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Recently I made a point to return to the idea of mindfulness and extending my actions beyond mindless button pushing, trying to find a connection between action and thought. This is all a very nice way of saying that I’ve been playing Minecraft and listening to the teachings of Buddha while I do so. There are connections there. Minecraft is, in a sense, a meditation on creation. The game is what is called a Sandbox, where the primary goal is to thrive and create. This then is not much different than real life in which we search for goal and meaning and are always drawn back to those two constants: Thrive and Create. As I was listening and playing I was reminded of the five mental hinderances. In specific I was reminded of the idea of middha or torpor, which is best described as mental fatigue. I realized that in trying to recover from that I we often overlook torpor or criticize it as weakness in our society. While it is perfectly fine to feel physically exhausted, the exhaustion of the mind is considered less acceptable. Dr. Frank Lipman’s book, Spent, talks about this dichotomy of understanding in depth. Here I have less than ten minutes remaining so I’ll say what I can.

Work burn-out is a real thing and for teachers like myself–those expected to be ‘on’ all the time, it can come quickly and if left untreated can be permanently damaging. This isn’t my primary problem. In truth, I have no single issue but a series of small mental drains that add up to a tank that doesn’t always get refilled, leading to torpor. Another one of my issues is being a dad. I love the job. I live for it in so many ways, but it sucks the very life out of me. As a single dad my kids are at my house 6 out of 7 mornings each week and full of need and energy. They don’t always have the wherewithal to recognize that each scream (either of glee or anger) and question and accusation and slight or insult peels away another layer of mental strength. They also fail to grasp that the blank stares and wonton inaction they offer when I tell them to do something (such as get dressed) also peels away at the energy banks. By the time they are off to school I’ve already lost energy and then I have to go to work and endure additional drain.

Anyone who has enjoyed a roleplaying game or video game is familiar with the concept of hit points. You only have so many and each shot takes that number down closer to zero. Fortunately video games strategically place health packs throughout the digital world to ensure that you don’t get dead. Unfortunately, in life we are responsible for our own health and must create a situation that allows us not to get drained to the point where we are ineffective. For me, torpor is the result of ‘low health’ coupled with the inability to regularly heal. The nightly Minecraft meditations and the writing help.

Still, more is needed to be back to full health.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. It occurred to me that the blog number will pass this year in less than a week. Meaningless moment of note, but all moments of note are meaningless short of the history and the context specifically assigned to them by the people who are closest to the moment.
2. My mid-kid did an in-class assignment that asked him to write and draw about his life. It was all sports and video games and the word family over and again. Apparently we don’t do much else. This is to be corrected post haste.
3. Fantasy Drafts are around the corner. Soon I will speak on such things at length. Equipped with my DirecTV Sunday Ticket MAX, and a ton of guides, I’ll be a draft problem…

Note: forgot to post this one…

Sam Esmail’s Mr. Robot is one of a handful of shows to hold my attention this summer. There are great moments of self-awareness that start with the episode names themselves. As we watch this neurotic/psychotic hacker unravel we are often left with the idea of what is real and what is merely his perception of what the hacker life should/could become. In fact, there is a near 4^th wall moment where one of the hackers remarks that some TV guy is gonna come along and define how the world perceives the next generation of hackers. Touché. Only, that isn’t the only thing defined by the actions of the show. In truth the portrayal of the villain, the aptly named Evil Corp, the show also defines the corporate rat race. Where Mr. Robot seeks to create a hacker identity it instead develops a compelling corporate identity that feels all to real and accessible.

As an only child I was pretty proud of the stuff I had. As mentioned here before, I owned several G.I. Joe figures, a doll house, a Hulk Hogan (why, Hulk? Why? Sucks that they snatched your job though) action figure, and a complete metal model of the Five Lion Voltron. I mention the last one to afford an air of cool to an otherwise cool-free childhood. The rest of the stuff made me feel like I made it. My points of comparison were few and far between, however. Once I started going to friends houses, I recognized that my made it was in fact quite minimal. That, my friends, is the corporate rat race. It doesn’t matter how much you have in comparison to those below you. Corpers are never graded on that. It matters how much more you have than those who should be considered your equal in some measure. In truth, you haven’t made it at all until you discover you have no equal in the hierarchy.

That is the vision that Mr. Robot puts forward, and one I intend to further in my own writings about capitalism.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. The website will be back sometime tomorrow. That’s a good thing.

So, the site is back, Stewart is gone, and the strange reality show that is the Trump campaign rolls on. Life is a very interesting miracle and one that has brought many new things to think about and consider. I failed to watch the debate tonight, but I saw the highlights and the resulting discussion on the news channels. What is interesting about the entire situation from a sociological perspective is the role of ‘buzz’ and black and white thinking in the political election system. The news heads are talking about who won and whether or not Trump looked presidential and failing to capture the real story, which is the fact that this entire situation is about popularity and how to ‘look’ presidential. What are the good sound bytes? Who delivered them? How were the candidates able to explain away or make up for earlier guffaws? How long did it take for 9/11 to be dredged up?

The winner of that last one is Christie who talked about his famous hug with Obama by saying he remembers hugging the families of the victims of 9/11. He was largely applauded by the media (and crowd) for this bit of slickness. I think the better bit of news head work would’ve been to ask why hugging Obama matters one dang bit. ‘Optics’ I guess, something we’ve come to appreciate in the new political world.

Moving away from politics, I have little to say about the last Daily Show. I haven’t watched it yet. I’m waiting for the right time. I do think it is interesting to live in an era between shows–where so many iconic bits of entertainment are ending and so many more are only beginning. Letterman, Leno, Stewart.. they are an important part of the American cultural makeup. For many they served as rallying points for ideas and interests. I wonder who that role falls to now?

 

I’ve encountered no less than a dozen highly publicized wrongful death cases involving police officers this year. Not once did I make or even hear a call for the national defunding of the police force. Recently some damning footage has surfaced showing a Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast exec basically selling harvested tissue. This is wrong on every level, but it doesn’t match what happened as a result. The senate moved to defund Planned Parenthood. Now I’m clearly not giving the whole story—Repubs have been pushing for a PP defund vote for a long time, but the fact is this polarized environment allows everything to serve as a catalyst for absolute response.

 

What ever happened to moderation?

 

I remember being raised under the banner of ‘don’t throw the baby out with the bath water’. The core philosophy of my youth was nuance. Nothing existed under a black and white dichotomy, yet now everything exists in the vein. If you have a problem with something, destroy it. We are a disposable society in that way…

 

Some Thoughts:

1. There is something really wrong with Ted Cruz’s appearance. I’m not sure if it is bad plastic surgery or what, but the dude makes me very uncomfortable.
2. Since we are on the subject of the political realm, the Trump thing doesn’t seem real to me, but it is. In fact, I have a real fear that Trump has the sort of ‘it factor’ to draw a new demographic to the polls and use that to catapult into a legitimate candidacy. The base has flipped. Today I heard a republican pundit call Jeb Bush ‘almost hispanic’ because he has a Hispanic wife. They are reaching for anything that draws in enough people to break the Hillary-hold.
3. Recently I published a story that features flooding in India. I short sold the conditions. Today I heard about two trains swept off the road by flooding out there. Conditions in many parts of the world are so bad that it makes me feel very guilty to have space and comforts…. This laptop is a comfort.

Preface: The following blogs cover a brief period of poverty during which I was unable to restart my site. Instead I wrote offline and gathered the files with hopes of posting them shorty. This is shortly…

 

I woke this morning to discover my website was down. This is an unusual occurrence, which is usually predicated by weather or nuclear strike. This time the culprit was cold hard cash. I run the talislegger website on a biennial subscription and as it turns out it is time to pay the piper. That raised an interesting question: Do I actually need to own a piece of a server in order to effectively run a website?

 

Short answer: No. I picked up the server space around the turn of the century when I masqueraded as Djmalik and had a lot of proprietary data housed at djmalik.com. I had kids in triplicate and retired from the biz (though I feel a mixtape coming on). Djmalik died out alongside thoughtwired.com and a handful of other websites I maintained for various purposes.

 

Today I don’t have those sites or any real need for server space. The 10 Minute rule is more or less the extent of my web presence, so I’m basically parking a domain name with limited use. No, don’t go hack my extra storage. Bad hacker. Bad! The truth is the server remains as a promise and an opportunity for growth. I did more on the web once, and one day I could do more again.

 

Once I figure out what exactly I want from the Interwebs…

I’m still on my movies in the summer kick and looking forward to taking in Mission Impossible. Perhaps looking forward is a bit much. I’m doing as expected, much as I will do with Fantastic 4  but with much less hope that the film is going to turn out okay. One film that did turn out okay was Trainwreck. Amy Schumer plays a chick who is a bit of a mess–not in terms of her out there sexuality but mores because of her being a total asshole. Yep, she’s an ass and totally out there about it. This is an important aspect of the story because this isn’t about the really sweet and wonderful girl getting the dude. This is about real people who aren’t perfect getting something that works for them.

It is also crazy funny.

Without giving too much away, John Cena plays a character that I couldn’t stop laughing about. He stole most of the scenes he was in. My favorite was the movie theater scene. I’m in love with the line, ‘You ain’t about that life’–once you see it you’ll understand.

I’m about done with this ten minute stretch, much like the boys are about done with the summer. School starts in the morning and I’m looking forward to having a few extra moments to myself.

 

What is it we are really here for? Not on earth—not as a race. I mean as the children of our parents. Today walking through the shoe aisles picking out cleats I was struck by how much influence I truly have over my kids. While I am certain that influence will turn decidedly negative in less than a decade, for the moment they seem to do and like the things they presume I expect of them. My eldest two are playing tackle football together for perhaps the only time they will do so in their lives. In the spring they’ll play soccer together and I know that is purely for them, but this I suspect has more to do with me than anything else. I don’t think it is the only thing in their lives that is that way either.

 

For the longest time all I wanted to do was prove myself to my mother. Mission failed again and again, but I kept plugging away, trying desperately to make something out of the things she thought were important in life. I got the grades, excelled in mathematics, got the college scholarship, signed up to be an engineer, took the fireman’s exam (she changed her mind a lot) and sought out all manner of success purely to make sure that when she talked about me it wouldn’t be one of those, ‘Oh that’s YOUR kid?!’ situations. I didn’t want to embarrass her. I wanted her to feel pride when she thought or spoke of me. I fear my kids are the same way with me.

 

My kids are way into video games and sports, which are the two basic food groups of my early existence. Add in pop tarts (which they also dig, but all kids do so that’s not on me) and you have the makings of my clone existence. They came to know these things because of me. My ex is fond of saying, ‘you made em that way’ to which I reply, ‘no secret there’ because she’s right 100%. She isn’t about the games. She’s more about the learning and the outdoors. They like that stuff too; I can see evidence of her in all three of them. Still, the video games and the sports are the dominant programming. Does that mean they don’t like that stuff on their own? I’m not sure.

 

After this season I am not going to bring up playing tackle football or any other sport. I will merely show them the options available to them for activities or just ask, ‘you guys want to do anything this season or are you ready to chill?’ The answer could be surprising but it is necessary. I don’t need them to try to do what they think I want. I need them to be happy in their own respect. That means learning things outside of the talis-verse. The best thing a parent can do is expose their kids to everything that’s possible.

Earlier today I ran into a hairy situation in Minecraft. Here I was, loaded up with a ton of mined iron and gold and wearing my only diamond breastplate. It’d taken me some time to get to this point. I worked hard and suffered through many setbacks to get the level of kit and building that i’d accomplished. In fact I was on my way to developing a train line between two cities. I was doing my thing. Then I made a simple misstep. I tried to clear out a lava spot and stepped into the remnants, lighting myself on fire. I did not make it out in time.

The next two lives were spent dying quickly, trying to find my way back to the spot where I was before my stuff vanished. I failed. Then I lost all composure, shutting off the game and reloading it in creative mode–cheat mode. In an instant I’d ruined the game entirely. I invalidated everything I’d done on my own and moreover everything my boys had done. The world I built was no longer considered ‘survival’ it was instead a cheat world where nothing I built existed without the possibility I’d simply spun it all up in creative mode.

So what? It is just a silly game.

Indeed, but the lesson is far more real and human than the game would indicate. I tried to take a shortcut because a setback upset me. The result was a greater loss and me becoming a huge disappointment. All of this based on the fact that I was impatient and unable to deal with failure. Losing is a consequence of action and without the fear of consequence, some terrible things can unfold. Beyond that, the lack of consequence creates a meaninglessness and a false sense of confidence that can be detrimental.

All of this, from a silly game.

50,000 is the number of people reportedly living in my town. It is also the number of people who attend GenCon in downtown Indianapolis every year. 50K. Imagine an entire small city worth of people showing up to support role playing games and the writings, costuming, movies, etc. based off of the RPG genre. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be there this year, but my heart is with the gamers taking part in the ‘Best four days in gaming’ and especially with those who are going to be picking up my new short story as part of the World of Shadows Shadowrun Anthology edited by John Helfers. I’m geeked about the anthology and about the other awesome stuff coming out during the convention.

On the other hand, this is the 2nd year that I’ve appeared in no more than a handful of publications, meaning my output has decreased significantly. The culprit? There are a million of them that all swirl back to the central idea of not handling life before life handles me. Fortunately the end of that is fast approaching (the handling, not life). I believe I’m close to hitting my ‘sweet spot’ again after identifying the issues holding me back and making some early stabs at fixing them.

It is time to shine again.

I’ve been debating the first pick in the 2015 fantasy draft; figuring on whether or not Adrian Peterson is going to be the guy or if someone else is going to step up and get me that big win in both leagues. I don’t have an answer, but I can say that the season intrigues me in many ways. There aren’t one or two things that really define whether a player will be exceptional. Sure, we know a few will always be great, but some will be exceptional, and I am starting to figure out who they are.

What does exceptional mean? Well, it means that your player performs above and beyond round-based expectation. If I pick up a player in the 1st, there is an expectation of point production on a weekly basis. If you get a late round flyer that performs well enough to be considered a key starter, then you’ve got an exceptional player. I believe those types exists throughout this latest draft, because expectations create that.

I’ll give you one or two for today. I’ll start with Shane Vereen. Here is the truth about the Giants: They won’t be a top 15 defense this year. As a result they will need to be able to go into the teeth of a run defense and still put up 24 points minimum a game. In order to make that a reality they’ll need a pass-catching back to balance the focus (and also lighten the focus) on the receiving tandem. Donell proved he can’t handle the load, but the load is still there and in need of a guy like Vereen can rank up a lot of fanstasy points in that system.

Times about up, so more ASAP.