10 Minute Rule

I study my children.
I’m the guy behind the two-way mirror holding a clip board and considering. Everything. Lately my analysis has turned to sports and the way my kids handle sports. When I watch the pros, and even back in college in that one sad year I was a part of that world, I could see the guys who were real and the ones who weren’t going to be at the next level. Skill was a part of it, but it was the smallest part of it. Determination, drive, and above all else, killer instinct.

Jordan is the poster child for killer instinct. When he played he wanted to put you away. He wanted to make sure the next time you faced him you were 100% afraid of what might happen to your now-fragile ego. Killer instinct also means rising to the challenge of playing superior talent until you become that superior talent. Now I see glimpses of both behaviors in my two oldest kids, but I don’t see them both in any kid. The eldest has that killer instinct. He’ll fight to the end and by the end he wants to put you down for good. He wants to do this in sports, video games, arguments, eating contests, hell, he wants to do it in a farting contest. No matter the challenge, he wants to win badly. The middle child is the ‘step up’ kid. He always wants to rumble with the big kids. He wants to get in there and hold his own and see what he can do. He is a fast learner and when encountering a new skill or trick or sport he gets the look in his eyes that says, “I can do this.”

You gotta have both to be a pro. My eldest wants to be a pro, so I need to find a way to teach him ‘step up game’. There may come a time where all three develop that pro instinct. I hope it happens. I love it when my boys want something badly and fight as hard as they can to get it.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. 1245 is a lot of posts. Here’s to over 3 yrs of writing every stinking day.

The funny thing about Thursdays is they are my Friday. It is my last day of class, and often the last chance to get to see the people I care about at the office for a few days. Thursdays therefore are a bit of a reboot for me. I shut down all the energy of the last week (good or bad) and refocus myself in preparation of the coming week. I look forward to the coming Monday because I know I will be ready and I know it Thursday likely means disconnecting from the academic reality for a while and just being a husband and a dad. I love that part, if if I never feel I am good enough to deserve either honorific.

Some thoughts:

1. You learn a lot about yourself by your self perceptions, your flaws, and the things you find ways to rationalize.

2. Happiness is easier when the weather allows for such things.

3. Had to renumber several posts. I shorted myself a hundreds place

I am still lamenting the horrible season the Giants are having, but at least I’m 4-0 in the fantasy realm. I only have 2 Giants on my roster and they don’t even try to score points anymore. I try to score wins in the correct pick column. Sometimes I’m right. 9-5 last week, which means 37-25 overall. I’m 10 behind Jawarski, the picks leader. I need a few good weeks to catch up. Lets get it.

 

BUF over CLE
Impressive as the CLE run has been, BUF has a legit defense and momentum to carry them through.

NO over CHI

NE over CIN

DET over GB
Shoot out here. This game is tough to call, but I don’t think GB can stop Bush.

IND over SEA
I wish I had Luck this week. He’ll be scoring on the ground.

BAL over MIA
Didn’t believe last week. Still don’t.

PHI over NYG
Just don’t even say it. Not a word.

STL over JAC

KC over TEN

ARI over CAR

DEN over DAL

SF over HOU

SD over OAK

ATL over NYJ

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m still not sure the leading lady can carry The Blacklist. I’m also not sure she needs to at this point. I would put it on par with the other new NBC show, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I need more from both, though the mystery of The Blacklist is more intriguing than the Marvel offering. The Marvel offering is teeming with weak characters and unfulfilling mysteries. It isn’t Whedon strong, but it is cool.

I cannot think of a better way to release a book that tackles the curious question of living zombies than a zombie flash mob. I spent the afternoon sipping a wonderful Watermelon iced tea and then wandering into range of a hungry mob of zombies who mauled one woman and then did the thriller dance.

Yeah, that happened.

The mob was part of a novel release party at Arizona State University for author Tom Leveen and his new book Sick. Leveen is a noted YA author whose previous works are slowly racking up awards. Zombies–horror in general–is not a new topic for him. He is an avid follower of the King (Stephen, not Elvis). Following the mob scene, Leveen spoke along with other scholars about the role of zombies in popular culture.

Zombies have been around for an incredibly long time. Over the last few decades the idea of zombies has morphed from the Vodoo-insipired stories of Haiti to the infection-driven plague set forth to eat all of humanity.

There is a certain simplicity in the zombie mythos. In the world of zombies there is little to distinguish us besides Alive or not, and the living are forced to band together in order to stay living. Zombies and post-apocalyptic stories flower from the same tree. Both tell the tale of folks who want to separate from the shackles of modern society and live in the land of simple goals. It doesn’t get simpler than, “Stay alive!”

Doomed to live in a zombie world, I would have very few rules and but two goals: Stay alive, and find some more of that watermelon tea.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Fell behind quite a bit in the class, which is resulting in a inability to do things on the time frame I really want to do them. What I am instead left with is a lot of confused kids who, while happy, are probably losing faith in their ability to trust when things will be due. At any rate, it isn’t really fair to give them more work until the past work is graded.

I am starting to understand the banality of the 24 hr news cycle. Originally I thought the cycle presented an opportunity to approach every story from multiple angles. Now I feel like we all too quickly run out of things to say. Yep, I’ve had that problem on multiple occasions here on the blog. The good news is I plan to use this space in the coming weeks to detail my 90 day novel efforts. So, I suppose that offers at least a few new posts per week.

I got nuthin tonight. Well, almost nothing. I’m starting to get a rhythm going for the semester with my school and home life, enough so that I consider having a life. This will undoubtedly disappoint my cat, who expects me to spend evenings parked on the couch brushing her fur and pretending to read or write while in actuality watching bad TV. Given the loss of two pets that my friend recently suffered, I am halfway inclined to oblige the feline…and her pretty little dog too.

So, I’m giving the 90 day novel formula a looksee. Given the positive reviews and the quality of the writing of the text, this looks like a valid structure that I can incorporate into my teaching. I’ve tried quite a few ideas about how to produce a novel on a schedule, and most of them crashed soundlessly on the ears of my students. Worse still, when presented with a living breathing success story, several of those same students managed to tune the fellow out completely, despite the fact that everything he said was a pure gold.

They didn’t see it that way.

I’m fortunate in my life to be in the company of brilliant educators. I spent some time talking with Myrlin Hepworth, and he helped me understand where they are coming from. See, they haven’t faced the trials and tribulations of the publishing world, so they still have the fortune of believing they’re the shit. They can sit back and observe a success story and say, “If he can do it, It is going to be cake for me.”

But it is everything but cake.

I can’t hold their hand and slam their face in the dirt at the same time. I’ve tried telling them about the real writing world, but it isn’t the same as being the proud recipient of a dozen flush letters reminding you that damn near everyone thinks you are telling a story that isn’t worth telling. On the other hand, I can’t let them feel invincible to the point where they blow off a NYT best seller like he’s the guy emptying the trash.

It isn’t everyone in the class who is like this. On the other hand, it is enough of the people that the vibe dictates the environment. It is for that very reason I’ve started bringing in even more guest speakers–former students–to remind the class of why they are there. Maybe I ought to do that for the 4-5 soccer team.

We were blasted this past week. The final score was anywhere between 12-20 to our measly 1 goal. It isn’t the score so much as the fact that hardly anyone on the team showed an interest in playing the game. It is always like this. When I signed up to coach 4-5, I thought I was signing up to teach kids the basics of sports and competition. I did not realize that competition was off the table. This is not the case with all teams. It is a matter of the makeup of the team and the parents as to what you are going to get–and want to get–out of a season. I wish I’d realized that from the get go. I would’ve structured the practices differently, really spending my time focusing on different facets of the players as opposed to working to get them to play together and to kick the ball into the net. It is the same as with the CRW class: Had I been more aware of who and what I was dealing with, I would have gone a different direction.

I guess the message here is, know what you’re dealing with before you get too far down a path to change course.

I define myself as socially awkward.
This isn’t a well known fact, given I am a moderately successful professor who doesn’t rock the tweed and does have more than three friends. Still, I tend to find myself in these situations where I am left asking, Urkel-like, “Did I say that?” As a person whose career is shaped around words, you’d think I’d be more careful about the ones fleeing my lips. At least, you’d think I’d know what poor sentence choices look like.

Tonight I accused my wife of poisoning me (which she did do, btw). The accusation slid out casually in the midst of a conversation that, at the time, had little self-depricating or partner-depricating tones attached. Still, it is part of what she and I do sometimes. We tell stories on the other. This story came up over soup, when I asked my wife what was in the soup we were having at the chop and flip restaurant. That question drew a hint of curiosity from those with us, so I explained that I thought the soup might be the same soup I am allergic to. Then, for reasons I can only classify as social awkwardness, I felt compelled to explain that I’d had the bad soup once and gone delusional for the next two days, like a man possessed with Peyote. Then I continued, explaining that she would know full well what the soup was, because after the initial poisoning, she had occasion to serve the soup to me again and did so. I felt it was a cute story. Nobody else did. Me = awkard.

My awkwardness reads as a mixture of trying to hard and being afraid to simply be myself in all social settings. I am not afraid of what people think about me so much as I am afraid of devilishly misreading what they think about me. It is therefore my natural defense mechanism to try and make an early impact in the conversation to draw out a response that lets me know if I am reading them the way they mean to be read. Misreading = awkward. Forcing a situation where a read can be taken = epically awkward.

So, that’s me. I’m a creature of certainty and a man who is willing to work as hard as is possible to reach a desired outcome, so long as I recognize that I’m not misreading the possibilities of that outcome. Unfortunately, that translates poorly into the social space on occasion, and suddenly everyone knows your wife poisoned you.

There. I said it again…

 

Some Thoughts:

1. That dull pounding at the back of your skull is apparently called a caffeine headache.
2. It is harder to write with a cat perched on your laptop.
3. 11:47 is almost too late for coffee but never too late for aspirin with happy sleepy drugs in it…

When I was in college I wrote a lot of stories from the perspective of a female. I figured, at first, that since I was dating women and really wanted to know how to figure out these ladies I was dating on a psychological level–basically so I could have a better understanding of why I kept breaking up with them. More than one person thought I was gay. A college male who has a healthy respect for women’s shoes, digs home design, and writes women must have a secret desire to have sex with men.

I wrote women, and I learned about authentic writing, because my writing wasn’t authentic. I wrote what I researched and what I desired women to be. I didn’t write with an honest sense of who women are. I had occasion to spend a few hours with author Julie Ann Peters, who writes LGBTQ YA fiction. One of the things she told me was that her book, Luna, which is about a transexual person, was originally from the transexual’s perspective. However, that perspective felt false. So, she had to rewrite the story from the perspective of someone close to the character, as this perspective is clearly a lot more accessible to the writer

Be authentic when you write. In each story there is a character whose POV you can write honestly. It may not be the protagonist you had, but it is the character and thus the character arc that you know how to tell.

Some Thoughts:
1. Having a handful of nascent friendships isn’t as desirable as a handful of deep friendships. I am working towards the latter, though my late life has been the former.

2. 33 states have no law protecting against gender identity discrimination. There are still more frontiers in the equal rights debate. As a result, transgenders are more likely than any other LGBTQ groups to experience violence in their lives, this is notwithstanding the attempted suicide rate of 41%.

3. Thinking about transgender, it is interesting to note how many people are forced to try to pass, because of how society is unwilling to let people be who they need to be. One day I need to task my students to build a hierarchy of discrimination–ranging from most margnalizaed group to least…

Coulson is a Life Model Decoy.

That or he was ressurected by Scarlet Witch, a character certain to debut in the show (as she is his ex) along with her brother, Quicksilver are slated to appear in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Now we know Whedon is using the show as a vehicle to bridge the films and he could introduce characters in this way. We also know Coulson did in fact die from Loki’s blow. Working him back into the continuum isn’t a retcon so much as a plot device to indicate some larger tech or magic.

But enough about the larger plot. The pilot episode of Agents of SHIELD was vintage Whedon, a world crafting, team-building romp into a world dealing with the emergence of Gods. The show inspired me to really reflect on the idea of higher orders of power in the way that few comics have. This is about unpowered people trying to hold the line in a world where your enemy could be a God. It was everything I needed to see in a pilot. I will be back for week 2…

Just like I came back for Riddick 3. Here, it is 10 years after the events of Pitch Black and Riddick has gotten soft and been betrayed by the Necromongers. So, Riddick has to bone up and be a man out on a planet where things are about to get real–Pitch Black style. The movie happens in three phases: Riddick the lone man, Riddick the hunter/killer, and Riddick doing his Pitch Black thing. All three phases are vintage cool with strong visuals and classic one-liners. This isn’t high fiction. The Oscars will not get a copy. At the same time, it is fun and well worth the hour’s wage for a ticket.

17 minutes into the Giants game I started composing a Facebook post. It was a memorial statement really. I said, RIP Giants Playoff hopes. I thought it might mean chances for a single win were fading too. I’m not so sure. There is a true difference between pro and college athletics. Pro players appear to be more okay with sucking and less hungry about winning, but here is the thing: Pro players hate that comparison. They want to be seen as wanting to win and to perform and to give their all every week. The Giants did the exact opposite last week and I refuse to believe they’ve cashed in their chips already.

Betting on the G-men cost me a point, but I got it back with another slick pick against the Niner’s. 9-7 is not great, but it does bring me up to 28-20, a dang site better than .500. I caught Hoge and Wickersham, and I’ll have them both this week. It is all because of these picks:

SF over STL
I’m torn over this pick. STL is a very good home team–they beat the niner’s and Seahawks at home–but I refuse to accept that they can beat an angry niner’s squad–even without their top pass rusher.

BAL over BUF
Buffalo isn’t all that good. The defense let the Jets go wild on them and the Ravens have a lot more offensive speed and weaponry than the Jets can dream of. Worst still, l’il Ray might play.

CIN over CLE
Cleveland is resurgent, but a one week surprise is not enough to put down a CIN team that just knocked off the Packers in a come back win.

DET over CHI
Megatron has his Starscream back. That means that there is a solid ground game and legit passing to a safety back. This means the door is open for the TE to step up and, best of all, Megatron has room to work. I’m just wondering if the new #2 is going to have game.

SEA over HOU
The Seahawks are a very good team, and even on the road they are going to be able to put up a lot of points. The Texans? Not so much.

IND over JAC
I’d pick my 8-9 Flag team over the Jags at this point. My kid could run for about 80 against this squad.

NYG over KC
Say word? WORD. I believe in the G-men. All that stuff above shoulda led you to that conclusion. Yeah, it is Andy Reid and he owns the G, but this is a team in need. Lets just hope that players only meeting led to some soul searching on the O and D lines.

MIN over PIT
When your daughter calls you out and you make that public, you plan to put a foot in someone. I believe that foot is inserted this sunday and AP begins to look like a 2k back again.

AZ over TB
Rookie QB is going to suffer the wrath.

NYJ over TEN
CJ2k has been CJ1K and will look like CJ85yds this week while the Jets struggle to another close win.

DEN over PHI
Close, high scoring, not a chance Vick outduels Manning.

WAS over OAK
Billed as the battle of mobile QB’s, a concussion could immobilize T. Pryor and make this contest moot.

SD over DAL
Not feeling the star this year. I think the bolt is better.

ATL over NE
Unless Gronk and Amendola show, this game is the first time a real O challenges enough to put the game out of reach late.

NO over MIA
Still don’t believe…