10 Minute Rule

I think I’ve been going about this Zombie thing all wrong. The first sign of trouble was when a trusted colleague revealed a dislike of Zombies. He didn’t get the relevance. After all, they are not ‘the other’ so much as they are dead things without the good manners to lie down. There are far better metaphors for ‘the other’–Aliens, mutants, sociopathic gang bangers, werewolves,  etc. So, why use an essentially hollow metaphorical shell?

Because it is the hollowness that defines the argument.

I’ve come to see zombies as a metaphor for the craving we all, at one time, feel for something that is missing in our lives. We can become consumed by that craving and forget ourselves entirely until that craving is satisfied. However, as zombies tell us, that craving has no end. They want brains, but we may want fame, or wealth, or love, or passion, or belonging. Most of us can control the urges for what we crave, but what if we couldn’t? What if all of us thought about nothing but the craving? We’d be zombies soullessly searching for the thing that satisfies us but realizing that there is never enough of what we want to satisfy us.

Its a nascent theory, but I believe it has legs.

I think there comes a point where most of us realize that our lives don’t belong to us anymore. They did for a while, and then one day we wake up with a job and bills and kids. Family becomes priority one and the fantasyland of youth slips away like Peter Pan through  Wendy’s window. This is supposed to be a good thing. I learned that having responsibility meant growing up and growing up meant being mature and a healthy and productive member of society.

Somehow being a writer got lost in that conversation. Writers, i’m told, aren’t really healthy and productive members of society. Instead we’re trained to be pattern people; nine to five ants shuffling a bread crumbs and leaf bits back to the hill. Every once in a while I get nostalgic for my life before I became an ant. It is no knock on my family. You can love one thing yet still appreciate the memory of something else. I remember possibility; and when I didn’t know what I wanted to do or be. I remember a time when choice was only limited by my wallet and my imagination. These days choice is measured in a slice of afternoon instead of a month, a year, or even a lifetime of possibilities.

Somehow being a writer got lost in those possibilities too. My mother wanted me to be anything else. She wanted a concrete job with insurance and long term pension and commitment from an entity that wouldn’t collapse. She suggested a great many things, but I only ever remember Garbage Man and Fireman. Once I tested to be the latter. I scored well enough, but it wasn’t something I ever wanted to do. I’d rather write the sequel to Backdraft than be the sequel itself.  Somehow I found a way to get those things she desired, easing the strain of daily complaints and worry. I did it without having to be a garbage collector or dash into burning buildings.

I found a way to write, and maybe even live a life that allows for writing. Still I cherish the memory of times where writing was all there was.

Some Thoughts:

1. It is entirely possible that rain depresses me. See above post for evidence.

Watching ‘This is 40’ while making football picks is more depressing than I thought possible. The film is grossly accurate with a sense of humor that I find compelling… and terribly familiar. I’m not even 40. Days like this I feel like I’m living in a sitcom—The League maybe. I’m going to plow right through that and make some picks.

I went with a general theme here: For half these games the more talented team isn’t going to win. That strategy is the result of specific game situations. Minnesota will beat Green Bay based on the D-line. The same can be said of the Jets. San Diego is a sleeper team and so on.

1. NO over ATL
2. NYJ over BAL
3. PIT over CLE
4. DET over TB
5. MIN over GB
6. HOU over JAC
7. SD over KC
8. CAR over MIA
9. CHI over STL
10. IND over AZ
11. OAK over TEN
12. NYG over DAL
13. DEN over NE
14. SF over WAS

A convenient way to get at the heart of a character’s inner being is to look in their closet. The things we keep in our closet (real closet or the headspace) are indicative of how we see ourselves and what we want to project or sometimes even want to hide from and avoid projecting. The actual closet is where we store the things that we want to wear and where we prepare ourselves to share ourselves with the world. The fictive closet–the head space–is where we hide out and keep the parts of oursleves we don’t  want people to see until they earn our absolute trust.

The stuff that passes for news these days is problematic. I struggle to understand how a 24 hr news cycle can be filled with nothing meaningful and then, in the sudden face of tragedy (or, rarely, excitement), be filled with nothing but that specific event. I understand tragedy on a personal level. That means that I don’t feel every news channel needs to be filled with my ‘money shots of sadness’.

Because so much of what I put down here is based on what I see and hear and do, Its been hard developing topics now that I’ve largely abandoned the news. So, I turned it on the other day. I checked out a show (New Day on CNN) and a few websites. That led me to some thoughts:

1. The Knockout Game, as told by the CNN anchor is a terrible and fairly typical criminal situation. Kids have been jumping random people long before America was a colony. The difference here is the prevalence of social media-specifically through sights like Youtube and What I noticed above all else is the coverage is
2. Sometimes you find yourself in situations where you are a completely different type of person than everyone else around you. This rarely bothers me, but once in a while I feel so startlingly out of place that I shut up and just observe the situation with an abundance of curiosity. When it happened this last time I recognized that my life experience and approach to life and how I feel things need to happen is different than the majority of people I encounter in AZ. I’m irreverant. I don’t take things too seriously. It seems immature to some, but maturity seems immature to me most times. Maturity means exhibiting a set of behaviors prescribed by a long dead social leadership sect and continued by all of us in an effort to be accepted by leadership and the majority. That is useless to me. I want to reach through the skin of people and see who they are beyond that veil and interact with them on a real (non-formal) level. Perhaps I ask for too much. It does occur to me that in order to be taken seriously in most settings you must appear to be a very proper and serious person–that or an erratic genius.
3. A recent poll I found on a site (and then lost) indicated that somewhere around 40% of polled parents were against contact football up until the high school years. The effect of this could be a reduction in people cultured to handle the rigor of football contact and thus more injuries at the high school level. I also think it contributes to a general softening of America and Americans. This at the same time we are getting heavily into MMA and such…odd that.

The Storymatic spit out something quite compelling which I’ll need to address at a later date. My brain doesn’t have the juice to put out that level of thought. I can reflect on what’s been though. The last few weeks of a semester are exceedingly difficult. Students often don’t recognize the danger they are in until its too late. Think of the fable of the frog in hot water (still don’t know if that is true) and you’ll understand what I mean about freshmen and failing grades.

I’m needing to do a fair deal of damage control at this point, as well as reconsidering how I manage grades throughout a semester. On an interesting side note, I’m going to be replacing my DVR, which has me swallowing hours and hours of recorded footage before it is all deleted. I finally have a dedicated understanding of the Sleepy Hollow show. I’m not certain I like it all that much yet. I do like the fact that black female leads are becoming more prevalent in prime time. On the one hand it could mean that being a black female is hot again. On the other hand it could symbolize a reemergence of a certain style of black feminine beauty–which is a bad thing. Short of NCIS: Los Angeles, everybody is putting forward that Sanaa Lathan look.

I’m rambling again. Good thing my time is up.

I bought a fighting game and a philosophy movie broke out.

When I picked up Arkham Origins a few weeks back I did so with the understanding that the game would deal with a younger Batman. I presumed it would be in the same story vein of the latest Batman cartoon. It isn’t. Arkham Origins deals with some serious issues starting with identity. I don’t need to give too much away to tell you that the game is all about how Batman processes his identity and other build their identity around this path he’s taken. That path becomes the defining element for a number of key characters who decide in later games whether they want to follow the Bat way or the Joker way.

I haven’t finished the game, so I am no shape to deliver a solid review. I can tell you that the game makes me think in a meaningful way about interpersonal connections. The game reminded me that we often define and dedicate ourselves to something outside of ourselves. We join religions and teams and relationships in an effort to unlock the secrets of who we are. This game shows that in such a vivid way that even the games younger audience will understand why these things happen as well as what drives the relationships between the series’ key characters.

The hardest part of teaching happens to be the very part I wake up each day for. I can remember being that cocky college kid, full of ego and certainty and ready to accept the challenge of any teacher who dared put one forth. Sadly none did until I clawed my way into 300 level classes. Before that was boredom, ignorance, and uncertainty. I hated going to class because all the professors ever went on about was their research and the stuff that mattered deeply to them. Once in a while their interests and my own dovetailed, but this was not the way things normally went. Here is how it normally went:

Teacher: I want you to write a paper about A violation of your civil liberties.

Talislegger: Your paper, madam, is a violation of my civil liberties. Can I do something with Dragons?

Teacher: Get out.

This scenario repeated itself for years. I wondered why nobody bothered to ask me what was worth writing and researching about. When they finally did, I was chock full of nothing to talk about, because I’d never been given the tools, training, nor preparation to become part of the conversation. I believe the role of the student at every level of learning is to become part of the academic conversation. The higher your level of course (or discourse), the more I would expect you to contribute to the conversation. I actually ask my kids why 1 + 1 has to equal 2. They answer in a basic but informative fashion, contributing little to the philosophy of math but happy still that they contributed at all. This is how it should be.

This is how it will be in the spring when I return to teaching the research essay. I’m a sucker for Dev Ed, so I choose to spend my time hanging out in the middle of that pool. Every now and again I surface and pretend to be a composition and rhetoric scholar. The truth is, I’m just a plain ol’ writer, and maybe a bit of a sucker for a good tale at that. When I teach the research course I tend to theme it around student research. I actually start the class by being one of those teachers I hate. I pick a generalized topic to use as a point of entry to the student driven experience. It isn’t totally hypocritical though. I try to gauge student interest before I dive on into planning the next semester. This coming Spring I’ll set it off with a pair of rousing research challenges centered around cord-cutting (the act of removing oneself from the financial burden of cable TV in order to get everything online) and The Shining.

The topics–though specific, are actually lenses into the DIY and film research and analysis segments. The students will have a chance to pick their own DIY/escape from the grid topics as well as choose a film (possibly of the Kubrick or the Horror w/ a meaning and a message vein) in order to do a closer research analysis on. The goal here is to show them how powerful research can be both on the ground level–researching things that can effect your life financially–and the air level–researching things that can effect your life philosophically.

This two pronged attack is meant to propel them into individual and small group research projects that will lead them through a semester of contextualized problem-based learning. Best of all, it doesn’t suck.

Some Thoughts:

1. Warm wishes go out to my friend Tracey. She recently lost someone very important to her. It is a hard thing to face the fragility of life. I won’t say this too shall pass, because it wont. Instead I hope the loss becomes a part of you; that you carry the memory of love like a birthmark. Such things should never be forgotten or ignored.

A friend and colleague lent me a very interesting creative tool called the Storymatic. It is a story prompt generator designed to infuse creativity into your writing process in the moments when it becomes stale or even stalled. What you do is draw a series of cards that pertain to the main character or the conflict. From there you can produce your original fiction. I gratefully accepted the tool and promised to use it to generate this evening’s ten minutes of writing. Here it goes:

Character Cards: Subject of a medical experiment, Person who never gives up
Story Cards: Glasses, Aquarium

There isn’t much left now. The glasses tell me I have less than an hour before sleep takes me. The Prolponiaquin pushing through my veins burns feels heavy as egg nog and I know that I need to get to the scientists before they get to me. The glasses tell me to go to the Aquarium. I don’t know if its the water it wants or something else entirely. It took a long time for me to understand what was happening. I thought I was insane. The strength and agility results were way above what I was capable of before the exams, and increasing exponentially. Two months after the tests began my sight started to fail me. It was the opposite of what they expected. The other tests were showing results ahead of the curve of other participants, but I was the first to show any side effects. What use is a soldier woh can’t see?

They didn’t even pay for the glasses. They processed me out with 100% disability, set me up with a sweet severance package, and wished me the best for with my condition. See, they thought the strength and agility would leave me once I was off the injections; hell, so did I. Only, nothing went away–nothing but my eyesight. I bought glasses on a lark. By then I couldn’t see but two feet in front of my face. I couldn’t drive or walk too fast. The folks at Walmart asked for my prescription, but I hadn’t seen a doctor about any of this. I started trying on glasses, just hoping one of the standard pairs might make a difference. One did. Then it did more…