Chronocide

brb

2009-12-17T14:08:00.002-06:00

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Twilight is Bad

2009-12-02T22:21:00.007-06:00

Brief injection of truth here, if you don't mind.

Twilight, the popular franchise surrounding the work of Stephanie Meyer, is just not good. It's just really, really, really not good. And I mean that in just about every way possible. Frankly, I'm more confused than anything.

I simply don't understand how so many people, so many millions of people, can be so unabashedly obsessed with something of such tremendously poor quality.

Webster defines "quality" as:

quality: (n) a degree or grade of excellence or worth. synonym: caliber, excellence, merit. antonym: see Twilight.

I just don't get why so many people are obsessed with something that's so obviously shallow and poorly done.

Maybe this entire class of people has somehow failed to come into contact with reality. It seems like if something of quality 0.2 drives you completely wild, then something of quality 1 or greater would be exponentially more engaging.

Considering my scale has "2005 New Orleans Hurricane Preparedness" at quality level 2.4, my hypothesis holds that Twilight fans would stagger around in a constant state of utter infatuation with just about everything around them were they to put Meyer down long enough to notice.

Yet we fail to see this happening.

The thing is, Twilight is not deserving of the hatred it is currently receiving on the internet. It's just a bad series of books and a painful pair of movies. There are plenty of bad books and movies out there that we don't hate, we just don't care about them one way or another. They're inane. Harmless. Mindless. Think toy monkey with cymbals.

The hatred toward Twilight has very little to do with the works themselves.

It's all fine and well for someone to like cheesy romance novels or mindless action movies. Most sane people won't try to strangle someone just because they didn't mind watching Serendipity.

No, the hatred is a (justified, in my opinion) backlash against the sheer obsession so many people have for it.

Imagine if about half of the people you know suddenly began buying lots of toy monkeys with cymbals. Imagine if they got toy monkey with cymbals tattoos and toy monkey with cymbals ringtones. Imagine half the people you know talking about toy monkeys with cymbals for hours every day. Imagine Hollywood pandering to this craze and making a two-and-a-half-hour movie that was just toy monkeys with cymbals, and that half of everyone you know dressed up as toy monkeys and bought their own official toy monkey with cymbals cymbals and all went to the showing at midnight, and then again the next day, and again the day after that.

This might be all well and good if the phenomenon died out in oh, say, a month or two. Your friends went back to being functional human beings, and you could sit down with some Chinese food and have a good solid talk together about non-primate non-percussion matters. Then you probably wouldn't care so much.

But what if the monkeys persisted for a year? Two years? Three? Wouldn't you feel robbed of these people that you loved? Wouldn't you grow to abhor the insanity that took them from you? Wouldn't you murder any monkey you saw on sight?

If you're a Twilight fan, and your answer to any of those questions is yes, you now know how your Twilight-hating friends feel about Twilight and how incomprehensible your behavior seems to them.

Make Me a Flapjack!

2009-10-19T11:40:00.007-05:00

It all started in German class.

"Wie alt bis du?" I asked.

In the exercise, we paired up and asked each other a set of questions.

"Ich bin einundzwanzig Jahre alt," said Michael
"I am 21 years old."

"What's your name?" "how old are you?" "where are you from?" and the enigmatic "what kind of person are you?" which seemed a tad deep for introductory conversation.

"Wie alt bis du?" Michael asked.

A seemingly innocent exercise in basic conversational skills.

"Ich bin dreiundzwanzig Jahre alt," I told him.
"I am 23 years old."

"Wow," Michael said, "You're old."

I shrugged. "Fifth-year senior."

Michael nodded. "I'll be doing that too. It's pretty hard to get out in four years, especially if you change your major."

"Guilty," I said.

"Me too."

Wait right there.

While I'm thinking about it, let's talk about pancakes, shall we?

Pancakes are a kind of flat bread cooked in a frying pan or griddle. Depending on region and preference, a pancake may be topped or stuffed with fruits, nuts, jams, or meat. Pancakes are frequently prepared with a rising agent such as baking powder and are cooked on one side before they are flipped to be cooked on the other.

One interesting thing about pancakes is their universality. Unlike kibbeh, which has exclusively Mediterranean origins, pancakes find their roots in many cultures. From Asia to Africa to Europe, pancakes have their own styles and beginnings.

But no matter where you go, you'll be hard-pressed to find a culture that eats their pancakes plain. In Canada and the U.S., we drizzle syrup over these hotcakes and lather them in whipped cream or butter. In France, pancakes are fried thin and rolled into crepes, which are stuffed with cheese, spinach, fruit, sugar, or meat. A Czech "palačinky" is folded and topped with chocolate sauce. Nobody wants to eat their pancakes plain.

I only bring this up because as I was driving home that day, I realized that twenty-three really did feel old. Twenty-three, and I still don't really know what I'm doing with my life. In two years, I'd be halfway to thirty, and it seems like you're kind of supposed to have your life together by that point. None of this mucking about writing pancake blogs.

The truly frightening part was how quickly it was all going. 1999 was a decade ago. I remember 1999. What am I doing now that is so different from back then? I'm still in school, still running through the mazes, still sucking up to the teachers. What for?

Also, twenty-two had gone so fast. I didn't even remember most of it. Was the rest of my life going to zip by like this?

I changed lanes and puzzled that one over. What had I done when I was twenty-two? It seemed like that year didn't even exist. I remembered twenty and twenty-one... what happened to twenty-two?

It was at that moment that I became unsure of my own age.

Okay, it's 2009. I was born in 1987. 109 minus 87 equals...

Twenty-three, right?

Am I really twenty-three? Some of my friends are two years older than me. They couldn't be twenty-five already...

Who else was my age?

Russell. Russell was born within days of me.

I grabbed my phone and dialed.

"Biiiiill!"
"Ruuussseeelll!"
"What's goin' on?"
"Nothing. Quick question."
"Shoot."
"How old are you?"
Pauses. "I am twenty-two."
I was stunned. "Wow. I guess that means I am too."

So that's the story of how I got a year of my life back. I think the moral of the story is to keep things interesting or else you lose track of what you've experienced. You fall into the mundanity of the everyday and forget to grow or experience something new. It's kind of like how the twenty-second plain pancake would be indistinguishable from the twenty-first or twenty-third. You might even lose track of how many pancakes you've eaten. But if you try some crepes, maybe a "palačinky" or two, then maybe it won't be so easy to lose your place.

Markers - Part 3, Every

2009-10-18T23:35:00.001-05:00

Glen Olsen's house slept in the sea of woods like an ancient leviathan. It was old, and fat, and covered with vines. In the summer, the floorboards grumbled and the rafters moaned in the heat. It sprawled across a full acre, and the wood that made it outdated the Great Depression.

When we moved in with my stepfather, most of the rooms were already taken. Although there were many rooms and only my stepfather, my mother, and I lived in the house, almost all of the rooms were inhabited by memories. Trophy rooms, hunting rooms, and the study which housed a personal library. Glen had devoted these rooms to markers, things placed to remember. A victory, a kill, a lesson.

My room was assigned to me. I would have never picked it.

Never.

Still people are everywhere. On the sides of the roads, in grocery stores, in movie theaters. There were times in my life when I would see one every day, like the still boy in my kindergarten class, or the homeless still man that the bus passed every day on the way to school. You're not supposed to be uncomfortable around them. Everyone just goes about their business and makes the best of the situation. At age nine, I knew it was taboo to touch them. In kindergarten, I had touched the still boy, and my peers had stared at me. I watched as people in stores respected the personal space of still people without ever making eye contact. The still people didn't make eye contact either. The still people never made eye contact. They only muttered to themselves.

The still woman in my bedroom always whispered about a man named Avery. She wore a fancy green dress, and she stood in the corner of my room, facing the wall. Every night, I went to sleep to the sound of her whispering, "I can't see, Avery," or "What are you doing?" Every morning for six years, I woke up to her mutterings. She never moved, and I never spoke to her.

Sometimes I still hear her whispering when I lay down at night.

Sometimes I still wonder who Avery is.

Sometimes I remember how I pulled the blanket over my head, horrified that her gaze might turn to me, pale in moonlight, as I shivered on my bed. Horrified that she might look at me and see me. Horrified that she would fall silent.

She never did. As far as I know, she whispered right up until the house burned down. I never went back after that. She might still be standing there, whispering as foliage overtakes the ashes.

Whispering like she had over my bedside.

Whispering like all the others.

Every single one.

Computer Doodling

2009-08-31T12:30:00.004-05:00

My new pastime: "doodling" in Maya while listening to audiobooks. Here is one such doodle.

Here's another:

Announcement

2009-08-15T03:10:00.002-05:00

Changes are coming to Chronocide. For one, there will be posts. For another, there will be multiple authors. Brace yourself for more awesome than your fragile mind can handle.

Am Mart in Baton Rouge

2009-04-28T03:55:00.007-05:00

America's Market is the place to get a sandwich in Baton Rouge. Located at the intersection of Nicholson and Lee/College, Am Mart is a one-stop shop with a healthy stock of alcohol, cigars, and essentials like cans of ravioli.

The best part of Am Mart, however, is its deli, which serves warm sandwiches of all varieties. From Chicken Salad to Hot sausage, every single one is a winner that I would stack up against any other sandwich shop in the area. If the quality of food isn't enough to get you interested, then the price will. Even if a good sandwich isn't something you'd sell your younger siblings for, it's hard to beat a foot-long sandwich with the works and a bag of chips for $4.99. It really is a lot of food, too. Sometimes it's enough for two meals for me.

Customer service is unrivaled as well. They know me by name, and I don't even have to give them my order anymore. I almost always get the Cajun Turkey on wheat with provolone cheese and no pickles, onions, or tomato. I highly recommend the Cajun Turkey, by the way.

Anyway, you can walk in and place an order and they'll have it ready in about five minutes. It's a pleasant place to spend five minutes, too. If you're not in the mood for waiting around, call ahead and they'll have your order ready. Here's their information as provided on their fliers.

--

American Market
5251 Nicholson Drive, Suite Q
Baton Rouge, LA 70820
Phone: (225)767-7531

Deli-Fresh Poboys & Pitas
Sugar-Buster Wheat Bread Available

-Roast Beef (Extra Lean)
-Cajun Turkey (98% Fat Free)
-Turkey (95% Fat Free)
-Cajun Ham (97.5% Fat Free)
-Ham (95% Fat Free)
-Pastrami (95% Fat Free)
-Salami
-Tuna Salad
-Chicken Salad
-Hot Sausage

All dressed with mayo, mustard, lettuce, tomato, pickles, onions, salad dressing, and your choice of cheese: American, Swiss, Cheddar, Provolone, or Pepper Jack.

All for $4.99 with a 1oz bag of chips

.99 for extra meat, .49 for extra cheese, .25 for jalapenos.

Open 7 days a week!

Mon-Wed 8:30am - 11:00pm
Thur-Sat 8:30am - 12:00pm
Sunday 8:30am - 8:00pm

Deli closes 30 minutes before the store does, so don't wait until the last minute if you want dinner!

--

So anyway, go to Am Mart. It definitely has my recommendation.

Am Mart from Nicholson.

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Explanation: Apparently a good number of people find this site by searching for "Am Mart" on Google. Unfortunately, the article I wrote that they find has little to do with Am Mart, so I figured I'd give them something helpful to read.

Markers - Part 2, The Instant of First Contact

2009-04-14T23:09:00.008-05:00

Read this first.

Everybody is different. Some people don't like chocolate because it's too sweet. Some people don't like skyscrapers because they're too high. Personally, I don't like hospitals. They're too crowded.

At times, life seems like a puzzle, like the foam pieces on Mrs. Scottsdale's floor back in kindergarten. All the parts are there, but you can't see how they fit together. Only later do you see how the whole truth was staring you in the face all along.

Other times, it's like a ring, like the one I lost. It loops in on itself, round and round, over and over. You follow the curve of silver until you get to the engraved word Forever, and then you go around the ring again.

Other times still, it feels as if life is a random splatter of unrelated components, like lunch on a cafeteria tray.

The last time I was in a hospital, I saw the whole thing from beginning to end. I'd understood for a while by then, but only after seeing the birth process with my own eyes did I fully believe the truth. There's a difference between knowing something and knowing something. Seeing, believing, and understanding are all completely different concepts. It wasn't until that day that I knew.

When I was nine years old, that night in the hospital was still far away. I was only halfway there. Nine more years would pass before I knew. A few more were still left before I even understood.

When I was nine years old, my mother married Glen Olsen. This union meant two things for me immediately. First of all, I instantly gained a sister. A stepsister, at any rate. But she was already grown and lived with her boyfriend in Carvington. I don't even know her middle name. Secondly, we moved out of our lonely house and into my new stepfather's place. By comparison, it was a mansion. Glen was and is an orthodonist.

Remind me later to tell you about my room in that house.

When I was nine years old, my mother gave birth to my baby brother. Half brother, technically, I suppose, but I never saw him that way.

I also got in my first real fight when I was nine.

All things considered, nine was a pretty eventful year for me. These previous matters were insignificant, however, in comparison to this last one.

When I was nine years old, she told me her name was Alyssa.

I stared at her, flabbergasted. I might have gone on staring for the rest of lunch period had Gregory not elbowed me.

"Parker!" I blurted. Then I blushed. "I mean: hi, I'm Parker."

She turned her powers on Gregory next, and it was my turn to elbow him.

When his jaw regained function, he murmured, "Gregory Thompson."

"Nice to meet the both of you," she said. She looked as though she would have curtsied had she not been holding a plastic yellow lunch tray. "Is anybody sitting here?"

Greg and I both shook our heads. Our eyes were unblinking orbs.

She smiled, and we melted. "Good," she said. She sat down like a feather come to have lunch with us.

Over her shoulder, I saw Jason Swick eying her from another table.

"My family just moved from Pensacola," Alyssa said. "Today is my first day."

I struggled to come up with something to say. Something witty. Something encouraging. Something profound.

Gregory beat me to it. He nodded his head enthusiastically and said, a little loudly, "Okay!"

Alyssa laughed, and I... well...

Let me preface this by saying that I don't believe in love at first sight. Believing in love at first sight is like believing in organic spontaneous generation. Barring an act of God, living creatures don't just randomly erupt from nothingness. It takes a long time for the complexities of life to develop under natural conditions. Love is the same way. It's almost as complex as life itself, and takes a good while to evolve. However, just because I don't believe in love at first sight now, that doesn't mean I didn't then. The human mind has terrific capacity for self-delusion. Especially when we're children, infatuation and love are almost impossible to distinguish. Infatuation can easily happen in the blink of an eye or wiggle of the hips. If love blooms where infatuation ignited, you can feel as though you've been in love from the instant of first contact.

All this is to say:

Alyssa laughed, and I fell in love with her.

That moment is crystallized and forever embedded in the forefront of my memory. The rest of the day is wiped out by the splendor of her laugh. Indeed, the sound took most of the next year with it. When I try to remember my tenth birthday, I can't. All I see is the lunchroom, and all I hear is the echo of her voice.

I know the rest of the day happened, however. I have one more memory from that day. The way I know it's the same day is because I squirted ketchup on my shirt when she laughed, and there was dried ketchup on my shirt when I walked down the kindergarten-first grade hallway on my way out of school.

The rest of my memories were outshone by the previous one, but I think this one remains because it contributed to the knowing. It remained because it was part of something too dark to be washed out by any silly girl's silly laugh or the rush of any smitten boy's heart.

I don't know why I walked down that hallway that day. Usually my route took me down the fourth grade hall and out the west exit to the parking lot. For whatever reason, that day I took a different path. I visited my old haunts in the younger halls of the school.

Crayon pictures and pipe-cleaner sculptures adorned the white-painted cinder block walls. I passed a set of cardboard owls. I smiled, remembering my own version of the project. Mine had been the only red owl of the bunch.

Kindergarten and first grade let out a couple of hours before the rest of the school, so the hallway was abandoned. I walked alone, and the only sound was the click of my shoes on the tile. Every room had a heavy metal door, and every door had a narrow vertical window. All of the rooms were empty, and all of the windows were black.

I came to Ms. White's classroom. When I was there, it had belonged to Mrs. Scottsdale.

I pressed my nose to the darkened glass and peered inside.

The room was different. The puzzle pieces on the floor had been replaced with circular rugs. There were newer toys and even a computer in the corner. The walls had different decorations, and glitter-smeared stars hung from the ceiling tiles by strands of yarn.

One thing was the same though.

The still boy remained in the center of the room. Everyone had gone home, but he remained. He stood alone in the darkness, and he swayed slightly. He was no older than he had been my first day of kindergarten.

His back was to me, but I could tell that his mouth was moving gently.

I pressed my ear to the glass and heard him whisper, "I wanna be a pirate."

Markers - Part 1, The Shame of Breaking

2009-04-03T19:18:00.010-05:00

I don't drive. I tried once, back when i was sixteen. The ensuing ordeal made me decide it wasn't worth it. It's also the reason I have a police record. Sometimes I still have nightmares about my stepfather demanding to know where the blood came from.

Everybody is different. We're taught that before we can read. At least in America. Little motivational children's books that tell you that it's okay that you're short, or tall, or pudgy, or stupid. Everyone is better than you at something, and you're better than them at something. That way we can all feel special.

But no matter how different you feel, there are some rules that you can never break. Even if nobody tells you that the rules are there. Especially if nobody tells you that the rules are there. Some of the most important rules are never talked about, never discussed.

I didn't realize that until I was five or six, whichever age it is that they pack you up and drop you into first grade.

My mom left, and I turned around to take in this new place that I would have to brave on my own. The walls were plastered with laminated caterpillars and anthropomorphic school supplies, all of them wearing identical loopy smiles with blushing cheeks and triple-lashed eyes. The floor was beige tile, but most of it was covered with giant semi-soft puzzle pieces. On a shelf I spotted Lincoln Logs, some tiny plastic pigs of every color, Tinker Toys, bean bags shaped like frogs with googly eyes, a plastic bowling set, and a box of Marble Works. The air smelled of paste, and tiny tubes of macaroni were tucked away wherever the janitor couldn't reach.

Most of the kids were already playing and talking. There were seven boys and nine girls. One of the boys was a still person. I'd never been around girls very much before, and I was nervous. At that point, all I knew about girls was what I knew about my mother, and so I expected them to want me to wash my hands frequently and keep my elbows off any tables. But they didn't seem to have much interest in my hygiene. In fact, they weren't interested in me at all. They weren't interested in any of the boys. They were off in a little group by themselves, chattering away in an intimidating and very pretty way.

All of the boys, except for the still boy, were already inspecting the room's toys. I was an only child at the time (I have a younger brother now) and my mom and I lived in a house at the end of a long lonely road. There was no neighborhood for me to play in; no neighbors to make friends with. Still, I was more comfortable with boys than the girls, so I moved to join their inspection of the oversized checkers mat and the box of Connect Four.

A spindly blonde woman intercepted me.

"You must be Parker," she said.

Her voice was like melted butter. I eyed her suspiciously.

"It's good to meet you, Parker. I'm Mrs. Scottsdale. I'm your teacher."

"Hi," I said carefully.

"Maddie!" Mrs. Scottsdale shouted, her voice suddenly sharp. "Stop pulling Sarah's hair!" Then she turned back to me, and her face softened. "Why don't you come and take a seat on the floor, Parker. We're about to get started."

I moved to where she pointed and sat down on the floor next to the still boy. The still boy wasn't sitting, though. Like all still people, he was standing quietly, his shoulders hunched and his head down.

"I'm gonna be a pirate," said the still boy to himself.

I looked up at him.

"Avast," he whispered.

I smiled.

"All right everyone!" cooed Mrs. Scottsdale. "Come have a seat in the middle of the floor. We're going to play a game!"

The boys reluctantly detached themselves from the wall of games, and the girls moved their babbling circle to the center of the room.

"Have a seat, have a seat," said Mrs. Scottsdale.

Boys and girls settled on the soft puzzle pieces all around me.

"Have a seat. Jeremy, that includes you. Sit down, please."

I looked up at the still boy. He was still standing.

I remember thinking that this was going to be interesting. Maybe Mrs. Scottsdale didn't know that still people never sat.

"I'm gonna be a pirate," whispered the still boy.

But Mrs. Scottsdale didn't care. She seemed to understand it was best to just not bring attention to it. "Okay children. Settle down, settle down. We're going to play a game that helps us get to know each other. It might be a little scary, but I know you can all be brave. Here's how we're going to play, okay?"

I looked around. Everyone but the still boy was watching Mrs. Scottsdale attentively.

"First you say your name. I'm Mrs. Scottsdale. Then you say what you want to be when you grow up. I want to be a school teacher. See? Then I want you to walk around..." Mrs. Scottsdale moved into the cluster of seated children, "...and pick someone--it doesn't matter who--pat them on the shoulder, and they have to go next!"

Several hands shot up. "Pick me! Pick me!"

Mrs. Scottsdale placed a finger on her chin and surveyed the volunteers. "Hmm..." she said. Then she walked over and patted a heavy black haired boy on the shoulder.

The boy rose mightily to his feet. "I'm Gregory Thomson," he said excitedly. "When I grow up, I wanna be a firetruck!"

The other boys murmured in approval, but some of the girls giggled. Gregory looked around the room and studied the uplifted faces with the greatest seriousness. He lumbered through the group, and kids jerked their fingers out of the way to avoid having them stepped on.

He patted me on the shoulder.

I swallowed.

"Avast," whispered the boy at my side.

Nervously, I stood up next to him as Gregory found a new place to sit.

"I'm Parker Lindsey," I said. Some of the boys snickered at my last name, and my legs felt like Jello. I knew I had to compensate. I had to pick the coolest profession I could think of. "When I grow up," I said, "I want to be a quantum physicist."

Silence.

I stood in the spotlight of attention shivering like a naked eskimo.

"I wanna be a pirate," whispered the still boy.

I figured someone else had probably heard him too, so I tried to shift the heat off of myself. I looked at him. "You know pirates aren't really around anymore, right?"

Silence.

"Pick someone else, sweetheart," said Mrs. Scottsdale.

I felt my face growing hot. "Well," I said, "I'm sure we all know what you want to be by now, but you get to go next anyway." I patted him on the shoulder.

Silence.

"Avast."

I glanced at the boys and girls sitting on the floor. They were staring at me like I had a squid on my head.

I swallowed hard, my hand still resting on the still boy's shoulder.

I abandoned the joke and tapped the boy sitting in front of me instead.

He stood instantly. "I'm Jason Swick," he said proudly.

I sat back down on the floor, and my face burned in shame. I felt like I'd crossed some sort of line, joked about something that wasn't to be joked about. I'd broken a taboo, and even though I was sitting down, I could still feel some of the other kids' eyes on me.

That day was the beginning of understanding.

You'll Have to Excuse me, I'm Off to Save the World

2009-04-01T17:42:00.006-05:00

There are valleys where dust clings to the cobwebs and the air is tomb-stale. The sun never surmounts the cold walls, and blind things creep beneath the unending shadows.

Sometimes you have to pass through these forsaken gullies. You push the webs back with a drawn sword and charge into the dark. At length, you slow to a walk. The path was longer than you expected, and you didn't think it would take more than a sprint to cut through to sunlight anew. Time passes, and still you walk the valley. The darkness is uniform, and you sense no passage into night. Your body is tired, though, so you sleep amongst the spiders and snakes. In the morning, you'll start again. In the morning, you'll come out the other side.

But the end of the valley is further still than that. Hours fall to days fall to weeks. Your armor becomes dull and covered in spider leavings. Your chestplate is scraped and dented where you had to turn sideways to edge through a narrow gap where the canyon walls seemed lean together and whisper to each other in the darkness above your head. Your sword is sheathed. You no longer fear anything in the valley. The creatures of the muck and the mire are familiar now. You know they are too tired and blind to raise a fang in your interest.

Lethargy grows on you like the rust on your armor. You don't remember why you came here to begin with You don't remember what you were looking for. You don't remember what you thought lay on the far side of this endless darkness. You trudge on out of habit, rather than perseverance. Days bleed together. You sleep when you're tired. You walk when you're awake. Your mind functions only to carry the body through its off-beat clockwork schedule. After a while, you talk to yourself. Not long after that, you stop talking altogether, and your voice begins to resemble your armor. Ever in darkness. Ever trudging. Not thinking enough to mold something as foolish as hope.

And then suddenly you're out. You blink and stare at the sunlit wilderness. Green is the brightest of the colors, and it floods the landscape. There are sounds and smells, where before there was only the staleness of air and the echo of your own breathing.

You've emerged. The world stands before you, waiting. Your hair, skin, and armor are all the same dust-gray, and your brain struggles to understand the implications of this development. Your eyes, pale and weary, slowly deepen to their original sapphire blue.

The call of your adventure swells, and new purpose takes your feet. You step from the shadow of the rocky walls, and dust falls from your legs. You're back, and the person everyone remembers you as being launches into the wild, the valley forgotten.

It's not boredom, it's the enemy. It's not music, it's your hero-rising theme. It's not life, it's a story. It's not Wednesday, it's a chapter.

Why on earth are you sitting there looking at a computer screen? Don't you realize you're in the middle of an adventure?

There are only three things to do in any day. You can live a story, you can tell a story, or you can waste time.

I speak as one who has staked his life on the claim that there is merit in the telling. That words can change a mind. That the imagined can impact the realized.

Live, tell, or waste.

Why The Watchmen Movie Ending is Better

2009-03-06T03:37:00.010-06:00

EXTREME SPOILER ALERT: If you have not both read and seen the novel and film versions of The Watchmen respectively, DO NOT read further. You will spoil for yourself either a literary or cinematic experience that would have been excellent.

ADDITIONAL SPOILER ALERT: Seriously. You need to read the graphic novel and watch the movie before you read this. If you haven't, stop now for your own sake.

"Heresy!" some might cry at the very title of this entry. Those people should follow the uninitiated who left at the spoiler alert. The implied argument is that the filmmakers should have remained consistent with the author's wishes and left the original ending intact. However, it was Alan Moore's desire that The Watchmen not be adapted to film at all, and therefore the very existence of the movie is in opposition to the author's wishes. Such an argument negates itself, as ANY ending of the movie (or indeed any part at all) would be logically deemed unsatisfactory, regardless of how closely it mirrored the graphic novel.

There is a prevalent mindset which dictates that deviations from the canonized work in film adaptations are inherently inferior to following the original as law. This idea has neither basis in literary theory nor plain reason. Albeit, there are plenty of scenarios in which such deviations have proven to be bad. I cite the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as one such example (note that Douglas Adams himself participated in writing the screenplay and greenlighted the project for production, further evidence against the "superiority found in author's wishes" argument) However, we would do well to remember that authors are human and ergo prone to making less-than-perfect decisions. Their presentation of a creative work is by no means the optimum form of the work. A book might be based on an excellent idea, but the author is free to make bad choices in plot or character design which make the finished product less excellent than it could be. Alan Moore did not make bad choices in writing The Watchmen, but neither did the filmmakers in writing the screenplay. Indeed, they improved on his work for the medium. Once one is willing to put aside any insistences of Moore's writing being divinely inspired, the reasons for this are clear to see.

Here's the basic rundown. The movie is incredibly loyal to the book. More so, I think, than any other adaptation I've seen lately. But at the very end, when readers of the book are expecting a giant alien to pop into existence, there's nothing but a big blue explosion. Instead of having Ozymandias genetically engineer a fake extra-terrestrial life form against which the world is intended to unite, he instead frames Dr. Manhattan for blowing up several major cities.

There are three reasons why this is a better ending than the novel's version. The first is simply a matter of narrative form. The Dr. Manhattan setup does not require the introduction of the various artists who design the alien nor the subplot that ends in their demise. Complexities are good when they enrich the creative work, but if they can be eliminated, they should be. Streamlining a narrative is the responsibility of the author so as to avoid wasting the reader's time. The cinematic ending is easily more economical than the novel ending. It deals with all the loose ends efficiently without introducing more information and/or characters, keeps the focus of the narrative on the protagonists, and avoids confusing the audience with auxiliary setup.

Secondly, the ending makes more logical sense as far as story structure is concerned. On a basic level, it stands to reason that Ozymandias would use forces already known and feared by the world in order to intimidate them into peace rather than engineering an external fear. If we are to believe that he is able to emulate Dr. Manhattan's powers using technology, a notion that the book implies as well (e.g. the teleportation device used to deposit the alien), then it makes sense that Ozymandias would take advantage of this ability if he could achieve the same results without venturing into the fields of genetic engineering, xenomorphology, and psychic weaponry (all of which were required for his plan in the original). Moreover, it makes Dr. Manhattan's reasons to leave Earth stronger and therefore more emotionally believable. Allowing him to play the unsung hero and have his name tarnished effectively completes his character arc. Since no additional characters or subplots are required to execute this final plot twist, it increases the resonance of the piece, making it feel more whole and complete.

Finally, the movie version is more in-keeping with the previously established themes of both works. In the end of the novel, the faux alien contributes nothing to the work thematically. Xenophobia was not addressed as a theme prior to the alien's teleportation. Society did not call for the outlawing of masked avengers out of fear of their strangeness but rather out of fear of their unchecked power. Their slogan wasn't "Who are the Watchmen?", it was "Who watches the Watchmen?" However, establishing order through fear of Dr. Manhattan, who is often compared to a god, is absolutely inkeeping with the established theological themes which are discussed frequently in both works. The question at the end becomes not only "What constitutes acceptable loss for the acquisition of peace?" but also "Is fear of the divine the only/best way to bring order?" This completes an otherwise dangling theological discussion that is maintained for the first 10 sections of the novel.

So that's my opinion of the matter. The cinematic ending is more efficient, more structurally sound, and more thematically correct. I cannot think of a way to coherently argue that a manufactured alien constitutes a better ending without resorting to the deontological.

As a sidenote, the movie was very enjoyable, and I place it just a bit below Slumdog Millionaire in terms of overall goodness. Two thumbs up.

Quick Cure for Boredom: Fictional Album Covers

2009-02-23T03:50:00.008-06:00

Click images for full size.

Okay, this is kind of a fun exercise in creativity I found on facebook. It takes all the decision-making out of the "what do I create?" process and lets you get right down to the "how do I make these pieces come together?" part, which to me is always the most fun.

It's always interesting to me that creativity generally sprouts better in confines than in absolute freedom.

Here are the instructions, exactly as I got them:

1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random... Read More... Read More”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

5 - Post it to FB with this text in the "caption" and TAG the friends you want to join in. (you can untag yourself if you don't want this photo up)

Now I'm going to go play Rock Band at full volume regardless of the fact that it's 4 am. It's Mardi Gras weekend, and there's not another soul within 3 miles of me. Baton Rouge is in apocalypse-mode.

ADDENDUM: Apparently my next-door neighbor is still here and is unappreciative of both my singing and fake guitar playing. I thought everyone loved Livin' on a Prayer! I thought wrong.

... sorry.

...

Whoa-oh! We're half-way there!

Gear and World

2009-02-18T13:57:00.001-06:00

Click for full size.

Robots Are Bad

2009-02-11T17:14:00.022-06:00

String theory defines reality as we know it as operating in ten dimensions. In short, we live in three spacial dimensions, the fourth dimension is time, the fifth dimension is a branching off through the possibilities of time, the sixth dimension is a manifold consisting of all possible histories, the seventh dimension unifies all lower dimensions in a singularity, the eighth dimension is a scalar construct composed of at least two distinct universes and all of their respective possible histories, the ninth dimension is a divergence from the curve created between these two points of individual infinities, and the tenth dimension is a spacial realm in which all of the previous are reduced to a single point.

That being said, my current academic situation is more convoluted and complicated than string theory, which just goes to show that robots are bad.

But I digress. If you'd prefer me not to digress then perhaps you're reading the wrong blog.

In the Tolkienian universe, Ents function as an embodiment of Nature. Tolkien himself was quite an advocate of the natural world and saw our planet as something worth protecting. He viewed technology and machines as destructive forces that overrode the merit of the individual and sacrificed ecology for economy. All for an abstract ideal known as Progress.

We chuckle a bit at the idea of Manifest Destiny now, but this driving notion of Progress isn't a whole lot different.

Anyway, it makes sense then that the armies of Saruman and Sauron would use siege weapons and other machines. Their fortresses are described with language echoing a factory, and nothing green can be found in Mordor. Elves live in harmony with Nature, Orcs destroy it.

Which is where the Ents come in, because while Nature is a widely passive force, it is far from static. Until the Ents appear in the books, the Elves function as the primary defender of Nature. However, they are more easily read as entities existing in harmony with Nature rather than Nature manifest in corporeal form. The Ents, on the other hand, embody the slow but heavy strength of Nature. They are meek and difficult to provoke, but once they have been pushed too far...

Two days ago I went to make an urgent appointment with an advisor. This was a shiny new advisor who had been recommended to me by my previous advisor because she found that she wasn't capable of comprehensively evaluating my current academic situation. As a point of interest, I was passed to that advisor from a previous advisor who recommended that advisor to me after advising me to do the equivalent of jumping off a scholastic bridge. Advice that I took, by the way, and now none of my classes count toward any major in particular, much less my own.

Anyway, in order to get in to see the Wizard, I have to have my concentrations declared. I've already filled out the forms to declare my concentration and submitted them a week and a half ago. Unfortunately I'm "not in the system" yet, and therefore can't see the shiny new advisor. I tell the advisor that the previous advisor advised me to this advisor, and was there some way we could make an exception? She took down my name, my student ID, and my phone number. Said she'd call.

Like most women, she never called me back.

I went back into the office today and met the same woman. We went through the identical conversation, right down to her facial expression when she informed me that oh she's sorry but I'm not in the system yet. I told her that I had been recommended to this advisor from a previous advisor, could we make an exception. She took down my name, my student ID, and my phone number. Said she'd call.

Don't fault me if I'm dubious.

I realized that I'd seen behavior like I'd just witnessed before. In science fiction. It was then that I came to the horrifying conclusion that LSU advisors are, in fact, robots.

Before this revelation, I was always on the line about robots. In iRobot, I thought my good buddy Will was giving them an undue hard time. And if I'd been on the board, I would have let Robin Williams be acknowledged as a human long before he died at the ripe old age of 200.

Now, however, I am a firm believer in the evils of robotics. Sign me up for the protest and stick a picket in my hands. I'm pulling all my stock out of Honda as soon as possible, and I'm making sure all the products that I buy are hand-fashioned by honest, hardworking Indonesian children. If LSU advising is anything like the world we can expect after Skynet takes over, I say we nip it in the bud now.

The Ents are restless...

A Sign

2009-01-23T19:30:00.002-06:00

Q

2009-01-20T03:36:00.002-06:00

What does it take to be a hero?

How Life is NOT Like Apple Cider

2009-01-06T15:49:00.013-06:00

There are those who might argue (erroneously) that life is, in many ways, like apple cider. It is in this essay that I seek to prove these misinformed people wrong.

As a sidenote, it's good to be back. It turns out that taking several writing classes at once in which you're forced to produce material that you are uninterested in can give you a temporary aversion to writing. This resulted in a semester-long bout with writer's block, which is interesting because this time of uncreativity came in sharp contrast to a pile of preceding prolific periods. Which brings me to my first point.

1. Life, unlike apple cider, is heterogeneous.

You may have some months of good writing, and you may have some months of no writing. Now, those clinging to the ciderassimilitude theory... wait just a second... Firefox's spell check accepted "ciderassimiltude" as a valid word. Interesting. See point two for further notes... anyway, like I was saying, those clinging to the ciderassimilitude theory may argue that mulled cider and chilled cider alike may retain granules of apple precipitate. However, the presence of these minor granules cannot be compared to the vast possibilities and changes that happen within even one year of an average person's life.

2. Life, unlike apple cider, is surprising.

If life were like apple cider, words like "ciderassimilitude" would not be accepted by spell check. Apple cider is predictable. Although there are different variations of cider, one generally can predict what a cup would taste like to a relatively accurate degree. If the prediction proves invalid, a single taste is more than enough to predict the flavor of the remainder of the cup. Life, however, is filled with warm sips, cold sips, pleasant sips, and gross sips. A more intelligent person might argue that life is in many ways like a cup of worms and chocolate sprinkled with packets of Icy Hot. Of course, no intelligent person would conceive of such nonsense.

3. Life, unlike apple cider, is made of people.

Without people, without interactions, without love or awkwardness, life is just existence. People are the essence of life, and apple cider contains 0% people. Fact.

4. Life, unlike apple cider, is a four-letter word.

This is a matter of basic mathematics. "Life" is spelled with four unique letters, while apple cider is spelled with six unique letters and two reiterated letters, totaling ten letters overall. Ours is a world bound by physics and asthmatic principle. Distances and weight can be calculated and predicted, added together and subdivided. It is this elementary fact that makes life in the universe possible (not to mention architecture, astronomy, engineering, automobile manufacturing, farming, animal hygienics, ash-tray modeling, gymnastics, painting, timber processing, union organization, political science, and poker). Because of this undeniable truth, it is impossible to say that a four-letter word is in any way similar to a ten-letter pair of words.

5. Finally, life, unlike apple cider, contains both emotion and intelligence.

Anyone who argues that apple cider is intelligent is pants-on-head retarded. Anyone who argues that apple cider is emotional probably owns too many cats.

I believe that by now I've proven beyond a whiff of doubt that life and apple cider can in no way be regarded as analogous. Although it is true that both are nice to have in front of a fire during a cold January day, there are no other rational connections between the two. Those who have previously postulated otherwise would do well to right their views as gracefully as humanly possible.

And the Unburnt Bridge Award goes to...

2008-12-01T16:18:00.007-06:00

I hugged all of my exgirlfriends yesterday. That has to be some sort of achievement or something. Yay me!

Let There Be Light

2008-10-14T00:44:00.025-05:00

Overly Cranial Warning: Warning, the following may be overly cranial.

The Theory of Relativity is a staple of modern theoretical physics. It's one of those things that just about anybody can claim to understand. "Oh yeah, time is relative. Totally." Indeed I've been under the illusion for years that I actually understood the concept. Only today did I finally wrap my head around time dilation as described by Special Relativity.

Don't stop reading, I swear I've got a point.

We'll start at the ground floor and work our way up.

In our perceived reality, we observe Time as an absolute. It's what allows us to make schedules, set dates, and keep tempo. Time can be evenly divided and accurately recorded by different people separated by miles.

Light moves wicked fast. About 186,282 miles per second. Other things that seem wicked fast immediately pale in comparison. A bullet, for instance, travels at roughly 3/4 of a mile per second.

Our understanding of speed is relatively straightforward. If you need to catch up to a moving object, you merely need to move faster than it. Quick, math students: If Lex Luther fires a gun at Lois Lane, who is standing 20 feet away, and Clark Kent is standing 400 feet away on the endpoint of a line that bisects the distance between Lex and Louis, how fast does Clark have to move in order to intercept the bullet two feet in front of Lois? Time's up! The answer is "stupendously fast." But assuming there's no kryptonite lying around, it can be done. Right? Right.

Alright, here's another problem involving bullets. Tom Cruz is standing on the back of a train shooting at a helicopter. If he's facing in the same direction that the train is moving, do his bullets move faster when the helicopter is in front of him, or to his left (neglecting air resistance)? When he shoots in the same direction as the train, his bullets move slightly faster because they enjoy the full benefit of the added boost from the train's velocity. That one was a little harder, I confess, but it makes sense, right? Good. We're almost clear of all this nonsense, I promise.

Scientists tried basically this same thing with Light instead of bullets, and the Earth instead of a train. The Earth is moving through space at more than 18 miles per second--much faster than a speeding bullet--so if we have equipment sensitive enough, we should be able to measure a difference in speed between beams of light fired parallel with the Earth's motion and those fired perpendicular to it, right? Just like the bullets, right?

Wrong. It turns out that Light moves the same speed no matter what direction you fire it in. Indeed, Light moves the same speed no matter what. Period. Everyone will observe light as moving the same speed.

One last hypothetical. Say you've got a bridge built from here to the nearest star system, Proxima Centari. Straight flat bridge that you can walk across. I'll stand on the Earth side of the bridge with a Super-Deluxe Acme Spotlight, and you go stand on the Proxima Centari side and wait until you can see something. All set up? Good. Now, the Flash and I do lunch on Thursdays, and he's agreed to take part in this little experiment.

Trail 1:
The Flash and I will stand on this side of the bridge and turn on the spotlight. Light will immediately begin traveling your direction. But it's a long way to Proxima Centari, and you won't see a thing for, oh, four years and three months. Trail 1 complete.

Trail 2:
This time, the Flash has agreed to run alongside the beam of light all the way down to your end of the bridge. I turn on the light, and the Flash takes off. The beam soars far ahead of him at an astounding 186,282 miles per second, but the Flash reacts quickly. Aiming to keep as close of a pace he can with the light, he accelerates to 186,281 miles per second. Therefore, the light is only moving 1 mile per second faster than him, right?

Wrong. The light is moving 186,282 miles per second faster than the Flash! Our hero increases his speed, faster and faster, but still the light leaps ahead of him, never slowing for an instant. Because the superhero and the beam of light were engaged in such fierce competition, the Flash arrives at Proxima Centuri after only a few minutes of running. An incredible feat. Without even breathing hard, the Flash describes his surprise that the light appeared to react to him, accelerating when he did to be ever-faster than him.
"Isn't it strange," he asks you, "how much faster the light got here this time just because I was following it?"
"No," you tell him, somewhat put out. "It took just as long as last time! Four years! Again!"

You see, what the Flash didn't take into account was that, in order for light to be a universal constant, Time itself warps and bends to make it so. Four years of waiting for you was almost no time at all for the light-chasing superhero. If you're lucky, he might carry you home so you don't have to walk, but even though the trip may only take seconds, I will have already abandoned the experiment, having heard nothing from either of you for the past eight and a half years!

When this all finally clicked for me this afternoon, the literary significance of these truths rushed through my head.

You see, we might believe that ours is a universe governed by Time. Time is a persistent thing. A devouring thing. The symbolic connotations with Time are ultimately death, decay, and ruin. A world built on time (Repent Harlequin!) is bound by structure, schedule, and punctuality. Repetition and cycles. And ever-looms the knowledge of the End. Time ticks away, stealing breath, and chewing life.

However, this is not our universe. The most fundamental property of our universe is not Time, but Light. Boundless, free, radiant. Illumination and truth are associated with light. Victory and understanding. Ours is a world built on a mysterious force that is all around us, yet it is difficult--if not impossible-- to understand fully. Even Time is under its jurisdiction, and it outstrides all competitors so completely that, by comparison, they quite literally appear to be standing still. Indeed, Light operates as the very foundation of absolutely everything. Even the most complicated new theories bend to its rule.

What were the first words spoken in Genesis again?

Pink Hair and Vitamins

2008-09-25T11:30:00.017-05:00

Any girl with pink hair can totally have her way with me. I'm sorry, but that's just the way things are. Research has proven that this factor alone can make an individual exponentially more attractive to me. Cited examples include Paramore's Hayley Williams, who was downright meh with orange hair, but inexcusably attractive with pink hair.

I was on the bus the other day, and a girl with pink hair gave me the eyes. Knowing absolutely nothing of her personality, interests, spirituality, or intelligence, I was immediately prepared to enter into a life-long monogamous relationship with her on the spot. Hyperbole may be in play to some degree here.

Anyway, like I was saying originally, my mom sends me these care packages every few weeks. (I didn't mention that earlier? Oh. Well, I'm mentioning it now, then.) Some crackers, canned soup, and, occasionally, vitamin C chewables. While my roommate, who is a kinesiology major, claims that obtaining 500% of my daily vitamin C has literally no beneficial effect on my health, my mom, who is a mom, says that it will keep me from catching cold.

Whether or not I take the vitamins is a mystery. It is also beside the point.

My point is, I'm thoroughly convinced that, while dietary supplements may be healthy to a degree, a large portion of the perceived effects of vitamins, health drinks, and herbal remedies are induced by the placebo effect. You think taking something will make you better, you take it, you feel better. The brain is a powerful thing, and I'd even bet that a sizable percentage of mundane ailments are psychological in nature.

Because of this, I've been a long-time user of a technique I only recently learned is called a "meta-placebo." I have deliberately convinced myself that ibuprofen cures all diseases, fully aware that I'm manipulating the placebo effect and that, on a deeper level, I'm merely convinced that my afflictions are mostly in my head. Which I don't think is to say that I'm insane.

Whether or not this knowledge instantly makes my meta-placebo a meta-meta-placebo is a mystery. It is also beside the point.

The point is, regardless of the physical effects of the medication, I've found that, when I believe these things, ibuprofen does indeed cure many ailments. It even helps allergies, if I want it to. Therefore, in spite of the real worth of the pill or vitamin being taken, its effects may be perceived as far more beneficial than can be explained biologically.

On a sheerly factual level, most people dye their hair pink in an effort to express how different they are. Call me a cynic, but doesn't it seem like they're merely conforming to a set of standards defined by society as abnormal? Therefore, in trying to rebel against societal constraints, aren't their actions still governed by popular opinion? Even were this not the case, counter-culture still has a set of standards and rules for appropriate attire and appearance. Regardless of their relationship with popular culture, they are still adhering to a system defined by a larger group of people.

Pink hair is attractive to me because its mainstream societal connotations are independence and individuality. On a surface level, girls with pink hair would appear to be expressing their high level of self-confidence and a solid understanding of who they are as a person. However, because their attire is likely either reactionary or simply defined by an alternative culture, it would appear that those with pink hair actually possess a visibly inflated sense of confidence masking self-doubt as well as a lesser understanding of who they are as a person. Everything I would want in a significant other is practically absent. Their actual qualities are substantially less than those that I would perceive. Placebos. While this certainly cannot be true in all cases, I would venture to guess that my theory holds true in most.

However, this higher understanding of what pink hair actually represents only leads to unavoidable complications with my savior complex. Pink hair is once again desirable because I have an innate urge to show people how special and loved they really are, regardless of whether or not a relationship with that person would be beneficial to myself (or even remotely healthy, for that matter.) Effectively, the pink haired individual is operating as a meta-placebo, and my attraction is maintained, regardless of my knowledge of its falsehood.

In short, pink-haired girls are not for me.

Chronocide Needs You!

2008-09-15T14:43:00.007-05:00

Attention all you readers out there (All two of you)! For my next post, I'm going to write an article on how something is pretty much exactly like something else. Basically what I usually do. But here's where you come in! Post two dissimilar ideas, and I'll pick the craziest pair and attempt to philosophize about them (Ex: The Annexation of Puerto Rico and Flashlight Batteries). Got the picture? Alright! Go!

P.S. You're gonna have like a week to come up with stuff. I've got a short story due Friday and don't even know what it's going to be about yet. Multiple posts are totally allowed; go nuts.

Screenshot of Michael Douglas

2008-09-14T01:17:00.002-05:00

Because it's awesome. I dare you to disagree.

Inspiration

2008-09-11T20:47:00.018-05:00

Sorry it's been so long since my last decent post.

We all have things we think we need. Things that, if we could just somehow have them, we would be happy and fulfilled. Maybe it's something like fame. Maybe it's money. Maybe it's something as simple as a grade in a class, or a weekend on the road with your friends. Maybe it's a person that you feel like you have to date. Maybe it's a friend, someone you could just talk to. A look of pride from your father. An apartment of your own. A spouse.

In reality, I think that we risk putting these kinds of things up on a pedestal. Effectively, the more we want something, the less satisfying it is after we acquire it. We build it up in our minds, the answer to all our problems, and then when we finally get it, we're disappointed because it didn't live up to our inflated expectations.

The truth is, we don't need those things. They're all extras. Few of them solve more than a single problem, and not one of them adds a single breath to your life.

Relationships are especially vulnerable to this fallacy. The belief that something can be a panacea. We want so desperately (at least, us romantical types do) for someone to come along and fit us flawlessly. They complete us. Unfortunately, reality very often delivers something much different. In truth, it's something far more romantic.

I was talking to a friend about relationships lately. We were talking about how a lot of people go into boyfriend/girlfriend stuff expecting the other person to fill their gaps, complete them. The subtle implication here as that, by yourself, you're less than a whole person. However, some hypothetical prince/princess is supposed to come along and fill you up the rest of the way. Two half-people coming together to make a whole person. Sounds less romantic when put that way, huh? Sounds emotionally unstable and codependent. Almost deranged.

Real relationships, romantic or otherwise, are made from a unity of two complete people. It's not about .5+.5=1, it's about 1+1>2. Becoming more together than when apart because you are both complete individuals. You don't need one another; you choose one another because you're both better together than apart. You each build each other emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and creatively. That excites me. It seems far more romantic than the dependency described above.

I'm completely stuck in both my novels and my current short story right now. I open any of the documents, and I stare at the last sentence I've written, no great ideas finding my fingers. I need inspiration. I close the document and wait for it. I take a nap. I read a book. I go for a run. But inspiration never comes.

But do we really need inspiration to make things? Should our ability to create hinge solely on something as fickle as a Muse? What conditions do we really require in order to create? Where do ideas even come from, and can we predict when they're going to come again? If not for inspiration, how does anything get made?

But maybe we don't really need inspiration. Maybe it's just one of those things we put on a pedestal. If I could just have inspiration, then I could write that novel, or finish that painting, or write that blog post. When we get it, we expect it to fix everything, and for the creative work to blast into existence as though from the mighty arm of Zeus.

In truth, I think inspiration is little more than a spark. No lightning strike. It's just the small jolt that gets the car started, but you need gasoline to keep going. Gas is expensive these days. I recommend stocking up on perseverance, observation, and raw determination. They'll be the things that get you through after the ignition fires. Loving something to death doesn't hurt either.*

My good friend Ze had a few great things to say about this very point:

*In point of fact, loving something to death can hurt quite a bit, but you may find yourself full of ideas in the aftermath. Not a bad trade.

2008-09-07T12:20:00.004-05:00

In very local news, my dreams are getting to be far too realistic.

Also, recent research has shown that House of Leaves is a book worth reading. Do so. Unless you like sleep an awful lot, in which case this may not be for you. In fact, regardless of your preferences regarding sleep, the dedication explicitly says "This is not for you." While I'm not a writer anywhere near the caliber of Danielewski, I must humbly disagree. This is the book for you. Unless you like sleep. Then get Goodnight Moon instead.

Lights Out

2008-09-04T21:24:00.008-05:00

The following is a short clip from Russell's documentation of our adventures during Gustav.

At this point, the power was out, and we could only see by means of candles, phone screens, or the camera's night vision. (Or perhaps a digital watch's back-light).

The Importance of Indiglo

2008-09-04T12:19:00.012-05:00

When you’re a kid, a digital watch is an indispensable tool. Boys have little patience for things like dates, and a watch would always tell you what numbers to scribble at the top of your worksheet. The stopwatch function allowed you to track a class or a school day creep by incrementally. Or you could use it to time how long it took for your mom to get through the parent pick up line. Or how long you could hold your breath. Though none of us had ever been any deeper than the twelve feet of the public pool’s deep end, our watches were waterproof to a mind-bending 33 meters.

It would seem that the watch’s utilities were boundless. The only useless feature seemed to be its ability to tell you what time it was. There was, however, one use for a digital watch that outshone all others.

In a boy’s life, there are countless dark corridors and unlit crannies. From exploring the storage attics of churches to moonless forest expeditions. These were times so dark that a watch’s meager backlight was a torch in the depths of an Aztec ruin. The black was rent by soft cyan, and the frightening became adventure.

I’m in college now, and I don’t find myself in places quite that dark anymore. My world is lamp-lit and florescent. Darkness to me is a road lined with headlights under a city-hazed sky. True dark has no place with technology. My phone has the date on it, and I don’t time how long I can hold my breath nearly as often as I used to. I don’t wear a watch anymore.

Hurricanes have a way of bringing the darkness. When our apartment was shot to black, I pleasantly stumbled upon my running watch in the dark. I’d thus far used it only for timing my miles. Now, once again, a watch became my eyes in the dark.

I had oil lamps. I had candles. But I could take a shower with my watch.

By the way, if you haven’t ever taken a shower in the dark, and I mean in the absolute pitch black, you need to stop what you’re doing right now and get to it. Live a little, chico.

--------

New line of thought entirely: I put Muse’s cat box under the sink in the bathroom and then taught him how to open cabinets. Do not teach your cat how to open cabinets. Now he just entertains himself with the slamming sound they make when they close…at 5 a.m.

That’s what I get for deliberately raising an agent of Discordia.

The Gustav Adventure!

2008-09-02T19:38:00.007-05:00

A video compendium of our experience with a hurricane. Think of it as a missionary's slide show. It's just as boring, but hey, at least the pictures move.

The night before the storm:

Don't squint too hard, there's nothing really to see here.

The morning of the G-Day. The hurricane wouldn't kick in until that afternoon.

It was eerie how still it was.

Muse was getting into the spirit of things by around noon. Here's him pretending to be a hurricane.

What's amazing is that these videos are even worse quality on blogger than on my phone. A sad tale.

Gustav arrives:

The hurricane didn't really get into full swing for a couple of hours.

After Gustav took personal offense to our air conditioning and fancy electrical lights, the following became my pastime:

Reading by candles and an oil lamp. Effectively my ideal evening. It was pretty much awesome.

There was a loud thump:

A tree hurled itself at Russell's window! A sad case of failed plant kamikaze. A more successful martyr for nature's cause effectively blocked the road to the back of our apartments. No brittle sapling, we're talking a mighty deciduous of hefty girth. Lumberjacks everywhere shed a tear at its departure.

I saved my favorite for last. Check this out.

Even at a video quality that rivals Keanu Reeves' acting, this image still makes my blood jump. The flag there is the Louisiana state flag. The pelican sewn into the center was encouraged by the wind to migrate to a warmer climate. The clouds are beyond analogy.

What is not recorded is that our AC bailed, and the apartment began a trend that would have eventually rivaled the seventh circle of Hell. Heated water took a vacation, and our beds felt like marshlands. As soon as the electricity kicked back in, though, all returned briskly to normal.
THE END.

The Staff of God Loometh

2008-08-31T17:59:00.005-05:00

A hurricane makes landfall tomorrow morning, and Baton Rouge will meet it.

When Katrina hit two years ago, I was in northern Louisiana. I remember the clouds boiling across the horizon like inverted wave crests. I remember the charge in the air and the darkness on the wind. Then I was two-hundred miles away. Tomorrow I’ll stand near the very eye.

Some people have left Baton Rouge for safer grounds, but my roommates and I are foolish and brash; we’ve stayed behind to ride the storm all the way through.

The ambiance is strange now. There is no hint in the weather that a catastrophe charges our southern borders. We still shop at our familiar haunts and clean the dishes. Today I took the trash out and heard a dog wailing in desperation. That, I confess, was a bit unnerving. The barks and whines cut through the calm air as the only physical evidence of what comes with tomorrow’s dawn.

No one knows what will happen in the next 24 hours. That’s the irresistible draw of it. We all know that something is going to happen. We even know when it’s going to happen. But the story that will unfold, the damage that will be done, is known only to God.

Every tree that will be uprooted is now proudly photosynthesizing. Every car that will be damaged is now placid and pristine. Buildings may fall and waters may rise. No one knows. All we do know is that tomorrow will be wholly unlike the days that came before it.

Later I’ll be able to look back at this writing and know. But for now, it is a grand mystery. And that absolutely energizes me.

I thrive now, breathing this electric air. I wait for the storm with swelling anticipation. Call me a fool.

Gustav means “The Staff of God.” Whether it is a shepherd’s crook or a warrior’s weapon is yet to be seen. I suppose, though, that there is a third possibility.

A Reluctant Passenger Boards the Dane Train

2008-08-29T19:12:00.006-05:00

I’ve never kept my opinion of Dane Cook a secret. In the past, I’ve criticized his style of comedy as disappointing in depth, somewhat desperate in delivery, and needlessly profane (isn’t it a shame that I couldn’t find two words that start with D to say “needlessly profane?”). I felt as though Dane had to pull the laughs out of me like I had swallowed barbed wire. I was an unwilling participant in his game, a victim that he used to propel himself (loudly) to fame.

Recently, my life has undergone a major shift. I didn’t mean for it to happen. I certainly didn’t want it to happen. But it did.

I remember it like it was last week, when in fact it might have even been as long as eight or nine days ago. I was driving in my car, and I had the genre on my iPod set to Comedy. In my collection, this means a heavy Mitch Hedberg base, a sprinkling of Steven Wright, a solid Demetri Martin section, and a swash of Dane Cook. Now, Mitch Hedberg is the man, and Demetri Martin is impossible to beat (Steven Wright is pretty weird, but he can make me smile) however, as I drove across town, I found myself laughing out loud only at one man. That man was Dane Cook.

I’ve always found him funny. That’s not in question. I just never liked him. In my opinion, Dane Cook : Mitch Hedberg :: chicken nugget : steak. It’s not that chicken nuggets don’t taste good, but a good steak is just better in all aspects. I would say that Dane gives a sharp injection of comedy. You laugh out of obligation, because the material is clearly funny. However, after the chuckles die off, you find yourself feeling slightly guilty for having laughed. It’s like the difference between a dense creepy movie that carefully develops an ominous mood over the course of hours and a cheap thriller that makes you shout when something jumps out at the camera.

Then I realized something very fundamental. The purpose of a comedian is to provoke laughter. By this single area of judgment, the best comedian would get the most laughs. Methodology is reduced to a nonissue. After seeing Dane act in Mr. Brooks and Dan in Real Life, I no longer despise him so fiercely as a person. Perhaps this new foundation of respect allowed me to come to terms with my own secret liking of Dane’s comedy.

So that’s that. I didn’t want to be, I didn’t ask to be, but I’m a Dane Cook fan. I sincerely apologize.

Next week we’ll explore my hidden obsession with Jimmy Buffett.

The Rise and Fall of the Panic

2008-08-26T17:21:00.008-05:00

INFORMAL POST WARNING:
THE FOLLOWING POST IS LIKELY TO BE INFORMAL.

So I'm in this class called "Writing the Novel" this semester. Our professor, for whom I've already cultivated a large respect, insists that all material turned into the class be new. That is, written during the course of the class. This has a single glaring implication: I'm going to have to start writing a new novel.

I've been writing the same book for a little over a year now, and it's still got a ways to go. I've never really had to come up with another idea before. I've always just relied on this one. Now that I'm being asked to create something else, the Panic is starting to make himself visible.

To ward off the attacks of the evil Panic, our professor has suggested that we keep journals. He claims that he doesn't know a writer who doesn't. In light of my aforementioned respect for the man, and because I'm a sucker for perceived mandates regarding writing, I immediately rushed to Barnes and Noble and picked up a black spiral bound notebook.

Ever since that fateful day 24 hours ago, my life has never been the same. I don't know how I lived without journaling before. It's like releasing thousands of tiny hydraulic valves all throughout my body. I recommend it not only to writers, not only to Christians, but also to anybody in possession of a decently functional frontal lobe.

As for now, I've gotta run (literally) so that's all for today.

Furblob Machine!

2008-08-19T15:14:00.004-05:00

Here's a thing I made. Hooray!

Maya started getting irritable toward the end of this thing. Wouldn't render or even save anymore. I had to redo whole sections of it several times. Ouch. Started yesterday around lunch and finished this afternoon. Mission accomplished.

Chronocidal Success Grade: Very Poor.

A Brief Summary of Everything

2008-08-18T14:00:00.007-05:00

Life:

Life is a gift and a responsibility. This we should never forget.

God gave us life but not without purpose. We can’t just drift. If it’s our job to create, we must create. If it’s our job to encourage, we must encourage. If it’s our job to obey, then we must obey. All of us must lead, because, as Christians, all of us must be examples. This is a massive responsibility that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Though this seems to be a heavy burden, it’s really quite the opposite. Sacrificing one’s own life to Christ’s cause relieves you of all the pressure. The only hard part is letting yourself go and taking up Christ’s life instead. We’re not called to make ourselves perfect, but rather to wholly abdicate ourselves so that He can live through us.

Also, again as Christians, we are free.

I think that part of our purpose in life is to come to an understanding of freedom. To do so, we must understand the complexities of sin’s chains. Sin is addictive and corrosive. It’s overwhelming and controlling. Like an infection, it breeds and grows. Its an epidemic that has infested all of creations. As Christians, we are immune to it. It has no grip on our lives. Our falls into sin are a result of deliberate decisions on our own part to act outside of faith in God’s plan and take matters into our own hands. All sin stems from acting without faith, which in turn comes from selfishness.

I think that we can’t really begin living until we understand how truly free we are. Think of the things that bind you. The things that control you. Whether it’s pornography, self-doubt, anger, lust, alcohol, or a need to be in control. Now, realize that you’re choosing that over freedom. It doesn’t own you, you choose it. That doesn’t mean sin’s not tempting, but it does mean that you have authoritative power over it. Your freedom through Christ outshines all your black afflictions.

Love:

Of all the things love is, it’s not fickle. Complex? Very. But real love is absolutely unwavering. Be this for a brother, friend, lover, or parent, love that stems from God is indefatigable. And all true love is breathed by God, like the stars themselves. As humans, we operate as angled mirrors. God shines his love down, and we reflect it to others. It is because of this that we are capable of loving purely and recklessly, without thought to self-injury. If your mirror is tarnished, the love you reflect is dimmed, and you need to clean your mirror.

Love is, in its very essence, the act of self-denial. Reflecting the light onto yourself does no one any good. True love is repeated and endless self-denial. It seeks not to own, not to control, but only to serve the need of the beloved. This love can be directed romantically or otherwise. Friends can love in this way just as easily as couples.

Also, it must not be forgotten that love bites like a rabid monkey. When you’re dealing with love, you’re handling something that is more powerful than yourself, and it can break you if you are too weak. Love is holy, and we are usually not. Buckling under the beam of love leads to some pretty dark places, but it’s not anything that you can’t overcome with His help. Dust yourself off, pick up your mirror, and get back at it. We are called to love above all things. This is the greatest commandment. So get out there and love someone! Don’t worry about yourself, don’t worry about what anyone thinks. Give someone 100% of you, and don’t care if they even notice. Real love requires no reciprocation.

Death:

Death is nothing. Mild wordplay there, I confess. What I mean, though, is that death is insignificant. It's fascinating and it intrigues us, but in the end, it's little more than dust in the void. If we really believe what we profess to believe as Christians, then death is little more than the beginning. Our lives here are not worth comparing to the magnitude of life that God has in store for those who love him. Mourn out of sensitivity for others, but not out of hopelessness. Death is gain. Death is victory. Death is the period at the end of the first sentence of a novel.

This doesn’t mean that death should ever be sought or sold. Christ doesn’t necessarily call us to die for him, but to live for him. If living for him leads to our death, then so be it. We don’t falter from his calling to avoid death, and we don’t seek martyrdom. We live hard and love harder. Fear nothing but God, not even death, over which we have the highest triumph. Live until you die and then keep going.

Taking Nursery Rhymes Seriously 2

2008-08-18T11:23:00.009-05:00

Nietzsche lay on the floor. His wet eyes drifted disconnected, noting little of the familiar dusty room. His head pressed against his ear, crumpling it against the dry-rotted rug. His mouth hung open, and his tongue lolled across his pointed teeth as he panted. From where the old woman sat, she could hear his stomach growl.

She had once been petite, even beautiful, but uncounted winters of sitting and sewing bore a heavy tax on her appearance. Her kinked wire spectacles rested perched and alert on her tiny button nose. Behind them, her eyes were the crystalline blue of the fading past. Her cheeks hung like dough from her fragile jaws, and they twitched slightly when she blinked.

She sat at an old wooden table. One of the legs was uneven, so a ripped and coverless yellow-paged Bible kept the wobble out. The crossbars on her chair were broken and dusty, but the old thing had held for decades, and it had no reason to fail her now. She sat with a cheap china teacup in her hand. The tin kettle rested on the faded runner, but spiders had made homes in it long ago, and her cup held no liquid. Tea was a luxury she could not afford, but imagined things came free, and she sipped instead warm thoughts and recollections.

She remembered her husband John, now passed near ten years ago. Cancer in the lungs. She had sat beside him from the first blood-choked cough to the last. Nietzsche had been there too, watching the man he loved with eyes not understanding. She remembered his whimper then, confused and woeful.

John had not left her much. He had been a schoolteacher. In life, money had been tight, but they had managed. In John’s absence, the tiny house had steadily crumbled to disrepair and mold. Others had moved into the house, eight-legged and insignificant. They built their cities in the dark corners beyond her reach and amongst the trunks of neglected furniture. The woman herself had an arrangement with them, and they each kept to their own quarters: them to their shadows and she to her well-trod path in the carpet. If Nietzsche had noticed the decay of the building, his eyes did not betray it.

The dog whined and the old woman looked at him blankly. Nietzsche’s ribs pressed out against his thin skin, and she could see outlines of the bones through his fine brown fur. In days past, she had spoken to him. Even carried on conversation with him. As the years drifted by, however, she gradually fell to a silence that matched his, and she could not recollect the last time her dry throat had produced voice.

She understood the dog’s whine, though, and after a few minutes’ preparation, she hoisted herself up and made to cross the room. Her walk was stilted and uneven. She moved like a derelict machination: gears and cogs were missing, but it was still capable of shambling to a directive with an eerie kind of determination. Her ice-laden eyes refrained from excess use. Lazy-lidded, they lay bolted fast to the cupboard over the moldy kitchen counter.

Behind her, Nietzsche’s head rose in hopeful anticipation. His old brain remembered just as hers did that the old woman had placed a bone in that cupboard one week prior. It had still borne the remnants of the meat that it had been pulled from, and the smell of decay had crawled from the cabinet for days, seemingly unnoticed by the old woman. The memory of that now-gone odor made Nietzsche’s stomach ache in a new way, and he whined hopefully in the old woman’s direction.

She reached the counter and leaned on it for support. The dog’s eyes followed her trembling hand as it reached for the false-ivory cupboard handle. She pulled at the small door, and it came loose with a pop. A slick aroma of rotted meat puffed into the room and reached Nietzsche’s acute nose. Even as the smell excited him, his weary heart dropped in disappointment. It was not an odor of presence, but an odor of past. Even before the old woman turned back toward the table, Nietzsche knew that the flesh-encrusted bone was gone, and only the aura of its fragrance remained.

The woman said nothing, but left the cabinet open as she shuffled back to her shaky chair and empty teacup. Nietzsche’s head fell back to the rug, sending up a plume of dust. His anger burned toward the woman, for he knew she had betrayed him. In the winter of night, as the hound had slept, the old woman had staggered to cupboard in midnight hunger and claimed the meat for her own. He could smell the decay on her breath even now, and he despised her for her treachery.

In the corners of the room, the spiders twitched with joy. The smell released from the cupboard would draw the flies again, and there would be a feast that night.

--------

Well, that was rather depressing. It turns out most nursery rhymes are pretty dark. If ending on this one leaves a bad taste in your mouth, here's a cheerier one. I promise!

Furball

2008-08-12T00:02:00.009-05:00

Just piddling around with fuzziness.

I confess, the music is far too majestic for the subject matter, but I couldn't let you listen to something boring. That would be irresponsible. Guess the artist anyone?

Acquisition

2008-07-28T21:30:00.002-05:00

Life is a series of procedures.

Life is accomplishing Procedure A in order to acquire Item B, which you know is just a snack to tide you over to acquiring the ultimate Item Z. Item B tucked safely away, you return to Procedure A in order to acquire Items C-Y. Throughout the whole ordeal, you might change procedures once or twice, but your steady march through items remains constant. In a cosmic irony, everyone eventually discovers that Item Z is Death shortly after its acquisition. Obtaining Item Z not only allows, but also forces you to abandon all procedures.

Sacrifice is abandoning Procedure A, forfeiting all additional items, and skipping to Item Z so that someone else is able to continue acquiring items with their procedures.

Selfishness is whenever someone else becomes a procedure.

Codependence is whenever someone else becomes an item.

Short sightedness is persisting under the delusion that an item that is not Item Z is Item Z.

Optimism is proclaiming the supposed independent value of each item.

Pessimism is acknowledging Item Z for what it is.

Loss is a break in a procedure.

So is Vacation.

Love is believing that a person is Item Z

So is Hate.

Boredom is an awareness of procedures.

Apathy is an awareness of items.

Depression is illogically reducing existence to a manageable analogy.

And Here's What I Think of Kate Chopin

2008-07-12T15:07:00.010-05:00

Bill Dye

ENGL 2270-02

Ms. Rugan

1 July 2008

Response to Kate Chopin’s “At the ‘Cadian Ball,” “The Storm,” “Désireé’s Baby”

The classic, thoughtful, and delicately pretentious tone of Chopin’s work reminds one of an acquaintance whose overuse of superlatives causes you to disbelieve anything he or she might ever say. Her vibrant characters leap from the page as stirring true-to-life stereotypes with just enough depth and development to encourage the praise of critics worldwide. Her plots are brilliantly predictable, each supporting a cast of creatively re-named characters from her other works injected into fresh (and yet wondrously identical) storylines. These attributes hold true in her short stories “At the ‘Cadian Ball,” The Storm,” and “Désireé’s Baby.”

At first glance, “At the ‘Cadian Ball” appears to deviate substantially from Chopin’s customary thematic cymbal-clashing (as typified in her singularly protracted novel “The Awakening”) by appearing to portray a character as the “soulless siren” stereotype as opposed to her long-time favorite “powerless against the masculine forces arrayed against her” stereotype. In addition, her criticism of the institution of marriage is watered down substantially in this work to the point that it can merely be described as 'very heavy-handed.' However, “The Storm” throws all these artistic ventures to the wind, and Chopin returns abruptly to the characters that we know and love so very huggy much. Although the characters have the same names and marital statuses of those found in “At the ‘Cadian Ball,” the characters themselves have been mysteriously replaced with those from “The Awakening” and “The Story of an Hour.” This permutation of personalities allows the reader to, once again, learn the timeless morals of “marriage is the devil” and “infidelity is nature’s relational panacea.” However, these stories alone do not sufficiently address Chopin’s other favorite literary tool, the melodramatic demonization of men. This tool she employs with the subtly of a blacksmith in her short story “Désireé’s Baby.” This story features a dazzlingly archetypical southern male who goes by the name of Armand. Chopin cleverly misleads the reader into thinking momentarily that the major theme of the work is racial in nature, only to throw back the veil at the last minute to reveal that she is, in fact, dealing with a far more powerful thesis: a description of the incarnate evil of the Y chromosome and it’s subsequent effect on any clichéd, well-meaning, and hopelessly subordinate women who happen to be in the vicinity. A reader may also find these characters to be puzzlingly familiar. There is purpose in this as well. Like the previous story, these characters are also reincarnations of those from “The Awakening.” Chopin’s use of identical characters is a deliberate tactic to avoid accusations of creativity, fluidity, and originality.

Order and Chaos

2008-07-12T12:59:00.004-05:00

“It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.”

~Douglas Hofstadter

Holmes

2008-06-24T23:00:00.001-05:00

"Dear lord, Holmes, why would anyone do in the frosted mini wheat?"

"It's elementary, Watson. It appears that we have a cereal killer on our hands. Come now! The game is afoot!"

Muse Continues to Like String Cheese

2008-05-29T15:16:00.006-05:00

Don't worry. I'll keep you posted on any further developments in this ongoing dramatic saga.

Grand Theft Vita

2008-05-27T20:03:00.010-05:00

Over the last week, I’ve been playing an inexcusable amount of video games. Specifically, Grand Theft Auto IV. In one day, I played 10 hours. Heaven help me, there are no stopping points in this game!

The worst part is, I’m actually involved in the storyline, which isn’t something that usually happens with video games. I actually care about the characters and what happens to them. If it was just the driving around and crazy antics, I think I would have a much easier time spending my days on less wasteful endeavors. As it is, the fate of Nico Bellic, sociopathic homicidal carjacker extraordinaire, is of more concern to me than the characters of my own book, which I should be writing instead of playing games.

On my way to drop off the energy check today (one of my first ventures into the outside world since my abduction by GTA) I realized something truly frightening. I missed the place where I was supposed to turn, and my first instinct was to drop the car into first, throw on the emergency break, blaze a tire-squealing 180º spin out, and continue on my merry way. For those of you unfamiliar with the etiquette of normal driving, this is somewhat of a faux pas.

Thus, I’ve compiled a list of ways in which playing this game has altered my mind for better or worse.

Things I Learned From Grand Theft Auto IV that I Didn’t Necessarily Want To

1. The most efficient way to pull a U-turn involves the handbrake and a serious tax on your tire treads.

2. All wrecks are survivable and injury only occurs if your body passes through the windshield at speeds exceeding 100 mph.

3. Fast food can cure bullet wounds.

4. All vehicles are equipped with GPS locators that conveniently point out the locations of any police personnel.

5. Speeding is not a punishable offense.

6. Reckless driving is not a punishable offense.

7. Vehicular homicide is not a punishable offense unless the victim is a police officer, in which case any nearby cops will pursue you for no further than 500 yards before deciding that you’re not worth their time.

8. For people driving sports cars, the road is entirely populated with other sports cars. For people driving trucks, the road is entirely populated with other trucks. For people driving motorcycles, the road is entirely populated with irresistible temptations to defy physics, innumerable death traps, awesome wheelie-while-shooting opportunities, and, yes, other motorcycles.

9. Everyone is extremely mortal and fragile, except for you, being evidently made of a titanium alloy.

10. Damage to your vehicle is negligible, because you can always just grab another one with no negative side effects.

Needless to say, I feel as though I’m somewhat of a road hazard now.

Oh yeah, and hit up the vote in the sidebar. -->

Blue Cubes

2008-05-23T21:25:00.001-05:00

Cubes!
(Music: Angels and Airwaves)

Leaf Blower

2008-05-23T01:48:00.006-05:00

Went and saw Narnia. The dryads intrigued me, and I wanted to try and figure out the effects used to make them. I think I worked it out. They come together to form my name at the end there. You can't see it that great, but, hey, it was my first try and I used a font that was a bit too noisy. Mark II will be better.

This did not qualify as a "successful time-killing creation" as defined here, and it wasn't because the rendering was quick. Leaves are fickle and frustrating things, and there is no "drift delightfully on the wind" button.

Oh yeah, anybody wanna try to guess where the music comes from?

Quantum Silmarillion

2008-05-21T12:28:00.018-05:00

I was just sitting around this morning jamming to No Doubt, when suddenly everything teamed up with everything else, and they both ambushed me.

I’ve been listening to Tolkien’s Silmarillion lately (audio books: God's gift to the easily distracted), so naturally my head is flooded with the music of the Ainur and the songs of Ilúvatar (which, I imagine, are somewhat dissimilar to No Doubt). However, my mind rarely gives full thought to any single notion, but instead leaps haphazardly from one idea to the next like a portly frog on fickle lily pads, allowing no time for meditation or contemplation. Therefore, it’s not unexpected that I should find myself thinking of the Silmarillion, chaos theory, and quantum mechanics all around the same time. I’m looking into Ritalin.

Anyway, one of the main issues addressed in the first section of the Silmarillion is the nature of evil and an explanation of its presence. Though this is a topic of debate and exploration that has existed for millennia, Tolkien handles it with a litheness of tongue that would put a philosopher to shame.

Modern western moral dichotomy divides things as good or evil. Tolkien brushes this perception aside and adheres instead to a view held by many mythologies: a conflict of order and beauty versus chaos and discord.

In this arena, Melkor, a clearly Satanic figure, breeds disharmony in the chorus of the Ainur (effectively angels). But Ilúvatar, who is God, weaves Melkor’s cacophony into his own greater symphony, creating something even more magnificent. “And thou, Melkor,” Ilúvatar said, “shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.”

Silly Melkor. Like he’s gonna try and out-create Ilúvatar.

Anyway, this reminded me Einstein, who, on the subject of quantum mechanics, famously quipped, “I am conviced that [God] does not throw dice.” He said this because there is a premise of uncertainty bound in the nature of quantum physics. It is impossible to accurately predict both the location and velocity of a single subatomic particle at the same time. (This all falls under the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics)

What this implies is that the fabric of the universe is inherently random. This called to my mind one of my favorite quotes. Douglas R. Hofstadter said, “It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order.”

As a parenthetical, although this has been a favorite quote of mine for some time, I just recently made the connection that Hofstadter is the author of this book, which Russell might find significant.

I’m sure that there are plenty of physics students out there who would be unsurprised to hear that Satan is in-part responsible for quantum mechanics.

By the way, for those of you who are interested in these kinds of things, check out the Chaos Game. This is an application of an algorithm explored by a guy named Barnsley. Effectively, randomly placed points, when the rules described here are imposed on them, create ordered systems. In this case, a fractal called the Sierpiński triangle.

An Afternoon Well Spent

2008-05-20T03:03:00.011-05:00

I consider time-killing activities on the computer to be successful only if the time it takes to render the finished product exceeds the time that it took to actually design the thing. That is to say, the computer itself has to spend more time on it than I did. Anything else I have to consider an actual project. If a project has no purpose, I have a much harder time justifying my wasted effort. That being said, this is a successful time-killing creation.

UPDATE: At the prompting of my friend Russell (under the guise of my nemesis Schmarmy Scott) I've added some catchy music (courtesy of John Murray) and whoosh sound effects.

People Who Are Far More Awesome Than I Will Ever Be: Addition 1

2008-05-08T15:45:00.004-05:00

I want one so bad.

I hear they run on maple syrup.

Deception

2008-05-01T12:30:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I like to eat mini pizzas and pretend to be a giant.

Usually, I'm still hungry afterwards.

Video Project for a Class

2008-04-30T10:13:00.000-05:00

Behold! Group projectness!

I'm pretty sure this is the completed version.

...and no, in real life I don't have a horribly fake New Yorker accent.

Make a Friend Day 2

2008-04-30T02:16:00.001-05:00

Today is Make a Friend Day!

Today, make friends with someone you don't know by secretly borrowing their iPod without their permission. Then, take the iPod to your computer and make a copy of the list of their 5,144 songs. Then, erase all the music from their iPod and replace it with 5,144 copies of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." Then, rename all the "Never Gonna Give You Up" songs after all the songs on the the list that you copied. Be sure to get all the star ratings right, or they might suspect something. Now you can covertly return the iPod from whence it came.

Above: Replaced Songs
Below: Disguised "Never Gonna Give You Up's"

Muse Likes String Cheese

2008-04-27T16:08:00.000-05:00

Taking Nursery Rhymes Seriously 1

2008-04-25T20:19:00.000-05:00

The height was impossible, and the walls were too smooth. They rose up into the black like an infinite iron tunnel. Somewhere up there, though, I knew there was open air. I could feel the draft on my face and legs. Somewhere up there… was freedom.

I’ve always been small.

Back home, food was scarce and I was the first one to be forced out. Mom never had much patience for her weaker children, and, truth be told, I’m lucky to be alive.

For a long time, I just drifted through life, going wherever the wind took me. When I came of age, I went through the stereotypical femme fatale scenarios so classic to my kind. Though small, I consider myself more determined than most, and I managed to avoid the usual pitfalls and man-eaters. Indefatigable, I pressed on through the trials and, in the process, I guess I sort of found myself.

A deep rumble echoed through the walls from the outside, and I knew the storm was getting close. Time was a lit match, and the course before me was beyond anything I’d ever attempted before. But it was something I had to do. Something I had to prove to myself. I had to be more than small. I had to be more than just determined. I needed to be able to accomplish something. Something unheard of.

I deliberately broke my musings and leapt to the wall. It was going to be a long climb, and I didn’t know if I had the strength. I convinced myself that I did, however, and I pressed on, dauntless.

I climbed for what felt like hours before I saw the square of light above me. It was jagged around the edges, stuffed with dying leaves and twigs. It was still so far away, and my legs were getting tired.

Then came the rain.

At first, it only made the going difficult. Rivulets rushed past me, down into the darkness below. They slickened the walls and splashes stung my eyes, but I was still able to climb. The ending in sight, I was refortified. I’d come this far, I’d not fall now.

But then came the downpour.

The debris at the top of the shaft dislodged and fell toward me like the hand of God. The initial blow ripped away my tentative grip on the slippery metal, and for a moment I was airborne.

I tumbled, water and filth all around me. Below there was only darkness, wherever below was. I was disoriented and lost, falling without hope.

Somehow I found the wall and managed to regain my grip. I clung to the wet surface with unbridled tenacity, my life hanging on my last ounce of strength.

But my recovery was short lived. The next surge brought me down in a flood. Down and down, sputtering and drowning, I rode the rapids like a dust speck, helpless and, unavoidably,

small.

Consciousness prodded tentatively at my body like a stranger to a corpse, and I awoke. I was soaked and lying on my back on a concrete slab. The sun, however, stood high in the sky, chaining down the wet and turning it to vapor.

I regained my feet in the rising steam and looked upward. The clouds were gone, and the water was disappearing.

I brushed the filth from my body and turned to the pipe that had spat me out. Water still dribbled out of the dark opening. The inside walls would be slimy and more treacherous than before. The tube rose high above me, so high that I lost the top of it in the brilliance of the sun.

I was weak. My body was bruised and beaten; my legs tired beyond all my experience. But I was not finished here. This was my task. My task that I set before myself.

I approached the opening and it loomed over me. I climbed in without pausing to think. I couldn’t risk my strength giving out now. I picked my way through the muck and made it to the back wall. The walls climbed upward, ever-high to my sight. But this time, far above me, there was a pinpoint of light. The height made me feel small. Small indeed. But the light made me feel determined.

Weary but undefeated, I leapt to the wall and began my climb anew. This time, I would see my way to the top.

Rehashing Old Turf

2008-04-24T12:14:00.000-05:00

Beholds! Screen Shots! (Click on 'em to make 'em bigger)
I deviated pretty heavily from the diagrams. Fur and wires are difficult to pull off without jacking up the required memory quite a bit. So now he's all covered in rubber! And armor!

All Hail the Horror of the Blue Rider

2008-04-23T20:30:00.000-05:00

It's this thing I volunteered to make for this guy. A little rough around the edges, but ya win some, ya lose some. (It might look black initially; the first few seconds are pretty dark.)

Why I Can Never Go Back to Am Mart Again

2008-04-23T19:48:00.000-05:00

If you’ve spent any significant amount of time with me, then you’ll know I love sandwiches. Simple, clean, wholesome: the sandwich is the way to go. I’m particularly partial to sandwiches from a little place near my apartment called America’s Market. Half liquor store, half deli, Am Mart regularly delivers much higher quality sandwiches than the one pictured here for a pretty decent price. And, since it’s within walking distance of my apartment, eating there means I get to avoid Baton Rouge traffic.

Anyway, “Russell!” I cried from my computer desk, “What are you doin’ for dinner?”

“Am Mart!” came the reply.

Joy of joys! Am Mart! Sandwiches! Decent Prices!

With images of turkey and pepperjack dancing through my head, I followed Russell to his car and we headed off to Am Mart. Mere seconds later, we arrived.

Behold! A pleasant surprise! It was our favorite sandwich maker guy who was behind the counter! It’s the guy who claims that he’s got really good dexterity and can walk a quarter across his knuckles!

He took our orders and told us that Dr. Phil was crazy and we meandered around the store, perusing the myriad of intoxicating beverages while we waited for our sandwiches.

Russell was getting his drink from the soda fountain, a mixture of sweet tea and Powerade (“It’s called an Arnold Palmer,” he told me, "But you're supposed to use lemonade."), when the front door opened and in walked a familiar face.

My legs gelatinized and my smile clattered on the floor.

“Russell,” I whispered fiercely, “Scott just walked in.”

“Who?”

“…Scott.”

“Smarmy Scott?” Russell asked.

“Yeah. He just walked into the door and took a right by the ice cream.”

“No way.”

“Yes.”

Then suddenly he was behind us! I avoided eye contact and Russell retreated behind the cigar display. I followed, doing my best to be tiny and camouflaged. Russell apologized for laughing at my dilemma, and we took to the aisles, watching the security mirrors to keep tabs on Smarmy Scott while we waited for our sandwiches to be done.

Scott engaged a fellow Am Mart patron in friendly conversation, enabling me to secure vocal confirmation, as if the protective glasses weren’t proof enough. Though I couldn’t hear what the conversation was about, the patron had a slightly bewildered look on his face after it was over.

“Russell and Bill?” the sandwich maker announced to the store.

We made our way to the front, took our bag, and left as quickly as possible.

Merely being in the same room as Scott compelled me to thoroughly wash my hands before partaking in my sandwich, for which I no longer had an appetite.

So, if this guy has been carefully following me for the past few days, watching my every movement and waiting with unknown intent, then you all know what description to give the police when I disappear. Bono-like and goes by Scott. Should this happen, please act quickly, and don’t let him keep me locked in his musty old basement with his poor decrepit shut-in mother for very long. I’m afraid of the dark and people who seek to molest me. And decrepit shut-in mothers.

Jibblies.

The Orca

2008-04-20T22:43:00.000-05:00

A little clip I made.
It doesn't really serve a purpose.

How Evangelism, Homicidal Intent, and Repressed Sexuality are Expressed through Identical Introductory Conversation

2008-04-20T17:03:00.001-05:00

So I was shopping in Wal-Mart today in the groceries section. It’s a Sunday afternoon, so the place was pretty packed. I was on my way from the soft drink aisle to the water aisle trying in vain to locate bottled Propel. As I was moving through the crowd, a tight congestion occurred and, my experience from working at Sam’s Club kicking in, I moved to the front of my cart so that I could more easily guide it through traffic. A questionable maneuver, I admit, but one that I’ve found particularly helpful at times.

Coming through the crowd in my direction was a man pushing middle-age. He had slicked back black hair, a five o’ clock shadow, and what I identified as stylish European sunglasses. The man could have probably picked up fourth or fifth place in a Bono look-alike contest.

Anyway, as I passed him, tentatively shuffling my way through the traffic, he looked me right in the eye and said, “Don’t ever cross my path like that again.”

I blinked. My well-mannered roots kicked in, however, and I replied with the always-acceptable fallback, “Yes, sir,” and continued on my way.

Odd, I thought. And was there a hint of a smile on the guy’s face? Did he recognize me? Is this someone who I know and he was just pulling my leg? He did look a little familiar.

I turned and looked at the man, and he turned and looked at me, a strange half-smile on his face.

Maybe this is a guy from church or something and he thinks I recognize him. Maybe he thinks I’m someone I’m not.

Anyway, I turned back around and continued my quest for flavored water. I gave one last look over my shoulder, hoping recognition would spring on me, but I had no such luck. The man, however, was still looking in my direction.

But I carried on, feeling a little guilty for perhaps getting in the man’s way. Something about my personality makes me feel bad about inconveniencing other people, especially if it’s a grievous enough offense to cause them to break the speech barrier.

I found the water aisle and started down it, picking my way through the crowd and trying not to get in anyone else’s way. As I’m walking, I heard a voice coming closer behind me, obviously talking on the phone.

“…no, not right now. I’ve gotta go; I’m following somebody.”

I turned around just in time to see Bono-look-alike putting away his cell phone.

Uh oh, I thought, here comes a lecture.

“Excuse me,” the man said, “I know you’re busy; you’re shopping and I’m shopping, but I wanted to ask you a question, do you mind?”

I shrugged and rested my weight on my shopping cart, “No, that’s fine, sir.”

“Don’t call me ‘sir,’” the man told me, “I’m a working man. I’m in the army.”

I stifled a “Yes, sir,” and managed to say, “Okay.”

“Tell me, son. Do you always just kind of drift through the grocery store?”

Suddenly it his me. The demeaning attitude, the stiff attempt at informal conversation. This man was trying to save me. He saw my long hair and apathetic posture and saw a soul in need of redemption.

I actually get this quite a bit from fundamental Christians. I’m a believer myself, but I guess I just don’t look it. But I usually let them do their thing and preach me the gospel so that they can feel good about themselves and continue on their merry way. It’s no inconvenience to me, and I like talking about spiritual matters.

“No,” I said, “I was just trying to maneuver that passage back there.”

“Passage?” the man said in mild disgust, “Passage? I’m not God. I’m a child of God, but I’m not God. You understand.”

“I do,” I replied, my suspicions confirmed.

“Am I offending you? You tell me if you want me to go away. I never do this… It’s just I saw you and…”

“No, no,” I said, trying to encourage the man to share his faith, “It’s okay. I’m intrigued.”

The man looked at me hard for a moment, and the seconds stretched out like miles.

“Well,” the man said, “I saw you passing by and you interested me.”

There was a pause long enough for me to determine that it was my turn to speak, and, not really knowing what to say, I told the truth.

“You’re, uh, sunglasses, are actually what caught my attention,” I told him.

“Oh no, no,” the man said, pulling his sunglasses off, “They’re not shades. They’re for protection. I work on an oil rig, see?”

And in the army, allegedly.

“Oh,” I said.

The man made an impatient noise and made to move away but came back into the conversation. “Are you alone?”

Warning flags! Where was this going?

However, the man didn’t really intimidate me, and I’m pretty sure my being alone in Wal-Mart on a Sunday afternoon was a pretty safe situation, so I went ahead and told the truth.

“I am.”

“You’re shopping here. Getting your groceries. You’re just a child, at least to me you are.”

Another long pause.

“What are we talking about?” I asked.

“We’re not,” the man said, “See, that’s just it. I’m steering it.”

At this point, I kind of just wanted to cut to the chase. The man was obviously no social butterfly and if he wanted to share his beliefs with me, he wasn’t going about it very efficiently.

“Well, then, why did you stop me?”

“I don’t… I just… What’s your phone—God blesses all people, did you know that? It’s what the Bible says.”

Was he was about to ask my phone number…

“I’ve heard something like that,” I told the man.

“Married?”

“…What, me?”

“Yes.”

“No, I’m not married.”

“But you’re clearly single.”

“No, I’m not sing—”

“And young. Obviously young. I’m Scott.” The man extended his hand in greeting.

I shook it, “Good to meet you Scott.”

“And your name is?”

“Bill.”

“Bill, yes, Bill.” Something about the man made me hate the sound of my own name on his tongue.

“What do you want to say to me Scott?”

“I… I just… I never do this, you see?”

“Alright…”

“And when I saw you back there… I just felt like I needed to talk to you.”

“Okay…”

A long pause.

“I got these glasses from my psychiatrist. He tells me it’s a good thing.”

“You have a psychiatrist?”

“Of course! It’s how I made all my money, I’ll tell you that. But don’t worry, I’m just a little crazy. ADD. Which at my age, at the age of thi—actually, I’m not going to tell you my age.”

“…Okay…”

Silence.

“So are you going to give me your phone number or not?”

My stomach knotted up, the creepiness rating of this conversation was already through the roof, and this question just doubled it.

“No, I don’t see any reason to give you my phone number,” I told him.

“Good,” Scott said, “Good man.”

“Well, it was good to meet you, Scott,” I said, pulling the drawstring on the conversation.

He reached out to shake my hand, and I had little choice but to accept it.

“It was good to meet you, Bill. Your’s is a face I won’t forget.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“You know, there are some people who God blesses… and then there’s you.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Who he doesn’t bless?”

The man laughed. “Well, I didn’t say that. Good to meet you, Bill.”

“Adios,” I said.

The man walked away.

I grabbed some lemon Propel off the shelf and decided it was time to leave Wal-Mart. As I was walking to the checkout stands, I saw him in main aisle, watching me from afar. It was so creepy that it made my stomach throw a lasso around my air pipe and pull itself up.

I checked out quickly and made for my car. The entire way home, I kept checking my mirrors, mortified that Army Scott was following me. Visions of him finding my apartment and coming in during the night were flickering on the edge of my imagination, and I washed my hands as soon as I got home.

Now all I can think about is that somewhere, a middle-aged Bono-look-alike is housed up in his ramshackle apartment fantasizing about me.

Jibblies.

For Kelleigh

2008-04-20T13:56:00.000-05:00

Half-Off

2008-04-14T18:07:00.000-05:00

3 ⁵/₁₆” x 2 ¹/₁₆”

These are the dimensions of American life.

They’re the dimensions of your credit card. Your driver’s license. Your Tropical Smoothie Café punch card. Your business card. Your debit card. Your hotel room key that you accidentally stole from Marriott last year. Your social security card. Your library card. Your Auto Insurance Identification card. Your Dillard’s gift card that your grandmother gave you even though you never shop at Dillard’s. Your University I.D. Your Blockbuster card. Your “half-off all Johnny’s Pizza” card for teachers only that you swiped from your mom.

3 ⁵/₁₆” x 2 ¹/₁₆”

Weighty Matters

2008-04-04T12:02:00.002-05:00

Everything in the universe is attracted to everything else.

Originally, our concept of gravity hinged on the pull between points found at the average of objects’ masses. Although our understanding of gravity has changed some in the past centuries (fields and aberrations and other such craziness), this primary concept remains. Everything is attracted to everything else.

What’s more is that this effect snowballs. When something slightly more massive than the surrounding bits of matter starts to draw stuff in, it becomes heavier, increasing its gravitational pull.

Gravity is, quite literally, what makes the world go round. Though it constitutes a basic underpinning of the universe, we still don’t know very much about it (See other universal underpinnings: light, time). However, from a strictly observational point of view, there appears to be two separate kinds of gravity, which I will give the pseudonymic dichotomy of Good and Bad.

Good gravity is responsible for the grand celestial orchestra that is in constant celebration all around us. It dictates the movements of planets, moons, stars, and galaxies. And clusters of galaxies. And clusters of galactic clusters, and so on. Good gravity is what allows life to form, and, indeed, it is what allows life to continue. It forms worlds and hangs stars; it is the breath of the universe. Good gravity generates order.

Then there is Bad gravity, or gravity for gravity’s sake. Bad gravity is found when a single object accrues too much mass. When this happens, the object is crushed under its own weight and loses its identity. Instead it becomes a menacing darkness, an all-ensnaring stellar beast. It destroys and rends, breaking even the laws of physics as it munches holes in the order of the universe.

The differences between these two forms of gravity are almost nonexistent. Anyone who has fallen and broken a limb or skinned a knee knows that gravity corrupts. Anyone who has studied black holes for any span knows that absolute gravity corrupts absolutely. It seems that the degree of gravity that any single object is given authority over is the only distinguishing factor between maintaining order and mindless self-indulgence. This is how it should be done: gravity, as all things, in moderation.

That is to say, without gravity, nothing can grow and nothing can form. All things need gravity in order to survive. So gravitational anarchy is a fundamental fallacy. The opposite end of the spectrum bears no fruit as well. Though some say order may be imposed by a single object ordained with boundless gravity, nature shows us that this yields only destruction. Systems are sustained by centralized gravitational governors, a.k.a. stars, that hold gravity only as is necessary to maintain the balance of those objects that orbit it.

As a final note, I would like to point out that there are things that deliberately go against gravity. Birds, spaceships, exotic particles. These things add uniqueness and diversity to the world. They inspire joy and awe. These case examples do not seek to overthrow gravity as a whole, but only to defy it temporarily as it applies exclusively to them. In a way, it is the responsibility of gravitational rebels to break the monotony of a completely ordered universe. In the same way that happiness cannot exist without the contrasting idea of sadness, beauty cannot exist without a background of utilitarianism.

I like my coffee black just like my metal.

Make-a-Friend Day!

2008-03-30T18:22:00.000-05:00

Today is Make-a-Friend Day!
Make friends with someone you don't know today by accessing their computer while they are out of the room and applying this GIF as their desktop background! Everybody loves a party panda!

(Click image for larger size)

An Exciting Excerpt from English 3025- British Literature I

2008-03-24T18:15:00.000-05:00

The following is a genuine replication, to the best of my note-taking abilities, of an actual paragraph of lecture in Professor Sandiford’s British Lit class.

Sandiford:

“We understand that, in Chaucer’s time, in the context of this cultural background, given the variety of individuals gathered together in a circumstance such as this, that it would be unreasonable not to expect certain interactions, certain energies, certain exchanges, conflicts, arguments, disagreements, or certain (chuckles) dissociation of humors to occur since there will always be individuals, these persons, who bring to the table their unique personalities and characteristics that have a nature of stubbornness, of big-headedness, of a desire to do whatever they want to do, to throw the rules to the dogs, who seem to have a dedication to breaking the rules, or disobeying the rules, even after these rules have already been established (laughs). Such a character, or personality: this particular, um, bent of personality can be uncovered, can be, um, exhumed, in a way, from the Tale of the Miller.”

Making a Splash

2008-03-20T14:11:00.000-05:00

In honor of the cinemazation of Dr. Seuss’ classic children’s book Horton Hears a Who, IHOP has installed several temporary items on their menu so sensational that my writing about my experience with one of them supersedes doing my homework. Of course, ceremonies as illustrious as cleaning my ears supersede doing my homework. Regardless, these Who-themed dishes do in fact merit note.

First is the obligatory green eggs and ham. This entrée I politely passed on. Abandoning conventional methods of greening scrambled eggs (e.g. food coloring) IHOP has chosen to mix into the mash either puréed broccoli or spinach. Two things that I normally enjoy, greens and eggs, that I’m not sure should be smashed together in such a way.

Next are Who-cakes, which are basically pancakes with two different colorful syrups with rainbow chocolate candies and a sucker stuck in the top. That’s right, a sucker. Again, several things that I like, albeit not necessarily at the same time.

Which brings me to the Beezlenut Splash, a drink that my friend Abide ordered. Admittedly, I’m a solid victim for a clever marketing ploy, so I was intrigued and ordered one in addition to my water. Beezlenut Splash is Sprite with tiny Jello cubes suspended in the carbonation. Two things I enjoy that turned out to be tons of fun together. By the way, if you haven’t eaten Jello through a straw, I highly recommend trying it at least once. The sound alone is cause for rejoicing.

However, as the meal continued, the Jello cubes became somewhat annoying, and I found myself more frequently reaching for my water over my Beezlenut Splash. It seems to me that we are creatures of constancy, preferring comfort to novelty. Beezlenut Splash is a heterogeneous drink that clashes with our desire to be able to predict easily the results of our actions. When we reach for Sprite, we want to taste an uninterrupted flow of Sprite. We dislike unexpected interruptions or aberrations, and we feel similarly about misleading cues. Reaching for a glass of water only to find that it is in fact Kool-Aid “Invisible Watermelon” is an uncomfortable experience.

In as such, you could dismally argue that simply adding to the cultural white noise is more aesthetically correct than being an artist and going against the grain. Heap on the pop and hip-hop and call it a day. You could point out that there are only a limited number of ideas, and, thusly, the extent of their permutations is likewise limited. J. R. R. Tolkien noted that man cannot create, only “subcreate.” Novelty is, perhaps, just combining two or three things that we like and hoping that we enjoy the offspring as much.

However, I don’t want to buy into this. I think this is the easy way out. Maybe it’s true that novelty is only a basic amalgam of pre-explored ideas. Maybe true originality is unattainable. I think this is all the more reason to creatively assault convention with the courage of a Germanic Tribal warrior. It should be more motivation to rail against the impossible, to try and try again to create and to mate ideas yielding complex and engaging offspring. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon laments that there is nothing new under the sun. I’m not about to go toe to toe with the wisest man in the world, but I don’t think that this fact conflicts with the motivation of creativity. We can’t just lie down and take wave after wave of iThis and iThat, keeping our ear to the latest celebrity scandals and styles while vegging out to reality TV. Maybe we can’t make new things, but we can take a page out of Ezra Pound’s book and at least try to “Make it new.”

Cerebral Combustion Imminent

2008-03-06T13:30:00.000-06:00

I would like to meet the man who can scramble this thing up and then sort it back out again. It's a four-dimensional Rubik's Cube.

Lunch

2008-03-05T16:25:00.000-06:00

We all bring different things to the table. Sandwiches, thermoses full of soup, canned ravioli, bananas, last night’s chicken, and even the occasional microwavable mini-meal. Our meals all make their trip in different containers. The disposable brown paper bag, the stylish insulated hiking pack, or 1950’s tin lunch boxes. Maybe we put together our own food this morning before we caught the bus, or maybe we simply eat whatever our parents packed for us. Some of us just buy whatever they’re serving in the cafeteria that day.

Some like to sit with people who have similar lunches to their own. PB&Jers stick together, and there’s a hard-boiled egg fad going on at table two. Others like to sit with people who pack their lunches in similar containers. The brown-paper-baggers have card game every lunch break, and those with Smurf lunchboxes form their own little clique (only one girl in that group, though).

However, there are the few, the brave few, who choose not to let what other people are having for lunch matter so very much. These are the friendly nomads, the wanderers of the lunchroom. Unbound by categorical restrictions, they bring their Alf lunchbox to eat with the brown-paper-baggers. They know that just because people bring their lunches in similar containers, it doesn’t mean that their lunches are necessarily the same. While the stylish-hiking-packers may seem to all prefer apples, some pack oranges inside their insulated multi-pocket zippered bags. It’s a commonly known fact that brown-paper-baggers generally prefer Squeeze-Its or Mondo to wash down their sandwiches, but some brave a can of RC Cola wrapped in a napkin so the condensation won’t weaken the structure of their lunch sack. In fact, the lunchroom wanderers know that two people who bring their lunches in different containers might actually have more food in common with one another than with the people that they regularly sit with. Smurfette happens to like peanut-butter and pickle sandwiches, a trait shared only by a boy who is desperately trying to pass as a dyed-in-the-wool PB&Jer.

The wanderer knows these things, and because of this, he can sit with whomever he wants in the lunchroom. It doesn’t matter if the girl next to him packed her own lunch or just eats what her parents packed. It doesn’t matter if she brought her own food or eats whatever the cafeteria is serving. The wanderer can sit down next to her and say, “Hey, I’ll trade you my Funions for your spicy Chex Mix,” or, “Wow! I’ve never thought about bringing waffles to lunch. I might start doing that myself. By the way, you’ve gotta taste this peanut butter and pickle sandwich. I know it sounds weird, but just try one bite. You might like it.” Sometimes the person he’s sitting next to gets mad: “How dare you try and force your eating preferences on me!” But, most of the time, the person sees that the wanderer isn’t being abrasive with his meal and that he just wants to share the tasty things that he’s found and look for other interesting foods to try. Then maybe, just maybe, that person will put down their syrup for a moment to try a bite of peanut butter and pickle sandwich.

Science and Fiction

2008-03-03T19:06:00.000-06:00

I was going to write a short story that revolved around the idea of quantum immortality. Quantum immortality a genuine concept within the bounds of theorized physics that inhibits the death of a conscious entity. Quantum mechanics can be approached in a number of ways, but the two most widely accepted models are the Copenhagen interpretation and the Many-Worlds interpretation. Quantum immortality is a phenomenon that is only possible within the bounds of the Many-Worlds interpretation, and as such I'll leave the Copenhagen model to your own research. The Many-Worlds interpretation holds that the universe is just one in an infinite array of quasi-simultaneous universes. These worlds can differ from our own universe in even the slightest details. There may be a universe otherwise identical to our own, except, where in our universe a certain snail gets eaten by a crow, in this universe the snail escapes without harm. Billions of years worth of history is exactly the same, save for that one detail. The changes can likewise be more drastic. Like a universe without the letter "e," or a universe in which humanity doesn't even exist. In a set of infinite variations, any one variation has a likelihood of 1 in 1 to exist. Hang with me here, 'cause this is where it gets cool.

Now, since there are an infinite number of variant universes, there's a universe where you neglected to step out into the street and get hit by that bus. There's a universe where the bullet that passed through your head was a dud in the chamber. A universe where you were saved at the last possible moment by the most improbable of circumstances. The idea that in the event of death, consciousness is transfered to the most likely alternate universe in which it is able to persist is known as quantum immortality. No laws of physics actually contradict this idea, and its veracity is as probable as a number of other theories built on quantum mechanics.

So the story would consist of an everyday student who discovers, through a series of perceived good fortune, that he cannot die. He can get hurt and crushed and dismembered, but true death will always evade him. As the story progresses, he tries to commit suicide on multiple occasions but it always fails. He shows this to his roommate who watches in awe as the handgun fails to fire only when pointed at the protagonist's head. In another universe, though, the roommate would see his friend die right in front of him. The protagonist, originally happy, motivated, and humorous, devolves to cynicism and hopelessness. He thinks at first that he's a cursed individual, but later reasons that, no, everyone else is just like him. At some point, everyone realizes that they are immortal, stuck in their own rail-jumping world, ultimately isolated and deathless. The story would end with him friendless, angry, and paralyzed from one of his brushes with death. I think the title of the story would be "Lucky."

The problem is, the story has to be 7-11 pages double spaced, and this is far too elaborate a story to tell in such a short time. Such a massive psychological character arc would take much longer to maintain a level of verisimilitude. So that's that. Sad panda.

Omission Statement

2008-03-03T16:14:00.001-06:00

The purpose of this publication, plain and simple, is to keep me writing. All too often I find myself delving in profitless hour-killing activities (the fruits of which I'm sure to post in eventual time) when the focus of my down time should be focused on the written word. When I'm stuck for ideas in my to-be-published works, I reason that continuing to create within the same medium can be nothing but healthy. In as such, here is my blog, and this is a description of its lack of direction. Enjoy.