My nightmare

Last night, I had an awful nightmare. I dreamt that I had gotten to the theater to watch The Dark Knight and couldn't find my ticket. It was awful because everyone went into the theater without me. I looked everywhere for my ticket, but I couldn't remember where I had put it, so I was retracing my steps. I had just started when I was nudged awake. Let's hope I don't forget the tickets on Saturday.

In the meantime, I can't decide whether I'd rather be Batman or Joker.

Outdoor Ballet

I'm at the outdoor ballet and testing this app.

Posted with LifeCast

Good morning, Mr Phelps

I've been watching episodes of Mission: Impossible on my bus trip back and forth to work and noticed that those guys did everything in suits. Everything. Digging tunnels, shaking down mobsters for money, blowing stuff up, schmoozing with corrupt government officials, everything. And they looked good doing it.

So I've been thinking that might be a good look to resurrect. I'm going to think about that one some more, but in the meantime, check it out. What do you think? Should this look come back? I'm certainly metro enough to pull it off.

My new writing pal

For my birthday, I got a nifty program to help me organize all my notes and other things that I'm really excited to really get into using. It's called Scrivener and I've gone through the tutorial a couple of times. Now all I have to do is collect the notes in it that I've been writing down in a notebook. I'll let you know how that goes. Probably.

Tolstoy's problem

I've been reading War and Peace and I'm doing fairly well, considering it's in another language. But so far, I think I've recognized something that Tolstoy does that I'm not a fan of, but I tend to do myself. He tends to give too much detail about minutiae than I want to bother reading. As I mentioned before, I feel like I tend to do that as well, meaning that's something I'll have to watch out for. If I don't like reading what I write, who else is going to want to read it?

Cynicism - gift of my generation?

On my way to work this morning, I saw a sign that got me all fired up, but not in the way it was intended. It said "Lower gas. Vote Cannon."

I sat, disappointed in the people who actually believe that a single congressman can have any kind of an effect on the price we pay for gasoline. It's one of those possibly comforting lies that our government representatives try to sell us. How many people actually believe in those signs? And in this election year, we're getting a lot of promises for change, assurances that life will be better under one president than another, but I'm highly skeptical.

Don't get me wrong, I think that things will probably be a little different than they are and different from if the other person is elected instead, but there are so many forces that affect a society's development and health that one person in the government isn't going to have that big an impact on me. Or any other citizen. I kind of feel sorry for George Bush, because he's going to be a scapegoat for a number of things that were products of our own hubris and greed. He's got a lot to answer for, himself, but I'm not sure that he's really accountable for all the things that have happened during his presidency.

This distrust of The System, I think, is one of the strengths of my generation. The trouble is, we don't care enough to try to fix it. I'm staring at my desktop wallpaper picture of Solid Snake and have come up with a parallel. The kids of Generation X are a lot like Solid Snake. We feel like watching the fight break out and sneaking around the side to do what we want while everyone else is focused on the gunfight. We don't join a side permanently, just long enough to get back to what we were doing. But maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm the cynical one and I'm an anomaly. I still don't think a politician has my best interest in mind all the time.

Back to gas prices, though. While I would definitely not mind having cheaper gas, we're still not paying as much as other countries for gas and this gives us a good incentive to think about living more sustainably. I mean, think of the Dutch settlers who saw all those dodos and shot them for fun, or the settlers of the American West shooting as many buffalo as they could. With the benefit of hindsight, we look at that and go "What were they thinking?" I think that in about a hundred years, future generations will think the same thing about us and our consumption of gasoline and other natural resources.

And now you're wondering what this rant has to do with my writing. Well, if you're one of those people who feels that history or economic influences shape art and literature, this is some good background towards the ideas I'm compiling. Just another brick in the foundation of the mind creating a story about people who don't exist, as far as I know.

Teenagers

Walking around the bus stop in the summer and watching the teenagers is an interesting study. When I was a teenager, I remember feeling like I was so grown up and could pretty well blend in with a bunch of adults and I can see that same feeling in them.

The funny thing is that they're so wrong. I was so wrong then too. They almost all look so young, and the ones who don't look as young as they are give themselves away when they start interacting with their friends. I don't know what it is that fixes that in the space of just a few years, but something changes that inexperience for most people. Maybe we all have different experiences that make us older. I think mine started with frostbite. I don't know where this is going, so I'll end it there. Just part of the WASTE system.

The big plunge

I've been putting it off for years. They've been sitting on the shelf the whole time, staring me down, daring me to take them off the shelf and take them on. Up till now, I've looked away and faced down other intimidating books, ones that many people have heard of, few people start reading, and an even smaller percentage of people actually finish them. I've taken on Gravity's Rainbow, Ulysses, and A Brief History of Time, read them and put them back on the shelf. My egotistical trophies that wave to those in the know, saying, "Yes, I'm here and I have been used." Very few books in my house have escaped being read front to back, but this one has. I'm the only one in the house who can read it.

I finally decided to pick up and read my copy of War and Peace, which is daunting for anyone, but my copy is a souvenir of my time in Ukraine and is just how Leo Tolstoy wrote it--in Russian, French, and German. I read two of those languages, and fortunately, there are Russian translations of the French in footnotes. It's spread out over two volumes. I've noticed there are words that I never learned, since they're artifacts from the days of the aristocracy and I'm guessing there will be a lot of words from the Napoleonic-era war culture I won't know either. The rate I'm going, I'll be reading this book for a long time. But I'm determined to finish it. I'll let you know how it goes. If I remember.

More on the big changes

This picture pretty much sums up the big change in my life. He's brand-new and he's mine. The first boy of mine, which means there are going to be some interesting new developments to go along with that in the next couple of years.

I've been working on a book with my brother to take the place of the Dad Handbook my dad kept citing as how he knew so many useless things. We never saw the book and started doubting its existence, so we decided to write all the manly stuff down. This is related to the big changes because it's information that will be vital for the boy as he gets older. Things like Batman lives in Gotham City and Superman lives in Metropolis. And it's not the same city. So I'm happy and proud and excited for the fun new experiences.

Big changes

There are big changes on the way for me soon. More later.

Consistency

I'm finding it difficult to write in this blog consistently, but that doesn't mean that I'll stop trying. I console myself with the thought that about three people read this blog and I'm writing it primarily for myself anyway. I feel like Alice, who gives herself very good advice that she doesn't follow.

The last little while, I've made a couple of decisions about the way I want to live my life. I'm making a concerted effort to stay engaged in the conversation with people I like instead of spending all my time with the totally cool electronic gadgets I have. I try to remember that the gadgets can wait and people may not. Besides, I don't want to turn into one of those people who, like many of the younger generation, don't know how to interact with people in a way that doesn't involve a cell phone or a computer. There's something to be said for that face-to-face conversation. It's so much more complete.

The other related decision I've made is that I want to regularly spend time outside so that I'm not one of these pasty white guys who spends all his time inside with his electronic toys. Besides, I want to make sure I don't forget how to do all those nifty outdoorsy things I spent
years learning and honing.

So why am I telling you all this? If you want to be different or make some changes, start now. Know that you won't be perfect at it, but keep at it because something's better than nothing.

Movie wrap-up

I had mentioned being excited to see Indiana Jones and Iron Man, both of which I've seen now. Here's what I thought, not that anyone cares.

Of the two, I'd see Iron Man again. Iron Man was fantastic! I'm looking forward to a sequel. I'm not into spoiling things, so if you haven't seen it yet, you'll have to sit through the credits to see the real ending. As a former comic book geek, I almost wet my pants.

Indiana Jones was fun, but I'm not sure if I'd watch it again. After the Star Wars prequels disaster, I was pretty sure I didn't want to see another George Lucas movie. So I was hesitant to see Indiana Jones until I heard that Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford had looked at previous scripts and rejected them as crap. Figuring that their input would help temper the recent downhill trend of Lucas's storytelling ability, I saw the movie. It was fun, but just like the Star Wars prequels, he tried to use dramatic computer graphics to take the place of a compelling well-told story. When we got to the end of the movie, I thought "There better not be a sequel." If there's another Indiana Jones movie, I'm not going to see it. Again, I'm not going to spoil the movie, but there's the possibility of another one.

Having written about those, there are a couple more movies I'm looking forward to this year. The next couple are Get Smart and The Dark Knight. I'm really excited about Get Smart, which is next.

Studying body language

The other day, I was on the bus and then the train with a young married couple, and although I couldn't hear what they were talking about, I could tell they were fighting about something. More accurately, the young wife was annoyed with her husband.

I could see by their body language what was going on. He had done something or had failed to do something which had annoyed her. She sat, leaning on her elbow, leaning away from him, while he kept trying to point things out outside the window, looking for some topic that would engage her in the conversation, which would have nothing to do with what he'd done. He kept trying to make her laugh, and she gave him a token laugh every now and then, but her brow never gave away that she was still annoyed. As the husband got more desperate to pull her into the conversation, his motions became more emphatic, he started resorting to cheaper humor until he was finally acting like a complete idiot, embarrassing himself so that she'd have him stop. It was all sadly amusing.

Fixing my problem

I think I've pinpointed a solution to the problem I feel like I have in writing a novel. I may have talked about it before, but this is my blog, so I'm going to talk about it again. As I look through things I've written before, I realized that I usually have a fun idea or an interesting scene I want to fill out a little more, but as I get into it, I realize that I don't have a point. It doesn't usually go anywhere, so I get bored or burned out. And then the work gets filed away in some electronic repository for months. Maybe even years. Every now and then, I'll pull it out and think about where that story could go, and then I get annoyed that I didn't leave myself a clear destination, and I put it away again.

I've thought about outlining a story, but I so rarely outline anything on paper that I fight against that idea. I don't want to stifle my spontaneity, feeling like I've doomed myself to follow a map I've already laid out. On the other hand, Kurt Vonnegut mapped out Slaughterhouse Five so many times and for so long that when he actually sat down to put the words on paper, he just had to fill out the story that he'd already streamlined in his head.

I'm already working on just writing things and leaving them less-than-polished while I press on to write more things, and that's a challenge for me. I tend to edit and polish things while I write, so this is a difficult move for me.

But I think that the solution to my problem is to come up with the climax and the falling action first. Rather than writing the story in order, I need to start with that section and then build out the story from that point. Kind of like a Toni Morrison novel. She always starts with a peek at the climax and then backs up and shows how the characters got there. I think I should probably start taking that kind of approach, but possibly not giving the climax as the opening of the story.

I'm sure that the two of you who read this blog don't care, but this is about me exploring my own process. And who knows? Maybe this'll be highly informative for future generations when I've published something.

How generous?

I was walking around the bus stop yesterday, trying to move around a little to contrast with sitting around at a desk all day, when I noticed a cultural phenomenon that I'm not sure has ever been explored.

Smokers are typically generous with their cigarettes towards other smokers. "Hey man, you got a smoke?"

The typical response is a free cigarette. So I wondered how generous they would be with something less valuable. Cigarettes are expensive for their size.

What would be the response for "Hey man, you got a fry?" I mean, it's kind of a personal thing, a single piece from a larger package, and it fits in the same category as something that isn't particularly healthy, but is enjoyable.

I imagine that the response would be something along the lines of a strange look and some form of "No". But I can't be sure it's something I think would be interesting to do field research on.

Also, I'm excited for the new Firefox to show up out of beta. The little banner below will take you to a page where you can set up a notification for when that happens.

Out of books

I've reached the interesting and intermittent problem that many readers have in that I'm all out of books to read. I suppose I could re-read something, like I just did with Buckaroo Banzai, but I feel like tackling something new. If you've got a suggestion for a book I should read, please tell me in the comments. I'm not saying I'll read all of them, but I'm all for gathering suggestions from both of you who read this blog. In the meantime, I'll just spend my bus rides watching old episodes of Mission: Impossible I've put onto one of my digital devices.

Girly man

I was at the bus terminal, walking around while I waited for my bus when I saw a soft-in-the-middle mid-30s guy standing outside the bus in one of those close fitting fitness shirts with the embroidered logo of a massage school, trying to negotiate something with the driver. It was apparently not going well, because as I came close enough to hear, the door closed, the guy started walking away, and the bus engine growled louder to move the big hunk of metal.

Right then, the guy waved his girly, hairless arms and shouted, "Why does everything have to go wrong today?!" And he headed off to what was certainly going to be the next disappointment. I could speculate on what else had gone wrong by about 8:30 in the morning, but he looked fairly well put together, wasn't bleeding anywhere I could see, and seemed to have a backup plan, so it couldn't have been all that bad a morning. It was his question to the universe, soft girly arms stretched out that made me pause and take note.

Sweet weekend

The next couple of weekends I expect to be freaking sweet. This weekend, we went boating and I got to play with my new wakeboard for real. We'd gone a little earlier to test drive a new boat and I was afraid I was going to hurt myself that time. The water was rough and really cold, it was a new board, new boat, different driver and we were going way faster than I'm used to going. So I played it a little more conservative.

Last night, though, I felt a little more at ease because it was a boat I'm used to, a driver I'm used to, the water wasn't as rough or cold, and we were going a good speed. So I got to play with the new board and I really like it. It felt much easier to control than the one I've been using. And I nailed a move I'd been working on at the end of last season.

Also, this weekend, we're going to do some playing outside and some container gardening.

Next weekend though, Memorial Day weekend, my cousins are coming here to play. I don't know if they've spent enough time in Salt Lake to see some of the fun things around. I mean, they've come up for my wedding, but they weren't here for very long. And on top of that, I got tickets for everyone to see the new Indiana Jones movie together. It'll be fun to do that together, even if my worst George Lucas related fears come true and the movie makes an unexpected, highly sucky twist in the Indiana Jones universe. You know, something along the order of JarJar Binks and midi-chlorians and just about anything else related to the prequels.

The weekend after that, I'm going on a date to a matinee performance of the ballet, and a couple of weekends after that, I get to meet my little boy. I'm really excited for that. Words don't do justice to my excitement. It's time to go do something fun. I'm off and running!

Who do you write for?

So this last few days, I've been thinking about voice and thinking about what my voice is when I write and who I tend to write for. Everyone's got an ideal reader, a person we're trying to please when we write. Kurt Vonnegut talks about this in one of his books, although I don't remember which one it is off the top of my head. He wrote for his sister. I can rule that one out because my sisters aren't huge into reading. That, and I don't care what they think of my writing.

Joseph Williams seems to write for himself, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think he sounds like a fun person to meet at a party. So I may write for myself. I know I did in high school, but that may have changed. Maybe my problem of feeling a little lost could have something to do with the fact that I haven't written anything of consequential length that I've enjoyed. I started writing something and worked on it for months, but it was unfocused and I didn't like it anymore, so I stopped and started working on something else.

It's been suggested that my writing tends to be very intense and I probably burn out trying to prolong the intensity I've set up. That could very well be true. I think that another part of the difficulty is that I keep trying to make something powerful and literary when I'm not that kind of person who can punch gaping holes in your brain by sheer force of research and verbiage (which my writing hero does). I feel like my voice is more like Vonnegut's: hands in pockets, shrugging and shuffling around almost idly. But under the unassuming exterior, there's a wry, sharp view of things that aren't usually asked because they're taken for granted. Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout
character was a caricature of himself, a disregarded figure who made wild penetrating cuts in the world view of any of the few people who read Trout's work.

While Kilgore Trout usually threw out absolutely batty scenarios to comment in things, I feel like my method would be more like making some unusual but fitting connection so that we can all point and laugh at it. Kind of like the article on Wired today about how Microsoft-Yahoo!-Facebook is like being back in high school. That's the kind of thing I'd do. So I'm still trying to figure out my voice and who I write for. I'll let you know when I figure it out.

Memories of Scout Camp

Scout Camp is one of those events that ranks highly on the list of male bonding moments and not only because you spend a whole week with a bunch of other guys. Although I guess you could argue that the mere proximity of so many adolescent boys has a significant impact on the
dumb stuff that could go on.

I'm standing at the bus stop, listening to the rain on the canvas cover, listening to music, and wondering how it's cold and rainy in May in the freaking desert.

It rained almost every year I went to Scout Camp. And it rained for the whole week each time. So we'd sit in our tents between classes, rain hitting the canvas of the old square framed tents, shoes covered in mud, and write things for the requirements of the merit badge classes. To keep from going completely batty having to deal with the paradox of staying inside while we were outside, we came up with some pretty typical 'boy' activities, most of which either involved the threat of physical injury or making a huge mess. Not the threat of making a huge mess, we actually made them. I remember one year, we got ourselves so scared about alien abduction (we weren't too far from Roswell) that none of us could sleep for hours. In retrospect, it was completely ridiculous, especially considering an actual bear showed up in the camp a couple of years later and tore some kid's tent apart looking for some popcorn he had stashed away.

But we invented games that involved throwing sharp sticks at each other's feet, wrestled each other into the mud, stuff like that. I wasn't a huge fan of that second one, considering I'm not on the big side of the size spectrum. But we did all kinds of stupid things and had fun doing it.

Funny how that sound of rain on canvas brought back memories of some of my less-than-bright moments.

In an unrelated note, I was listening to a writing podcast, where they were talking with a book editor and the editor mentioned something I probably knew at some point but had forgotten; she said that an editor can help a writer with plot but voice is something that a writer just has to have. So I'll probably be trying new things to develop a voice that's mine. I feel like most of my writing feels sterile, with just flashes of me every now and then. I tend to be more serious and staid in my personal writing and explore some of my humor in, say, technical instructions that I write. Does that make nonsense to you too?

Cinco de Mayo

I don't know if you ever have a flash of completely ridiculous brilliance, but I was sitting at my desk yesterday, contemplating what I could do to celebrate Cinco de Mayo that wouldn't cost me money or get me fired, and had one of the aforementioned flashes of ridiculous brilliance.

A paper Pancho Villa mustache!

There are a couple of reasons I was excited about that idea. It's easily reproducible, it was totally cheap, I could make one using things I already had at my desk, and it seemed to fit in the same category as a giant sombrero in terms of its cultural relevance.

The best part of the day was when we had a team meeting and everyone wore the paper mustaches I made for them. So there we all were, a room of professionals, sitting in a conference room at a reputable company, paper Pancho Villa mustaches on our faces to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. I laughed really hard at that realization, while we sat there, looking like we were pretending to be Pancho Villa.

The Unabomber

So a couple of years ago, I decided to read the Unabomber's manifesto. I don't remember why, maybe because I like the emotional connection I feel with the word 'manifesto'. It's got that sense of containing radical thought that's probably well-considered, but still rough, meaning that others can come later to refine aspects of it themselves. I'll blame all those literary theory classes I took in college for making me not afraid of reading radical thoughts and finding strong and weak points. But I digress. You've probably gathered I do that frequently.

Anyway, Unabomber manifesto. While a lot of the process and background leading to his argument didn't fit with my experience and realistic predictions, he made a couple of useful points, which I think fit fairly closely to those made by the Transcendentalist writers. Kaczynski and Thoreau had very similar approaches to life: simple and self-reliant.

They both ask the same question, which is one I'm frequently considering. Am I being a capable individual today or am I just a cog in the machine, a mass-producible, fully interchangeable part of the machine?

Most days, I don't even think about it, but when I do, I'm frequently feeling more like a cog in the machine. Unsurprising, since if I felt otherwise, I probably wouldn't be asking the question.

I'm writing this on the bus and there's a guy sitting across from me just grinning like an idiot. I know that just because he's smiling doesn't mean he's dumb. I'd cut the guy some slack if he were reading a book or listening to something on headphones or even talking on his phone. But he's not. He's just sitting there, goofy, vacant smile all the way across his face.

I wonder what people on the bus think of me. I'm sure there's someone like me, taking character notes on the same busses I'm on, and I wonder if I'm any kind of interesting character to them. I try to be fairly low-key, but I'd be curious what kind of a personality I exude.

I'm going to end heee because the guy across from me became the guy next to me and I don't want him to think I was being mean.

Doesn't work too well

I was walking around at work a minute ago and since my hands have to have something to do, they frequently fiddle with the security badge around my neck. I just tried to use my badge like nunchakus while it was around my neck, but I decided that didn't work particularly well. Just thought I'd share.

Under attack

This blog post will probably land me in some hot water with a significant part of my readership in the next couple of days, but this is why I have my own blog that I don't share.

There are times I'd like to just like to be off somewhere serene by myself and not have to deal with the drama that comes with living with other people. Before I get further, let me say that I typically enjoy spending time with the people I choose to spend time with. That's why I choose to spend time with them. This particular displeasure is uncommon for me and is temporary. (Can you tell I'm trying to do some preemptive damage control here?)

But I got attacked this morning for, I was going to say no reason, but there was definitely a reason. I'll even admit it was a valid reason. What bothered me most was that I felt like it was unnecessarily harsh. I was waiting for the referee to come out on the field and make the call, but he didn't, meaning that I'd have to take care of it myself.

There are times to fight back, times when you should just take it because it's stupid and doesn't hurt, and then there are times when you deserve to get smacked. I fit into this last category, but I didn't deserve the reaming that I was getting, so I set some boundaries for what I would listen to and what I wouldn't.

Which made me think of a meeting I was in today. Someone (not the person in charge) was blanketly condemning everyone in the meeting for not being prepared enough and that caused us to "waste time". I was tempted to point out that our little discussion about wasting time was wasting more time than continuing the way we were going, but that wouldn't have gone over well. And I didn't feel like picking a fight because that really would have derailed the meeting and no one likes to be a captive audience to two purposely obnoxious people verbally slugging it out. I was thinking about the other people in the room.

So I'm listening to Ben Harper redo a Led Zeppelin song and it's got me thinking about that kind of thing. I tried to remember if Led Zeppelin remade someone else's songs, but then gave up and decided they probably did. It shows you're a part of the club, educated in that sphere. I can't remember if there's a specific term for that, but I'm sure there is. And I'd be willing to bet it's something obvious, like "referencing." But filmmakers do it all the time, authors frequently refer to previous works, and even the most innovative bands remake someone else's song at some point.

Anyway, some days, I would just like to be a mountain man, but only for a little while. And not today, because it's cold. Maybe I could be a mall man today or OOOH! I know! A Barnes and Noble man. That sounds highly appealing. Or maybe I could see a preview screening of Iron Man today. I thought I saw that there were tickets available around here.

No time for revolution

The three of you who read this blog may get the reference for the title, but I don't think it's likely. It's very Andy Kaufman in that it's so inside, I'm probably the only one who thinks it's funny.

Alright, to the real deal. I've started a new job and spend more time on the public transit system than I did. That's time I'm using right now to update you. Also, I've jumped right in to get going on the big project I'm now working on and don't have the same time to devote to keeping up on this blog. But I'll do my best.

Can I tell you how excited I am to see Iron Man? I think Robert Downey Jr. Will be the perfect Tony Stark. For him to play an arrogant alcoholic douchebag is like Rob Lowe playing Benjamin (I hope you heard that the way Mike Myers pronounced it) in Wayne's World. In both cases, I see them playing a caricature of themselves. A bold move, I think, in both cases. On top of which Iron Man is just a freaking sweet superhero.

I mean, who wouldn't want to fly around in a bulletproof, state-of-the-art suit of red and gold armor? Show me where to sign up for that and I'll totally be there.

In other fluffy news, I got invited to the Metal Gear Online beta and am looking forward to playing with that.

To something you're a little more used to in this blog, I sat on the bus with two idiots. The public transportation system is a great place to observe interesting characters. Anyway, these two idiots were sitting at the back of the bus with me, having a very loud discussion about drugs. And not the kind you usually get at the pharmacy. The kind you buy because you know somebody and know the secret handshake. I could hear it over the sounds of the movie I was watching on one of my nifty electronic toys. The volume of the conversation combined with the topic heavily influenced my perception of these two. One of them practically yelled, I kid you not, this is a direct quote, "My girlfriend sells weed!" and then yelled his phone number out for the whole bus to hear and write down. Even over the sounds of the fighting in my movie.

The other idiot carries around a very realistic-looking airsoft gun which can apparently shoot steel BBs as well. And he had a dumb name. I remeber what it was, but I'm not going to share, just in case... I don't know. Just in case something. But it was something like Micci, which is pronounced just like the name of a beloved cartoon mouse. And then he yelled out his phone number too.

I just got off the bus in Orem and it's cold today. What's with this dumb weather? It's almost May and I'm concerned that my poor frostbitten ear is going to be in pain from the cold before my next bus comes. This is unacceptable, Mother Nature. The unfortunate thing about the previous statement is that I'm pretty sure Mother Nature doesn't keep up with my blog. Moral of that story is: don't get frostbite. It gives you a cool story, but it sucks pretty much the
rest of your life. Sure, the nerves in my head can put themselves back together after I chop them on my wakeboard, but my ear hurts for a decade afterwards and maybe longer. I'll let you know.

p.s. Tomorrow is one of my favorite holidays. I wonder how we should stick it to The Man tomorrow.

Busy busy

I'm currently sitting in a commencement ceremony for a school I was part of in college, before I switched to the monstrous horde of people who studies English. Maybe it's just me being sentimental or snotty (my money would be on the second option, but they're both possible), but I seem to remember the opening remarks for the humanities college as being funnier, more candid and more fluid than the comments in this college of sciences.

We'll get back to that topic a little later, but let's take a short detour for a moment. I want to take a moment to talk about college for some of you who may be in it or thinking about college for your near future. I have had so many experiences recently that have reaffirmed for me that you should do what you love rather than what will make you more money right out of school. Don't get me wrong, it's important to earn enough to live on and pay off your schooling, but it's not the most important thing. The most important thing is to enjoy what you do. I felt like I fit in so much better as an English student than I did as a physics student. And this event is another affirmation of that for me.

So let's go back to the section before on why it's not surprising that the speeches in the humanities school were more engaging. When you spend all of your time answering the question "so what?", all of your statements have a purpose based on answering that question. Scientists, on the other hand, are concerned with collecting all the information they can, sifting out what seems most relevant, and drawing the most probable conclusions based on the information at hand. Both approaches are important in their own realms, but when one of the fields is more involved in the less tangible points, the finer points of the human experience, those points seem more relatable. They tend to hit people 'where they live'.

Putting those points together in a way that constantly emphasizes how that applies to us has more impact than a catalog of important things.

Again, this is nothing against scientists and mathematicians. I was one and am close friends with others; I'm just saying that the specialties fit differently and have different skills, making one of them better suited to make speeches more widely applicable. I'm going to end this here and enjoy the rest of the ceremony.

sitting at home

There's something decadent about spending the day at home during the week. So I've been enjoying my time here. Playing at the park, napping, writing a little, having a nice sit-down lunch not at my desk. It was leftovers, but still nice because as I mentioned before, it didn't involve my desk.

I don't have any interesting thoughts in my head at the moment because I haven't done anything particularly unique today. But yesterday on the train, I sat across from a guy who had a manila envelope full of papers. He pulled one of them out, which had a photocopy of his driver's license on it and a little form below that, titled Salt Lake County Jail and then a bunch of titled lines.

It looked like an inventory of personal effects, but I'm not sure. He was counting things on his fingers. He almost missed getting off at his stop. 

The end

I'm sitting at my desk, contemplating the lyrics to The Doors' song "The End".

I realize that there are a couple of things about that statement that point out just how odd I am. First of all, I like The Doors, who are not particularly well-known for appealing to the general masses, but which of my favorites are? Then there's the fact that I'm sitting at my desk, contemplating lyrics. Put those two things together and prepare yourself for a strange trip. Even if you don't like The Doors, this'll be an interesting point, I promise.

Alright, so the song starts with this section:

This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend
The end of our elaborate plans
The end of everything that stands
The end

What I'm contemplating here is the difference in meaning, but remaining truth in the words if you just grouped them in a different way. The way that Jim Morrison sings them points out the ambiguity in the line breaks. If you haven't heard the song, it sounds kind of like this:

This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end,
my only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans . . .

The line "my only friend, the end" is the one that's really got me thinking. It could be taken to be a very dark line, especially with the later part of the song with the killer who puts his boots on and then takes a walk through the house. Against the obvious approach to take the whole song as a single text to gather information on the theme and the tone of the song, I want to take a very focused look at this single section as if it were isolated from the rest of the song.

Since life is a constantly-changing stream of events, there's always an end around the corner and a corresponding beginning of something else. I know what you're thinking and I'll totally admit to being an optimist. I think I've even heard the term 'Pollyanna' used in reference to me.

Lately, things have been pretty rough, but in the very recent past, it's starting to look up. For me, then, saying that my only friend is the end is not a cry of desperation or some dark, depressed declaration. I feel like it's more a statement that change is coming, leading to a new beginning. A fresh start.

Now I'll put the question to you for your own introspection. What is coming to an end in your life? An end to putting off writing someone a note about how much you care? Are you going to quit smoking or put an end to the frozen meals you just heat up? There's a new beginning behind each of those ends and I'm sure you can find something else to change. This is your big chance! You can pick whatever you want to change rather than just waiting for life to roll the dice and pick your change for you.

Recurring fight

There's a recurring fight at my house about aliens. It flares up every now and then like those trick birthday candles you can't blow out. It centers on the stasis beam that aliens use when they abduct people.

Having seen most of the episodes of the X-Files and Star Trek and a whole bunch of B-movies, I consider myself something of an authority on alien operations and tactics. Obviously, it doesn't take much to become an expert. Anyway, I get yelled at for not being willing to 'protect' my wife from lights that she claimed were aliens, coming to get her. My argument is that the stasis beam they use immobilizes everyone and everything besides the person or cow they want to suck up to study. So even if I wanted to, I couldn't do anything to prevent her being taken.

I wonder if she'll believe me now, since they took her last night. And aliens, if you're reading this, I'd like her back soon.

The sun rises again

Really, I have no idea what I want to say today. I feel like Mike Fallopian, sending letters that don't say anything substantive through the WASTE system, just so that the system doesn't go unused.

"Hi, reading public. How are you? I am fine. Hope you are having fun. Rob"

I've had some pretty great things come up recently and some more coming soon.

Boring post, I know, but I figure crappy is better than silence.

"I'm waiting for the universe to provide a path . . ."

Many of you reading this blog (that would be, what? 3 people?) know that one of my favorite TV shows is Arrested Development. For the benefit of those of you who may not be as familiar with the show as you probably should be, I'll summarize one of the characters so you don't miss out on what this post is about.

Tobias Fünke stops working as a psychiatrist to become an actor. A bad actor. In a family meeting to figure out how to make them seem like less of a disaster, the family's publicist says that he needs to give up the ridiculous quest to become an actor and get his medical license back. Tobias says, "I'm just waiting for the universe to give me a sign", at which point, Michael drops airplane tickets in Tobias' lap so he can appeal his suspension from medical practice in Boston. Tobias says, "Any sign." He totally missed the sign that didn't match with the one he was looking for.

I'm afraid I may not notice a sign like that in my quest to be more employed than I currently am. You'll let me know if I miss it, won't you?

But while we're on the subject, Saturday was interesting for me. I dropped off the girls and thought I'd like to go somewhere and write. So I drove around, stopping at places I thought would have internet access. I didn't feel like paying for it and I didn't feel like jumping through a bunch of hoops to log in, so I drove back to the mall to wait. And then I felt really stupid.

Since when does writing require an internet connection? Or even electricity?

I pulled out my notebook and pen and took some notes on what I saw at the mall. There was a girl in full ballet gear, walking slowly around the mall to practice her deportment. Sparkly costume, slippers, tights, hair in a bun, arms and feet in position. The whole 9 yards. Brave kid and mean teacher. That's what I thought about that. Had it been less obvious what I was doing, I would have taken a picture of it for you, gentle reader. (I always thought that was an obnoxious phrase to read. I don't like to think of myself as a gentle reader. I like to imagine that I'm mentally tearing through the book, but whatever. It was from a different time.)

And there was a couple who looked like they belonged more at an airport or a train station than the mall. Matching outfits, matching fanny packs and baseball caps, matching rolling suitcases, matching Walkman cassette players. It was a little disorienting, remembering I was at the mall, not an airport terminal and that it was actually 2008 instead of 1992. With the ubiquity of iPods and other mp3 players, it's totally anachronous to see someone walking around with even a portable CD player. And those aren't that old, comparatively, to say nothing of seeing someone walk around with a tape player. Anyway, those were just a couple of the interesting people I saw.

I've noticed that I don't usually take notes on those people who are trying to get noticed. For example, the kids who hang around Hot Topic with their spikes and black makeup don't get a second glance from me. I'm more interested with the people who are the real nonconformists. The people who look like they could blend right in if they didn't wear matching t-shirts and cargo pants to the mall, dragging their luggage behind them. The people who've just got that one thing that obviously sets them apart just a little bit and they don't fit in with the group of people who think they're different, when they are just part of another big group of people who wear black makeup and spiked belts and dog collars. The real nonconformists make more interesting characters because they're more likely to have some hidden talent or secret to keep than others. Of course, there could be some great secrets in anyone. That's what makes it so much fun to learn about other people.

In the salon

I'm writing this in the salon, which is kind of fun. I love haircut day!

But today has felt like kind of like a waste. I haven't done much.

Which is how I feel about this blog post so far. It's not revealing or even interesting, I don't think. Probably because I haven't been able to just sit and write it. I haven't been in a coherent frame of mind, since I've been at the salon, crawling the mall, and then at a restaurant during the course of the last few sentences. The next blog post will be more useful, I think. I hope.

Characters

Lately, on the train, I've been doing things other than watching people, which cuts down on noticing other people. That leads to not finding interesting characteristics of those people. It would probably be a good idea to look up from my book every now and then. Had I not done that last week, I would have completely missed the kid who was dressed like Carmen Sandiego.

I'm not kidding. Big red fedora, jacket, but he was obviously not elusive enough to be everyone's favorite globe-trotting thief. I mean, I could have bounded over there and grabbed him until the police came, no problem. Which makes you wonder why did she wear such a conspicuous outfit all the time? Wouldn't it make more sense to be like The Saint in the movie version, where he's constantly changing his look? Or at least not standing out so much. She ought to dress up like a suburban housewife (sweatpants, no makeup, t-shirt, running shoes that have never gone faster than 3 mph besides that one time she had to chase down her kid before the kid jumped into the fountain at the mall, hair in a quick ponytail) because who's going to think that she's a famous thief then?

Although considering the absolutely audacious things she tended to take off with, I guess it wouldn't matter what she dressed as. And my other question is why steal something there's got to be absolutely no market for. It's not like Winona Ryder, stealing clothes for the thrill because she could wear the clothes. But absolutely no one's going to buy the Eiffel Tower because everyone knows where it came from and that there's nowhere else you could get it. Can't you just see the conversation?

"Hey, Ted. Nice life-size replica of the Taj Mahal in your backyard. I didn't even see any builders."

"Uh, yeah. Thanks, Bob. Heh heh. I hired a construction company that only employs elves. They built it completely silently in a single night."

"Hey, did you hear that the real Taj Mahal is missing? They say that Carmen Sandiego and her gang took it. I wonder what they do with those things. Better watch out so they don't take yours, it looks so realistic."

Anyway, I never actually caught Carmen Sandiego in the game, but I got damn close a number of times. As Maxwell Smart always said, "Missed it by that much."

Gray day

This is one of those gray days that make you just want to sit on the couch and read a book. Well, maybe not you, but that's how they make me feel. I've decided I'm going to do some fun things today with my girls and spend time where my laptop doesn't have a wireless signal. That's usually pretty fun. Disconnect for a little while, enjoy the company of the people I'm with. I realize the irony of saying that after my post yesterday, but there are people I generally enjoy spending time with, contrary to how it may have sounded yesterday.

I hit on something yesterday in my blog post that I don't think I'd really thought about before it came out in type. I need to delve into my character sketches a little deeper to figure out what really makes them tick, makes them unique and weak. Most of them are fairly superficial, dealing mostly with what they look like and what that says about their personalities. I need to figure out what makes them uncomfortable, how they deal with that, and what they would do in a situation where their coping mechanisms are unavailable.

If you want an example of good characterization in that regard, look at the first season of Lost, one of my new favorite shows. But the way the characters are depicted is fantastic! In each episode, you see what they're afraid of, what they're running from, and how they react when their typical coping mechanisms are taken away since they've crashed on a remote island. Okay, I'm off to play now. Until later . . .

Bring it on

I know that all one of you reading this blog are feeling left out since I haven't written in a few days. But I've been busy working on things. Looking for more writing work, working on a book with my brother, watching the NCAA basketball finals. Man, what a good game that was!

So currently, I'm sitting at my desk, listening to Mott the Hoople, working on some website content and thinking about the jobs I've applied for so far. It's a strange group of seemingly writing-oriented jobs, but who knows? Kind of like when you post a job and start interviewing, it's always interesting to see what kinds of people show up. Kind of like taking the train to my office; there are always interesting people on public transit. Even the normal ones seem interesting. I like to look at them through my mirrored sunglasses and imagine what kind of person they are. There's no way I know for sure, and I don't pretend that I'm right about it, but it's fun to imagine the things they're afraid of, what they hide from everyone else.

Back to the topic of thinking about the jobs I've applied for so far, I'm consoling myself thinking about how most of my favorite writers had strange jobs initially as well. That puts me in good company, the way I see it. Besides, it gives a more real-life perspective than sitting in your apartment and just dreaming things up. Like Marx did. While I don't typically consider myself a people person, I like studying people. I find them interesting from a safe distance, which means a distance at which I can instantly disconnect myself from the relationship when I want to. I'm very particular when it comes to people I actually enjoy spending time with. At least, that seems to be true.

You know, I think that one of these days, I should use my nifty phone and post a little photo tour of my trip to the office and back home. I really enjoy the trip and I think it might be informative. Or at the very least, illustrative. And who knows, maybe I'll be good at capturing things in a different medium than my usual method. You've got to try new things. See what this blog's doing for me?

Doubt

I'm not usually the kind to start second-guessing myself, but I've been pulled into a realm of self-doubt the last couple of days.

Do I have an overinflated sense of my abilities? Why does everyone around me seem so much more competent at what they do than I feel? Am I a writer, or am I a guy who's just literate and I need to quit kidding myself and cultivate a skill that's actually in demand? I mean, the market for people who have a skewed view of reality can't be a very large one. Especially the market for the kind of completely silly I tend to lean towards.

Anyway, I had a strange dream last night that I was at a park. Just a park with a playground and one of those pavilion things where people have little parties, like I did for my birthday for years. So there I was, having fun at the park, when the biggest fire engine drove up. It was huge. And a very shiny white. My friend John decided that he was going to open up the opaque cover over the driver's side of the windshield and drive the fire truck around the block while he held onto the front of it. Hanging onto the front, steering by reaching in through the windshield and turning the wheel. How he controlled the speed, I don't know, but this is a dream; just go with it. He took off, backing it up out of its parking space and then going for a drive around the block, all while hanging onto the front of the enormous fire truck.

The truck was an impervious white plastic, with locking covers that flipped up over the windows to protect the truck in particularly scary fires. And there was a lot of chrome. Chrome flames on the side. I know, chrome flames on a fire truck, but there they were. And they were beautiful. I don't know what that has to do with anything. I just felt like writing that down.

Long day

So today's going to be a long day at the office. We've got some people coming in so we can gauge the interest in a class on business writing. I won't get home until the time when I usually sit on the couch with my wife and we either read books or watch DVDs of one of our favorite TV comedies. While I'm excited about the prospect of teaching writing, I'm sad that it's at the expense of quality time at home. The price we pay, right?

Here's the kind of writing I envision taking up the introspective parts of this blog:

• kind of confessional, like Anne Sexton, who I think was hot. There's just something about crazy women that sucks men in like a tractor beam. The downside to me being all confessional is that there probably isn't anything juicy. But I don't plan on hiding things, which will be a rare thing for me. While I'm on the subject, what is it with people sharing things online that they wouldn't dare go to a party, stand on the table, and declare to everyone at the party? And yet, in essence, it's the same freaking thing! I realize the ridiculousness of me knocking that and then fully planning on declaring everything myself.
  
• self-focused, but not to the same degree as Marcel Proust. I do have other things to do besides sit here and write everything that comes into my head. But I want to get as much of it down as I can while I'm sitting here. And as someone with a healthy (perhaps unhealthily high) regard for himself, I have no problem talking about myself.
• as honest as possible. I get tired of couching things in glossy terms, like a Potemkin village, when things aren't as great as I'm describing. I don't expect to have to spare anyone's feelings, so I'm not going to. Having said that, I'm not going to go out of my way to write in order to offend someone. That's not who I am.

Think of this kind of like my diary. I'm writing it for me and you can stumble on it and read it if you want, get your voyeuristic little thrill out of poring over my pages and realize that your life isn't really that boring after all.

Do I really need this kind of explanation? Seriously, most authors just start with a story. Whatever. I've already written it and don't feel like deleting it all. Besides, it would also violate my rules. Maybe that's why I have them. As a reminder to leave it, since I have a tendency to edit and rewrite everything as I go. I've got to get a draft out and then go back to it. Which applies more to the book I want to write than to this blog.

I wonder if anyone besides my wife will read this. And if they don't, so what?

The Journey Begins

You're here and I'm here, so let's get started with introductions.

I'm Rob and I am, at this very moment, an underemployed writer, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone. "A writer looking for work?" and this is where you would fake an expression of astonishment at the prospect. But we'll get to that in just a little bit.

If you're reading this, you're either related to me, stalking me, looking for something else on the internet and are now lost, or you've stumbled onto this out of sheer boredom. Whatever the reason is, you're welcome to stay as long as you want.

But what I'm doing here, and the reason for this blog is that I wanted to have a place where I could work out my problems, which I do best in my writing. My personal journals are full of days where I was working through something I thought was rough. I'm not necessarily an organized person*, so I get things onto paper, where I can sift through the words later. My friend thinks best while he talks through them, which makes for very long conversations when he's stressed about something.

*When I lived in Ukraine, I got called "a miracle in feathers" on a regular basis. Apparently, that's the kind of forgetful person who has to write everything down or it's just gone. Like me.

In addition to soul-searching, this blog is intended to be a place where I can practice writing things that I enjoy writing. I get tired of writing the same boring technical documents after a little while and I've got ideas I want to work out. Again, with words. But I'm planning on writing some fictional something, which I'll do to some extent right before your very eyes. I think it'll be fun and, I'm hoping, informative for someone interested in what an underemployed writer does in their scads of free time.