Month: December 2016

Monday nights I blog from my BBQ and Bourbon spot outside my second favorite bookstore (Half Price Books still holds all the cool points because of an untouchable selection of vintage books). I use the time to be alone and take in a world that I am not a part of. I’ve come to know the waitstaff and appreciate their familial camaraderie with each other. I am recognized as a regular and appreciated in that sense, but the gems are the food and unfamiliar faces that move through the restaurant as though it were a way station between moments in their daily lives.

As a writer I am first an observer of the human condition (and fully aware of how pretentious that sounds). I see, for example, the crowd of eight men all fitted with beards in various stages of known cool. Two of the men are joined by girlfriends and as a result living on the fringes of the conversation but positioned at the center of the table. I see three ladies barely past their teens and painted in fashions that mark their upbringing and allegiance to the particular styles and cultures that divide them but in the same make them a collective. Each bears a gift that they will exchange at meals end. For now they chat and visit cellphone notices with equal importance. Perhaps they imagine each others lives as their own, and this is a kind of escape from the lives they have.

It is only a glimpse and all I can share in 10 minutes.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. This was written last night and posted today. I get pretty lazy post BBQ.

I’m watching the Dallas game and it has me thinking about football. To begin, the Giants won tonight and secured an NFC playoff spot. Hopefully the 10-4 moves to 12-4 and the crew rolls in on some hot momentum. The team needs Dallas to lose two games in order for the G-men to catch them and it looks like tonight will not be one of those losses. On the other hand, Tamp Bay has been officially exposed as a pretender–at least through the first half of this 17-6 tilt. These games are still meaningful, which is why most fantasy seasons end this week. That includes my remaining active season where a grip of cash is on the line in the championship game. We are up by 50 right now with our opponent still having two players (RB, WR) yet to play. We still have Jason Witten in play and he is tearing it up. This is a ppr league, so his 6 catches translate directly into points.

I have not had the best fantasy season. I lacked my normal diligence in the endeavor. The lesson I take from this is study more in all things to be more successful in all things.

As I was settling in to watch Rogue One it occurred to me that Harry Potter had successfully launched a second series in the Potter Universe before the Star Wars franchise could. I don’t count any of the proposed 9 as a second series. That is in fact the same story spun through as the original books constitute a single arc. Then it dawned on me. Rogue One is but a footnote in that arc, framed effectively by Star Wars 3 and 4.

Actually, I’m wrong there. Rogue One is a continuation of Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels. Since Disney took the reigns, they’ve turned the two rather well written ‘toons into canon for the film. Characters from the Rogue One movie make their first appearances in the cartoons and continue their often vibrant lives on the big screen.

This in no way indicates that Rogue One is good… or bad. Rogue One hit me in much the same way that the Magnificent Seven remake hit me. I knew what was going to happen. I knew who I was supposed to like and dislike and in spite of that I chose to enjoy the people I felt were cool or particularly well told. This includes the expected empathy for the ‘villain’ and a whole lot of oooh for Darth Vader.

Rogue One deserves a better review than this and that is coming. There are a host of characters to discuss and major Star Wars plot lines that were reintroduced and, in some cases, tied up. The film does its job, which is ostensibly to tell the human story of the people who constitute the rebellion without being that same old story we know. It had to do all of this without playing like a round of Battlefield Star Wars.

For the most part, it pulled it off.

I have this problem. Once a year electronic systems in my presence—generally those I own— stop behaving as they should. This time around I lost two GFCI outlets, my bedroom ceiling light, a 1×4 HDMI switch, my entire talislegger site, and oh yeah, my local network infrastructure. I’m trying to look at the problem in the same way ‘garbage in, garbage out’ way I approach my diet. I recognize that if I don’t eat good food then my health is going to suffer. I suspect bad power may be to blame here in some way.

 

The site is a separate and coincidental (maybe) issue. I don’t host the ‘legger from home, so if there is a problem it is due to the host company dropping the ball. However, the rest of these maladies are all centered on the home. I wonder if all of it is actually about the power coming into the home not being enough and brown out quality electricity damaging the equipment?

 

It feels like a reach, but it also feels real to me. No, this is not a hypocritical example of confirmation bias but a moment of realization that my assumptions about the quality of the electrical grid In my zone have no basis in reality. Recently I saw two new structures go up in my town. One is a Big 5 and one is a Culvers. The Culvers project predated the Big 5 by half a year. However, the Culvers is still building and the Big 5 opened over a week ago. The quality of labor here is vastly uneven and I don’t know if a Culvers team or a Big 5 team built my house or even if the one that went up faster is worse than the one that is taking a long time.

 

Here is one thing I know: I’m not happy with the electronics and it is only getting worse.

I’m done.

At least I’m done with the teaching. I turned the page on my last final today, which means my physical semester is over. I still have a few classes to grade out and some basic record keeping to get handled in order to close this thing out proper. But damn it feels good to be done.

Now what? Recharge for starters. I am crazy run down. I need time to relax, recharge, and get excited about teaching and writing again. Should it work out, maybe the tone of this blog changes. In truth, I need to continue to change and to prevent this level of drain from happening. It is no good for the heart or soul.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. A cat’s tongue has more papillae than my hairbrush has bristles. Those barbs are responsible for that sandpaper feeling you get when a cat licks you. That being said, a cat’s lick is a sign of grooming, which is a clear sign of affection from a creature that often prefers not to be touched.
2. Watching the Knicks play the Warriors is like watching a child try to box a grown man. 36 assists on the last 36 field goals. The Warriors are adding a degree of difficulty just to keep it interesting and still lead by 23.
3. Some commercials make no sense. Instead they feel like a favor to an agent who needs a celebrity to get paid.

Lately I find myself wandering deeper into anger. A good deal of it is anger at self. I’m not writing, I’m terribly behind and inefficient in regards to grading, I have not been observant of my physical condition at all. Basically I have allowed myself to wither in the face of the gathering storm of work that is the end of the semester.

 

It got so bad at one point that when the website crashed I just said, meh, and let it be that way until I could stand it no more. Three posts worth of buildup and finally we are back. I believe there is a message in all of it. I think this indicates that I’ve hit a wall of sorts. See, I have been trying to decide how to move forward on a number of fronts. The universe, kind as it is, continues to offer me moments of realization that I am basically hanging on. 5000 emails in the backlog, more time watching TV than reading and, well, thinking, and a list of positives about writing that come down to this: It doesn’t always suck.

 

I need more. I need passion rejuvenated. I need to strike out and not be stagnant with the words and emotions and fire out and do something more with my mind. This life on the corner of a beat up couch is not for me.

Well, I broke the Talisblog. I took a night off of uploading, allowing the writing to be done by hand again and when I came back to all things normal tonight I discovered that there was an update to be done. The update did not go well. Facebook killed the code. Facebook always kills the code. It is the result of some unfortunate coding on their end and the lie of 100% compatibility. So here we are, just me and a once blank MS Word page and less than ten minutes left on the clock.

 

I’ve been swirling around a lot of big ideas and unable to lock down a single one. Perhaps it is the endless din of barking dogs that surrounds my backyard (seriously, shut your dog up. It is nearly midnight!) or it could be the heaviness of wanting to write a novel that is an instant best seller without having what I would refer to as a best-selling idea in mind.

 

Lately I’m all about ideas, though not entirely about writing. I’m about parenting and teaching and games and building and a dozen other areas of my life that don’t necessarily find me home alone in a dimly lit office. I think the previous paragraph holds the key: I need to do low stakes for a while. I need to just write stories and not get caught up in creating something award winning. It is a task far easier said than done.

 

I don’t know that I cold be happy in life without someone being attracted to me. Perhaps it is a flaw I picked up in my younger days when I hung out with guys infinitely more attractive than me in the eyes of every woman we crossed paths with. I remained the less attractive friend in a small clique of men who drew a great deal of attention. This continued on through college where prestige colored attraction as one does a coloring book. Outside the lines wealth merged with station to shove me violently down the wrung of beauty only to meet women who bartered more in substance than the other measure.

In time I came to appreciate my looks and my relative position and common sense won out. I would rather have a woman love my mind than my abs. Though I always appreciated when a lady realized I was not the forgotten spawn of Frankenstein’s monster.

I am not ugly. I’m not that confident in my physical form either, but I am constantly surrounding myself with those who are confident and have ample cause to be so. The men and women who I associated with tended to look as though they were taking a break from posing for magazine covers and during these breaks they’d cling, clan-like, to each other and I would hang on for dear life.

This ties in to my over sexualization of women. In a way, the more attractive a woman is, the more her opinion of my sexuality carries weight. This can be a boost or a terrible boon. I lauded beautiful women and their opinions for this very reason. For this self same reason I am extremely grateful that the one woman who actually matters–the most meaningful woman in the multiverse–loves me for both looks and mind.

Beauty is relative.

What one thinks of another’s physical (and even mental) form is based on upbringing, ideas of success, and a half dozen other less quantifiable categories. My love happens to be beauty incarnate, and therefore the most beautiful woman thinks I’m not half bad. Imagine the weight that carries. So, life is good because someone does find me attractive.

And that one is all that matters.

Watching the Giants game I’m reminded by one of the sutras of the Buddha. I’m paraphrasing here, but essentially the argument is that we should expend every bit of energy we have on the moment that we are in presently. There is nothing to save your presence for, so be present in the moment you are in. The Giants were present in the moment of this game, not looking back towards the wreck of last week or forward to the possibility of playoffs. They stayed in the game and played well enough to get the win.

This presence they maintained is much like the presence of mind that powers good writing. It remains elusive to me at times, but once I find it and hold on tight the results can be magical. I feel the presence of mind and the use of present energy is good for more than just sports and writing. These things are key to living and enjoying life and love. Imagine how much better sex is when you are present in the moment and not thinking of other things, or reveling in the ‘power’ of knowing someone wanted to have sex with you, or living in fear of not performing up to par, or wondering what happens in the relationship after, or wondering if the other person is happy in that moment.

So, be present.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. My dog thinks he is slick. He has a pattern he follows. He goes upstairs once he knows she has food. Then he sneaks back downstairs and around the corner to eat that food once she is done, hoping I don’t see him. I see you, dog. I see you.

I’m moving out of my living room.

I spend the majority of my time in the space vegging out or watching sports and playing minecraft. I’m moving back into my office where the work happens. This is important, because work isn’t happening and has not really been happening for the past year. Part of that is the disappointment that resonates from doing a lot of work and still waiting for a half dozen paychecks that may never ever come. The rest is pure lazy.

I write best when I feel safe and comfortable in the other areas of my life and I am moving back towards that. And back into the office.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m done fighting with the system to post direct to facebook. It does not work.
2. If you are suspicious of your loved one it will not work. If you harbor resentments against your loved one it will not work. If you are open and honest when you begin to feel anything resembling these feelings it will work. Communication is the open secret to a good relationship, but at least 45 percent of married couples don’t get that. I didn’t. I do now.
3. While we are on the subject of what breaks things: I’ve had a few students write research papers about the effects of pornography and I must admit the arguments against porn are compelling.
4. On a completely different subject, I just watched someone hack a cockroach using over the counter tech popularized through maker magazines. Later they hacked a human. Dope.