10 minutes of writing each and every day.
I don’t have a lot of words this evening. They’ve been sucked away by fatigue and a the after taste of 8 weeks of college teaching. I’m just tired I suppose. I plan to wind down the evening with DVR’d shows including Modern Family and a few episodes of Person of Interest.
TV is meant to be an escape, and it often can be just that. Between the kids and the work and the specter of writing assignments, I just really need a nice long break.
I’ve always been a fan of Hyperbole and a Half. I find myself wondering what happened to Allie, or my browser, or whatever. See, she hasn’t updated her stuff in a while according to my browser, which means she’s been bought off by Microsoft (circa the Guild) or I am just not getting updates. I love it when writers are prolific. I feel like I need to be that way when everyone around me is just clicking. The worst feeling is to be walking backwards in a crowd of runners. This morning I thought up a pretty sick introduction to a Shadowrun novel. This thing could be very good. I’ll be laying it out this week and pitching it shortly after. Accepted or not, It is going to be my Nano-novel.
In other news, I’ve hit a bit of a groove in the teaching world. I know what I want to do with my students next semester and for the rest of this semester. I was seeking a common thread or guiding principle that held everything together. With the help of a colleague I discovered that the central thread is the idea of responsibility and role. What is your role as an educated citizen. Being educated and being a citizen means heightened responsibility, but the beauty of America (and perhaps its downfall) is that you may select your role. All of my assignments are reflective in that they all ask students to consider role and responsibility as they write and especially in regards to who they are writing to.
At 0-6 facing the #1 team in the league, my season is pretty much over. Who would have thought the Cleveland Browns would pull off a win before I did? There were moments, well, moment, when it seemed like I could win a game. Then reality dropped a foot down my–.
Well, at least there is the pick ’em season. Heading into the week I was despondent at 47 – 30. A 9-5 week takes me to 56 – 35, beating all the pickers I’m up against save Wickersham and Mortensen. I’m still behind those two Bristol U brethren, but closing fast. I think this is the week I make my move. I’m going bold.
SF over SEA
NYG figured out the formula to beat Alex Smith, but it was always there. See, you gotta get a lead and make him play from behind. I don’t see how Seattle can do that this far from home.
TEN over BUF
CJ1k? Let’s hope he continues along this path and has a breakout game against the worst run D in football.
IND over CLE
Last week was a fluke. That beating Indy took in NY is the kind of thing that ignites offenses. I feel like they may get on track this week, possibly earning me a win in the fantasy realm.
GB over STL
Discount double check! I think the Packers are back to their form, which does spell trouble for pass defenses. Rodgers is doing his thing and spreading it around. When Jennings comes back it will be even better.
MIN over AZ
All Day Peterson has hardly been mentioned in the national media. This isn’t the week for that, but a combination of him and an emergent pass offense really could make the D’s day easy. Oh, and Skelton is starting.
NYG over WSH
I gotta go with my G-men, despite all the facts to the contrary. Fact: Gmen lost twice to these guys last year sans RGIII. Fact: Gmen are not good at home. Fact: they may experience a let down after whuppin that SF booty. Fact: Despite all these facts, I gotta stick with my Gmen.
NO over TB
(see above comments on Packers)
CAR over DAL
Carolina is a team in trouble. They are desperate and struggling. They will face a fast, angry D. They will struggle with the pass rush and–aww who am I kidding? This is the Cowboys. They’re getting punked.
BAL over HOU
Toughest pick this week. I think Houston is reeling and Baltimore is looking to step up and prove they can win without their defensive leaders. Here’s what happens: Shaub and Johnson abuse Baltimore until Ed Reed says no more. He get a pick 6, the O starts throwing it, and Baltimore takes the win.
JAC over OAK
Just like AP, pocket hercules has been quiet. I think this is the week he speaks up. With his feet.
NYJ over NE
NE isn’t as great as they think. Although this is a home game for the great and powerful Brady, the Jets D is playing with passion and purpose. I have never seen Cromartie play like this, and those around him are stepping up as well.
PIT over CIN
They’re still Pittsburgh.
DET over CHI
Megatron time, Y’all. This is not going to be about the run game. It is going to be about the passing attacks and pass defense for both groups.
The crying begins at 5:45 AM. That is the moment my wife leaves, raising the garage door and inadvertently informing our youngest she is gone. I rise reluctantly and pluck the child from the spot on the floor in the hallway where he weeps every Tuesday at this time. I bring him back into the bed and we sleep for a few minutes more as the rest of the house comes awake.
The middle child is next. He peaks in through the bedroom door, silent as a ninja. I se him and call him over. He gives me a kiss and wanders downstairs to dress and watch cartoons. The first born follows.
These are the easy moments of my single dad Tuesdays. I recognize the misnomer. I am happily married. However, my wife leaves early on Tuesdays only to return well past bedtime. It is that second half, the moments after school, that are the hardest. It leaves me in a state where I cannot do anything for myself or my teaching or my learning until they are fast asleep. As the hours wear on they grow ornery, and that leads to trouble.
Tonight the youngest tried to break my laptop in a fit of rage. He was mad for nothing and at nothing. He was simply disappointed about being tired. That is what happens when you don’t nap. So, I’m going to go nap right now.
I’m having trouble with one particular class. It feels a bit like the fates are conspiring against me on this one. I spent several hour constructing an incredible sequence of events designed to lead the class through the development of an essay and into a handful of crucial rhetorical patterns. Now, I thought I saved it. In fact, I feel like I copied part of the document into my evernote at some point without, apparently, saving the original document. If I did save the thing, I did so in a way that completely obfuscated it.
The problem is only partly content. Students will only get excited about something the instructor is excited about. Even then, they need to feel personally connected to the issue in some way in order to give a damn. The plan required students to come prepared with homework read and written in order to get into class. Each day requires a ticket in. At the end of the month the students are asked to assess the ticket in strategy as to how it affected their learning.
Here is the problem: I don’t know what the ticket-in for thursday is. So, I gotta generate a new ticket in, so I can keep things going. I think the ticket is going to be a 1 page draft of their reasoning behind their assignment choice for Tuesday.
That could work. It ought to, because everything else is gone.
This election season I’ve heard much about entitlements. Each ‘side’ claims (correctly) that the other side lauds entitlements for their base. The dems visibly help those less fortunate as a way to bring everyone up. The GOP helps those with wealth gain/keep more of that wealth so that it may ‘trickle down’ to those less fortunate. I fall along the democratic spectrum, but I am not shy on admitting that I have benefited from Republican created loopholes. While I didn’t pick up a nearly-free Hummer while that loophole was open, I am pleased the mortgage loopholes remain open.
These entitlements, these privileges are so ubiquitous that is easy to forget they even exist. I’m interested, both as a sociologist and as a middle-class American to really dissect these entitlements and find out how much the state is covering for us all. Watching the chaos unfold in Greece and elsewhere leads me to believe that any genuine challenge to our hidden entitlements will cause wide scale unrest. Imagine discovering that the government was keeping our oil prices artificially low, say a dollar or more. If prices jumped a dollar, we would lose our minds.
And then we would pay it.
The fact is, we don’t have control over the entitlements given, and should we be forced to relinquish them, we would take it. We would moan and gripe and complain about how ‘our America’ is vanishing, but we would stay put. See, nobody is going to leave America, because we have it ingrained in out psyche that it is the greatest place on Earth.
40 – 37 = 3 or 3 years.
Include the fact that I legitimately turn 38 in March, and I don’t have long to go before I am 40 yrs old. Why am I regurgitating this awfulness now? Well, because I desperately despise almost being 40, and I feel like the writing I do is quickly becoming a young man’s game.
There is nothing in the known world to prove my opinion is accurate. It is more of a feeling; a sense that there is a storm of twenty-something geniuses lurking just beyond my perception and waiting for a chance to release really great fiction. I am not mad at them. Hell, I envy them and what they will soon accomplish. I’ve been at this Shadowrun thing for over a decade and I’m finally hitting my stride. Imagine having the energy and zeal of a 20 yr old and being in full stride. That is what Bolt must feel like halfway through the 100 meter.
So what now?
Such a moment of realization should spur me to be a more prolific writer. It doesn’t. I am at the point where my life allows me so much writing and I’ve hit that cap. There is this though: I want to be at a place in a year where I get to leave home for a week, go up to the woods and write. Just write. The next year it can be two weeks, and then perhaps three, with the family joining me for the fourth week. I can do it if I have a grandparent fly up and help the wife out. The fact is, I need the time away from my every day reality to find my way into these wonderful imaginary worlds I hope to create.
Some Thoughts:
I’ve been thinking about time as a range rather than an arrow. Given existing theories that all time occurs at once, I have started to consider human life as a range of impact and experience. I have long held that when we ‘die’ it is only a perceptive end. We lose the ability to generate new memories, activities, motion, etc. Our initial energy lives on beyond that range of consciousness. This framework allows for concepts like, range of life (lifespan) to explain how different individuals can directly impact a range of activity within this flattened dot of time.
Our lifespan, or range of impact is the time where we have consciousness. This is the limited period in which we can directly affect what happens within the reality construct as well as be affected by the reality construct.
Here is where my thinking goes beyond: I believe we have the innate capacity to experience everything that occurs within our range. This does not explain the perception of ghosts (unless you consider overlapping ranges and the ability to perceptively connect with everyone within our range) but it does tie in with the theory that we are all one and connected.
I don’t know that the idea of range means anything right now. The range of human experience should be as long as the oldest person in the world’s lifespan to the most recently born individual’s possible death date. That range of experience does suppose that we have the ability to move forward as well as backwards, as all possible timelines have already occurred.
The central problem that Obama, Biden, and in fact any democrat has is this: The elections are being fought with two different set of rules. For the republicans, the rule is engage the base and sway the middle at all costs, no matter what lies need to be told or what promises need to be made. The democrats are under a separate rules condition. They must deal with the blatant lies and avoid calling anyone a liar or getting upset, laughing, or being condescending in the face of the lies being told.
This situation is the reason Obama bombed the first debate. He simply did not know what to do. If he responded by explaining the lies are lies with any semblance of emotion, he ran the risk of becoming the ‘Angry Black Man’. If he laid back, as he did, and tried to show he was above the fray, he becomes a detached leader not used to conflict. The spotlight is on him and how he response to Romney’s obvious BS. The problem is there is no right response under this rulescape. He cannot be himself and tell it like it is. That would seem ‘unpresidential’. Meanwhile, if you go the incredulous route, you wind up with the situation that Biden faced. You state the facts, face down the lies, and wind up being called a buffoon for ‘picking on Ryan’.
Basically, the challenger is the victim. If you do anything to damage the victim, then you, as the big strong leader, are the bad guy. Nobody wants to elect the bad guy–well, except when a Bush is involved…
This is a sad Waiver Wednesday. I have reached the nearly unrecoverable record of 0-5. At this point I am 4 games back from first in my division and no threat to win a game, let alone make the playoffs. I am not sure I can win a game this year.
The fact is, players who were expected to have incredible seasons are having terrible seasons. Chris Johnson, who promised to return to his 2,000 yard form, is in line to crack 500 yds by the end of the season. MJD (pocket Hercules) has been far from heroic, languishing in an offense that shows no dedication to winning. My receiving corps came alive, but Andre Johnson, once the most dominating receiver, has vocalized an awful truth. He said he wanted to take less snaps to save himself for the playoffs.
So, I am losing all my games. No matter what free agent moves I make, I lose. The same is holding true for the picks this past week. AZ fell to STL on the way to my 10-4 week. I could/should have done better. My record stand at 47 – 29, which puts me behind a number of prominent ‘pick men’ including Mortensen who at 55-22 is up on me by 8. There is still the 1 game I missed picking, so for now I will mark it down as a loss. 47 – 30. Tied with Golic. Lets break the deadlock, shall we?
PIT over TEN
Pittsburgh is a solid team on both sides of the ball whereas CJ0K has to be worried about losing his job. I blame the scheme. Johnson should be the focal point of the offense, but he doesn’t get the carries and doesn’t have the sort of zone scheme that will help him be successful. So what happens? TEN loses again, and my fantasy team follows.
ATL over OAK
ATL has all cylinders firing on offense. Oakland’s D can only slow them. Meanwhile, the Raider O hasn’t found its voice yet.
CIN over CLE
Cleveland is a stinky city. I have said this again and again. There is a sewage smell in the streets and now on the field.
MIA over STL
Miami is getting its stuff together. STL still stinks.
NYJ over IND
Sorry, Mr. Luck. There will be no Wayne this week. Cromartie is legit. He put down Johnson last week and looks to shut down Wayne this week, just as the chemistry between QB and receiver is coming together.
PHI over DET
It is going to be a close game or a blowout. It will be a defensive struggle or a pointsplosion. Fact is, I have no idea who is going to win this game, because I don’t know who the Eagles are. They win games, but they look real shady.
TB over KC
Backup QB means bad things for KC.
BAL over DAL
Ravens D is going to be the story here. Dallas, even after a week off, is still a chump team.
ARI over BUF
Buffalo is awful. Each week their defense sets a record for futility. Once a Camden hopeful, Mario Williams just hopes to keep his job. Expect hundreds upon hundreds of offensive yards for the cards. Fitz is going to go off.
SEA over NE
Seattle is tough at home. NE is not the team they used to be, and the new reliance on the running attack is going to fall flat here. Carroll is one of maybe 5 coaches that can best Bellicheck.
NYG over SF
Toughest pick of the night. I think it will be close as can be. I actually switched this pick to the G-men at the last minute, because it is a road game. Giants do better away from the distractions of the big apple.
MIN over WSH
Minnesota has been a legit team. With Washington having absolutely no answer for Adrian Peterson, and their QB possibly on ice, I give it to MIN.
GB over HOU
Houston’s secondary made Sanchez look (almost) good. Real deal Rodgers is going to produce more offense than the Jets could muster, and if HOU doesn’t control the clock, they will fall.
DEN over SD
Denver is up and down. Manning is getting his game right. Despite all of this, I see them as a better success story than San Diego