Month: April 2015

There is something about being able to throw money at a problem until that problem goes away. I mean I’ve been told my entire life that success cannot be bought but then I look at Microsoft and say, hell yes it can. I remember growing up in the dawn of the Xbox. That device flopped horribly. For years the Xbox lost money for the company. The game support was dismal and the device itself was subject to more crashes than the average Windows install. Fortunately for Microsoft, people were (and are) still installing Windows on a global scale. Every college I’ve visited uses Windows as the primary OS. That OS remains the basis for most Comp Sci 101 classes. This is not a local phenomenon. When speaking with visiting faculty from China years ago, they said it was the same way over there. In fact, it wasn’t until last year that China even announced a plan to develop a homegrown OS. So, money helps. It covers up a lot of the BS people try to do until that BS eventually sticks and becomes the norm. It feels like the same process is happening with the new Surface tablet. Give it a few years–even a decade, and I’m guessing it will be the norm.

This is exactly how Xbox cracked into the Big 3. Once upon a time the players were Sega, Nintendo (going strong since 1888), and Sony’s Playstation brand. Sega was the suspect platform, relying on hit or miss games that were built in the same vein as Playstation releases. Nintendo had a brand and a market share all its own and wasn’t chasing Sony or Sega buys. Xbox came along as an alternative and, of course, threw money at the problem. After years of losing or at best slim profit margins, Xbox stands next to Playstation as the ‘must have’ platform while even Nintendo lags, leaning on a shrinking specialized market of consumers. Sega? They have gone the way of Atari.

That bring me to the Surface Tablet. Microsoft has already lost 1 billion dollars on the Surface Tablet. This is roughly equivalent to costing investors 9 cents a share on dividends. I recognize that said in that latter fashion it sounds like, well, pennies. That is because it is. Because of the raw size and strength of the company, Microsoft can afford to take a hit on the tablet and keep taking hits on the tablet until eventually people catch on and like what it is all about. This is the concept of throwing money at a problem.

I can’t throw money at the problems in my personal or even professional life. I live in a world where money is being snatched away. I can see how having more capital will create more freedom and options. Perhaps with a clearer head (and less empty wallet) I would be able to appreciate the nuance and difficulty of wealth more than I currently do. As is, I don’t quite believe Biggie Smalls anymore. More money ain’t always more problems. Just ask Microsoft.

Some Thoughts:

1. Here is a situation where the officer was well within his rights to shoot the suspect and showed considerable (bordering on dangerous) restraint. Way to go, dude.
2. The first US opera opened in 1810. The opera was named ‘Converse’ which I find hilarious as that name went on to become the penultimate American shoe for a time…
3. Of course, that was also the year we annexed Florida from Spain–a decision we’ve come to regret.

I was reveling in the irony that a year ago today I was sick and thinking about creationism. Today I’m healthy and deep in thought about transhumanism. The two shouldn’t be at odds but seem to constantly be at each other’s throats. One is the belief that God set man upon earth while the other speaks to transcendence and our scientifically fostered ability to become more. The notion that faith and science cannot exist in the same mind and space is idiotic to me. I find science to be the rules and structure that define the words preached in all manner of faith. When most look to God they look for guidance, answers, belonging. When most turn to science it is for these same reasons and often with the same dogged belief structure–the belief that what was proven before is gospel.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. This cover of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ is sick good… if you’re into that sort of thing. If you are, this is cool too…
2. Tebow caught a shot with the Eagles. Sanchez and Tebow back together again?!
3. In keeping with yesterday’s post on slavery, 1809 was in fact the year Abraham Lincoln was born. He was later responsible for the emancipation proclamation. That bold statement led to him being murdered by an upstart named John Wilkes Booth.
4. Yes, my mid-kid is writing a paper on John Wilkes Booth.
5. Netflix’s Daredevil is the best possible version of that story and well worth checking out. I don’t think anyone will (or should) remember the Affleck debacle after this… or the Elektra film that followed it. I do think Elektra will make an appearance by the 3rd season of this show and its already been setup to feel right and seamless.

I’ve become painfully aware that we are a country that prefers to create context than recognize it. This is no more true than in the ‘gotcha’ moments we love trapping our media darlings in. The latest of these moments involves Britt McHenry of ESPN. McHenry is a tall, slim, blonde reporter known as equally for her physical similarities to Erin Andrews as she is for her ability to get tough interviews. Well, now she’s known for something more infamous. McHenry was caught on tape ranting at a towing company worker. The rant was impressive. There were attacks on the clerk’s looks, weight, education, etc. In short, she did to this worker what anyone who has ever had their car towed has wanted to do to the clerk on the other side of that shielded partition. Unfortunately, it cost her reputation and might still cost her job.

Freedom of speech exists in principle, but in practice if you say stuff that others do not agree with you will quickly find yourself socially ostracized. This is the true impact of a PC world. Now to be honest, I couldn’t care less about McHenry herself or the tow worker who got told off. Still, what really transpires in this video is just a tow worker being told off. McHenry was later forced to publicly apologize for having a human moment. This is not about elitism or racism or some power figure. This is about a celebrity who wound up getting towed and mouthing off to the person who had her car and, based on the video, was mouthing off herself. Now this context is lost on the general story. That story is about ‘fat shaming’ and making an example out of a pretty girl who talked down to a presumably ugly one. If that’s grounds for firing then half the population of American high schools can never be gainfully employed.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. 1808 was the year that congress officially banned the import of slaves into the U.S. This limited the number of slave exports that Africa could rely on. It did not, however, end slavery in Africa. The African slave system exists to this day, reminding all of us that not everyone follows the same rulebook.
2. Orphan Black is back and is one of a handful of shows that I still watch. The list is getting smaller by the day. That’s a good thing. TV rots the imagination, changing it from open thinking to varying degrees of simulacrum.

I’m not entirely clear on whether I can call myself nascent or not. I’ve clearly been doing this for a while with some success. I also still feel like I am crawling back towards that precipice of more. It isn’t binge watching Daredevil that is going to make me better. I feel like I will take that next step primarily as a result of having more experiences and learning to understand human reactions to the world and conditions around them. Writers drink in all of that and spill it back unto the page in prose or poetry, words scratched into paragraphs and sentences shaped into dialogue. For me the pathway has always been fiction, but the blogging is more about the truth and the result of my experiences. I’ve learned that I can do both and enjoy both. I’ve learned that one informs the other, and that often the relationship is bi-directional.

I have learned that blogging provides a sense of freedom. I can speak out and be real about things and often be real with myself without allowing myself (for the most part) to work about fear of persecution or ridicule. That makes the work all the more worthwhile.

I don’t know what is coming next for the blog, but I’m guessing it will be more involved and more worthwhile and, well, just plain more…

Some Thoughts:

1. 1807 marked the beginning of the gaslight era. It started in London on Pall Mall street and led to a longstanding genre and romantic period. The facts of gaslight however skew darker than the romanticized perception. Beneath the surface of the gaslight industry was a web of challenged patents, competing entrepreneurs, and murder.

I can remember some genuine moments in my short but entertaining youth coaching career. I can remember, for example, sitting with the boy whose dad hardly ever attended games and talking about how sad he was that his dad couldn’t see him play. We talked about it in terms of how hard his dad worked to make sure the family was happy and well fed. He agreed that his dad was a super hard worker and that we should make sure he played super hard and worked super hard in practice so when dad could make it he’d see his son working as hard as he did. I remember all of the tough practices when nobody wanted to listen; all of the sessions when the offense never seemed to work right or ball movement wasn’t close to being a reality.

I remember the losses.

I remember the big wins; the cheers afterwards and feeling good about the kids feeling good. I still enjoy running into other coaches and feeling that camaraderie that exists among us–especially among those I call rival.

I’ve coached everything under the son, raising three boys who are deeply into sports. I’ve come to appreciate the relationships, the acknowledgement and recognition of that hard work. This is why it is so difficult to be on a team where it is deeply clear that I don’t matter one little bit to anyone on that field or sideline except maybe my own kid. It hit me hard to recognize that after putting in so much work and sweat equity in helping these kids understand the nuances of the game, I am suddenly Just Another Dad who the coaches couldn’t care less about. Part of me wanted to roam the sideline offering suggestions. I feel like I can contribute and, though this could be armchair coaching at play, I feel like I have a basic understanding of how some of the systems in play can be improved.

I realize this is my ego talking. This entire football season has been a lesson in humility. The kid who was a superstar before being on the team is a nobody–a one touch a game back/slot receiver who has a whole bunch of speed and heart but not too much focus or experience. He does well with the one touch. I do less well with the abject obscurity. It isn’t that I want to be noticed–I could care less about people knowing me. I want to participate. I want to help the kids grow and get better. I want to offer something. I want to make new moments with my son and with others and give what I can towards helping them to becoming better people and players.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Thinking back to 1804 (Aaron Burr!) got me thinking about 1806, which is the year future president Andrew Jackson killed Charles Dickinson in a duel. How many of our earliest leaders and founders fought to the death like that. Here’s some irony. History books suggest that Jackson had several duels (mostly against attorneys, which I kinda get) and the majority of them were about defending his wife’s honor. Here’s the irony: She who needed to be honorably defended, disparaged Washington after Jackson was elected president, promising she would rather “be a door-keeper in the house of God than to live in that palace in Washington” She died before moving to Washington.
2. Ex Machina looks like a CGI’d version of Her.
3. New Star Wars trailer. Check it out here.
4. New Avengers trailer. I’m not sharing.
5. Chuck Lorre said he’d quit writing those short notes at the end of his shows. Liar. He wrote another one this week.

When I was a kid I used to watch whatever popped on the screen. A drawback of watching so much bad TV is the inability to accept simplistic moral and social conundrums as worthwhile. Sure, there’s more to it than that. I grew up around so much good literature that I came to recognize nuance and depth of character. I don’t see it a lot in TV. I see aspects of it; I see people making the effort in one way or another, but fully formed characterizations are rare. Daredevil is no different, but on the other hand it is based on a comic book—a form of visual literature that relies on still images to create pathos and understanding. Moving pictures are different and rarely translates from still in the original fashion.

That brings us to the new Daredevil series on Netflix.

I was drawn to the series simply because its another Marvel title and part of the cinematic universe. I knew of Daredevil as the gritty Hell’s Kitchen ‘Batman’ who moved through darkness like it was a clear afternoon. I queued up the first episode and fell right into it.

I stayed into it to this day, but I realized I needed to recognize the show for what it is: Really good action sequences spaced by standard and somewhat limited characters and drama.

The central argument in the series is about how to save ‘Hells Kitchen’  The Daredevil (the good guy) wants to do this by eliminating the criminal element. The antagonist want to save the city through gentrification and uses violence to bring some of his competitors in line.

That’s the whole thing right there. Of course they try to add the personal drama for each character but those characters seem more like the comic counterparts due to scripts that highlight one pivotal life moment for each of them–a life moment that presumably sent them on their separate paths. It gets worse too: each of the characters are often stereotypes that are limited, scene wise, to the stuff that advances that one issue or often personality trait the show decided was relevant.

In short watching Daredevil is awesome, but do it for the action. There is a scene in Furious 7 where this hacker-chick stares at Toretto’s team and assigns character traits to them (Alpha, Hacker, comic relief, etc…). I feel like someone did that with this show and wanted us to know exactly how we should feel about each person and enables us to only understand them through that lens.

I can’t be mad about it. It happens in the comics all the time.

Some Thoughts:

1. Today was the first day in months that was just about me for most of the day.
2. 1805 was the year an American boxer knocked out a British one–forever lending support to the all too predictable stereotype of boxing as being more than just two people beating on each other but a more. Instead it has and will continue to be about political, racial, and class-based relationships in metaphorical form.

Another night with a head full of thoughts and absolutely nothing to say. What I do know now is that I have a lot of stuff to write about in novel form. That will happen down the road, once my mind and heart are in better alignment and I’ve had time to bear the weight of the last few years.

Here’s something I think I think:

Each of us has limits and strengths and voice and potential. We let the world wear on us and erode all of that which we can be until we become the sum of the strength that we have in us to endure day after day. Even in the melancholy times like now I feel like the strength to endure is something I still have–though it wanes at times and is at once propped up by the desire to be something more and to have something better for myself and my kids.

In the end I want to build something that lasts. I tried that and failed once already. One day I’ll try again and I’ll take the lessons of the past with me into this new future and make sure I build something that lasts and leaves a legacy for the boys.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. In 1804 Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr drew pistols on each other in an illegal duel to the death. This duel was the result of long time fueding between political parties. There was some personal stuff thrown in there, but by all accounts this was a clash of ideologies. This is to say that we are living in a universe where such things are ‘fixed’. There will always be ideological tension that rises to the level of murder. As I reflect on Burr’s victory I am at once drawn to the stories of Orson Scott Card who , in his own way, really tried to perform a deeper analysis of the phenomenon.
2. Interesting report on Jennicam, one of the earliest versions of webcam life and for a while one of the most successful. Worth the listen.
3. It feels really good to just sit down in front of a computer and write. I feel like I’ve been pulled in so many directions lately that I have lost track of the action that has brought me joy since I could first hold a pencil. This isn’t just what I do, it is how I exist in the world.
4. At some point I’m going to have to clear my head and get back to being that person I love being, am capable of being, and who downright rocks the Casbah.

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.