Month: December 2014

Just started coaching the latest season of flag football. I’m constantly amazed at how difficult it is to get everything going properly for the first practice. It is even more amazing how little I actually know about coaching these kids. The more I think I know, the more I realize there is to know in order to get really good at doing this. Looking at the schedules, we’ll be facing some top quality coaches this year and if I want my kids to have a chance to be successful, I need to get better. Fast.

I wasn’t better at the whole fantasy thing this year: out in the first round in two separate leagues. Thanks, Peterson. I’ve seen better seasons, and like my much-maligned NYC teams, I’ll see better seasons again. In the meanwhile, lets talk about how other teams are going to do this week…

AZ over STL
They tend to have a hard time with this team, but Stanton is showing promise and Ellington should be GTG…

PIT over ATL
ATL cost me my FF season by sucking in pass coverage. May they lose every remaining game.

BAL over JAX

GB over BUF

TB over CAR
The loss of their QB in that fashion puts an emotional crimp in next man up. Very ‘Remember the Titans’

CLE over CIN
Rebound city, thanks to the run game and a failing CIN team. Not thanks to Johnny Football, but he’ll get the credit.

HOU over IND
IND is reeling….

OAK over KC
We’re going streaking!

NE over MIA

NYG over WAS
Play the NYG D this week, yo.

DEN over SD

NYJ over TEN
The Jets when on the strength of the run game and CJ0K gets revenge.

DET over MIN
Decepticons run wild!

SEA over SF
SF is trash now and the coach is gone soon… Thanks, media scrutiny.

PHI over DAL

NO over CHI

 

In the evenings, long after the sun has set and the children have made their way to sleep, my night life begins. The day determines the show, for it is always a show these days. Mondays I lean into the couch and wait for Castle to bring out giggles. Tuesday belongs to the Flash and the Agents of Shield afterwards. So on and so forth I burn my evenings under a soft red blanket beside my wife, engaging in the lemming’s work of being a viewer to all these shows. She says I have too many shows. I submit that more than one is probably too many. We are supposed to be creatures of thought and action, but the only thoughts I generate in this state are, ‘where is the ‘mote so I can fast-forward through these commercials’ and the only action is the petulant jabbing of those small black buttons in hopes of getting to the meat of the show with all due haste.

I used to call this kind of thing ‘research for future writing’

I also used to think the belly growing around my waste was fuel for a future spate of high-intensity workouts. I’m living in an orbit much closer to reality these days, and the reality is that it is easy to get stuck in a dead end routine. It is not so easy to get out of it.

Tony Robbins says you can tell a lot about a person by their rituals. I think rituals form and reform based on the conditions of the individual. My rituals speak of a tired body and soul drained like a battery in the Arizona summer heat. Fortunately there is respite only days away. The winter break nears and I hope to find my way back to strong energetic writing and the promise of a better tomorrow.

Perhaps a less cheesy one while I’m at it…

I’m tired.

This is no big revelation to those who know me. The nights end at 11:11 and days begin between 4 and 5 AM. I’m not working out and doing so much reading and writing that the brain often slips into auto pilot mode and the stuff that winds up filling these ten minutes is a garbled mess of stray thoughts and half baked ideas. Still, all of it is part of the process and part of the process is falling apart for a week or two while your head gets right enough to slip out of the gravitational pull of whatever story you’re working on and form coherent thoughts.

Not quite there yet…

Thanks to the machinations of a pretty epic 15 yr old girl, my eldest now has a kitten of his own. The kitty is mostly white with patches of grey and black fur. She’s all fur, actually, with pensive gray eyes that seem to say, ‘what am I doing here?’ The boy named her Skitty after the Cat-Pokemon that evolves into Delcatty. It was an obvious choice–Meowth and Lucario didn’t seem to work for a girl cat, and the name was going to be Pokemon influenced no matter what. She arrived this afternoon. We weren’t entirely prepared for the arrival. We had all the necessary equipment but failed to realize how shocked and afraid she would be to find herself in a new home with creatures she’d never before encountered–Chopper, our Yorkie for one.

Skitty is the third cat I’ve ever lived with and the first that didn’t directly belong to me. She’s also the first that wasn’t completely gray. Her predecessor, Razzi-Ann, died traumatically over a year ago. We are partially convinced that Razzi was poisoned by a neighbor tired of cats wandering from yard to yard. I say this because I rarely see cats in the ‘hood anymore. Perhaps Razzi was only one of a multitude of victims. Skitty on the other hand is too small to hop the garden wall and cruise the block. In truth she doesn’t have the willingness to even hop a baby gate. This will come, along with a deeper understanding of the world around her.

I hope she realizes she is being welcomed into a home filled with love and understanding for pets. That is if you discount the dog who peed on everything then escaped into the wilderness long enough for me to decide not to murder or sell him…

So, I finally did it. Friday I went under the laser and severed my chances for future kids. Vasectomies are common place these days. My doctor claimed to do a minimum of five procedures a month. Its simple work for him too. He finished the work in around 10 minutes. Turns out that a lot of things in life happen in 10 minute increments. In ten quick minutes I lost my ability to sire children. I believe that was the right choice for now–I’m in no position to have more babies. At the same time it is a far more significant shift that could have lasting ramifications on my state of mind as a male.

Are you less of a man if you can’t make babies? I don’t believe so. I apply that same thinking to women. Making babies (or sperm) doesn’t determine gender in my mind. Still, there is a world of people out there who feel differently.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Yesterday’s post was one I actually went back and read again today. There’s a certain desperation to that post that I was unaware of when I was writing it. The post felt like I was saying that my own creativity is dying. That is not accurate. My creativity seems to have narrowed into the laser focus of science fiction. On the other hand I feel like I’m capable of existing in many genres.
2. I’m stoked to get back to making the treehouse. Right now the plan is to build a floor using 2 x 4 beams with bracing underneath. The walls will go up the same way. This is going to be an actual house built around the base of the tree with a roof structure that serves as a traditional ‘tree house’ styled lookout. The kids will be able to play up there and I hope to attach another structure to it so they can do some American Ninja type stuff…

All writers run out of ideas.
This may be for a minute, week, month, even a lifetime. The length, I believe, is self-determined. A good friend told me recently that I ought to stop falling back on old solutions to the problems I have now, and I feel like that statement (however poorly paraphrased) applies to the creative spirit. Used to be that if I was blocked creatively I’d step back, breathe, and go read a bunch of stuff in the genre I was trying to write in. I called it a jumpstart. Today I was thinking of another solution to that situation: Write something new everyday.

Generally speaking, writers come to the table of life with one really good idea. They write around that idea, carving away at the core of their creativity the way a sculptor peels back the clay until the sculpture is finally revealed. I believe Stephen King’s one great story was the Dark Tower series, and nearly everything else he’s written orbits that work. I don’t believe it has to be that way. I believe that King, and others like him, escaped the trap of sculpting towards your one big thing by trying to write something new and challenging themselves as writers every day.

As a writer it is easy to get stuck in a mode or a rut or a specific style. Challenging myself will allow me to explore different styles, genres, and voices. This is the clearest path to stretch and grow my creativity.

Now all I gotta do is lock down the time for all this writing…

I missed this on Wednesday. The present upheaval and, well, reaffirmation that we are still a relatively racist society (in terms of social structure and attitudes) distracted me. So the responsibility falls to a Thursday night…

 

CHI over DAL
This is going to be a rather enjoyable shootout–especially in the second half as the D’s wear down. CHI has better receiving options IMHO.

CIN over PIT
This is an important matchup for both squads, though I think the advantage goes to the Bengals thanks to an evolved Sanu.

DET over TB

HOU over JAX

BAL over MIA

NYJ over MIN
MIN can stack against the run, but they can’t run against the Jets.

NO over CAR

TEN over NYG

STL over WAS

ARI over KC

DEN over BUF

SF over OAK

PHI over SEA

NE over SD

GB over ATL

 

I think I’m becoming increasingly bigoted in my semi-old age. Maybe just a touch cynical.

I’ve spent this week engaged in a series of very interesting and informative conversations with students in regards to the Micheal Brown shooting. Almost all who have some officer training or are officers themselves believe the shooting was just and preventable. I felt like there were really two conversations taking place at all times. One was about the specific issue and the other was about the larger twin contexts of continued racial profiling/standardized behaviors towards black suspects while the other was about the blue shield and continued justification of negative police behaviors based entirely on the fact that police are putting their lives on the line. I stand by the ruling that it was a just shooting. Everything I’ve read or heard or seen point to the officer being a stand up dude. What happened to him is terrible. Still, not all cops are Officer Wilson. Some are Officer Pantaleo, hiding behind the thick legal paperwork and bond of the police association. Here’s what I feel: I feel like we do owe our officers something more than what we provide them (financially and respectfully). I don’t however feel like we owe them the benefit of the doubt. In fact I believe we need to hold the people we entrust with our safety to a higher standard. I need to be able to trust the person I turn to in a crisis, not worrying if I’ll be shot in my own driveway, yanked out of my car by cops with guns drawn and tazed in front of my  kids because I asked to see a supervising officer, or merely stopped and frisked based on the way I was dressed. My grandfather was an officer. I grew up knowing the cops in my neighborhood. I grew up wanting to believe the cops were on my side. Some were. Some were not.

Cops are people and people can become jaded by seeing horrible things. Sadly, the profession (like teaching) protects everyone in the profession behind the same scratch-resistant, bulletproof wall. The same massive wall that says, ‘we will handle our problems internally’ and expects the rest of the world to stand by and wait patiently for that to happen–that expects the rest of the world to move on at let the wounds heal. Guess what: Wounds don’t heal unless treated. When they are left to fester they can kill the body or in the least leave an ugly scar.

It is time we stopped saying that just because someone was vetted and earned the right to wear a badge they are forever that same heroic person who first stepped into the job. I’ve watched the job jade people. I’ve watched it make people into racists, and stereotypers, and shoot first gunslingers. Its a hard job and we need to do more to protect the people who do it. That includes protecting them from the bad ones that make us all look bad.

 

There’s a certain idealism that comes preloaded with teenagers. That is why I keep a couple around like plaintive reminders of what life would be like if I wasn’t jaded by what life is actually like. It’s an experiment in indecency, really. I can still remember the feeling of freedom of an open door to an open world filled with possibilities and pleasures. I remember getting on a bus at the end of my senior year of high school and wondering, ‘what is going to happen next?’

 

I had plans. We all have plans of some sort—I heard about a kid who planned to stay on the couch for three to five years locked into waist-high stack of video games like a prisoner to the virtual. His mom nixed that plan when she ‘accidentally’ spilled a flower vase full of water on the PS3. He couldn’t afford to replace the machine, so she made him get a job to pay for a new one. That started a new plan for him.

 

My plan ended up getting nixed by a none-too-subtle failure of willpower. It was a recurring problem for years there. I’m not a teen anymore and it still creeps up on me every now and again. I’ve made plans, failed plans, and changed plans and all the while I’ve tried to cling to the tiniest sliver of that idealism that made me feel like I would conquer the world.

 

Nowadays I just want to conquer a story.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. There may be something wrong with me. I mean doctor time wrong. I’m getting fatigued and ready for sleepyland at 9pm… That wipes out all the time possible to be productive. It may be that I have to go back to night coffee.

I’m bitter about football, so I’m going to rant…

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Geno Smith is garbage. I’m sure he could dominate the league in my adult flag football league or even in the Semi-pro tackle league I used to play in out here. Heck, I even think he could do something for the Argonauts. That’s not the NFL though. In the NFL Geno Smith is garbage.
2. Idzik is garbage too! He hasn’t been productive in the draft and showed quite clearly he was more interested in sitting on the salary cap space than putting the money towards the pair of corners that coach needed in order to execute his defense. So what happened? The D was exposed. Now Ryan is going to lose his job, Geno might keep his job, and the Jets continue to suck.
3. They don’t suck as much as the Giants. How do you blow a 21 point second half lead to the Jaguars? I’ll tell you how: Larry Donnell fumbles the ball on a drive, attitudes fall to crap, and the crap collects speed as it rolls downhill. The Jaguars were suddenly running and throwing downhill and there was nothing the G-men could do about it.
4. I’m a physical mess… 9:30 and I want to go to bed. My body is for poop. I’m stressed, tired, and somewhat done with this whole teaching thing (till 2015). I’m ready to step away from the classroom and start the hard core writing.