The Gordian Knot in My Head

Good songs

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 05:30:00 +0000

I'll warn you now, this blog post is a long one. Kind of like how Proust filled volumes with memories spurred from eating a single madeleine, this blog post is filled with the shadows of memory conjured by just the mention of a particular song. Music is a big part of my life. Kind of like American Graffiti, there's a soundtrack that seems to roll fairly seamlessly through the various parts of my life. Right now, I'm in kind of a techno-disco glam pop sort of phase where I coo over Kylie Minogue and dance to Lady GaGa. (And my gay friends tell me these are the things that make them wonder about me.) My childhood was full of old-school Michael Jackson and Earth, Wind & Fire. So as time goes on, we associate songs with various periods in our lives and often when we say "Hey, that's such a good song," what we're really saying is "This song reminds me of a great time in my life." It's less about how the song itself is great and more about the memories and feelings the song brings back to you.

A friend of mine tweets what she's listening to periodically and today, one of her songs totally sent my mind screaming back to high school. It was the closing song for the 80's classic movie The Breakfast Club. Don't pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about; you know you watched it and secretly wished you were part of the group. I wanted to make out with Ally Sheedy. But the song is Don't You (Forget About Me) by Simple Minds. In case you need a refresher or haven't heard it in awhile, here it is.

Some songs span a whole period, but for me, this song is nailed to a particular evening, which like most of the times of years past that we remember most clearly, was a fairly mundane memory.

My friend's older brother is way into music. That wasn't emphatic enough. Let me try that one again.

My best friend's older brother is WAY into music. His musical collection took up a decent portion of their bedroom and he often subjected us to the minute differences in the various versions of the same song he kept scrounging up. Not only that, but he gets abnormally excited about things. You know how Tom Cruise jumped all over Oprah's couch because he was excited about his new squeeze Katie? Yeah, he would do that about going to Taco Bell (and he was 18). So you can imagine how excited he got about things he actually liked. There were times we were afraid he'd have an aneurysm. Also, all this happened before the internet was around and CDs were a new technology. I only throw that little bit of information in because it's essential to the story.

We were hanging out together with some girls at my friend's house, watching a movie or something that's gone now, overshadowed by the rest of the evening's events. I seem to remember that it was either a rainy spring evening or just a darkish overcast evening. It may not have been, but for some reason I remember it that way. Our viewing inertia was shattered when my friend's brother (for the sake of the story, let's name him Paul) burst into the room with an idea that it seemed was going to explode his head. It's hard to gauge the levels of excitement once they pass that "going to wet your pants with awesome" stage, so we thought it was just that he had rediscovered crayons or something and kind of blew it off.

Paul bounded in front of the TV and held hostage whatever it was we were doing until we listened to his plan. "Nononononono, WAIT!" he yelled. And then he outlined his devious plan. He had just decided that he wanted to hear this song and for some reason, it had to be on the radio. I can't explain this one because he undoubtedly owned 3 (imperceptible to everyone but him) different versions of this song in his CD collection. So he enlisted the 5 or so of us who were there to call the radio station and request the song. It's the same kind of logic we use when pressing the button to cross the street or call an elevator: if you press it once, it'll work, but if you press it 843 times, that'll make the system think there are far more people interested in crossing the street and change faster.

We were supposed to call the DJ at the radio station, tell him we were from different towns, give a fake name, and request this song. Because so many people (a whopping 5) from all over the area wanted to hear that song inexplicably at the same time, the DJ would be obliged to play it soon in order to appease his diverse listening audience, right? That was the plan, so we called, spacing out the calls a little bit so it didn't seem like we were crowding the phone lines to the radio station.

I remember thinking that I didn't really want to hear the song that badly, but it was unarguably a good enough song to request hearing it, so I didn't mind calling. I remember that the song played on the radio pretty soon after we called and Paul cranked up the volume on his fantastic stereo while we all danced and yelled the song at each other as best we could over the speakers.

I don't remember what happened after that because it doesn't matter. In that moment, we danced ourselves into a frenzy because we made something happen. It was a moment of high school that I didn't forget about. And I'm glad that Paul tied that feeling to a great song for me all those years ago.

Contributing to the conversation

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 05:57:00 +0000

Very recently, a relative of mine was starting to wonder about the value of her liberal arts major, which led me to think about my own educational choice. Let me be very clear up front: I have never regretted getting my degree in English. Point and laugh if you want, but there's value there that most people overlook. In the case with my cousin, her studies were called into question by some business major friends of hers. (I'm working on an MBA right now, so I understand that point of view too, I just don't agree with it.)

"What's your major?" is typically the first question students ask each other on a college campus. The second question is typically also a standard, but the answer to the first question determines the intensity.

"So what are you going to do with that?"

As I fielded that question, people generally assumed that I was going to be a teacher. English is only good for teaching more English, is the thought process there. My plan was to be an editor. And for the record, I'm a damn good editor, but that's not how my life has worked out. We make plans and God laughs, as the saying goes. I've been working in business for the last 10 years or so, doing just about every kind of business writing you can think of. Sure, I've done some editing, using what I thought I would be doing with my degree, but it seems like the real strength of my education has been in finding application of what I learned in school in places that aren't clear applications.

I'll probably share these from time to time, but the first application is what's leading me to write this blog post. It's all about contributing to the conversation.

Where I studied English, we had to study a major author and had a choice between Milton, Shakespeare and someone else that I don't remember. The key here is that these are major authors, their writing has been around for centuries and commented on by some of the greatest literary minds of history. I took the class on John Milton and one of the requirements was to write a research paper, using a topic that hadn't been addressed before.

When I read that project description in the syllabus, I kind of freaked out. One of the most famous commenters on Milton's work is Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Yes, that one. (I realize I'm a giant dork.) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner author, Samuel Taylor Freaking Coleridge. And that was also hundreds of years ago. What could I possibly come up with that could even compete with what Coleridge and hundreds of scholars since him have said about Milton?

As the assignment got closer, I voiced my concern in class and the professor looked at me and said, "I just want you to contribute to the conversation."

The paper I wrote didn't have to be groundbreaking, earth-shattering or paradigm shifting. He just wanted us to be informed and express our own thoughts, the main point there being that the thoughts had to be ours. And then we had to share them, we couldn't keep them to ourselves.

That led me today to be thinking about what conversations do I want to contribute to. What do I care enough about that I don't mind putting in some work to learn about it and then contribute to the conversation about it? Sure, we have Facebook and Twitter and, well, blogs like this one where we share thoughts of all kinds, ranging from what food we ate, where we are right now to having fantastic ideas that we should legitimately share. And I'm as guilty as the next person when it comes to creating my own noise to drown out good thoughts, but it's important to contribute your own thoughts to the conversations you've got an emotional investment in rather than sitting back and just letting the opinions of everyone else just wash over you.

Create something. It doesn't have to be big, it just has to be yours.

Piracy isn't all bad

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 22:07:00 +0000

I read this article today about piracy and digital books and agree with the speaker about book piracy.

It seems like the best way to fight piracy is to make it dead simple for people to pay for your content. If it’s good content that people find valuable, they’re totally willing to pay you to produce more of it. And it’s a good thing to let them share it with other people because it gets the word out to more people who may not have seen it otherwise. It expands your readership. Locking your book up with DRM and hunting down people who didn't pay for your book are counterproductive pursuits to the connection you get to make with your readers.

This is one of the reasons the internet has been nice for Radiohead and so rough on Metallica. Radiohead made it easy for people to share their music on the internet and then pay what they felt was fair, while Metallica sent the legal system after their fans who shared the music they loved.

Embrace new directions and take the opportunities that arise to relate and have a dialog (back and forth) with your readers.

I'm a failure.

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 01:24:00 +0000

I'm a failure, and that's a good thing.

I had a good start in National Novel Writing Month, staying consistently ahead of the goal for the first week. Ideas came fairly easily, kept flowing day after day with a good part at the end of each session to keep the story moving. The second week, I was going well, which is fairly unusual. The second week is typically difficult for people because they realize that the ideas aren't as smooth and that writing is hard work.

My problem was totally different. I got a job where they wanted me to start right away, work from 8 am to 9 pm every day, and take notes the whole time. By the time I got home, I didn't want to write any more. I ended up exhausted, I couldn't get back into the rhythm after that, and then I had a huge paper due for one of my school classes that took priority over the novel because there's a grade attached to the one for school.

This was a good exercise in priorities for me, deciding what's really important and what I can let go of for a little bit. Sadly, the event I'd been looking forward to for a year is what got cut this time. I also wrote more words for my novel in November than I had the entire previous year. I've still got plenty of the story to tell, so I can work on that in the next bit. I've also decided that I'm taking a totally different tack with next November. I think I'm not going to plan my novel at all next year. I may come up with a title and that's it.

Maybe. We'll see.

Holy busy November!

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 06:16:00 +0000

Happy NaNoWriMo! I'm right in the middle of writing my novel and things are going well. Next week, I'm going to feel stuck, I can just feel it coming. But as it is, I'm keeping ahead of the game, despite my life being completely crazy with school presentations, job hunting and being an attentive parent.

I've already done a couple of things with my story that surprised me, the biggest one being that the point of view is not the third person omniscient that's so common. It's not even the normal kind of first person narrative. It's so far inside the character's head like Catcher in the Rye. There's stream of consciousness narrating to some unknown party. Totally hadn't expected that. I was actually fully planning on writing the story in third person. But that's what the month is all about, right?

Here's my favorite little bit I wrote today:

Envelope safely tucked into John Tesh, I headed out of the store. Did I just say “envelope tucked into John Tesh?” There’s a phrase I hadn’t expected to say ever in my life.

Fun, right? If you're taking on writing a novel this month, good luck. And if you need some encouragement or maybe a suggestion to make your story better or keep it moving, please let me know. I like to help. Back to my adventure.

Here we go again

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 07:52:00 +0000

It's NaNoWriMo again and for me, it has been for almost 2 hours. I've almost hit the goal for the day and my eyes are starting to get kind of tired. I was feeling a little nervous about reaching the goal with the other things I've got to do each day, but my progress so far today has made me optimistic again. If you're participating this year, you can do it too. I'm certain.

By the way, I'll probably be tweeting more about it than blogging, so if you want to keep up with how I'm doing, my twitter feed is a good way to do it.

Remember, remember...

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 17:20:00 +0000

Yes, we're all getting excited for Halloween, right? But I'm also looking forward to the next holiday. You're thinking Thanksgiving, aren't you? Not me.

This next Friday is Guy Fawkes Day! I haven't decided what I want to do for it yet, but I love celebrating Guy Fawkes Day. Last year, we went to a cupcake party with some friends and made little bomb-shaped cupcakes in honor of the holiday (no one else did, which is fine) and one of the guys thought the sparklers we had for wicks was licorice. So he ate a sparkler and thought it was the worst licorice he ever tasted.

I enjoy celebrating obscure holidays, especially the ones that involve huge amounts of fireworks, like Chinese New Year. At least Guy Fawkes Day is on a Friday this year. It's hard to get friends to come over to celebrate Mardi Gras because it's always on a Tuesday and they always use the school night excuse.

"Remember, remember the fifth of November."

Duffy Moon

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 07:07:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

When I was in elementary school, I remember it was raining one day, so we couldn't go out and play on the playground for recess. (I grew up in West Texas. Rain's kind of a rare thing there. The picture here overestimates the amount of water in the city.) Instead, we all had to sit on the floor of the cafeteria/gymnasium and watch a movie that I honestly don't remember the title of. I remember thinking the movie was completely cheesy and I remember a single line from the movie, which I've repeated throughout the years and people have looked at me like I was completely crazy.

That's not an unusual feeling for me, but the other day, I decided to use our amazing finding stuff technology called Google and look up the statement "You can do it, Duffy Moon!"

A few years ago, all I could find was a couple of blog posts about the same thing: people who watched the movie as kids and remembered the line "You can do it, Duffy Moon!" and the same reaction from their friends. But today? Today was different.

I did a search for Duffy Moon and found the video, thanks to the wonders of YouTube. Here's the first video, and if you want to see the rest, I'll let you follow them through to the end.

You owe it to yourself to watch at least this clip so that you can be empowered to do anything, just like Duffy Moon.

You can do it, Duffy Moon!

Gearing up for next month

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 15:41:00 +0000

When it comes to working, writers are very particular about the way they choose to do it. Some are strictly pen-and-paper with a particular brand of each, some meticulously outline their novels before they write them (Vonnegut worked on the outline for Slaughterhouse Five for ages), some have encyclopedic backgrounds for all of their characters.

When November rolls around, probably my favorite tool is a writing program called Scrivener. I've been using it for a few years now and I love how it helps me stay organized, especially because organization isn't my strongest point. I can write sections, label them with themes and then move whole sections around as I need to. Really, I'm not doing it justice here. You should just try it yourself. Scrivener is one of the sponsors of NaNoWriMo this year and they're getting version 2.0 ready in time for November. It's been a Mac-only program for the last few years, but there's a Windows version in the works that should be released early next year. I know, not quite in time for NaNoWriMo, but if you're a PC, it's a good choice for you.

You can download a free trial for November here, or you can learn more about Scrivener here. Whatever you choose to use while writing this November, make sure you keep up. I'd hate for you to get left behind.

Skinny jeans

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 01:39:00 +0000

There are a number of things I do that aren't strictly hetero. Loving Lady GaGa and La Roux is one of them. Getting as excited I do about Haircut Day is another one. But there's one that I've recently realized and embraced, and that's my jeans.

Like most women, I have a pair of jeans that I like quite a bit, but they require some dedication to my appearance to wear it. Kind of like making sure you look good in that totally cute bikini you bought, I have to work at looking good in these jeans. Let me be clear, though, these jeans are not the kind that look spraypainted on that are so trendy among the high school crowd. Not like Howard Wolowitz. My skinny jeans are just a good pair of jeans that I need to work at to wear.

The last couple of years, I've been fairly sedentary, so I've gotten a little thicker around the middle than I usually am. (I know you're probably hating me right now because I've never really been big. A guy with a 31 inch waist can't complain much.) But since I have time during the day right now, I've gotten to walk my kids to and from school every day. A few days ago, I measured how far a walk it is and I walk about 2.5 miles every day.

Aside from getting to go outside and walk around a little bit, get some fresh air and sunshine, I've noticed that I can wear my jeans and not be in pain because they're way too tight around the waist. In fact, I've got room to spare.

It's amazing what a difference small changes can make in your life. Rhetorical question here, but you can share in the comments if you want to: What are your skinny jeans? What goal would you like to reach that you can make a small change in your life to reach?

A Mercy

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 14:26:00 +0000

Cover of A Mercy

I just finished reading Toni Morrison's novel A Mercy and thought I'd write a quick little review here. Why not?

When I sat down, book in hand, I had expected it to start with something horrible like her other novels do. I had prepared myself emotionally, but the beginning of the novel wasn't the same kind of jarring event. It was nothing like "They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time." On top of which, it takes off in the dialect of a character. That's not an unusual tack for her to take, but it made me concerned that the whole novel would be written in that dialect. Thankfully it wasn't, because I would have dearly missed Morrison's typically beautiful prose. (Pynchon's Mason & Dixon makes you work for every page and it took me about 2/3 of the book before I realized that the word phiz is face.)

The story was interesting, but I got lost as the point of view shifted from one character to another. I don't feel like I had enough time with each character to really understand what was going on with them before I had to move on to something else.

A Mercy was a good book, just not her best. If you've never read Toni Morrison before, this may be a good start, like easing into a slightly too-hot bath. If you're already a fan, you may miss some of the recurring character types and underlying themes, but it's still an engaging book. My favorite Toni Morrison novel is still Song of Solomon, but I recommend that one about as often as Gravity's Rainbow. Unless I'm sure you'll like it, I'll just keep it to myself.

NaNoWriMo is coming

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 16:44:00 +0000

This weekend, I registered for another month of insanity this November, since it's National Novel Writing Month. If you haven't heard of it before, you can learn more about it at www.nanowrimo.org.

In short, the goal is to write 50,000 words in the 30 days in November. Easy, right?

I've reached the goal two of the last three years, but that doesn't mean the books are readable. The year I didn't reach the goal, I didn't write anything useful. And the last novel I wrote was not a good one. It's on my shelf, but unless you come over to read it, no one will ever read it. I might be able to salvage it someday, I just don't want to make that effort at this point. It's that broken.

NaNoWriMo is good for me because I do a lot of editing while I'm writing, which means that I'm generally slower than most people and this is a good exercise to just get things on the page. A lot of things on the page. Sometimes, in an effort to just keep going, I'll throw a phrase out that I end up liking better than what I had been struggling to get just right in my head.

I'm more excited for this year's novel idea than I was for last year's, and I was excited last year. I thought it was going to be a winner of a story. The problem I had last year was that I got so enamored of the details I'd come up with that I forgot to think about the whole story. As a result, I got to what should have been the climax and realized that I hadn't built up to it at all. So the story just kind of dies. I'd like to avoid that this year, so I'll be spending time planning out how the story all works together.

If any of you are participating this year and want a writing buddy, my user name is cossackboy and you can find my profile here. I'd love to help motivate you and get through this crazy fun together.

Book Academy

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 03:28:00 +0000

Today I went to The Book Academy, a writing conference at UVU, and enjoyed myself. It was fun meeting with people like me who love words and nice to be around people who don't talk about their characters like that one guy in one of my college writing classes who said that his characters weren't doing what he wanted them to do. (My teacher looked at him like he had celery growing off his face and said, "You're the author. You get to pick what they do because you're God to them." And that reminded me of when Kilgore Trout gets to meet Kurt Vonnegut in Breakfast of Champions.)

It was fun to learn more about the industry and though I would have liked to get more into the business end of things, the conference wasn't about that. It was still fun and I met some interesting people. Writers are a fascinating bunch. I don't just say this because I consider myself one, they really are interesting to talk to because they generally have more things going on in their heads than most people.

I'm also kinda bummed that I don't have enough of a handle on my place in the industry because it would change how I would relate to people. I didn't network as well as I wanted to, and I have no one to blame on that but myself. I'm not the kind of person who goes around the room like the typical business major. I've got to find my stride on that kind of networking and I'm not there yet.

Can you tell that I've discovered a number of weaknesses today? The trick now is to work on fixing them.

If you didn't hear about it, they're going to have it again next year. Come with me, will you?

What comes first?

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 17:34:00 +0000

Booking Eddie Van Halen or having a triumphant video?

That's one of the things I'm trying to figure out with what I want to do with this SixUnpossible site I've got. It seems like a classic Van Halen-and-the-video conundrum.

Kind of like why Facebook is so popular or why Paris Hilton's famous. Facebook is so popular because it's popular and Paris Hilton's famous because she's famous. It's tautological and kind of maddening. I'm thinking of doing something related to books, but I still don't know enough about the industry or have a clear enough vision of where I fit into the future of books to have a chance. I'm still learning, but soon, very soon, I think I'll have a plan and a vision and be looking for a place to make it happen.

Master of my domain

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 20:21:00 +0000

I know that all three of you are cringing about that title, but yesterday I took the plunge and registered a web domain that I thought suited me. Okay, so it's not the exact one I was looking for, but it's close and possibly better than the one I originally wanted. There are two next steps, I think. The first is to get a design for a logo. The next is to design a placeholder webpage and contact cards. Okay, so that's probably more like three steps.

Image via Wikipedia

Sir John Tenniel's Red Queen

But the new domain is sixunpossible.com. Because the Red Queen thinks of six impossible things before breakfast and it's kind of my natural state of doing things as well. What I'm going to do with it yet, I have no idea. But I've got email and stuff set up for when I actually decide what I want to do with my nifty domain. Don't go there now, there's nothing there yet. I don't know whether I want it to be a consulting business, publishing house, or even an online opium den where you can digitally drop in, tune out, have some pancakes and disappear from reality for weeks at a time and not care. Okay, maybe not so much that last one, but I'm hoping to have some reason for people to visit and say hey. Again, one of those things I'll have to work out.

In the meantime, I'm still looking for a job and still optimistic that there's a company out there looking for me. If you hear of something, let me know, will you?

I'm still here

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:58:00 +0000

I'm still here, just haven't been keeping up as well as I could have. I've been really busy with looking for a job, helping other people out with things (since I figure I've got time now) and doing school work.

I've been thinking a lot about Althusser's concept of hailing, about the power of naming things. I also think it's interesting that he seems to be the only person who's done significant work in this area and I'm thinking of writing something up about it as well.

In a brain flash I had frighteningly early this morning, I've come up with a name for my business, when I finally get around to starting one. It's vague enough that it can fit whatever I want to do and descriptive enough that it totally suits me. I'm not telling what it is until I've got the resources to control the identity. I may tackle it in the next few hours.

The other thing I'm doing right now, because I have time, is I've got a friend who's doing a presentation to the youth at church about dating. I figured I would also have some good insights, so I'm working on that. If you were giving a presentation to the teenagers at church about dating, what would you want them to know?

I'm out of shape

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:34:00 +0000

I haven't been out on my in-laws' boat in about a year and haven't been wakeboarding since then either. Last night, they felt guilty that we hadn't been out with them and so we went to the lake. Everyone did a great job out on the water, getting up on the first try (I won't mention who didn't) and dealing really well with the rough water. The water felt really nice, by the way. When I got out on the water and moving around in the wake, I could almost instantly feel my legs saying, "Really? You do nothing for a year and then expect that we'll just do this like it were nothing?"

I'll level with you, sometimes I'm afraid of crashing because it's like getting punched all over your body at once. Sure, I've gotten punched before and I can take it, those are more localized and it's just the kind of thing I try to avoid. Is that so crazy? Anyway, I crashed a couple of times and climbed back into the boat, with my legs aching all the way up and down. "And now you're going to pay," they said.

And so I am. I've been taking Aleve today and my legs still ache, but it's not completely the wakeboarding. Stupid old sports injury. I guess the moral here is not to let yourself slip so far into entropy that you can't do anything. I've never felt as much like the people in Wall-E as I did yesterday, so I need to come up with a plan to get out and do stuff. I just don't want to spend as much time at the gym as my friend Timmy does. It seems like he's always there.

I took a little break

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:49:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

I got a little frustrated yesterday, since I've been doing the same things and haven't seen any results. Einstein said that's the definition of insanity. So I decided to break it up a little bit and do something different. I ran a few errands and watched a little James Bond with the little boy. We watched the introduction to Octopussy, which he seemed to enjoy before his nap. Then I played Batman: Arkham Asylum for a while and read a bit. I got to turn off my brain for a little bit and then let some newer ideas roll around in it. I feel more relaxed and ready to keep going. I've got a plan for something I want to do, I just need to learn more about it and I'm looking for people who can help me find the right resources to learn them. I want to learn more about bookbinding and the marketing/promotion side of book publishing. If you know something about those and are willing to share or if you know someone who I can learn them from, let me know, will you?

Typography

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:32:00 +0000

I just read a book entitled How to Spec Type because I wanted to learn more about setting print and layout. But as I read the book, I noticed some suggestions that involved drawing lines and estimating character counts. What? And then there were comments about how computer graphics just couldn't look as good as hand-drawn pictures yet.

So I looked at the publication date. 1987.

Most of the things that the book was explaining how to do can be done automatically by most word processing programs on computers now. It was good to learn why and what the computer's doing, but I don't think I'm going to have to hand-draw a page to give an idea of what it will look like because I can move things around on the computer in 8 different ways, print out an example of each one and figure out which one I like the best.

Important supervillain planning complete

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 17:31:00 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

You know how people tend to work things out in the shower? Buckaroo Banzai says it's one of the three Bs, places where the best ideas are born: bed, bath and bus. Anyway, I was in the shower today, contemplating life, the universe, and everything when I had the most fantastic brainstorm.

I got my latest great idea for becoming a supervillain. I'd become Horst von Throatpunch and acquire both a European aristocratic title and a doctorate in something like biochemistry or international extortion by dubious means. Then I'd build a fortress high in the Alps with a helicopter pad and automated missile launchers and do evil things from there. I haven't exactly decided what schemes I would want to have, but that's the beauty of being a supervillain. I can have as many schemes as I want and one of them's bound to work sometime. I think that Blofeld would be a good example of plans that I might want to engage in like hijacking some nuclear weapons from NATO, biological warfare distributed by hypnotized socialites, giant laser in a satellite orbiting the earth, stuff like that. Those aren't clichés yet, are they?

Duke Dr. Horst von Throatpunch, undisputed ruler of the Western Hemisphere. Has a nice ring to it. Maybe that's what I'll put on my business cards.

Big blog changes

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 21:30:00 +0000

If you've read this blog in the last few months, you'll notice some big changes to the way it functions. I've updated the look because my editor complained about having to read white on black. Also, you'll notice that the RSS feed has the full text of the blog posts. I realized it was dumb to make you click through to be able to read an extra 4 lines. It's not like my thoughts are earth-shatteringly important enough to make you have to click through one more time. I'm thinking of making a couple more smallish changes still and those will probably happen sometime between now and the next blog post I write, if I actually decide to change.

Image via Wikipedia

The other thing I wanted to mention today is that I've got an idea for a paper, treatise, thesis, whatever you want to call it, about the continuation of the narrative in Thomas Pynchon's novels and how it relates to TV. You know there'll be a reference to Hector Zuñiga in it. I just looked for a web link to help those of you who don't know the reference, but I couldn't find anything particularly helpful. This is the best I could do. Anyway, I think it'll be a fabulous paper, I just want to talk with someone about where would be a good place to get it out for people to read and put into their literature papers about The Crying of Lot 49 or Gravity's Rainbow. You know, the four people each year who actually decide to write papers about that. And they probably all read this blog. (Actually, it's highly unlikely, but I'd like to think that.) Anyway, I'm excited about the idea and when it's a little better-formed, I'll bring you into the WASTE system.

Archiving

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 21:34:00 +0000

Have you figured out that I really love books yet? After reading a book called Print vs. Digital a couple of days ago, I've gotten into studying the topic of archiving. So as I usually do, I jumped straight from normal academic writing straight to the killers and am re-reading Jacques Derrida's Archive Fever. One of the interesting thoughts from it that keeps rolling around in my head is that the form, the structure of the archive itself depends on the contents of the archive. Sure, this means that art museums and libraries have different structures from each other and from concert halls, but it also means that the form of the texts (used in a very broad poststructural sense) for each kind of art vary from one another.

I've been thinking about the changing storage of information and how that is manifested in the shifts in libraries, which are our repositories for knowledge. Should they have data centers that back up the information they hold to make sure they always have access to the information they've spent many resources in acquiring and generating? And if they don't get books for you anymore, what should librarians be doing now? Do we replace librarians with computer search terminals? Of course not. They're going to become curators of the knowledge resources at the library, whether those resources are online, printed or kept in the office of some professor who's currently working on something new.

The real reason

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 22:03:00 +0000

I've been thinking a lot recently about books and their future (or lack of one, depending on your camp). Then I started trying to figure out what is it that makes me inclined to keep the printed dead trees around and the answer's rooted in the ridiculous (like most of my thoughts) but at second glance is really very practical and realistic.

Big Brother is watching.

Come on a journey with me. It starts with Winston Smith, the protagonist of Orwell's 1984, which if you haven't read, you absolutely must. No hyperbole here because the book has so completely become part of our cultural heritage that you can't consider yourself culturally literate without having read it. From this point on, I'll just assume that you've read the books I refer to and if not, you can add them to your list of things to read. Winston's return to humanity, his reconnection with beauty is possible through his connection with Julia and with information outside the system, information not created (or more importantly, uncreated) by the Ministry of Truth.

That led me to the similar society of Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Montag makes his living by burning books, routing public information and molding public opinion through the wall-sized televisions that are ubiquitous. Depictions of complex emotions and dissenting viewpoints have no place in the tele-plays and it is Montag's job to make sure that any books found don't complicate society's complacence. The parlor is the ultimate in simulating a connection between people, but it lacks any emotional content, which is one of the reasons Montag decides to read one of the books. The emotion rekindled in him and the questions he asks of his society are results of his relationship with literature.

The Eloi watch someone drown

Next, to the Eloi in H. G. Wells' The Time Machine. They had no books, were perfectly content because they didn't have to do anything to provide for themselves and they still had everything they needed. Initially, their society looked like a utopia, but the lack of curiosity and mysterious appearance of food leads the traveller to look a little deeper at what's behind it all. After returning to his own time, he goes back to the future of the Eloi with three books from his shelf, the book ending with the question of which three books he took with him.

I thought about the stories I heard while I was living in the former Soviet Union about how certain books or albums were illegal to possess and they got shared in secret, passed from one person to another under fear of the KGB finding them. The literary situations are not outside the realm of possibility because I've heard stories from people who lived through it. I think that's why I believe in the future of printed books; there are still unanswered questions about the lifespan of a digital book. What happens when a powerful group gets control of the Kindle distribution system and deletes copies of 1984 from everyone's Kindle? Don't roll your eyes, that one already happened. What happens if the government decides that it's finally going to do something about Allen Ginsberg and puts something like a wiretap on the internet but rather than intercepting information, it removes all of his writings? What if something catastrophic happens and we don't have batteries or a way to charge up our e-readers? I admit that last one is a pretty remote possibility, but it's still possible. Even less possible is that you may come into possession of a time machine, travel to a future where humans have lost their curiosity, creativity and emotion and need to have some references to help them regain their humanity. But still, that may come up.

The value of printed books is in their permanence and reliability. They can be moved around outside the quick and light regular system of information, they resist revisionism, they give voice to the unpopular. It's an enduring record and fulfills the need that Writing the Body literary critics give for male authors to leave a creation that's undoubtedly theirs. It's an object that effectively conveys the declaration of the author that "I was here and I created something."

Julia Kristeva

Sure, it's convenient to have such easy access and portability of a text by using something digital, e-readers are getting cheaper to the point where they're almost disposable and the texts are infinitely reproducible at almost no cost, but there's something to be said for having a copy of something in a format that's a little harder to wash away with an errant magnetic field or some computer algorithm.

In college I had a History of Civilization class taught by the Special Collections librarian. He showed us the oldest text the university library had in its collection and he walked around with what looked like a little rock. I'd seen pictures of cuneiform writing before, heard about it in high school history classes, but here it was. A document surviving from the Babylonians, thousands of years old! Someone asked the question we all wanted to know, "What does it say?" The librarian looked up and smiled. The oldest document in the library of the most stone-cold sober university in the United States was "a receipt for beer." There were a number of ironic things about that, the first being that the university was so pleased to have this "book," which was actually a receipt for beer and anyone drinking beer at the university would have been in violation of the strict Honor Code. The other irony for me was that of all the things that could have been preserved for future generations, reflections of life and humanity from the time, we were looking at a receipt for beer. I'm concerned for the future, when our greatest thinkers and writers may have become obscured by a receipt for beer.

Play ball!

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 17:46:00 +0000

A couple of nights ago, our neighbor across the street, Tom, came over and gave us tickets to see the Orem Owlz play. That's our Pioneer League baseball team, part of the Anaheim Angels group. So yesterday, we went to the game with Tom and had a great time.

The kids had never been to a baseball game before, so they weren't sure quite what to expect. We were also a little concerned because the game started at the kids' bedtime, but we had a blast and they were such troopers. We got all the way through the tenth inning and then just couldn't keep it together any longer, so we took the kids home. But we had all kinds of fun and are so happy to have so many really nice people around us. It's making this rough time so much easier for me.

The future of books

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 05:13:00 +0000

One of the nice things about being a university student again is that I have access to the university library again, which has books on more academic subjects, like the future of libraries. Before my accounting class one day, I ran down to the library to find books about books. I just finished one about how print and digital media fit together in the environment of a library and how libraries are changing to fit the new relationship between the two kinds of media. It was an interesting read and I've seen some of the changes already in libraries around here. I have some questions about using digital media and I think if I can come up with an answer to a couple of them, I may have a nifty business idea. Yay for text!

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