to Motherfucking Han Solo in motherfucking Star Wars has ever done in great and shitty movie alike. Oh, wow, gee, Jimmy! Way to cash in on one of the oldest characters in the known universe. Not only that, but you spent the most money to do it, and the creatures you spent billions of dollars on (when you weren't CGIing more explosions than Michael Bay) still look like fucking cartoons.

What happened to the Cameron I grew up with, the one I knew and loved? The one who took Alien and made it into a crazy-slick action movie and pretty much reinvented the science fiction action genre? Or what about how he created The Terminator and then made a sequel that is still jaw-dropping to new faces everywhere? I've never been more afraid of checkered tile in my life than after watching that movie for two hours.

But we saw what happened to those, didn't we? Aliens turned into a love triangle between an android, a clone and a hideous alien/human thing beyond understanding.

Mmmmm.

Not to mention the way Cameron allowed the studio system to ravage the unconscious teenage body of The Terminator into a ridiculous venture into what I guess was supposed to be some sort of Philip K. Dick storyline that failed because--oh yeah--there was no effort at all in making a movie that was more than a Christian Bale vehicle that caused a meltdown of Chris Bown v Rihanna proportions.

And who can forget the ten-hour borefest of Titanic, the biggest movie on the planet for most of my teen years, where the highlights were Kate Winslet topless and the last fade to black that finally showed that this was one turd that could flush. Not to mention the Academy slurping on Jimmy's own fat, wet, sinking CGI cruise ship, and burying the needle on the "fuck integrity" meter and going for the ratings bump.

Oh, did I mention Avatar has been nominated for 4 Golden Globes? It's true. And it'll probably win, because the Golden Globes are voted on by foreign press people who rarely have anything to do with film itself, they just review them. So, in other words, if you want to someone who has no idea what you go through for a role to vote on whether or not your movie was any good, proudly encourage the Golden Globes. Who gives a fuck what a bunch of foreign press hollywood reviewers think? Do I get to give out an award because I have an opinion about movies? Where's my Golden Globe for "calling the Hollywood Foreign Press" out on their bullshit?

However, if you'd like to get a real award from people who are actually in the business you're in and have some kind of clue as to what the fuck you were doing, go for the Academy, who will snub you anyway, until they're worried you might die before they congratulate you on movies that were amazing over twenty years ago. So either way, if you make quality pictures, you're fucked.

But in walks Cameron, who if you don't remember, proved that Jesus Christ lived and died a little while ago, and will probably slay at the awards this year for another useless epic we'll all wonder how we liked five years from now. Take it, Jim, and eat shit.

2009-12-28T01:58:00.002-05:00

You know whats crazy? Wildebeests. Like, take all the wascawwy wabbits in the world and pile them together and you've got like a quarter of a motherfucking wildebeest. Those things are ill.

PS Happy Christmas to all those who read whatever I'm putting up here. I promise I'll put more stuff up here as soon as I am able.

PPS So I tried to find some pictures of wildebeests being badass, but all I could find was pictures of them getting owned by lions. So much for that.

Confession

2009-11-27T19:19:00.004-05:00

I wrote this using an on-line program called wordperhect that is basically stupid and unnecessary, but is pretty neat overall, like the coolest stuff on the internet. Check it out if you like, I recommend it.

But anyway I landed on the site and this little bit of prose-like mess sprung to mind. People forcing my to be arty makes me get a little arty.

Translation is as follows:
I'm not sure what it is but every time I see you it makes me crazy. I don't shake or anything, I just lose all the parts of me that make any sense and end up blathering like an idiot at the circus. I don't know what it is about you that makes me react this way or -------As if I can't tell you exactly what I want to say exactly the way I want to say it. My toungue does weird stuff and my mouth gets dry and I think of all these clever things to say that aren't clever at all and so it makes me want to not even try anymore. I don't think about it anymore: I just run away and hide so you can't see me.

Cool photos

2009-11-22T20:54:00.007-05:00

I know no one reads this blog, and that's fine. But if someone out there eventually does, check these out, they are neato.

They are color photographs from the 30's and 40's (mostly taken in the midwest United States). That may sound boring to you, but every time I've viewed photos from the 40's they were in black and white (and usually very good, too, Dorothea Lange, anyone?). But these are interesting just because they're just barely color photos: everything has just enough color saturation to make it noticeable; in other words, there's no high-def color blasting going on, they're just simply pictures taken simply for documentation, and mostly depict daily life in small farming towns and ranches.

Unfortunately, some (read: most) are riddled with Flickr tags because some people just can't see something on the internet and imagine that that something couldn't be better with them interacting with it. Honestly, where on the internet can a person just fucking look at a photo and not have some moron writing "LOL This silo looks lk a dildo!!!!!!111!!"?

ANYWAY, I thought these were pretty neat, as far as color photos of stuff we normally see in black and white go. While browsing them I couldn't help but think of Ted Turner and how he wanted to colorize all the old-school movies from the fifties, and this was back when the colorization process usually ended up making the actors turn red and purple on the screen. What Turner wanted to do was make the movies look like these photos, but he was a moron and decided to try to fuck with classics like Casablanca and The Petrified Forest. Wrong Teddy boy. Leave the colorization process to the movies who use film that can actually reflect colored light, as opposed to making all the movies fit your version of shitty colorization.

ANYWAY, check these photos out. They're cool.

What To Do, what to do

2009-11-16T17:33:00.008-05:00

I am different from everyone.

I know everybody is different from everybody else and that somehow we are all the same decomposing material and noxious waste. I know how we're all human and alike, but really unique in our own special way, and all we have to do is find our niche.

However, I am slowly coming to the idea that I have no niche, I have no specificity, I am not obsessed over anything, and this just may be my downfall. Especially if I want to be a writer.

Let me explain. I love music. Music is great. Music is something that can get inside your brain and twist it into bows or knots, fold it into an oragami swan or crumple it into a wet ball and toss it in the wastebasket. Music is the one thing that I'd have to say 90% of the world at least can handle on some kind of level. Some people love punk rock, blues, metal, emo, hip-hop, r&b (do they even call it that anymore?), soul, "classic" rock, 80's hair metal, pop, grunge, country, bluegrass, &cetera &cetera &cetera I could go on for fucking days. Some people like one kind of music and THAT'S IT. SOme people have a mixed bag. But me (and a lot of people I know) like ALL KINDS OF MUSIC. And that's where I sit. Somewhere on the gray line between all genres. I like almost everything. Our mixed bags are bigger than most (like those who just like blues, jazz, and swing and big band and...oh sorry), but that doesn't make us any better than those who like trance, house, techno and industrial. We're just different, and I get that.

But here's my problem: can I write about just music? Fuck no. I see what that does to people. Before you know it, I'll hate music. I'll hate the morons who don't listen to the music I've had on heavy rotation the last four months. I'll start looking down my nose at musicians who didn't affect me with their songs when I can't even play a fucking instrument (no hand-eye coordination, and I'm REALLY fucking lazy) .Look at Rollingstone's David Fricke. That guy fucking sucks. There are people out there (me included) who don't believe he EVEN LISTENS TO THE MUSIC HE REVIEWS. I mean, the guy rates an album like Nevermind three stars when it comes out and then retro marks it with five ten years later because he's afraid to look like he didn't know what he was talking about. Of course anyone worth his salt isn't going to Rollingstone's Music-Industry-Spoonfed-Music-"Reviews" anyway, but that 's beside the point. That can't be me. I can't be that egotistical (he said, writing an article about how different he was from everyone). I can't take a job that demands I focus and analyze music as if it was a frog on a rubber plate, it'll kill the whole reason I listen to music: to get away from analysis and get to where I feel good again.

Not only that but I don't know enough. I don't know when Nevermind was released unless I look it up. I don't know how many albums Tool has, I don't know how many bands Jack White is in (3?4?). I don't know my stuff. I can't convince you I know what I'm talking about unless I have that knowledge, and I'm certainly not going to fake it, because then I'm a fraud and have no value whatsoever.

Same thing with movies. I can't review movies, because I have little to no interest in telling people about a movie before they go see it. A preview is enough, but personally I think I'd be a much better person if I didn't even watch them before I walk into a movie. Previews ruin things, they ruin the magic before the movie--they build expectation (which can lead to disappointment) and kill the idea of honest intake. How many times have you watched a preview or read a review that a) gave away key plot points that would have been better left out or b) looked so stupid that you would never see it in a million years or c) got you chomping at the bits to go see that movie only to have you walk out of the theater twenty minutes into the film?

There's no way to solve this, really. Without promotion you can't have movies but that's why I can't review movies: I don't want to give away major plot points and I certainly don't want to take four thousand words and trash something I found no value in that you might really like. Everyone is different. Transformers 2 did really well at the box office, but the movie had no artistic or asthetic value. Yet it made billions (and I saw it in the theater, don't ask). But the key problme I have in reviewing movies is the same as music: I don't know my stuff. I like movies, but that doesn't give me the right to talk about them in anything but vague, compromised terms. I can talk about the thematic elements of The Dark Knight, but the only people who want to read that are decent film teachers and friends who don't mind listening to me ramble at length about morality plays when they really need to take a shit. I can't write a forty-thousand word review and submit that shit to the Times.

Many authors try to stick to one genre of writing: something that they're really good at or know a lot about; Stephen King is versatile, but he watched a ton of movies when he was a kid, mostly the badly made sci-fi/horror flicks made in the fifties and sixties. Dude obsessed over those, hitchhiking back and forth from a neigboring town to watch film versions of penny-dreadfuls. Crichton was a medical student obsessed with technology and the weird relationships of it's advancement and nature and how humans and technology really mean terrible things for each other. John Grisham worked in a law firm and knows his shit when it comes to law. He loves it, and he loves to show the morality between the decisions people make and the law that represents them. He's a beast. Clancy does military stories, Anne Rice does Vampires, Mark Twain did rural South in the 1800's, Fitzgerald did the rich youth of the twenties (well, the white ones anyway), and Steinbeck did the Depression-Era common man. These people all know their stuff and so their art drove them in that direction, they wrote what they knew and they knew what it was about their lives that was interesting.

My thing is, I don't know what I'm into. I know a lot of trivial information about books and movies and music. I don't have a career to use for material. Plus what I do know is boring: I know how to paint a garage and play video games and put off writing a paper. I know how to eat too much and play too hard and how to roll my ankle on a porch step and limp for a week. But is that enough to try and write and sell stories on? Is what I have that churns in me enough to live on so I don't have to worry about stupid shit anymore (something I know too much about)?

I guess I'll just have to do what I can with what I have and hope for the best. I suppose it's something I'll have to learn to do, just like everything else.

Hallowe'en

2009-11-01T02:43:00.003-05:00

Home again Home again, jiggity jog
And I've noticed this morning that Halloween is little more than a reason to get annihilated on a college campus. I thought long and hard about ditching this particular event, just simply because it held so little for me: a bunch of random strangers drinking at my cousins across the street, swaying to bad music while I sat alone in a corner watching them, wishing that I had the stones to talk to that really cute girl in the fishnet stockings, the one with the really nice pair of legs that pounce upon the brain like kagaroos in a sick and twisted fervor, looking for blood.

But in the end it was a good scene, which, in college-townese means no cops, no fights, and maybe just enough cute tail to flirt with, but maybe not enough to take home, but that's fine with me. Can you imagine? The young, sweet smiles of Elise, Anna, and the girl dressed as Cleopatra whos name I forget, but she was so attractive I suddenly wished I was dressed as Marc Anthony, just to have more to discuss.

While the people downstairs danced to thick beats provided by whatever iPod was stuck into the amp, I hung upstairs and tried my best with a cute pirate from Wherever. It doesnt' matter. She took the last train out of my sight, gone to the wind and the dying leaves that flutter about her gold-embraced head and her swinging beads, but it was okay.

Maybe if I had talked just a little more, more about the fall of Rome or the encroaching barbarians, maybe a little smatter of speech about the Egyptian front, and I would have had her in the bag, her eyes fluttering up at me like sparkling stars, reflecting only the darkest space and the sharpest, brightest twinklings that we behold in the night sky. Maybe. But I digress. What do you want to hear about, dear sister, dear brother with your eager eyes and emblazoned shield stuck upon your chest like a knight who glued his best defense upon his chest?

PerhAps you want to hear about the couple (there's always one) that stayed on the ugly couch the fuck couch, the one that no one ever uses except to look at and wonder what the hell it's doing there, all night, only to neck and make out, only to suffer the indignity of my macking it to some poor girl dressed in gold and try my hardest not to fail.

Maybe the light is wrong, but methinks that maybe the real reason for tonight was to dress up and be someone else for a few hours, to pretend that the car, the house, the school work you left in your bag wasn't calling to you and begging to be done, maybe the night was to forget who you are for just those minutes, those fleeting seconds that tick off the clock and into the ether. Maybe the point of Halloween is to pretend that your problems are infinitesimal and ridiculous, stupid in the light of something new and golden and dressed like Cleopatra. Maybe Haloween is so popular because life is a set of token digits that mean nothing unless every now and again you can break free and visit someone else's life for awhile, just to get away. A four hour vacation from the worries of home and bills and school, from the evils of overdoing it and the bone-crushing loneliness you feel day per day. Maybe Halloween is for those who wish for something better and fantastic that you can never have.

All I know is that Cleopatra was cute, cuter than most/all, and I somehow missed my oppurtunity to let her know that. Maybe if I'd gotten a hold of her earlier or somehow better, I wouldn't be punching letters here alone and kind of drunk, trying to figure out why tonight was so great. Thank you cleopatra, Prisoner, Female Jason Vorhees and even that cutish girl in the living room who danced all night: you made my evening, despite not knowing enough about you to even recognize you in the light of day. Somehow you made it special. And that's exactly what I needed.

Interlude [i]

2009-10-16T16:06:00.005-04:00

"I saw her today at the reception, a glass of wine in her hand. I knew she was gonna meet her connection, at her feet was a footloose man."--The Rolling Stones

She stood against the bar, running her finger on the brim of her glass, eyeing herself in the mirror behind the bottles. The dress was a black one, ending right above her knee so I could chase her calves down to the matching black shoes that almost disappeared against the black oak floorboards.

Her hair was loose, but in the sexy way only true brunettes can accomplish, framing her dark eyes and her pink lips and waiting until under her jaw line to start the inner march over the breasts. Her waist begged for me to wrap my hand around and pull her toward me, and I knew that I could do it, hell, had done it, long long ago. Memory flitted through my mind like dropped polaroids: her on the balcony looking back over her shoulder bathed in sunlight, her smoking a cigarette in the tub and the look of anguish when she dropped it, her crying as I pulled out of the driveway.

She was not there for me. Henry and Laura were finally taking the plunge, and they had invited the two of us before they knew that we weren't us anymore. She had gotten the letter, as she still lived at the house, and she had politely called me and told me that she didn't have to go. After all, they were my friends. Of course I insisted, because what else could I do? I could be the bastard and hurt her more than I already had, or I could be a man and fess up that everything I had done was wrong and that she was still important to me and that now that I had my own house and my own sheets and my own ashtrays I didn't sleep anymore and I smoked too much.

Instead I landed somewhere in between and told her she was invited too and that it would be foolish to refuse free food and drinks from friends.

I didn't realize she would bring a date. He seemed like a friendly guy, too much hair on top, like he was building a tower that smelled of Brylcreem. He smiled at me with lots of teeth when we met, crushing my hand when he shook it to mark his territory. "I'd like to punch you in the face just to show the little lady that I like her bunches," is what his beady eyes told me as he smiled and introduced himself. His name is Hank. I nearly laughed and sprayed white russian all over his fancy car-salesman tie. Hank. Like a cartoon character.

I had come alone.

I roamed the reception after the deed was done and while most folks were still choking down their dinners and before the dancing started. The bartender didn't seem to mind, I apparently tipped him well enough to actually give me a little alcohol now and again. Eventually I found the Bride and Groom yucking it up and I made a few of the appropriate jokes. She asked me how I was doing, and he told me he was sorry, he didn't know she would bring someone. Her eyes were sad for me, his the traditional "I'd feel for you if I hadn't just gotten married" look I'm sure everyone gets after time. I felt awkward, after all, it was their day, not my pity party, so I told them I was fine, that I didn't mind that someone great who's life I had crushed like an insect was here and the only thing stopping me from getting on my knees and begging for forgiveness was a giant lunkhead of fat Elvis proportions who thought bone-crushing handshakes were the epitome of success with the ladies. I told them I was fine and carried on.

The dancing started, and I roamed over to the bar, and I saw her. I saw her there, waiting for someone else, and I felt my heart ache the slow, hurting ache of the dead. Her man was tearing the carpet up with a nameless blonde from the Groom's side, and it did look like they were enjoying each others company.

As I watched, she bought another glass of wine and stared at it for a long time, still rubbing her finger on the brim, waiting for someone who wasn't me.

I held my breath, and went anyway.