Month: July 2018

So many thoughts churning this morning. I think I will deliver them to you MMQB style.

Some Thoughts:

1. Trying to lose weight is difficult. I’ve adopted a low-carb diet and it has effected my general mood in negative ways, my energy level in positive ways, and my overall weight minimally. It hasn’t been much more than a week (I believe I started on the 8th) and my expectations are very high. My results are not. I expected to lose close to 10 lbs by August. This was never realistic. I have lost roughly six as of two days ago and I weigh so much right now that the six doesn’t even show. I absolutely need to do more than I am doing. I need to add the gym into my regular routine.
2. I’ve had every opportunity to write over the past few days and I really haven’t. Instead I’ve watched very bad TV (Electric Sheep on Prime and the Kingsman: The Golden Circle) in the moments I could’ve spent working. There is a lot to be said for vegging out but this is just ridiculous. If I want to write, I ought to be writing. So, why am I not writing?
3. Finally saw Sorry to Bother You. This was an experience. As a fan of surrealist cinema (I’ve watched practically all of Cronenberg and Lynch) I was still taken back by the content of this. Bold proclamations were made and laid right out there on the surface. A lot of what was shown/said resonated and I know the director intended us to draw connections to things that are happening right now and have been happening for a long time. They rope you in with ‘use your white voice’ but that really only scratches the surface of what the film is getting at. Surprisingly, I can direct my sci-fi class to the work and feel like it absolutely works.
4. I’m not going to go on a political rant here, but I have to say that the marriage between the Republican Party, the Republican news machine, and Donald Trump’s family is astounding. At one point recently Stephen Colbert asked, how dumb do you think the American people are? I think you missed the point here. It isn’t about being dumb so much as it is about being easily convinced to go along with something so long as you think it keeps you as part of the in group, safe, and works towards what you’ve defined as your better interests. Unfortunately, they tend to define your better interests when the reality is that they just want you to listen so they can remain in power working towards whatever agenda keeps them in power and reaping the benefits.

Picture Yueyang City, a thriving waterside city in China. As clouds fill the horizon something else begins to take shape behind the clouds. Suddenly there in the mist is a distant city that cannot possibly be there. Yet there it is.

I don’t know about the validity of the photo or what really went down here, but this is yet another curious event that falls into the realm of the creative research experience I want to offer in the fall about unsolved mysteries. I don’t expect students to be able to solve this one. In truth, I doubt it is even real. Still, it corresponds with the age old phenomena of Fata Morgana, which deserves research and attention. Humans have been seeing illusions for years. Our brains are wired to fill in the blanks where they can in order to allow an image to meet expectations. This is, in many ways, the fundamental science behind magic tricks.

Teaching the writing of research papers is terribly boring work on the surface, because people don’t often desire to be there. Likewise they lack the fundamental drive to do the deeper research necessary to suss out a critical thinking problem. Instead of thinking like Sherlock Holmes they want to think like Sam the Google searcher. Having interesting problems to unravel should stimulate that hidden desire to learn more. Maybe I’ll even get them to step outside the box a little as well, opening their minds to new ideas and experiences.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m happy. Worried I’m not being the best partner, but still happy to be able to be a partner.

Turn on the NFL Network. Heck, turn on any sports network. The NFL training camps are about to open and everyone is talking quarterbacks. However, nobody is talking Eli Manning. It feels good to see Eli in the comfortable shadows again. That’s where Eli works—from the position of relative obscurity. Not a soul is talking Giants super bowl and that is exactly why the Giants are going to sneak up on everyone.

Let’s keep it in the qb conversation. Eli is dealing with yet another new OC and new offense. By all intents and purposes this should mean a step backwards, but I feel like it is the opposite. This new look is designed to offer more pocket protection and exploit some of those matchups he quietly exploited last year. What do I mean? Manning had the lowest ranked receiving and running back corps in the NFL last year yet still managed to have a statistically impressive line of connections to guys who for the most part are bench players or out of the league this year. He worked with junk and a terrible line and now he has some real talent around him in an offense that maximizes that talent.

Sure, this might be a fanboy talking big about his team, but the Giants improved at almost every position on offense. New line. WR are healthy. A freakish athlete of an RB. Save for Eli and a budding talent at TE we are talking about a new team here. If the camp and pre-season allow the chemistry of these talents to gel (and based on the pics coming out of everyone’s instagrams it is) then we are looking at a new look Giants offense to go with a new look Giants defense that is going to surprise people with its suddenness.

 

I am watching a movie called How it Ends. It’s a Netflix release in the vein of other Netflix direct movies that feature A or B list stars. This one has Forrest Whitaker and the dude who played Four in the Divergent series of films. It is terrifying in its portrayal of reality and our sheer lack of understanding of  the unknown and what is possible.

As I watch I consider my writing and what I am trying to explore/expose through words and I think about this film as a version of what I am trying to do here. My stories are questions. My stores are attempts to peer past what I know towards what I could imagine could be and could have been. I tend to isolate that to science fiction but lately I’ve been thinking that the Sci is a crutch I am using the way Shadowrun has long been. The key is to tell the story about the people and find some bit of soul and solace in building their world and their relationships.

I write to reflect on the things I am going through and the the things I see happen in the world around me. More and more it is becoming important to tell those stories and to look into the peculiar darkness gathering at my feet and share that vision with those who see the same but need the words and share that vision with those who would see differently.

The truest sign of a capitalist society is when you can create a holiday out of whole cloth designed solely for shopping, not put any trappings on the thing, and still watch it be successful. I’m not talking Black Friday where we are supposedly getting gifts for xmas. No, I’m talking about Amazon’s Prime Day. It is a real thing. It has news coverage and shopping so effusive that the website has slowed to a crawl. The only deal I’ve seen so far that isn’t a straight up Amazon tech product is the wii switch deal for 299 plus 64 gig card plus $20 worth of nintendo game credit. That right there sounds deal-tastic.

I might get it. I have 26 hrs to decide.

See, I bought in. I don’t actually need a switch. I’m better off getting a GoPro so I can record my kids playing sports. Yet here we are thinking about yet another gaming system addition to solve problems that do not actually exist. That being said, I would take a Ps4 deal. I am definitely about the ps4 life.

See, that is addict talk right there and reflective of the power that these things have over us. By these things I am absolutely referring to the concept of capitalism and the idea that happiness flows from what you have. I don’t desire to be a materialistic person, but I cannot deny that it is a part of my nature. That is why Prime Day raises my eyebrows if but a little. I should be focusing my finances on paying bills and paying down credit but dammit if I don’t want to buy new stuff.

I am finding a hint of joy in blogging on the phone. Maybe it represents a basic change — a helpful one— in understanding how to access the writersphere. It took me a while to give up the notebooks and now I rely on laptops for writing. I do my work through offline docs that are inherently tied to the computer as if it were my digital notebook. Today at writer’s group (every writer needs to get one of these together. Seriously) we talked about writing in the cloud so that the writing could be continued anywhere as opposed to confined to the laptop and the higher likelihood of losing my stuff there (as I worry I already have) vs. the cloud and its benefits.

Drawbacks exist to the cloud as with any platform, but what makes me interested is the idea of always being a click away from my active doc. I can talk into a doc as I am driving down the road vs. trying to send myself an email with notes to eventually possibly be transferred to a doc or text myself and forget the text in a sea of messages from every automated response known to billing, electric, and otherwise.

Its not really a solution. The solution is to think like a writer first. It’s a shortcut. I’m not mad about those.

My kids hate each other. This isn’t some bit of speculative fiction this is simply the summative results of a careful study. They  just don’t get along. I question whether or not they see the value in one another or instead just see each other as an obstacle for parental attention and material goods. As I say, they don’t like each other.  I for one find that completely unacceptable.

This all started pre-divorce. It started back when we had our third child and that child broke what I suspect was the careful balance between the two children. Suddenly there was a third child and this opportunity for one on one attention at all times vanished. Now this is the part I could be purely speculative. I don’t know for certain that  not having one on one attention is what caused my kids to start to evolve into the current madness. I do know that the madness exists and that bugs me beyond all belief. I really don’t even know what to do about it. I’ve tried figuring out how it started in order to walk the back and maybe figure out a way to stop it, as though I am some virologist who is looking for patient zero in hopes of finding  vaccine. I don’t know if there is a vaccine for this. I don’t know that I have any real say and how they continue to cheat and treat each other as they move forward in their lives. I wish I had some say I wish I could say something. It appears that all I do is stalled them for just another moment before they go back to isolating  One brother in particular and making  left difficult for everyone around. I suppose this is what parenting looks like when you tear away the veneer and see the termites chipping away at your soul underneath. I also suppose that I exaggerate quite a bit. Maybe it isn’t as bad as I’m suggesting here maybe they are just kids being kids and this is in heat but instead just the rituals of childhood. I wouldn’t know. I never had a brother or sister or anyone that I can’t really claim was close to me in that special way that way that I dreamed of and so now as I see them I wonder if this is how it is supposed to be or this is how it’s been made to be. I wonder and I feel a sense of responsibility and that makes me sad.

I often imagine what it would be like to not want to play video games. I’ve felt that way, though very briefly. I’ve gone a day or a few deriding games altogether only to wake up one morning, log into Minecraft and start digging a hole or jumping back into Madden with hopes of turning the entire thing into a story inside my head where the players live wonderful lives off the field fueled by the work they do on it.

I play because I want to and perhaps because I no longer know any other way of being. If something else came along to derail my play for a significant period of time, maybe that would be what I turn to first instead of gaming. It ought to be writing, where I do have absolute control of the narrative and the only challenge is getting it done.

It isn’t. Not so far at least. Instead I fall into the familiar cadence of gaming and listening to audiobooks to while away the day. All things in moderation and balance, I suppose, though as I stated recently such things are my personal kryptonite.

That and finances.

Some Thoughts:

1. I am officially dissatisfied with my life and physical condition, which means it is time to do something about it.

2. Just saw Skyscraper and it was quite good. It isn’t Shakespeare, but it is everything you want to get out of an easy summer action flick. The heavy reliance on trope and convenience allowed me to turn my brain off for a while and let the lizard-lobe do all the heavy lifting.

3. I continue to suspect that the so-called ‘lizard-lobe’ is the basic operating system for most humans walking around in America.

4. That percentage seems significantly higher in faux-urban areas.

5. Yes, I made up lizard-lobe and it sounds damn good.

6.

 

 

I am blogging on my phone, which is to say I haven’t solved the computer problem. Perhaps this is the return of the gremlins problem—the universe’s way of saying, ‘you still haven’t quite made it.’

trust me, universe, I know.

Still i have made a lot of progress and I feel like I am slowly drifting away from self-deprication and destruction towards what looks to be a more positive state of being. It is as slow and painful of a journey as can be but it is progress.

Today I watched my mid-kid practice football, proud of how far he has come with my eyes ultimately on the goal of seeing his college paid for by sports and academics both and him enjoying that ride. He has the chops to do it. Not right now. Right now he’s a dehydrated mess of a fortnite addicted kid and that’s squarely on bad parenting. I need to set limits for him and the others and remember they are kids who clearly have no sense of their limitations in the face of fun and desire.

A lot of life boils down to moderation and limit setting. Sadly these remain the weakest facets of my personality. It shows.

The death of my mac has certainly messed up my mood. You could say that it brought me to my own personal black screen of death. I don’t blame the mac entirely. My mood has been in rough territory for some time. I am trying to strike a balance–find a way that everyone in my life gets attention and is happy. I fear that in that someone is always being ignored or not cared for, etc. I also think that the laptop represented a type of crutch. It was opportunity and connectivity. So long as I had it I could work, which made me feel like I would work even if I didn’t. Removed from the opportunity for even that, I find that there is little to keep my heart and soul from plummeting into the depths of disappointment and to no small extent,  negative self-actualization.

In short, I do actually suck now and I am lazy, and I no longer have agency in any of it. That is my worst fear–the loss of the opportunity to get this thing right and turn myself around. Maybe deep down I know that it is already too late for that and this small moment (brought to you by Apple) is just a taste of the future the way I see the future sometimes when I put on a shirt and look like all of those beer belly guys.

So, this too is an opportunity for me to show that this possible future is only still one of many and that I do have agency in my life. If I actually believe that I do.