On Firing Squads

Some of you Twitter users might have participated in Susan Orlean's #booksthatchangedmyworld discussion.

One of the many books I mentioned in my personal list was The Plague by Albert Camus. It didn't sit well with me after the initial reading but slowly grew on me over time as I turned the events over and over in mind.

The following passage is one that I think about a lot:

"Have you ever seen a man shot by a firing-squad? No, of course not; the spectators are hand-picked and it's like a private party, you need an invitation. The result is that you've gleaned your ideas about it from books and pictures. A post, a blindfolded man, some soldiers in the offing. But the real thing isn't a bit like that. Do you know that the firing-squad stands only a yard and a half from the condemned man? Do you know that if the victim took two steps forward his chest would touch the rifles? Do you know that, at this short range, the soldiers concentrate their fire on the region of the heart and their bullets make a hole into which you could thrust your fist? No, you didn't know all that; those are things that are never spoken of. For the plague-stricken their peace of mind is more important than a human life. Decent folks must be allowed to sleep easy o' nights, mustn't they? Really it would be in shockingly bad taste to linger on such details, that's common knowledge. But personally I've never been able to sleep well since then. The bad taste remained in my mouth and I've kept lingering on the details, brooding over them...."

If My Arms Were Big Enough...

I'd put all of you in a simultaneous headlock and give each and every one of y'all your own specially dedicated noogie because you deserve it.

xoxo, bitches.

We Are All Doomed, Seriously

I've been thinking of getting knuckle tats. My right hand would read: PUSH. My left: OVER. The idea being to give a good laugh to all those involved in the next scrape that I find myself in. The reveal would be right before the fisticuffs, you know, the moment of levity that takes place during the stare down. (That's how it happens, right?)

And maybe, just maybe O. Henry sits up in his grave a little bit and strokes what's left of his decrepit chin in appreciation.

Or not, because it's already been done by someone else a million years ago when people were still fish.

Luckily we're not fish anymore or a species that inhabits the Gulf of Mexico... but I'm not even hung up on that nightmare. We were going to kill the planet somehow it was just a matter of when. Now with the knowing, it's liberating to finally see the horizon of Our Impending Doom.

For me this means saying no to very few opportunities. That person asking to by you a drink might be buying you the last beverage you may ever have in your life so don't pass it up, even if you are driving. You may be leaving your house to purchase groceries, never to return to a house or CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT. Cats are Tweeting!

It is time to party like world is going to end. Soon.

Spoken like a truly crazy person? Perhaps, but consider this my fellow human: The state of the Gulf of Mexico prior to the incident was not good as in like not even close to good. There's already a dead zone about the size of New Jersey. That's bad. I don't imagine dumping a couple million-billion drops of oil into it will make it better.

Now, if the Powers That Be can go into a well a mile under the sea completely unprepared with any kind of workable contingency plans for when everything goes wrong, what is to stop them from committing the same kind of atrocity on land? Who's to say it isn't happening right now and we just don't know about it? Judging by the Government's lack of involvement and just even SIMPLE understanding of the risks associated with deep water drilling it's safe to say that no one is watching the back of the American people, or the front.

But it ain't even about that, because I'm talking about the people of the world (Sorry America even though we destroy it the best) and what WE are doing to it every single day. It is completely unsustainable. The methods of continuing our energy hungry way of life get dangerous and more destructive as the resources become harder and harder to reach. People have shown time and again that we will destroy anything in our path to get what we want. Sorry, Other Species.

[This is the part in the story when I get up from the comfy chair at my computer desk and make a hot cup of tea using the instant hot on my espresso machine... ]

Something y'all need to understand here is that I'm only pointing this out because it weighs on me heavily, I mean calm down people, I'm not suggesting we fore sake our instant hots and cede our comfy chairs to the apes. That's lunacy.

No one tries to force a carnivore not to eat meat, right? I'm just saying we need to be a little more conscientious about our destroying so we can milk our run a little longer. I suspect there's little we can do about our chosen path and when the aliens come from afar to pillage our worn out rock (which will be inhabited and controlled by eleventh generation sentient robots loosely based on a Steve Jobs' patent.) they will study our destructive method of existence and classify them as Human Nature.

So enjoy it while you can. I am going to party until my body won't cooperate or the lights go out. Whichever comes first.

Practicing My Blank Stare

I was at a show the other day, standing by the bar waiting for something to happen. A kid noticed the shirt I was wearing and waved me over.

"What?" I said, meaning "What exactly are you trying to sell me?" He asked if I had heard of [A Clever Pun On The Band Shirt I Was Wearing]. I told him I hadn't.

"Oh, they're a cover band, you should totally check them out." He said.

I nodded and disentangled myself from the conversation with a fantastic Jedi Maneuver that involved Time Travel!

Not really, but TIME TRAVEL IS AWESOME and dangerous in the wrong hands, which would be any set of hands (or hand) attached to a human being.

It took reserves of self control that I didn't know I even possessed to keep from going into a rant about how the only cover bands that I could ever give a shit about are all female avant garde, art-punk, reinterpretations, not a bunch of dudes playing songs that I already know note for note, in an inferior way to the original, because it could only be inferior because it's not original. Enough with the rehash already!

I'm sure he meant well, so it never got to that and to that end, I rewarded my good behavior with a drink.

Actually I bought a round of drinks for everyone and made it rain for posterity's sake.

Oh, who am I fooling....

The Oracle (flash)

Everyone assumed that the size of his ears made him a great listener. They were in fact gigantic, as if robbed from a sleeping elephant and attached to the head of a sleeping person, with great care taken to hide the delicate, requisite stitching to join different species' body parts.

They assumed but never asked. People were drawn to him, to tell their stories of misfortune. They stood in long lines and waited patiently for the person in front of them to finish confiding in him their life's woes.

He'd try to tell them, when they were finished that he had no idea what they were going on about but by a strange calamity of the cosmos, when he opened his mouth to speak, the inrush of air created just the right amount of downdraft to pull the monstrous ears completely over his head, holding fast until he exhaled and released them with a gale force.

"What does that mean?" Someone waiting in line asked the person in front of them.

"He's blessing them." The other said. Other listeners nodded sagely, confirming what they all thought to be true.

Resolve

Due to a strategically timed vacation I started my New Year a little late. I'm normally not the type of guy to make resolutions but this year I made one: I resolved to stop doing the dishes.

If you happen to drop by don't get all judgy when you're meal is served on a paper plate with the finest plasticware for utensils and yes, I did just fill a sippy cup of wine 'specially for you.

So the dishes...

Agatha Christie said, "The best time to plan a book is when you're doing the dishes." Heck, she'd know, I mean she only wrote 80 some-odd novels.

The problem for the rest of us mere mortals is all that planning goes to waste if you never actually sit down and write!

After setting aside my last work (tentatively titled The Myth of Parking Enforcement but Paola made such a weird face when I said that it may have to change :-/), I started immediately, feverishly, churning out prose on my new piece. It was still Christmas break so I had a lot of time to get things done. Funny how that works when the job doesn't get in the way.

Work started again though and I found myself slipping back into the old habit of paying lip service to ideas rather than formulating them into the written word on the page.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE WRITING. Rough math suggests I probably crank out about 500 words a day of non prose from social networking, job reports, carefully worded emails and the like but getting into the groove after a long day of doing boiler guy stuff ain't easy.

Usually I'd come home, do the dishes, catch up on all my internet stuff and then write. By this point in my life that means I'm making prose at about 6:15pm. Paola gets home a little bit after that and of course I want to spend some time with her so you can see the dilemma.

I decided that, in the near term at least, the most important thing is to write and so that is how it came to be. I walk in the door, make a cup of tea, go upstairs and hunt and peck my way to victory... or stalemate. In some sports you get a point for a tie, you know, sorry dirty plates.

It was timely that I heard the profile of Isabel Allende on the Writer's Almanac shortly after I made my choice. She starts a novel every January 8th by locking herself in a room for 10-12 hours a day. She doesn't use an outline, she doesn't talk to anybody about what she's writing. and she doesn't look back at what she's written until she's completed a whole first draft.

I've never read her work, if you have please recommend something. If I had the luxury of time I'd be all over that approach.

Something she says to her Creative Writing class, not mentioned in the article, is to write a page every day for a year and by the end of year you will have a book. Blew my mind to hear that. It's something I never thought about too. Anyone that dares to take themselves seriously as a writer should be able to put together 250 cohesive words a day without a strenuous effort.

And if you can't, well you need to at least get to there. Take it from good old unpublished me.

If I can do it so can you. 6800 words and counting...

How Not to Critique

One of my favorite scenes in Whit Stillman's marvelous moviefilm Metroplitan begins with the protagonist, a Mr. Tom Townshend, launching into a full on assault of the works of the celebrated author, one Jane Austen. You may have heard of this woman, on account of her novels being Emma Thompsoned or Gwyneth Paltrowed to death. Not that I'm complaining.

Because my memory is old and full of holes I can't remember the specific thrust but what the Internet helps me remember is this exchange at the end of the conversation:

Audrey Rouget: What Jane Austen novels have you read?

Tom Townshend: None. I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists' ideas as well as the critics' thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it's all just made up by the author.

I just wanted to pat old Tom on his cute little head and give him a lollipop the first time I heard that.

I am never opposed to criticism when it's valid, meaning not used as a forum to launch a personal attack. I don't believe that criticism should be unemotional and analytical either. I would expect that every good critic is incorporating their life experience, their taste into what makes something work for them which is really all a critic can express albeit, against what one would hope is a solid cultural framework for context purposes.

Criticism is one of the tools that historians, curators and the like use years from now to reflect upon our culture and decide what kind of idiots we were.

Howevah (as Stephen A. Smith would say.) You can't review something by proxy. Past experience may shape a future opinion but you can't say for certain your opinion of something until you experience it yourself.

Have you ever had two friends that you thought would be perfect a love match for each other, and surprise they didn't like each other for the same reasons you thought they would? Has your BFFFFFF in the whole world showed you something that they were absolutely sure that you'd love and you found yourself less than enthused when you got to experience it for yourself?

Have you ever gone to see a band with someone and they fell in love with the opening act even though you (yourself) were in love with the headliner?

Have you ever gone to a film that you were absolutely certain you would love/hate and come out with the exact opposite reaction?

If you answered no to all of those, Congratulations, you're a robot and your secret decoder ring is in the mail.

Think about it like this. Would you rather have someone form their opinion of YOU based on what one of their friends says about you or would you rather let yourself and your own actions speak for themselves?

Now apply that to art, music, movies, food and the like and tell me how you really feel, robot.

I will have more on this later, I hope.