Author: admin

I finally had a chance to watch Spike Jonze’s ‘Her’ which delves into the relationship between an AI and its (her) user. This is what I refer to as organic sci-fi, a style of science fiction that is actually an exploration of the idea of humanity vs. a conversation about the integration of science and technology into mankind. A good example of the other kind of sci fi is Alien or Terminator (hard action, I know).

At the 41 minute mark it just goes completely nuts as the AI commits to the idea of a physical relationship with the user and, for a moment, you realize that this has absolutely nothing to do with the AI and is in fact a simple response to programming and, possibly a form of psychotherapy for the user that does in fact mirror his nightly behaviors… minus the dead cat. Then we get a pair of totally CGI cut scenes and dive right back into a dude who is deeply afraid of commitment–or more accurately the change and loss of control that comes with commitment–and kind of scared of reality himself.

The film is beautiful and creepy all at once. I found myself drawn to the character, to his profession, his loneliness. All of it added up for me in a way that made sense. The relationships were the same way. While the story often progresses in the way that you want, it occasionally veers off and pursues innovative ideas about relationships and love and life and it comes together in a way that makes it all worth the watch.

Spike Jonze is a guy who is all over the place. There’s Jackass and Where the Wild Things Are and, one of my favorite films, Being John Malkovitch. This is another bit of weirdness in the box for him and fun the whole way through.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. 1803 was the year the first public library opened in the USA, which is a really big deal for a writer.
2. So, this happened. I am shocked and impressed and a little bit envious as a writer. Not envious. Excited and looking towards doing my own version of stuff in the near future. Thats the key with genre: you take what exists and add the color and flavor of your own voice and background.

Not a lot going on tonight with the brain stuff… just enough mind power to dream up…

Some Thoughts:

1. Wondering about how the Agents of Shield show will be able to wrap up or pause their current story arc in order to link up with the upcoming Avengers movie. I’d be surprised if they don’t. There are already thin linkages to the new Daredevil show that mention the Avengers but don’t cater to the storyline.
2. Speaking of Daredevil, the show is legit. This is an attempt to tell a Marvel story that isn’t about super powers and isn’t about super agents. This is about a dude who, while having powers, isn’t the Hulk or anyone. He gets tired and bleeds and worries about people. He even tries to separate right from wrong in the dark land of the vigilante.
3. Speaking of comics, the first comic book was published in 1802. It was called the Wasp, and had no relation to the modern character of the same name (and Avengers pedigree).
4. What happened to story innovation? As I read through this latest slate of fantasy and fiction books I see nothing new and exciting. I don’t see new ideas. Even Game of Thrones is rote–bloody and sex-filled, but rote.

If you think that being a single person will somehow afford you more time, you ought to forego being single. No sense in setting yourself up for disappointment. I learned this through experience. I’m learning a lot of things through this new life. With any luck some of it will help someone else down the road.

One of the first thing I learned about was laundry. It takes a long time to get it done. I’m not talking about the folding and such. I merely speak of the washing and drying. We’re talking almost two hours and if you let the stuff sit in the dryer for too long then it gets wrinkled, which means more time ironing half a dozen tee shirts (Yes, I iron them if I really have to).

No one tells you that. No one tells you about the loneliness either.

At night the walls close in on you and you start to think about the darkness as a state of being, even a future. There is sound and light available if you could just turn on the TV and climb down that rabbit hole into forgetting about the facts; forgetting that this big house has no value if its just you and that you can’t live your life inhaling in between the moments that you have your boys.

There has to be more. There has to be more time, more meaning, more opportunity to climb down the rabbit holes of your own making; to embrace what you thought could be as opposed to what is.

What is is empty nights and a sort of misery that only happens when you are waiting for your life to start again. Or end. Either option seems a possibility in the darkness. Buddha suggested, “The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.” On the other hand loving yourself is core to the philosophy of Buddhism. The trick then is to love yourself through the darkness and the doubt and the wonder of what tomorrow will be and not to worry if it will be as empty as the night.

It can’t be.

Some Thoughts:

1. While watching Thor: The Dark World recently I considered writing a spot of fan fiction that focused on the forgotten bits of the major fight scene. I wanted to call the piece ‘Claims’ and write about the handful of cars that were shot through a portal to another world. Those cars belong to someone and those people probably would file a claim…
2. There is going to be an Independence Day 2.
3. I get the distinct feeling people find me melancholy. This is only a little bit true.
4. 1801 was the year the U.S. house chose Jefferson over Aaron Burr. He’ll become famous (as I’ll discuss in a few days) as the answer to a trivia question in a Got Milk? commercial. he was famous before that, of course, but that commercial was the stuff.
5. 1801 was when Kentucky outlawed dueling. Important to the story to be told in #4… It was also the year of the first U.S. foreign war–the Barbary War.

I continue to create the conditions for my success and recognize some past failures and reent successes. This and the habits I have create a reality that is sometimes really good for me and sometimes equally bad. I am in a good space right now, though I am carrying the guilt of outstanding work. I gotta get stuff done, but I also want to prepare for future classes and set up a summer routine that will aid me in being successful. 

One such habit that might help is returning to evening coffee drinking. Without the caffeine I feel like I’m slow and, well, exhausted.

Some Thoughts:

1. 1800 marks the formation of the U.S. Library of Congress. It is important to note that this organization, at one point, archived every tweet ever sent. This means that there is a solid record of at least the first 800 entries in this 1800 entry long blog. 
2. Got the mid kid a bow and arrows for his bday. This may have been a terrible and dangerous mistake. Not that he’ll shoot anyone, but at some point in time he will become convinced that he is a DC superhero. Like for reals…
3. More folks moving on from the Daily Show. I suspect the new version will be a shade of the most recent.

There are a number of other things I ought to be doing in this ten minute burst. To hear it from my 10 yr old, I ought to be playing Dragon Ball Z: Xenoverse, because by not doing so I am confirming his suspicion that I will never play and thus wasted my money on the game. Of course his assessment neglects that I bought the game for him and further neglects life itself–beyond video games. That’s his crutch. Mine is still TV and finding all new and colorful shows designed to waste my time and further distract me from the actually important and meaningful tasks in my life.

These tasks don’t include NBA 2K or any manner of game, but they do include writing, which I’ve neglected as of late. I feel like I need to build up some more ‘life experience’ to really start producing ground breaking work again. I don’t know, I enjoy the stuff I produce but it hasn’t been special for a while. At this point I’m rambling, so on to…

Some Thoughts:

1. Children fascinate me. I had occasion to open my desk computer today and found an unfinished poem about sunlight. On the second screen was a poetry website with a sampling of Spring-themed poems the mid-kid was using to understand the cadence and specific imagery of seasonal poetry. Why he didn’t just ask me is a completely different conversation, but the fact that he went online and sought out this information to write a poem on his own gives me hope.
2. I’m having extensive shoulder (rotator cuff) problems. This is further evidence of aging that I can no longer deny.
3. 1799 indeed. This was the year New York began abolishing slavery and the year the slaver Eli Whitney began mass producing firearms. Those two things have been entangled ever since. There is a longstanding relationship between the fear historically attributed to black men and the use and control of firearms in the United States.

I thought I’d pay homage to the MMQB for producing really intelligent pieces about football this off season. As I move into the tackle world I start to real recognize that football is about human stories and about insider and outsider groups. I see that insider/outsider dynamic very clearly in the division between coaches and parents on my son’s team. The coaches are a click–almost a family. They are often the fathers of the best players (at the very least the fathers of the kids who get the ball) and have come to these relationships through the trials of past seasons and friendships that have come to extend beyond the playing field.  In truth, the majority of my (local) male relationships were built that way. It only stands out to me now because I am clearly on the parent side of the equation–an outsider who can only stand and watch and hope that my kid can play to the level deserving of touches.

The learning curve from flag to tackle is steep. Not only have I had to reach back years into my memory in order to remember the last time going through tackle drills, the offensive and defensive schemes are more advanced than before. Now, as a learner and perhaps future OC, I’m having to think about blocking assignments beyond merely the skill positions. I spent this last practice watching the team move through formations and picking out the possible plays and audibles out of those formations. It was good fun for me, and it showed me all the strengths and weaknesses of the team’s coach. One weakness is the lack of a backup QB.

I’m not quite ready to pull out a clipboard and get to work. I believe this summer’s basketball experience will be really helpful because I’ll be working with 6-7 year olds who don’t want to listen or do anything resembling teamwork. I’ll have to find a method through that and learn how to become a better manager. I’ll have to do something new with it all too, because the old way is limited and I’ve hit the wall.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. This body as temple ideal has turned into more of a distant ideology for me. My body is filled with junk food, excess fat, and coffee. Lots of coffee. Nothing I usually do to get my mind, body, and spirit in sync in working, which I suppose is the core reasoning behind trying to do things a different way.
2. They’re going to make this officer-involved murder about race, but it shouldn’t be. They in this case are the media and the people with a bone to pick. I haven’t seen evidence of systemic racism in this situation. I have seen a very terrible officer do something he immediately went all “Chicago PD” on and get caught doing it. One media truth: Without the video we would be hearing a very different narrative about the shooting… Or not hearing about it at all..
3. 1798 was the year the USA established the Marine Corps. This was, in part, a political response to the very brief French-American war of the same year. I’ve often believed that wars are declared for financial reasons more than moral or political. Wars make money and enable national funds to be spent in very specific ways. Nowadays we outsource our war capabilities to multi-billion dollar corps. I fear this too is a mistake, because a publicly traded company is beholden to its stockholders and not to the quickest path to peace. There is more profit in continuing conflicts than ending them.

Spent some time thinking about getting ‘back to one’ or in other words, getting back to the space where I am centered and organized and ready to face the world. I was there for a spell and then I went I blew up my life. That all starts by assessing where I am at vs. where I want to be and what I need to be working on in order to reach my goal–especially in terms of obstacles. For example, I recognize that I watch too much TV and tried to solve that problem by canceling DirecTV. When I called they were able to bend my already weak will to at least a month longer stint by offering a massive one month discount. I gotta be tougher than that.

Distractions are the spice of life and I all too often allow them to become a focus of my being. That isn’t the person I want to be. I see that person every day in class. Most of my students are that person. Anything that is going on in their lives is infinitely more important than everything happening in the rest of the known universe. Just recently I had a student decide to miss a week of class because she was fighting with her boyfriend and it made her feel unable to participate.

As the semester winds to a close I am happier and happier about the opportunity I have to get very focused and build my skills both as an online teacher and as a writer, given the significant amount of time I will have to pursue both. I’ll also have the urge–since nobody once to leave the house during the Arizona summer.

All in all I believe it is time for a change for the better in my life and I am ready to start realizing that change… Even though I’ve said it before.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. 1797 was the first year that scientists proved that diamonds were a rarified form of carbon formed, in part, by intense pressures. This immediately invalidated the Superman film produced almost 200 years later when that dude squeezed a piece of coal until it became a diamond he could present to Lois Lane… Is it weird that this is the one part of the film I was like, “that could never happen”
2. Sad and interesting perhaps only to me, 1797 was the year the capital of NY was moved out of NYC and placed in Albany. Now in defense of that snowy and distant place, Albany used to be a big deal in terms of commerce. On the other hand, it is the second time a significant capital was moved out of NYC. Did you know that NYC used to be the capital of the United States?

I had a chance to watch the Edward Snowden interview with John Oliver. Since I only have ten minutes I have to be a reductionist. I see his argument as, ‘Americans should not be spied upon and the NSA should only spy on outside threats.’ His argument is more nuanced than that and he goes on to argue that we have a right to know exactly how much we are being surveilled. I agree with him in that aspect, but I do so knowing that I likely should not have a huge say in controlling that.

In the John Oliver interview it became clear that people care about privacy when it comes to petty things like dick picks. Oliver called it a visible line in the sand. So based on his argument (which I agree with) we care about surveillance when it applies to us and don’t want to be watched. We don’t care about surveillance when it applies to people we have no contact with or when we can logically process the need for that surveillance to happen. It is a terrible double standard that we continue to perpetuate in this misguided effort for and understanding of safety.

I am all for safety. I am all for security from foreign threat.I just recognize that threats come from within and that those are far more dangerous than anything outside of the ‘hard protective shell’ of Amurrica.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Three things happened in America in 1796 that I found incredibly interesting. We got an elephant from India, started a black church, and
2. Despite the fact that collegiate athletics seem akin to modern slavery in many ways, I still want my kids to have the opportunity to explore the relationships and excitement that come with college athletics. I just hope the slavery part comes into national focus before then and people start to recognize how messed up college athletics really are and fix the problem.

New week, new start, evolving attitude. I’m one step closer to disconnecting from cable entirely and limiting one of my major vices. Life changes when you allow it to happen and for me it does slow quite slowly (and usually once I’ve removed the detritus of bad habits like hours of TV). Of course I’m writing this as a show streams on netflix. The real question is am I reducing a vice or just making it more financially manageable?

Change is an important thing and something I cant entirely plan out. I can create (continue to create) a path to being a more idealized version of myself but the real work of the experience is dealing with the obstacles that exist and discovering the obstacles I make for myself.

Turns out there are a lot of those…

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Still binge watching Kimmy Schmidt Season:1. I must admit I’d lost all faith in the ability of sitcoms to be even remotely entertaining. ‘One Big Happy’ represents the average crap and ‘New Girl’ represents the dying breed. Kimmy is better than both with excellent guest spots from stars of all kinds, including producer Tina Fey (you’ve been missed).
2. Fire destroyed 1/3rd of Copenhagen back in 1795. It is hard to imagine that something of that sort could happen in modern times, though something like that happening would make an incredible premise for a short story and possibly even a novel.

I’m borrowing from Ice Cube here, but the sentiment is legit. I finally got to watch one of my boys play tackle football. He only carried the rock one time and scored a 30 yd TD. That’s enough for me right there, but we followed it up with an easter interlude (very brief egg hunt-styled excitement), Subway sandwiches, and a Diamondbacks game.  I’m sort of a big kid when it really comes right down to it, so after all the excitement we watched the kid-version of a parkour action flick, and then I sent the kids to bed so I could binge watch the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

I’m completely aware of the loss of man card here.

Some Thoughts:

1. Kentucky got beat. MSU got whipped badly. I’m not sure I entirely care. In truth my aptitude for college basketball fell off the charts after the Cyclones exited (in the first round). I’m not afraid to admit that I stop caring about certain things once my teams depart…
2. Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin in 1794, but he didn’t event it himself. Legend has it the work was done by a slave named Sam who was looking for a way to ease his workload. Two ways we can look at this. 1) something good came out of slavery 2) folks have been taking credit for other people’s hard work for nearly the entire history of our country…