10 Minute Rule

Engels and Marx.

Few years have the lasting significance of 1844 because that is the year that the two thinkers met and started developing/preaching their ideas about governance and socialization. It also happens to be the year that ended the 2300 year prophecy and for told of the return of Jesus Christ. That second part presumably didn’t take place but did harken a new age of religions such as Seventh Day adventists and the followers of Bahá’í.

While some religions, such as seventh day, flourished under the rule of their  founding member , others came to be relegated to back pages and side streets.

Change happens on a lot of fronts. You cannot become acquainted with one without considering the others. 1844 was about change on multiple fronts.

With yesterday being the last day of school, this is officially the first day of summer and I have a slew of home projects (daddy-do list) to attend to. Lets ignore for a minute the utter revocation of my man card at the site of my pinterest board and obvious submission to the creation of a daddy-do list and stick to the beauty of creation. I get to plan and organize a garage and an initial bills and storage area and a downstairs closet and a pantry and, well, there is the matter of the boysroom superbed (3d rendering is underway).

I enjoy these projects and really enjoy building and organizing. I wonder if I will actually enjoy being done with the work as much as I enjoy preparing to do it?

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Part of being a good friend is staying in contact. I’m going to get better at that. Really.
2. Part of being a good writer is establishing goals and working on your craft every day. I’m going to get better at that, and I mean more than the 10 minutes kind of better.
3. Part of self actualization is setting goals and visions for who you can be and who you want to be as an individual in all aspects of your life. It comes down to focusing on the things that you can control, which are attitude and effort. Nothing else is entirely in your control, so those two must be allotted at a level fit to your desire to succeed less you will not succeed.
4. Gilmore Girls is really good. I feel like there are a number of series that happened over the years that I need to tackle to have a more completely understanding of generations of people. Dr. Who is next followed by the British version of Sherlock Holmes.
5. After that I’m going to research anything and everything produced by Jennifer Lence. She seems to live at the epicenter of cultural phenomena. A lot of her work is translated from foreign shows especially spanish language shows, which brings me to 1843, which was the birth year of uber influential spanish realist Benito Perez Galdos who helped keep Spain on the map throughout the 19th century, eventual turning his literary eye to the stage. He’s had major works adapted to the big screen over the year and is in part responsible for the mass market acceptance of some of the works that Lence has brought over from Spanish-speaking nations such as The Mysteries of Laura. Oh, she does Flash, Arrow, and the rest of those upcoming shows (Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow) too.

The way I see it, the human brain is capable of calculating millions of tasks in those 100 billion neurons floating around in that grey sac. Unfortunately, a great deal of those tasks are designated as maintaining body functionality. That leaves considerably less processing power for non-essential tasks. This number shrinks even further when your mind is consumed by an idea you don’t quite know how to bring to fruition. The idea bouncing across those remaining neurons is a bedroom rebuild for my three boys.

I’m going to share a photo for the first time in.. ever? It comes from this article I found via pintrest.

This photo ruined me. It was such a brilliant and relevant idea for my gaggle of dudes that I wondered how the heck it never occurred to me. I went crazy doing measurements and researching products to make a boy-version of this heavenly bedset. I thought through every possibility except for the part where one of three boys say, how come I get bottom bunk. That happened once I shared the picture and they started a screaming match over who got what spot in a bed that was still at this point imaginary. I almost quit right then. I should have, but I’m that dad: the pleaser. Instead I doubled down and tried to figure out a way to make the thing work.

I haven’t figured out a way. In fact I found several more obstacles ranging from fan placement (I’ll need to add bunk blowers to provide adequate noise and wind while also pulling the ceiling fan) to designing something that needs to grow with these growing boys.

The other day I stumbled across a skylight that would be the perfect beyblade stadium. I was itching to buy it, so I talked it over with a friend who suggested that I might be doing the stadium for me and my idea of what they want and need more than for the boys who are probably over beyblade and would be over the new stadium once the new smell wore off. The bed wall may also be a me thing while being a knee-jerk response to an under represented need.

I’m going to think on it and come back to it soon… It isn’t like my brain gives me much of a choice.

Some Thoughts:

1. The illustrated London news started its run in 1842, marking it as the first illustrated weekly news rag. Today we have a plethora of bloggers doing it weekly and even daily. How times have changed… Its a wonder we don’t run out of things to talk about.

Ramping up for my summer Lit and Film class I’ve been doing a case study of the adaptation of Wayward Pines from the novel to the small screen. Wayward Pines is an important novel in the way that Hugh Howey’s Dust is important. It is written by an independent author and published without the help of the big book companies. The book’s author, Blake Crouch, is presently #6 on Amazon’s top 100 where he remains one of the handful in the top 20 not writing about billionaire bad boys, vampires, or some combination of the two. Crouch approached the book with a vision and sold that vision to Fox. What did they do with it? Well, lets find out.

Authenticity is an important aspect of that translation (adaptation) from book to film. I am the type of person who believes the film ought to be authentic to the text. I define authenticity as carrying forward the literary position (deeper point) of the text and remaining loyal to the general plot. For example, if Game of Thrones the TV show decided that they were going to eliminate whole characters from the chorus–perhaps narrowing the Stark siblings to only two for the purpose of telling a narrative they have the time to tell or the most important (as they see it) aspects of the narrative.

Wayward Pines is literature in the sense of a piece of work tackling larger ideas through a character-driven narrative. My fear of the adaptation is that the sense of the larger ideas is lost in the visual pursuit of suspense-building and misdirection. On the one hand the larger meaning of the town of Wayward Pines is made obvious through quick visuals that give away far more than the novel does at that point in the story. In other words, the book deals with some real issues and the show trades in that conversation for suspense and moments of heightened drama.

The story isn’t over. I’ll continue following along and wondering if the effort is worth the time…

Some Thoughts:

1. Whats crazy is that I thought today was friday and thought I’d somehow missed a night of posting… Not going into the office everyday makes me lose touch with reality quite fast.
2. In 1841 the slaves who freed the Amistad were themselves freed, despite calls for their extradition to spanish authorities. It is an important step towards civil rights, especially considering that the slaves were defended by none other than John Quincy Adams.

With a week off and a mind that is nearly tired of playing WWE 2k15 and other games, I find myself falling into legitimate thinking patterns destined to lead to something productive and worthwhile. This is probably not that post. I recently tore myself away from the console to read an article about ‘winning’ your first week at work. As is my normal thought pattern, I filtered what they had to say through my latest ‘new job’ experience that took place a few years ago. I don’t think I made a wonderful impression. In fact, I think the impression I made then is probably worse than the one I made this year when life punched me in the mouth and followed up with a few kicks to the nethers and said, ‘You want some? Come get some!’

I could’ve used the article then. For all intents and purposes I will use the article now going into the fall semester. I’ll take a few things it says to heart, such as not trying to impress, engaging with the right people, and asking the necessary questions beforehand. More importantly I am going to have this conversation with students about how to ‘do’ their first week of school and critically consider the role early impressions make in the way a person is perceived and ‘handled’ over time.

I don’t believe there is a great amount of meta-thought that happens around the idea of how to be a student by students during the first week. There is just too much going on. They are entering a new world with new responsibilities and likely doing a great deal of partying and worrying and buying of a whole bunch of stuff to be ready, but what does it really means to ‘be ready’ and to make a ‘good impression’ and set yourself up as the student you expect to be from day one. I don’t have a clear answer, but I feel the conversation is one worth having with the students.

Some Thoughts:

1. Back in 1840 William Henry Harrison was named president of these United States. Who? Exactly… It is strange how some presidents slip into obscurity while others–either through things they did, things done to them, or the circumstances of the time end up living in our hearts and on our money forever.
2. Houston proved once again that they don’t belong in the conference finals. Now what is Cleveland going to prove as short handed as they are? Only that LeBron James is kind of an epic basketballer.

I am starting to think that fan fiction is moving the literary world in ways it never has before. Fans always want what they want, but nowadays fans aren’t waiting. They are creating. This video is a prime example of what I mean. As a writer I can login to Amazon and produce and sell fan fiction and even have it marketed as derivative of the original text. At times authors will publicly support these efforts. The author of the Wayward Pines series mentions fan fiction on his website and even directs readers to buy some of the stuff his brother wrote and that another major author, Brett Battles, wrote in the Wayward Pines universe.

It is not so easy to create but it is getting easier to have your creation recognized. 50 shades of Grey, a book that started as Twilight fanfic, sold over 90 million copies worldwide. Whose fanfic is going to be the next big thing?

Some Thoughts:

1. I had to make the hard decision to pass on coaching tackle football this fall. I feel like I made the right decision for my boys, because it gives it leaves them in more capable hands. It also has the added bonus of giving me time to work with other teams as an assistant and to have even more time and mental energy to pursue writing.
2. The Clippers fell apart. I don’t even know what happened to cause such a shocking collapse. It isn’t like the Rockets picked up their game or even figured out something about the Clip we didn’t know. The Clippers just fell flat.
3. I’m pulling the trigger on the bags. I’m not sure I have full support, but this is something the kids will enjoy and will remember. That’s enough for me to do it. Maricopa Knicks 2015!
4. Today marks the first day in some time there isn’t any soccer for my boys. Coincidentally 1839 is the year the Cambridge Rules were born, which later became the basis of what we now call soccer.

When I was a little kid I started using a Commodore 64 and programming in Basic. Back then a lot of what I did revolved around simplistic if-then statements and prompt-response algorithms. I had this thought even then that computers could do more and that there were some wicked programmers out there set to push computers to the brink of what they could do. I wasn’t alone in that thinking. Terminator came along in 84 (even then the irony of that movie that year wasn’t lost on me) and tried to signal the rise of the machines. Hal had come before that, but I didn’t get to see it until after Terminator. The combination of those visions were soon joined by Cameron’s Bishop (I saw the original later). All of this promised a future where computer intelligence could and would exceed human intelligence relatively quickly. All of this pointed to a future where we would gladly cause computers to be able to complete what were initially conceived as human-only intellectual tasks. Terminator and its ilk still felt fictional. They didn’t scare me. The stuff we are doing now is far more terrifying.

Some scientists believe that 90% of the news could be written by computers by 2030. On the surface it sounds ludicrous until you factor in the reality that a portion of the news we read right now is already written by computer algorithms. This is if-then to the nth degree. It gets darker. There are programs presently writing novels and poetry. Some of it is indistinguishable from human writing. So what does it all mean? As the singularity approaches and we gain a deeper understanding of what that means it is going to be harder and harder to define what it actually means to be human or even alive. Ex Machina spends a great deal of time having this discussion through action and dialogue.

All of this leads to one conclusion: We could be headed towards a reality where the media–the books and poems that shape our reality–will be created by something utterly unreal.

Some Thoughts:

1. Another late night just getting in touch with the media world. It is a wonder I sleep at all…
2. In a time when kids are facetiming and snapchatting and whatever comes next after snapchat, It is interesting to note that this instant distant transmission kind of started back in 1838 with the first test of the telegraph system.

I think there ought to be more screaming rooms. Japan has created a cottage industry of crying rooms, but I haven’t heard terribly much about a place to go and just scream your head off until you feel at ease. I used to rock a lot of heavy metal for exactly that purpose. I don’t believe I’m alone in this belief in screaming either. There are people, situations, and world drama that makes you wanna holler. Here’s a world one: I listened to Mitch McConnell blame the Iraq war on Obama with a straight face. People cheered. I wanted to scream. I watch racism unfold and people turn a blind eye. I want to scream. I watch really bad TV and I want to scream.

Don’t even get me started on raising boys.

The thing is, its socially unacceptable to scream in public. If you do it in front of your kids then you’re supposedly harming them as well. So where do I go to scream? My car mostly. I have a long drive and loud music. Its working for me. Besides, I’m far too old for the mosh pits.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. 1837 marked the beginning of the American boom-bust cycle with the first major bust and resulting economic depression. It makes me think that there is a timer on such things. The wave of financial gain crests and then breaks. We just survived a break, which means things ought to be good for a little while.

Over the years I’ve gained an increasing awareness of the spectrum between supportive and controlling relationships. I have, for example, stopped referring to it as a dichotomy. No relationship is completely controlling or supportive nor do the two necessarily even represent two ends of a long spectrum of relationship flavors. They are more accurately aspects of relationships that define and color the perceptions of the people in the relationships and how those people come to relate with the outside world.

Not surprisingly, I think about these things the most when my mother is in town. I’ve tried to apply all sorts of thinking to understanding how that woman works–none of which have been entirely successful. Yet the more time I spend with her the more I see aspects of her played out in my own familial relationships, and that scares the crap out of me.

My mother is a control freak. She is a person who needs to be right all of the time, because she predicates her existence on her own personal importance and control of the situation. This is especially relevant in terms of her grandkids, who apparently I have no idea how to raise. Because she is controlling, anyone else in a position of power relative to her own needs to be undermined. As such, she seeks to undermine me and cut me down at every possible opportunity. This is what I call the controlling relationship. So, as my kids are roaming around the house in tears from being berated or repeating her undermining comments I find myself absolutely ready to snap.

Still, she’s mom so I don’t snap and I try very desperately to give her the respect of the position even if no respect is tossed back my way.

I know my control/leadership style is purposely divergent from hers. Every time I see a glimmer of her ‘way’ in myself I beat it out of me. This isn’t necessarily a great idea, but it feels like the psychological backlash of that parental relationship. At least the response is better than what I did as a kid. I was angry and dealt with her nonsense by being violent and harboring terribly dark thoughts. I’m over that. I am, as the say, “A grown ass man.”

Sooner or later my boys will be grown ass men, and I hope that in the intervening years I can talk to them about relationships and help them learn with me how to strike an effective balance that allows them to be good people to their lovers, kids, friends, and coworkers, without having to control those people in order to feel necessary and good about themselves.

 

Two days before the release of Mad Max: Fury Road Rotten Tomatoes had it with a five star rating and NPR was toting it as a film worth seeing almost solely based on the work and character of Charlize Theron. I was sold. I adore Theron and, especially after Monster, would watch her eat a turkey sandwich in a dark alley just to see her on screen. So, I watched.

And waited to be impressed.

Then I started laughing, often uncontrollably. Mad Max #1 and the new addition seem to both reflect the core idea of the director. George Miller’s vision and cinematographic thrust are in full view, especially in scenes featuring the herky-jerky speed-up phenomenon often associated with Evil Dead movies and not seen since the first Mad Max.

Mad Max’s world seems carved out of Viking mythology with a dusting of the truly weird stuff they used to make the 2nd and 3rd Pitch Black films. This is largely hinted at throughout earlier films but here it is hooked on steroids and slammed in your face three dimensionally where possible. Cars are the religion here. When the ‘kamikaze’ fighters prepare to die they spray paint their teeth with silver to resemble the chromed out grills of prized automobiles from the dead world. However, the film isn’t about that. It is about redemption. On a more metaphorical note (and obvious one at that) it is about the relationship between what we prize, what we weaponize, and what we want to have sex with. In other words, it is a blatant reflection of the objectification of women (and other prized possessions) and the resulting perceptions of power that come from that.

This is not put forward in the subtle way we see in Ex Machina. In fact, in one scene there is a beautiful concubine wearing a white dress with her legs spread apart to create almost a basket effect. She’s counting bullets and dropping them one by one into her crotch-basket. The camera lingers there for some time. Later, an older de-sexified woman opens her purse and in it are all the seeds of creation. Literally. She talks about it.

I’m not sure I want to talk about it anymore. I’ll say this: The film is often jaw-droppingly beautiful. I said wow and that’s beautiful multiple times and if the set designer doesn’t walk away with an award then people need to be hit. Hard.

See the movie for the beauty, for the action, but not for the story. If you don’t take it terribly seriously you;ll have a good time and you’ll laugh.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. There are a series of books and book come TV shows that swirl around the idea of global extinction and cryogenic freezing. These stories tie into the idea of a controlled release of humanity back into a world that was originally destroyed by said humanity. I wonder if this is a niche market or becoming a growing trend in the speculative genre.
2. All apologies for not posting yesterday’s blog until this morning. I’d been away from the ‘net for a while–which is something I think we all ought to do from time to time–and blogged offline. Posted it before I started righting this one.
3. 1835 marked the beginning of the end of bloodletting as a thing. This happened 17 years after a group of authors supposedly held a contest to see who could right the best horror story. The authors included Lord Byron (who was in part responsible for Babbage’s Analytical Engine…), Mary and Percy Shelley, and Joh Polidori. That contest resulted in Frankenstein and the earliest vampire tales. It is strange to me how everything is even tangentially connected.