Month: May 2016

Tonight I watched the Thunder choke. They shot an abysmal 38% from the field and a hair shy of 26% from three point range. But did they stop shooting three’s? No. Did they change up their game plan and adjust to the poor FG percentage by hammering it in? Nope. Instead they turned on each other, arguing and complaining and feeling rather powerless. In fact they were not. They just made mistakes. Despite a stupid good game by Steph Curry, the Thunder were in the game until the final few minutes. The Thunder just could not hit anything. Layups would turn into air balls. Three pointers into house-forming bricks.

They caught the yips.

In the end we wind up with the matchup we did want from the beginning: A healthy and ferocious Cleveland lineup facing the Splash Bro’s at the top of their game. This is going to be a wonderful showdown that will highlight what the NBA is today. Yet along the way we discovered what the NBA will look like tomorrow. We saw young teams and even younger superstars emerge from as far as Canada. We were greeted with a rare sighting of hope from the Knicks (just release Carmelo. It’s okay). There is even chatter that the sixers could be average one day.

At the same time we were forced to say goodbye to legends. The Black Mamba is out. He and Tim Duncan are the last remnants of an era of basketball that doesn’t exist anymore. Fans today probably don’t even know about the heroes that brought those two to the game. All they know is Steph and Bron and a half dozen Kevin Love commercials (where did he get all those dimes?).

I’m excited to watch the finals. I tend to follow basketball once the playoffs begin and get hyped all through the summer off of that. This is an olympic summer so the hype is raised yet another level. I just hope the superstars have enough left in the tank after these next seven games to bring home gold.

You take the job, do the job, and move on. That’s how things work. You can’t get invested beyond that, because attachments make you sloppy. You start to take a stake in things that aren’t about you and don’t belong to you. Eventually you care too much and then they can use that against you, reel you in, make you do more for less. It turns into a life and not work—not a job you can walk away from. I’m talking about being a mercenary. In some ways that is what I am, a literary mercenary. I do contract writing work. They bring me in, I sign a non-disclosure agreement and then they tell me what to write. My value is the voice, the productivity, and that hint of creativity I bring to the project that makes it mine and lets them know that they chose someone who gets the job done well as opposed to any old trained monkey you’d slap down in front of a keyboard and hope it types. The getting tied up is real too. It happens, and when it does the consequences can be devastating.

 

I’ve been doing contract work for one company or another since I was 18. My whole life is based around it, drawing me into it like a way of life. I contract as a writer. I contract as a teacher, moving through section to section, creating an appealing world of information and adventure for each class with no two ever meeting or being taught precisely the same way. I even used to contract as a DJ, a conduit between the music and the joy that aural an experience tailored to the specific people, place, and mood can bring. All of it was about the contract—the job. It never became about me.

 

These days I write primarily for one company in service of the RPG Shadowrun. I’ve been with them so long that I am more than a merc. I care about the people and the setting. I strive to put my fingerprint on every aspect of the world. However, it is important (and difficult) to recognize that I am still a merc. I write at their leisure and discretion. Furthermore, I tend to write the stuff they tell me to as opposed to telling the stories I want to tell. Today I had the chance to sit down with my writing group and reflect on that. Six years. I’ve gone six years without writing a story that was about me and what I want to say to the world. That 2190 blog entries worth of time and engagement that didn’t serve the stories born out of me and my experience and desires outside of Shadowrun. It was just a whole lot of me behaving like a shadowrunner and doing the jobs I’m paid to do, no matter how I feel about the work.

 

I don’t expect to stop anytime soon. Like I said, It’s a part of me now. Still, there are other parts and they need attention. I need to tell other stories and explore the things in my idea archive that have nothing to do with fulfilling a contract or mercking (yeah, I made that word up) through someone else’s project spec. Its high time to tell my own stories.

Dear Anime Creators,

Thank you for Afro Samurai. Though it sits next to Devil May Cry and Death Note on the banned list in China, many Japanese and other pan-asian viewers and readers are getting a chance to view a mostly positive image of black folks in the anime culture. That is important, because there are not a whole lot of positive images or images at all of African/black based characters in the medium. In truth, most of the characters who do exist are made up to look decidedly less black. I give you exhibit 1:

 

 

That is Basquash’s Miyuki Ayukawa. I’m going to forgive the naming conventions from here on out, because any culture is going to incorporate themselves largely into the stereotyping of another group. So for that there is some forgiveness, but lets be real. The Japanese culture has been borrowing from the African American culture long before Robotech got off the ground. Yet I can literally name the one significant black character in the series. Claudia Grant (pictured below).

This isn’t to say there are not other characters of color in anime. It just so happens that the color is peach. I believe this lends itself to the, shall we say, habit of adopting caucasians into the culture far more readily than those of African descent.

When I first got married the big issue was that I was a black guy marrying an Asian woman. Many in her family, including her father, had serious beef with that. On the other hand all the other siblings and the majority of the cousins were dating or already married to caucasians and that wasn’t a problem. I don’t directly blame anime for this but it is reflective of a culture that has no real understanding or desire to incorporate brown in any realistic way.

We change things in the modern world through mass media and through what we expose our children to. Anime is still obscenely popular in that part of the world and shows like Pokemon and Yo Kai Watch represent missed opportunities to prepare the children for a world that actually has brown people in it. Still, shows like Afro Samurai are a start and I am thankful for that.

Yesterday I suspended my facebook account. It was not an easy process. I thought I could simply press the deactivate button and that would be the end of things. Nope. The deactivate button led to a conversation with the interface that reminded me of dealing with my seven year old when he doesn’t get exactly what he wants. They asked why and no reason was good enough. Seriously. There was a drop down menu of possible reasons why you would want to quit and not one of them actually allowed you to quit but instead offered advice on how to fix you and not your issues with facebook. The best part was when I tried to press temporarily suspend and it only allowed me to do that for a maximum of seven days.

I finally settled on <other> and typed “reasons” and the thing allowed me to deactivate but reminded me that all I had to do was log in again and I’d be up and running good as new. Only, I never did login. Instead I deleted the app from my phone. Then the app crawled back onto my phone, asked if it was okay to save changes to the app and suddenly I got an email that said I’d reactivated my account.

I suppose that was the best part. You see, Facebook is a socially transmitted disease. NetHerpes. You cannot actually get rid of it but it can lay dormant for years. When I logged into talislegger.com, which is not hosted by Facebook but associated by way of like button, the whole dang thing seized up and it took me five minutes to unravel code in order to be able to use my own website to blog freely.

Gestapo NetHerpes (TM) indeed.

I don’t know that I will return to facebook. I use it for professional and academic purposes, so I suppose it has some value, but it now scares me. Like La Famiglia scares me. I don’t know if I will ever be allowed to get out.

Back before I was born there was this comic strip called Li’l Abner. In that comic there was a character from the Bronx named Joe who perpetually had a cloud over his head. It meant bad fortune. Joe held his head low and walked around in this daze angry and sad about how this curse afflicted him. In truth, all of the people mythologized as curse bearers tend to act like Joe B. I’m not much different it turns out.

I live in a universe where the majority of things that have gone wrong anywhere adjacent to me have been my fault. This may not actually be true, but this is how it has been commonly reported by my loved ones. I am blamed for quite a bit of the bad and next to none of the good and thats become so engrained in my psyche that it tends to affect my perception of the world and, more importantly, of my relationships. For starters, I tend to deeply distrust those who don’t blame me. I do so because I wonder, ‘what is your angle? what do you want from me?’ I distrust those who praise me even more, because I know they have to want something and will in all likelihood wind up betraying me in the most catastrophic way possible. So, the result is me walking around the world with a cloud over my head and recognizing that anyone who gets too close is subject to a chance of showers.

Understandably, this has a none too great affect on my personal relationships. In fact it tends to make me unaware of when I am being overly defensive and blaming. Consider that a side effect of blame fatigue. After a while I get tired of being blamed for everything, so I get angry and start blaming other people for everything going on in my world. I deny the existence of the cloud outright and claim sunny skies with no chance of showers. Or, I go the other way. Sociologists call it Labeling Theory. I get so used to being blamed for everything that once in a while I internalize it completely and decide that I am responsible for every bad thing in my life and all adjacent lives.

I suppose the truth lies somewhere in between. There are things that I need to take responsibility for. I recognize that I am far from perfect and there are a lot of things I don’t make easy. On the other hand, not everything is about what I do or create.

This blog probably doesn’t make a great deal of sense, but I hope it will to someone who needs to hear it. I hope it helps.

I have had enough.

I’m blaming the media whole hog for everything that is happening in our current political climate. We have a media system that is so hungry for salacious news and so utterly ill equipped to deal with it that we are left with a near certainty: Donald Trump will be the next president of these (formerly) United States and it will result in our country being further demonized in the international community and downgraded from a credit standpoint, because we can no longer be trusted to guide the ship as is.

I’m serious. Things are going to get worse and the media is going to make it worse because they don’t know how to act. I (foolishly) flipped on CNN and happened to catch an interview with a top Trump advisor and Dem. hot shot Austin Goolsbee. When Goolsbee said that Trump had repeatedly made attacking statements against women and hispanics the Trump aid–straight faced–said ‘When?’

I kid you not. What really bothered me is that the reporter mediating this conversation/interview did not follow up at all. That there is the real crime of this whole thing. The media is not doing their job because they don’t know how to deal with the stonewall nonsense of the Trump campaign.

Still, that was not the focus. The focus was Hillary Clinton’s emails and the violence of Trump protestors. The focus was on the people who won’t or cannot defend themselves. If you follow pro-white blogs (like I occasionally do) you will see an uptick in activity and support for the movement and that movement is centered around Donald Trump and his unwillingness to be PC. Things are getting worse and the media kind of loves it. Why? Because that creates an opportunity for more news and more story and they can tell the story, regardless of where it leads us and without bearing any of the responsibility.

The average person is a follower. The average American is a follower. We vote based on party for the most part (if we vote at all) and we get our information from a media that we deem to trust because other people who we do trust told us to. But what if that media is wrong? What if that media is generating a story that is more about their fear and unpreparedness than one that is based cold hard evidence and the preponderance of that evidence.

We are headed in a bad direction. Make America Great Again indeed. We do that by being a better more inclusive people, not by doing whatever it is we are headed towards now.

We arrived at Changing Hands a few minutes before the event was scheduled to start. Joe Hill was in town to read from his new release The Fireman. I’m at the register watching my girlfriend pick up the book when she turns to me with a smile and directs me to turn around. The man hunched over behind me looks like an almost young Stephen King. He’s wrapped up in the local swag, picking out tee shirts, books marks, and all things Changing Hands. He is Joe Hill.

The writer hung out a bit longer, looking around the store and just being a shopper and fan of books and bookstores. Finally he looked up and said to a store employee, “Do I need to go on right now?” A moment later the man walked in front of a crowd to raucous applause.

It was those moments before he ‘went on’ that I found the most inspiring. For Hill, it is still a ride he is on, and he is still full of wonder. That is the part I want to hold on most of all as a writer. I want to stay full of wonder. I want to be about the journey and the fans and the stories that come from my stories and the fun and experiences. I want to love the writing and be surprised at what stories spill forth.

I still want to write.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. There are two realities of work: That of those who don’t take work home with them and that of those who do. I live in the second reality and recognize that those in the first can really separate from work and as such fail to understand why one would be thinking about or God forbid doing work once off the clock.
2. Microsoft 10: Skynet Edition
3. How do they make soda look so damn appealing on TV? I want a sprite. I hate Sprite.
4. Why doesn’t the right to bear arms apply to high explosives and portable nukes?

I think I finally understand what a mid-life crisis is. It is more of a question followed by a recognition than some spectacular event. You ask yourself, like in the movies, ‘is this as good as it gets?’ but the question isn’t about what you have or what you are currently ‘in to’ instead the question arises from a deeper place of fulfillment and wonder. All my life I have wanted things–cars, homes, friends, wealth. One by one I ticked many of these things off the list. I had the nice car and that made me happy for a while. I had the big house and that fulfilled me for a moment. Friends move in and out of my life, filling a void and filling me with stories and fascination and warmth. Wealth never came, but every so often I can live comfortably. Even now when I am as cash-strapped as I’ve been in multiple decades I still manage to at least maintain a level of leisure and pleasure for my kids. Here’s the thing though: none of that makes a life.

I woke up this morning thinking about these things and where I go from here and, above else, why it is so hard for me to write lately. It all led back to the dual horns of passion and purpose. That, I believe is the root of the mid-life crisis. The name is a misnomer, because it does not necessarily happen at the middle of your physical life, but occurs deep into your spiritual life when you recognize that being about something is more important than having things and making lots of money. I realized that I am not about the things I thought I was about. I love writing, that is for certain. I love teaching in the classroom and sharing that energy with my students. I have focused too much of my energy on the shell of those things. I’ve focused far too much energy worrying about if I get published or what kind of stuff I am writing or how popular my stuff is. Likewise I spend the majority of my teaching worrying about the nonsense that goes on outside of the classroom. Who are my friends at work? What do my colleagues think about me? Is anyone noticing the work I am doing? Am I involving myself in the culture of the faculty? The campus? What sort of name and reputation am I making for myself?

So, when I talk about midlife crisis I talk about the idea that these things are not what matters and what really matters is peeling away the shell and finding what you are passionate about and living for that.

Easier said than done, I suppose.

There are times where a writer just cannot write. I don’t understand what it is but there can be a wall. I sat here for thirty minutes trying to write on a project I am particularly blocked on and eventually just fell asleep in my chair. Two days ago I was full of words and ideas. What changed? Nothing, really. Nothing that I can mentally capture at least. I believe there is a time and place for things and really good writers are the ones who have mastered the when and how of Butt in Chair. I have not reached that pinnacle but I am going to keep trying and keep searching for that raw passion that seems to power these writers through days like this.

I think a part of it is how much I allow myself to just appreciate silence. I’ve noticed this in my kids as well. We don’t read nearly as much as a family should and they are the typical kids–always connected to some game or device be it digital or otherwise. The last time we took a road trip and I asked them to leave devices behind the complaints were endless. The baby sat in the backseat and straight pouted the entire time.

Part of this is also the fear of the blank page. In other words it is the fear of not actually having anything worthwhile to say or add to the subject. I especially feel that pain/fear as of late and allow distraction to creep into the process far too often. Sadly, it is a slump but not a permanent one.

Some Thoughts:

1. Nope. Nothing.

This article isn’t about any of that stuff. However, since you’ve read this far I ought to tell you that you kind of already get what the article is about: Click bait. The idea of click bait is to draw you to an article or website based on an enticing title which may or may not have anything to do with the what awaits you on the other end of that click. We are all drawn to intrigue. A question, a puzzle, a tease about what might have happened to someone we all respect or at least remain curious about. This is an insidious tactic that serves for little more than to line the pockets of those who get paid per click and denigrate the quality and level of trust we associate with news-styled information. Meanwhile we retreat deeper into our alcoves of truth only daring to peak out long enough to grab at snippets of information that look enough like the truth we know or care about in order to remain informed.

But are we informed?

Or instead do we fill ourselves with a heavy meal of foolish and useless information that serves only to distract us from improving as a species.

Or maybe I’m just a but ahead of the times or even behind them. I have many friends who are okay with the species eventually going instinct. In truth, that is part of the formula behind the zombie craze. We want to know if we deserve a fighting chance. Do we? I like to think we do, however I am not always so positive about that. I am certain that we have the potential to be better but keep creating nonsense like click bait to distract us from what is possible.