Month: June 2016

It is no secret that I have been struggling with writing lately and that struggle arrived on the heels of summer heat. Its gotten wore and worse over the past few weeks with each day seeming like a real struggle to even want to do anything beyond Minecraft. I thought it was depression. Nope. Then I figured it was a complete disconnect from writing as a whole. Nope. I still have a desire buried down deep. Then, the other day I recognized that I was having an allergy attack and hit the medkit. That was the most productive day of the summer. It took me several more days and one droopy eye to recognize that a huge part of the problem overall is just that: Allergies.

I was passing by the mirror a few minutes pre-post when I noticed my eyes looked weird. One looked really hooded as if the lid skin decided to move further down my visage. Yep, I went to WebMD. I went looking for confirmation of what I already knew: I was having an allergic reaction, likely to the ridiculous mass of pet dander flooding my house. The cat is shedding and I haven’t opened a window since May. This combined with the constantly itchy, red eyes leads me to believe that allergies are taking control of my system and my system is seriously deteriorating my attitude about life.

There is a simple solution. Clean my house better and take the darn pills. So, I’m on it. Tonight I’m going to gather as much of the offending fur as possible via vacuum, etc. and dump it. What makes this hard is that the cat’s fur is largely invisible to the naked eye and the offending dander has already filtered throughout the house. I took the financial hit and got the cool filters, so we will see how things go. Unfortunately, things got a lot worse before they now have a shot at getting better.

When frustration settles on you like a cold front all you can do is lean into it. I feel at times that the summer is the perfect venue for frustration. The weather offers it–especially in the desert or in swamp-hot places like Iowa. The news outlets feel the frustration. Heck, nfl.com is spending hours writing and talking about building the perfect player at each position. That is cover story material while a deep investigation of the stratomatic is relegated to page B. In other words, there is little to say or think about that doesn’t come out all jacked up by weather and wasted time.

This frustration goes double when I spend the day focusing on kids. I love my kids and in many ways live for them, but I need me time too. I need a moment to collect my thoughts and build the motivation to do more than catch my breath in the hours they are away.

I’m tired and hungry for something more out of this life.

Some Thoughts:

1. Turns out Vincent Desiderio is a big fan of the Kanye West video. He was flown out to LA for the premiere and discovered at that moment what West had done. The conversation between the two left Vincent Desiderio feeling like West was not only an artist but a very bright student of art.
2. The only thing worse than being broke is thinking about it. To make matters worse, tackle season approaches and my kids need gear.

Kanye West’s new video, Famous, is about the idea of famous people all, quite literally being in bed together. An image of the last-supper-like Orgy (posted below) reveals the sum of the video. Unfortunately the video itself merely offers closeups of the affected individuals.

The image follows Vincent Desiderio’s ‘Sleep’ right down to the poses, which begs the question: Is Kanye a lot deeper than any of us really want to admit? See for yourself:

So what is the real message here, who are these people, and does it matter if it is actually them? The message is clear and rather simple: Fame and sex are intertwined and we as a culture show our prudeness through our inability to separate the two. I’m not in lock step with the argument, because I believe there are several different forms of fame that go with different social groups. I will agree that we do sexualize fame in a really blatant way and that in a patriarchy the responsibility is on the female more than the male to stay attractive. Kanye details this specifically by his use of males and females in the narrative.

Who are they, you ask? George W. Bush, Anna Wintour,Donald Trump, Rihanna, Chris Brown, Taylor Swift, Kanye himself, Kim Kardashian, Ray J, Amber Rose, Caitlyn Jenner, and Bill Cosby. Now we can debate why these groupings are here and what commentary is being made on fame based on who is there but is it really worth the effort?

As I blog I am watching the recent interview featuring Stephen King and George R.R. Martin, two of my biggest literary influences. The interview is fantastic and really speaks to the character of these two giants. It also inspires me deeply. Now, that isn’t the point of this article. In fact, the point of this article is about how the TV show Game of Thrones concluded and represents a sharp departure from the canonical work of Martin and wraps up a number of smaller plotlines and answers many questions about what is to come of the game. Now I don’t think the book is even going to follow the show in any way. I do believe that Winds of Winter will come out one day and will reintroduce Jon Snow, but there are so many more layers to that series than we have time to unravel in a TV Show.

This blog is short and took a while to write, which says a lot about writing while vaguely distracted by the heavyweights of popular fiction. Young writers, don’t try this at home.

I spent a number of years reading and then waiting for the books of the highly acclaimed Song of Ice and Fire series to come out. Over time the stories grew to such acclaim that the series was made into an HBO series called Game of Thrones. Television waits for no man. We have passed the point where the TV series has extended beyond what Martin has written. I thought I was wrong about that, but when Martin visited and interviewed the master, Stephen King, it was clear that Martin is not even remotely close to done with book six: Winds of Winter. Here is what this means: The TV series will finish the Game of Thrones long before the books do and the endings may or may not be similar. That is new territory for me. I have never been involved with a written series that is as yet unfinished before the TV adaptation ends its complete arc. The Walking Dead doesn’t count as it departed from the script relatively quickly and still follows the essence of a storyline that is so far ahead of what we’ve seen on TV that it may never catch up.

So what does it all mean? I’m not sure. It makes me question what I’ve been writing in a whole new way. Perhaps I need to develop the same talent King efforted to transmute to Martin–the talent of writing faster. Perhaps I need to work more and develop my craft in a way that is condicive to A) creating something TV studios want and B) finishing the arc before any real adaptation begins. Martin hopes to avoid the Robert Jordan curse of dying before the work is ended, but at this rate it seems woefully unlikely that he will publish more than a book a decade and he claims to have two more after Winds of Winter. Each of those promises to be a 1500+ page omnibus. I’m excited and live in utter dread of the idea at the same time. I don’t know a writer who can bring the world of Westoros to life the way he can and given his schedule, he can hardly live long enough to do so.

So, yeah. I guess I need to get better enough to finish it myself or just get over it. Egotistical? Yeah, but the other alternative is prayer, and I’m already doing that. The other thing I’m doing is watching the end of Season Six with rapturous glee. Tomorrow night is Game night and I cannot wait.

I watched Ted 2. I think its important to watch the worst humanity has to offer in order to appreciate things that are good. Ted 2 is not good. In fact it is fairly racist, inane, and barely intelligible. At its core the film attempts to tackle the notion of personhood, even going so far as to invoke Dred Scott. f course this was followed by jokes about Arizona State (referred to as HPVU), crazy homophobia, and a ridiculous amount of marijuana. Overall, the movie sucked. It was another nail in what should be the Whalberg coffin, but I’m pretty sure he will be successful always. Hell, I laughed.

I wound up in a conversation today with my paramour about challenging yourself. It was about her, but of course made it about me. If I can take anything from the film its that I can recognize when people settle into bullshit. We have a capacity as humans to do incredible things. We built planes, wrote epic stories, created the internet. We also invented snapchat, made the kardashians incredibly wealthy, and, well, Justin Beiber. That is to say that we have the capacity to do nothing but useless stuff and fail to challenge ourselves whatsoever.

When you don’t push yourself you become stagnant and then you die. I’m not about that just yet, so I need to push myself.

Some Thoughts:

1. One thing I learned above all else: I need to change my ring tone. Whalberg ruined it.

Ever wonder why we stand in front of the fridge? To me it feels like a microcosm of everything going on in the universe of our lives. Beyond that door lies the possibility of pleasure and guilt and every complication in between. Standing there at the door feels like standing at the precipice of something. Do I surrender to pleasure? Do I face the consequences? What should I do?

Then again, it might just be an ordinary stainless steel fridge full of the food I put in there to make the stuff I wanted, or more to the point, to make the stuff the people in my life want. When it is empty again I’ll fill it up with their wants and needs and maybe throw in a few things for myself. Nothing too extravagant, because that isn’t healthy and, again more to the point, it takes away from what I can give to them.

I suppose life is like that some times.

Some Thoughts:

1. I don’t buy Mila Kunis as a mom. Not. One. Bit. Her entering the ‘mom’ phase of her career is not a good sign for her or for Hollywood. What are we saying about leading ladies if she is being cast in that role. That isn’t to say that mom’s cannot be young and beautiful, because they can. This is more about typecasting and the historical effect it has had on women in cinema.

I hate taking medicine. I despise the notion that everything I need to be a perfectly healthy specimen isn’t inside of me already. Likewise, when I get depressed or run down or just out of ideas I hate actually doing work outside of my own writing. The correlation struck me today. I recognize at once that reading and working with other writers is quite a bit like taking medicine. I draw courage and inspiration from other writers. I draw motivation from people busting their humps to get stuff done. It is, in a sense, the very medicine needed to get my butt in a chair and writing.

I’ve spent most of this morning digging through digital piles of student writing. I’m making notes on all of these stories and trying to remind writers of the core goals of story and how to really shape their work in a more effective/appealing way. As I make notes I find myself more compelled and motivated to sit down and write. Helping them craft their message heals the part of me that has for so long been unable to craft my own.

This doesn’t directly apply to essays, of course. I don’t give interesting enough assignments to be inspired by what comes back to me. That too ought to change over the course of the next semester. I feel like I get no benefit from reading an essay about something neither I nor the writer actually cares about.

Finding this bit of energy about writing feels fantastic. I wish I could figure out a similar formula for physical activity.

Here is what I believe: Islamic terrorism is not being carried out by true believers. It is being carried out by soldiers. These soldiers are in the service of a hostile regime that thrives on the controversy it creates. Sure, they base a lot of what they believe on their interpretation of the bible, but news flash, so do we as ‘One nation under God’. We don’t have a real grasp on what these forces want other than chaos, wealth, and attention. In truth, we have reshaped the military-indsustrial complex around these types of conflicts and gone ‘all in’ on the fictional side of things by making sure our miltary-esque games and movies pay lipservice to the idea of ideologues and extremists as the new bad guy.

I’m tired of Islam being the boogie man. I respect that our current administration is focused on eradicating the organizations and not the religion itself. The shameful interpretation of the religion is highly reflective of the socio-economic state of the people carrying out these attacks. Moreover, you can see the same scenario in Chicago where young men are killing each other on live Facebook streams (Twice now? Seriously?) because they have so little that it is simple for them to fall under the influence of gangs. They use their colors as an excuse to eradicate anything that is a threat to that brand, these leaders use the Qu’ran as an excuse to maintain their power structure.

The Orlando nightclub shooter was a lone wolf attacker. He did what he did for his own reasons–and those are far more complex than, I love ISIL. He was not funded by nor a member of a terrorist organization. He is no more a member of the group than I am a NY Giant, though I totally rep that set as he ‘repped his set’ in the name of his set. Only, they were not really his set. They are and will remain an easily reachable excuse to act a public fool.

Some Thoughts:

1. I gained back six of the eight pounds I lost on that health trial. Want to guess what I learned? Moderation is effective, but awareness is far more effective.