Life and Lore

GAAAAAA!

2005-06-28T15:54:00.000-05:00

Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who lost his job two years ago after refusing to remove a giant replica of the sacred tablets he had placed in his courthouse, said the Supreme Court erred in its Kentucky ruling.

"We're talking about acknowledging the God on which this nation was built. Certainly the court has no authority to forbid that acknowledgment," Moore said on "FOX & Friends."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,160925,00.html

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ...

U.S. Constitution, That Pesky First Amendment

Dude, Roy. Could you be more wrong? I mean, really? If I drew big arrows to explain the above and you frantically scribbled them out, would that count? Or is there a threshold of wrong, so once you cross into the hallowed wrong, the wrongest of the wrong, the wrong of lore, you're just completely saturated and can't absorb additional wrong? Cause if there's room for extra wrong, I think you should really keep going.

THE VERY FIRST THING THE FIRST AMENDMENT SAYS IS THAT OUR COUNTRY IS NOT BUILT ON ANY ONE GOD.

That's the whole point!

Gaaaaaaa!

Coming soon

2005-06-27T21:37:00.000-05:00

I was away this weekend at a wedding, and I have tons to write about. But I also have tons to do, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Mike Mussina throws like a girl.

Lettin the ink from my pen bleed

2005-06-20T20:59:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I fucking hate blogging. I'll do stuff, stuff that makes me happy and sad, stuff that makes me look around and think when it's over, stuff. But then I gotta come back here and explain it? That's no fun. I wanna discover new stuff here, not recite stuff I already figured out. Then again, usually I don't have stuff period and I'm stuck bitching about random flights of whatever, so I should probably suck it up and start telling you all about shit.

Saturday: Baseball. Love it. I should probably talk about that someday, but most of you mostly know and the rest of you can wait. Also Batman Begins and Kendra. Don't feel like explaining that either.

Sunday: Nah, not going there.

Fuck.

Okay, here: I got a great haircut on Friday. I know, you're happy for me. But right at the end of the haircut, the woman was like, "Can I trim your eyebrows?" and I was like, "What the fuck are you talking about?" cause I'm a boy and you don't mess with eyebrows. But she promised not to make me look like a freak so I went with it, and sure enough, she snipped off some eyebrow hair and I couldn't tell the difference, so obviously I had more than I needed. Where the hell have you guys been with this? Why was I not informed that eyebrow depth is something I should be monitoring? Shouldn't someone have tried to sell me something to fix this by now? But (no thanks to y'all), I now know this is a potential thing, right up there with nose hair and getting fat and the facial hair just beneath the jawline and the ear that we all missed when we first started shaving. And sausage.

So there. You'll read that and you'll like it, or you'll go to bed without. You hear?

Let's play two

2005-06-17T23:14:00.000-05:00

I bought baseball shoes and a jock, which, to properly express my enthusiasm for tomorrow, I will now sleep in.

Etymology's got my back

2005-06-16T21:35:00.000-05:00

I'm ridiculously tired, again, still, but I'm so looking forward to the next two weeks. I got things this weekend, great things -- hell, I'm even playing baseball! I'm eager to keep writing, I'm even pumped about web development, and Tad's wedding is gonna rock. Sky-high, crazy-go-nuts excitement all around. Feel free to stop by and grab some.

Sometimes I look up at the heavens/ceiling with a wry smile and self-mockingly inquire. Not seriously, but not often either, cause I wouldn't wanna push my luck. I wouldn't say it's directed at God, more like Fate; it's directed at an imaginary focal point of meaning derived from my experience. Cause shit happens, and it's amazing what you find when you really pick through it. That's where my "God" lives, in how we can learn lessons and make metaphor from a simple physical world. A pigeon sitting above the court becomes an evaluating set of eyes when I'm trying to work on my handle. A song on the radio mocks before a date, but reassures on the drive home. I can't explain it. I don't have to.

Some people might call that God, I don't know. I say it's the good. And it's not in what conclusions I draw or what details I observe, but in the simple act of reaching out into the world and bringing something greater back.

roof rails

2005-06-14T22:01:00.000-05:00

Support, technically

2005-06-14T20:30:00.000-05:00

I spent much of the last two days being hostile to my company's web host tech support guys. Not hostile like my dad used to get when fast food employees messed up our order -- you know, that bizarre, disproportionate anger at incompetence and disappointment in the world -- not that; more like the hostile that starts out with annoyance at a problem I didn't cause and begins in the form of direct call to action. Something like:

Me: Our site is down, please address.

Not pleasant, not rude, neutral, perhaps with a hint of foreboding about the ability of tech support to address the issue. Which proved true enough, as sixty minutes of tech supportness resulted in:

Them: I have rebooted the server, and it came back up successfully.

Okay, great. But our site is still down. Did you even check? Oy. Let's try this again.

Me: The site is still down.

I don't really care enough to get angry, but "annoyed" is certainly within reach. It's hard to get too worked up about incompetence that obvious. You just kinda shrug and try again, louder and with smaller words. Pointing helps.

Ninety minutes later:

Them: Log into your account and make sure that the web server is running.

Gosh, who woulda thought to check the WEB SERVER service when the WEB SERVER stopped working. Certainly not me. Except, oh wait, yes, me. Urge to kill rising.

Me: Okay, this is getting a little ridiculous. The web service is running. We've rebooted the server twice; this is clearly not the problem. We're an online store and we'd very much like this cleared up before this weekend; your support so far has consisted of checking the server to make sure it's on, and that's clearly not enough in this case. Thanks for your attention.

Zing! Gettin a little snotty now. Little hostile. I'll nap for two hours until they say something silly like:

Them: While I was logged in I noticed someone from jonnymp3.com was also logged in and fixed your server.

I'm sure that makes no sense to you. That's okay; I have no fucking idea what he's talking about either. But hey, the site is up now! Still, time to reload:

Me:

1) You're speaking to the only developer for this domain, and I have no idea what you're talking about -- I still haven't made any modifications, and I have no idea why the server is running now but wasn't earlier.

2) I have no idea what jonnymp3.com is; Google has no results for it, the domain isn't even registered.

3) If someone else DID make changes to our settings, I want to know who it is and what they changed. Since you're apparently unable to tell me the former, at least provide me specifics about the latter. You said they fixed our server -- how? What did they do? Why doesn't it show up in the server action log?

That's right, if you're looking to register jonnymp3.com, it's available right this second. Act now, before the magic server-fixing fairies leave!

Them: jonnymp3.com is the name of my server here. I was checking your statistics and verify information about the machine. I apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused.

Urge to kill present, but confused. Sigh. I'm out of zingers anyway, might as well let 'em go.

Until the next time.

And I didn't know it

2005-06-13T23:53:00.000-05:00

about what I expected
not what I feared
nothing I didn't know
even at the time

I just wanted more from you
didn't know how to ask for it
and didn't handle
not getting it
well
which we know

so yeah
sorry about
that whole relationship thing

but hey
we're alive

Cause Ice Cube is crazy as fuck

2005-06-12T23:12:00.000-05:00

Eh, don't get too excited, I'm tired.

Is it better to write a quick entry or wait for gumption and a more thorough one? I can never decide. Anyway, I had a pretty good weekend, except it was a sucky weekend cause my weekends are whatever, but for a whatever weekend it was a pretty damned good one.

You should think about listening to Nina Gordon cover N.W.A.'s "Straight Outta Compton".

Oh, wait, I did write a thing. I'll go to sleep and you can read it. You don't even have to pretend to care, cause I won't be paying attention anyway.

"I think a lot of clients just want something cool, and it might be worth it to just whip something "cool" together."

a) Cool is not our job. Quality is. The difference between "cool" and "quality" is caring. Cool is exactly that. It's doing something interesting without completely investing yourself. It's an attitude that makes people like you, but forget you soon after. Quality resonates. Cool does not.

II) Quality goes all the way down to the floor. Details reinforce; there's harmony. People break this for the cheap laugh -- the out-of-character line or scene, the end of the commercial that doesn't make any sense but draws a
(soon-forgotten) chuckle, etc. Laughs are a result of quality, not a cause.
Settling for an easy reaction when pursuing quality means you're missing the chance for a good reaction, something that will stick. The attempt at truth is even more important than the execution -- people love "bad" movies they can connect with more than "great" movies that don't mean anything to them.

3) People are capable of recognizing pervasive quality even if they can't/don't express it. Great movies are re-watchable; every iteration reveals smaller bits of previously unnoticed beauty. It's not just the thing, it's the thing in the context of the world you create. A game where you click on random images to kill them is fun for five minutes. A STORY that explains why you're hunting monsters is weeks of entertainment. If you asked someone what they liked about the game, no one would say, "The little rocks on the ground." But if you took out the rocks, it wouldn't feel right.

I have no capacity for creating cool -- I get bored immediately. Even editing random photographs has a purpose: to make the composition better, to reveal. I also don't expect any of my work to register above "cool" for anyone but me. But someone thinking, "Oh, that's cool" and moving on isn't my motivation to create. Someone wanting a site that leaves people with "cool" doesn't mean I should strive for anything less than "quality". I'm lucky to come away with cool; if I put anything less in, I'd be lucky to come away with anything. Even in the context of a web site for a design company, there are still intentions: show people I can make aesthetically pleasing design, execute complex Flash programming, integrate photography and video, stick to a theme, etc. If there isn't something driving my work, I won't know what to do next.

w00t Wade Duck

2005-06-09T20:08:00.000-05:00

The sky was fucking huge when I walked out of the gym a few minutes ago. Of course, now that I'm in my basement I can't see the fucking sky (as we clearly established yesterday) so not only is there a good chance I'm exaggerating, but I'm probably just plain wrong and the sky is the same size it usually is. But I seem to recall the sky being fucking huge, cause I sorta wandered out of the gym and looked up at the sky thinking, man, fucking huge, which reminded me of the first time my friend Alex came to visit Chicago -- he's from NYC -- and he looked around and said, "It's so flat!" Then I tricked him into thinking a horse was a cow and we all laughed at the city slicker, even though it took us like three hours to get home from O'Hare cause we had no fucking idea where we going, I don't remember why, but we took Route 30 ALL THE WAY BACK, which was long and scenic. Like good sex.

Oh, speaking of sex, and thus sex organs, there's a piece of beef jerky on my desk that I absolutely refuse to eat because it's just way too ... I'm sorry. I'm an enlightened fellow, but it's so ... it's just ... I mean, it tapers and it has a ridge and everything, and I realize there's no possible way that any part of an animal could survive the jerkification process, whatever that entails -- entrails? -- but ... I mean, it's so ... you'd understand.

Anyway, the sky was fucking huge, I think because the clouds were fucking huge but far away, because it's not like the sky gets any bigger or smaller day-to-day, that would be dangerous; it might just decide it's tired of hanging out all the way up there and come down for a break, so people would run around yelling the predictable thing and Wade Duck would totally call it first, though people like Gheorghe Muresan and Yao Ming wouldn't get to hear it cause they'd be the first to get squashed, followed by freaks like me, and you guys would have a couple good microseconds to point and laugh at the tall people for once in your life -- maybe twice if you've seen us in an old basement or trying to dance or something -- and then you'd die too, except for Sarah Watts, who's taken quite a bit of shit from me the last two days for simply being short but would totally get the last laugh if the sky fell.

Which it won't, of course. It's fucking huge tonight.

I'm kinda hoping the last thing isn't totally true

2005-06-08T23:25:00.000-05:00

So a mouse fell into my basement-window-pit-of-death thing this morning. My moral stance on hands-on killing is directly proportional to the size of the target; i.e., it's perfectly acceptable to slaughter millions of bacteria, thousands of ants, hundreds of ladybugs, dozens of crickets, a few really big grasshoppers and Sarah Watts. Larger than that, I'm not quite as cavalier with the stomping or the squishing. I think I could step on a mouse if I really had to, but I'd feel awful. (I also can't think of any urgent reasons to step on a mouse, except maybe, "Quick, make a Rorschach blot and I'll give you a million dollars!")

If there's an intermediate agent -- poison, starvation, a big stick -- the standards relax a little, but not much. I don't mind killing stuff that's trying to live in my house, but I'd never play whack-a-mole out in the wild. Actually, I might just for the joke. Also I threw a frog really far in Boy Scouts once, and I'm still hoping he landed somewhere soft and, I don't know, rolled.

Anyway, I coulda let the little guy die in my window pit, but I'm just not that kind of guy. It was kinda funny to watch him climb up the window screen and fall back down every couple minutes, but then it got sad. So I stuck a six-foot length of corner bead into the pit and left, and I haven't seen him since.

Now let's pretend that story had a point and figure out what we've learned.

1. If you're six inches long and you see a big hole in the ground, no matter how tempting it seems, you probably shouldn't fall into it. (This applies to love also.)

2. Climbing up screens is pretty cool, but it's no match for corner bead.

3. Sarah Watts has an excellent sense of humor.

4. As nice as it is to pretend I can see the sun from the basement, I can't. All I see is the occasional rodent and corrugated metal. Neither is the sun. Fuck the hole. (This applies to love also.)

5. There is at least one mouse on the planet who believes I am a superhero.

6. Gravity is a fucking tragedy.

7. I am not a badass.

Like everything else that was

2005-06-07T21:37:00.000-05:00

Uh ...

Hmm.

Well ... nah.

Hmm.

Fuck.

Mostly I just want the same stuff as last week, but I don't want some of it quite as much, or I've accepted that none of it is forthcoming unless I keep my ass firmly in gear. My workouts are great, I need to haul ass on a web application, and I have laundry in the washing machine. Girls are cute and far away, and they're just gonna have to wait on me; I'm cool with that. My spirits are good and I need a haircut. It's summer.

Yeah.

morning stretch

2005-06-06T22:13:00.000-05:00

Who needs context when you have me?

2005-06-04T23:40:00.000-05:00

Man, I really hate yesterday's blog entry.

It's been, what, three weeks since things started getting mushy around here? And I said it would be over in a week? Good thing that happened. Yeah.

Tricia: yah

You picked up on that sarcasm there, huh. Nice. But I wish it were as simple as just falling in love with a girl. Girls have beginnings and ends (mmm); this is much more ambiguous.

Tiffany: So you sort of rediscovered the female sex or something?

Yeah, there's that. Seeing attractive girls and being attracted, that's fun. But more, just being with people in general. I've had some great times lately, but it's harder to go back to being alone afterwards.

Amanda: you feel desperate, huh

Hmm. No, I don't. Thankfully. It's just that when I sit down to blog, this is what comes out. I'm tired of it though. People accuse me of thinking too much, but explaining what I'm thinking takes so much longer than actually thinking it does; the thoughts all come at once. But sometimes I think for too long. It's great to be introspective, but at some point it just paralyzes you. The best way out of this is forward -- suck it up, do my work, find a happy place.

Amanda: who was the hired hand on bonanza?

I believe you're referring to Dusty Rhoades ... which would make a great porn name, come to think of it.

Amanda: you rock my world

You're too kind.

Tiffany: So . . . how did that all come about?

What, this whole resurgence of alone?

Tiffany: Yeah.

I guess it's a bunch of things. Being out of a relationship for a while, not seeing people through speech or poker or whatever, spending a lot more time working, etc. But it's never as bad as it seems here, either. Being alone makes up a large portion of my problems, but only a small part of my life.

Tricia: are you scared?

Actually, I feel safer than I have in a while. It's like everything's slowed down and I can take my time with writing -- I need to keep moving the chains, but I don't need to drive a two-minute offense down the length of the field. I'll get there.

Amanda: you'll be the end of good literature as we know it

Aww, how sweet you are when I quote you out of context.

And I'm never scared about being alone. I get along with people too well, and I've got too much going for me. It's the temporary price I pay for getting to do what I want; it's so worth it.

Though it's been bothering me lately ...

Amanda: what is?
Amanda: i need a hoody

You do that.

I just wonder what people think sometimes. If I seem a) desperate and struggling and small, or two) driven and moving and destined for great things.

It's funny though, I don't mind either way. I told someone the other day, I think I need more haters in my life. I'd love more people telling me I won't make it; you can't find better motivation.

I guess it's the thought of someone I care about pretending to think "two" while actually thinking "a", or something. Feeling betrayed in the moment before I write them off for not believing. I don't know. Whatever.

Tiffany: Can I go?

Sigh. Yes, you can go.

Tricia: :::jealousy::::

You can ALL go.

Amanda: hot

Bite me.

TGIFF

2005-06-03T21:57:00.000-05:00

Fucking Fridays, they're the worst.

I find I'm conscious there's an audience on the other side of this blog. When I first started rambling about life and lore, I didn't worry about being insightful or entertaining or even good; mostly I just flung words at the screen to see what would stick. But now I hesitate before writing about my problems because ... well, they're my problems, and I trust very few people with them. If I really wanted to talk about them with actual people, I'd call someone.

But I do this for me. I have to. So if you like reading this stuff, great, and if you don't, I heartily encourage you to do something else. (Mr. Picassohead, perhaps.)

And with that said, I'm not sure what comes next.

On nights like this, I find myself looking for beauty.

I open Photoshop but close it almost immediately; I don't have the patience, and what would I make, anyway? Two minutes later I'm opening it again without realizing it. I search my music collection, hoping to find something I've never heard before, something I never thought of in this context, but something that captures everything I'm feeling and channels it into something defined, a troubled beginning and a redeeming middle and an ending that leaves me somewhere safe.

I search for words to save me.

It never works though. Well, maybe sometimes it does; I find something to keep me occupied until I'm tired enough to sleep. Call it a draw.

Usually I'm left ... tilting, and I want to walk out into a warm night, or maybe run, it's so gorgeous -- but who wants to run, it's so gorgeous -- anyway, I want to proceed into a warm night graced with stars.

The stars. The stars understand.

And it's warm and damp (but no bugs, thank you) and open -- open, and you can't help but feel the same, wide open, because why hide from the stars -- can you hide from the stars? -- why hide when it's so obvious they know what you mean? They've seen it all, seen billions of people, we can't possibly understand how many people, maybe everyone ever even, people people people moved to look up and think, "THAT is what I mean."

Because whether it's loneliness or longing or love -- are those the same? -- somehow, it's more okay when you put it in the right context. Or maybe it's not context, maybe the stars are really beautiful enough to satisfy the irrational demands of our hearts, at least for a moment.

But then it's like, man, what the fuck? What the fuck am I doing? The fucking stars? Please. I'm lonely. Bored. Restless, underappreciated, left out perhaps ... and you come to me with the fucking stars?

Rationality sets in. I'll watch a movie, read a book, go to sleep. I'll wake up tomorrow, it'll be better. I'll find something to do, it'll be better -- I'll find someone to do; now we're talking.

The fucking stars. Fucking Fridays.

On Hell

2005-06-01T21:23:00.000-05:00

Ben and I have been talking religion for a while now. I used my blogging time for writing him back, so here's a snippet:

Hell is just as ridiculous as the seatbelt campaigns that tell you to buckle up because otherwise you'll get a ticket. We should be good because it's the right thing to do, not because we'll get in eternal trouble if we don't. You can say that the Bible is written for someone who needs a carrot and a stick, and that's fine ... but appealing to the lowest denominator is what salesmen do, and Hell always reminds me of the part where the guy offers you a special deal if you sign up before it's too late.

I'm good because I want to be.

I also refuse to accept the idea that I came into this world with anything less than a clean slate. If that's not good enough for God, he can have my life back right now, because it wasn't really mine in the first place.

If God's going to torture me for refusing to accept responsibility for something I wasn't around for, so be it. If I'm to bear an eternity of pain for disagreeing with the hypocrisy of the church, for believing that homosexuals are perfectly within their rights, for refusing to ally (in any way) with an organization whose leaders have sexually abused children and covered it up, for being disgusted at the history of violence, warfare, persecution and intolerance, that's fine with me. Because I'm living pretty well, and buddying up with Jesus isn't gonna improve how I live, how I treat other people, what I do and what I've done. You said it yourself, what an individual believes doesn't matter -- it's about absolute truth. I think the absolute truth is that I'm a good person, regardless of what the church or God believes. I have no desire to participate in a group that a) shames, bullies, and otherwise emotionally manipulates people to be good by the threat of eternal punishment -- if life is really a test of sorts, Hell should be the surprise ending -- and two) punishes me because I don't sing with the choir.

Besides, eternity just doesn't seem practical. I bet they'll totally start slacking after a couple millennia ...

her driveway, your driveway, the parking lot of a business that's open

2005-05-31T23:58:00.000-05:00

The following is completely true.

1. If you put a shitload of flour on your bumper, much of it won't fall off when you drive away.

2. It's apparently possible for a police officer to pull in behind a car with a shitload of flour on the bumper without noticing said flour.

3. If you're looking for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, there's one tied to a telephone pole on Cherry Road in Oswego ... but it's for the ghost, so I'd leave it alone.

The smallest wars

2005-05-29T20:20:00.000-05:00

I was talking to Kendra yesterday about how well she understands me.

See, I can talk to Kendra about absolutely anything. This is the primary benefit of crawling through the worst parts of each other and somehow coming out the other side. But it doesn't mean she completely understands me. She understands that I like competition, for example, but she doesn't understand why competing is important.

When I brought that up, she asked me to explain it -- competition. I said something like this:

Because perfection is possible. Because you can dribble two steps, step back and lift a perfect shot that hangs while you stand there, then falls softly into the net while you're still standing there; the swish, then you walk away.

Because winning is possible. There's a beginning and an end, and then it's over. How do you win in a relationship? You get married? Is winning or losing determined when you die? Life should be so lucky.

Because I get to be better than someone else.

It's natural to want to feel better, I think. That's what makes boys bullies and girls bitches, why the strong pick on the weak, why the left hates the right and vice versa. We want to be right, and that makes everyone else wrong.

When you bring that desire into the world, when you make it real, it fucks everything up. "I am better" becomes "I am better because". I am better because I'm smart; I am better because my computer is more expensive and better designed; I am better because God loves me. I'm better because I'm white.

It fucks everything up.

But in sports, you don't need to attach a reason; it's built in. It's called the score; that's why we keep it.

We don't need to make a big thing of me beating you, either. I don't need to pop my jersey or talk shit, cause we've got that score thing; it lays things out pretty clear. I'll just shake your hand and smile and tell you good game, and I'll mean it too, because in the moment that I win, it's done. Because I believed I was going to win.

Now, if you beat me ... well, I love that too. Let's go again. Let's see if you're really better. It's rare, but if you are ... maybe I can learn something from you.

Because I get to fight.

Because it's that lore thing.

And then we left the restaurant and I beat Kendra's ass in Scrabble.

tar road

2005-05-28T00:01:00.000-05:00

Defying gravity (but not as much as others)

2005-05-27T21:02:00.000-05:00

I had to guard The Guy Who Could Dunk again. Despite getting blown by about five times, my team won both games by virtue of good passing by The Italian Guy Who Talked a Lot of Shit (But Made His Layups) and efficient scoring by me and The Other Kid. Good times.

Still basking in the glow of Wicked. It was -- wait, that reminds me!

BigWillaeStyle: Does the fact I use the word "fabulous" detract from my manhood? Should I make an effort to replace it with a more masculine word, and if so, what word should I use?
Tiffany: to answer your first question - a little bit.
Tiffany: It depends on how you're using it.
Tiffany: The fact that you described 'Defy Gravity" as "fabulous" must denote some kind of latent homosexuality
Tiffany: I think "fantastic" is better for straight guys.
Tiffany: It's a good word, letting you get out any kind of urge behind your need to say "fabulous" without sounding gay.
BigWillaeStyle: Okay, I'm going to try fantastic this week.

It was ... fan-tast-ic. Fantastic. Hot.

Nothing urgent to talk about, so I'll share an e-mail I received at work. I'm responsible for monitoring the questions@ e-mail account for the record labels, so 1) I delete spam, 2) I delete spam, and 3) I get to sort through all the requests and pass the mildly important ones up. Weird people ask labels for weird things, plus we have a large European base; not only are those fuckers crazy, but they don't always know what they're saying.

Still, that's no excuse for ...

Subject: "...The beauty is a rare thing..." Ornette Coleman

"Music begins where words cease.What happens when music ceases? Silence" Julian Barnes

The sacred is the interference of the uncreated in the created,
of the eternal in time,of the infinite in space,of the
supraformal in forms;it is the mysterious introduction
into one realm of existence of a presence which in reality
contains and transcends that realm and could cause it to
burst asunder in a sort of divine explosion.The sacred is
the incommensurable,the trascendent,hidden within a
fragile form belonging to this world;it has its own
precise rules,its terrible aspects and its merciful action;
moreover,any violation of the sacred,even in art,has
incalculable repercussions.
Intrinsically the sacred is inviolable,and so much so that any
attempted violation recoils on the head of the violator.

Frithjof Schuon

Dear Friends: For me, music is a sacred thing. My name is [guy's name].I am promoter of jazz,contemporary classical, classical music and new music in the west of Antioquia State,Colombia. [boring crap]. Would you please give me a free promotional of your music. If you'd like to comfirm my cultural roll as promoter of music, you can contact [some guy]. 'I am faithful listener of your music and I'd like to share with my radio station listeners your extensive stock of music.Your work is a valuable contribution to my human and cultural growth.

Thank you very much.
A hug,
[guy's name]
Promoter of Jazz and World Music
P.O.BOX xxx - Colombia

(I was just kidding about the fuckers part. I like Europeans -- they're better at not killing each other.)

Wicked dreams

2005-05-27T02:42:00.000-05:00

A month or two after Tiffany left for college, I had a very vivid dream.

(I try not to talk about dreams because they're obscenely boring to everyone who didn't actually experience them, but this is important; I'll try to keep it short.)

I dreamt I was dancing / gliding over a polished floor set between tall stone pillars open to a blue sky, dancing with a girl I was absolutely in love with (who looked like a cross between Elyse, a different Elyse, and someone I haven't met yet). And when I woke up, I knew that Tiffany and I would break up soon, and that would be okay.

(See? Short.)

It seems like a pretty silly thing to conclude. But in that dream, I felt what being THAT in love was, and I realized that I hadn't felt THAT for anyone I'd dated. Sure, I'd been in love, but never ... awestruck -- never that lucky and inspired and complimented. The dream showed me what I really wanted.

I bring this up because I had a similar "falling in love" dream last night.

The "plot" of the dream was nothing; I looked across the room at a girl and she looked back, we lay on a sofa together and I wrapped my arms around her.

(Incidentally, the girl, while very cute and presumably a great cuddle, was a somewhat surprising choice by my subconscious. I mentioned it to her, though now that I think about it, I'm not sure I did a very good job explaining that I wasn't trying to make any sort of clumsy insinuation, so I feel a bit silly about the whole thing.)

Anyway, I felt the same kind of love as the first dream, and it's so ... reassuring. Which sounds strange because you'd think that waking up and losing it would be sad. But don't you wake up from nightmares scared, not thankful to be alive? I wake up remembering that feeling, realizing it's both possible and inevitable, that great love awaits and it'll all work out.

Then I went out and had a fabulous night. I couldn't do it justice, but I don't have to; some days drain your batteries and some days recharge them, and this was one of the best days, where warmth becomes energy, where sleep only ends a good thing.

Available Internet domains just in case you were wondering

2005-05-26T13:46:00.000-05:00

I was looking at domains for an online jazz music store today. Once I stopped being productive, I made this list.

The Frustrated Collection

flubass.com
wepooponyou.com
mynutsmakeanicetartarsauce.com

The Reverse Psychology Collection

verybadmusic.com
dissonantshit.com
musicpoo.com

The Symmetry of Life Collection

jazzhole.com (taken)
jazzfucker.com (available)

oppressedmusic.com (available)
enslavedmusic.com (available)
holocaustmusic.com (taken)

jimmyhat.com (taken)
musichat.com (taken)
musicaljimmyhat.com (available)

fenced out

2005-05-25T22:05:00.000-05:00

orange accident

2005-05-24T22:41:00.000-05:00

Shenanigans is the word, I believe

2005-05-22T21:20:00.000-05:00

Back in the day, my friends and I, completely bored with our day-to-day high school experience, frequently spiced up the educational process.

The Office Supply Wars (1998-1999)
One fateful morning, John Miller left our zero-hour math class (yes, zero hour, thanks to our state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line, suck-of-the-ass computer scheduling system) to get something from his locker. We had a few minutes before class started, and I wasn't doing anything special when ... I had an idea. I borrowed a stapler from Mrs. Williams and proceeded to staple John's math notebook shut.

This is widely regarded as the opening salvo.

Before long, new techniques for the stealthy procurement of others' school supplies were developed, and new offensive techniques were perfected on these items. One popular method was the Stapley Cachunk, the unfastening of the bottom of the stapler (conventionally used to staple things to walls) in order to smash the stapler down with full arm action onto an unsuspecting notebook, binding the notebook to itself, the notebook beneath, the book underneath that, and sometimes the desk. Soon, Nate and I began to bring specialized equipment to the conflict: staple guns.

(Needless to say, this sort of thing would not go over well in the post-Columbine era. In junior high, I was also part of a group of kids that wanted to make a Doom mod that replaced the game's monsters with images of our teachers and the levels with Traughber Junior High School. This also would not go over well today. So apparently, I'm a terrorist. But I digress.)

Staple guns soon became a staple (haw haw) of the front line. Magnum 44 markers also made their first appearance during this time, as well as hedge trimmers.

Perhaps the defining moment of the conflict came in Mr. Matteson's physics class, when I proceeded to borrow Nate's hedge trimmers and blatantly sever the strap of his backpack with them. That lead to this exchange:

Mr. Matteson: ... so y is equal to ... (a pause; to me) ... What the hell did you just do?
Me: I, you know, cut the strap.
Mr. Matteson: Oh. (another pause) So y is equal to ...

We soon realized that each side had suffered far too many causalities and agreed to scale back the conflict. Further skirmishes developed over the next year, but none reached the intensity of the previous fighting.

Suit and Tie Day (1999)
Largely self explanatory; our group of guys brought unheard of style to OHS our senior year. Pictures exist, but alas, I have none.

The Halogen Lamp (1999)
I sat in the back of Mr. Drolet's calculus class my senior year. Whenever D would use the overhead projector, he would turn off the classroom lights and use a halogen lamp in the back of the room so everyone could see well enough to take notes. It was my responsibility to turn on the halogen light. And of course, that much power corrupted me. As Drolet rambled on, I'd reach out and SLIGHTLY dim the light every minute or so. The increment was too small for anyone to notice, so as the lesson continued, I'd sit in the back and watch as the room grew dimmer and people hunched over their papers and squinted, completely oblivious, until someone noticed that the room was completely dark and yelled at me. The most fun thing ever.

Irritant Day (1999)
Nate and I, aided by our wits and 500 industrial "IRRITANT" stickers, proceeded to label everything in our path. Teachers, students, hypocrisy, hygiene -- nothing escaped our path. Soon thereafter, the janitors -- driven insane by weeks of scraping sticker remnants off lockers and walls and floors -- attempted to kill us.

Labeling Day (1999)
Similar to Irritant Day, but involving more wit and fewer stickers. It went something like this:

click to enlarge

There are some other games I should talk about, like Sentence Building, and stuff that came post high school -- Double Sided Tape, for example. Some other time, perhaps. Audience, anything to add?

What I want

2005-05-21T23:10:00.000-05:00

Thanks for listening this week. As much as anything, I write about this shit because when I've purged, it's hard to remember why I thought it was important enough to write about in the first place. Gin's exactly right, my problems are largely due to my inadequate (local) social network, and I've known this for quite a long time. I'm on the right track; establishing my career is just as much about finding a community as it is success. That's why it's not about advice or encouragement as much as just letting it out and thinking aloud (aword?) about why I feel the way I do ... and yet you guys insist on encouraging anyway. Thank you.

I figured I'd close out girls week by talking about what I want.

Heh. The first thing that comes to mind is going to my friend Dan's house in seventh grade and arriving as he was finishing up a porno. (Not FINISHING UP, just, you know, it was over.) I believe his exact words were, "When I get married, all I want is titties and an ass."

I can't help but think there's a staggering amount of truth in that.

I should probably start by separating what I want in a woman and what I want in a relationship. (We won't even get into the fact that it took me a long time to decide between "girl" and "woman" there, and what that means.)

We'll say that physical beauty is pass-fail (with possible extra credit for beauty above and beyond). So after that, she should have some combination of intelligence, talent, loyalty, patience, wit, an open mind, a healthy amount of ambition and some sort of super power.

As for the relationship itself ...

You know what, this is stupid. I mean, we all basically want the same thing. We value specific qualities differently, but we're looking for love and passion, challenges and adventure, comfort and support, open lines of communication and some inside jokes.

I guess when it comes down to it, I want to feel loved by people I love, and I want to feel attractive to people I find attractive.

I felt that this weekend.

Everything else can wait.

Duty in the face of overwhelming distraction (otherwise known as cowardice)

2005-05-19T16:29:00.000-05:00

Dammit, I don't want to write about this.

Okay. Fine.

So I go to the library today, and when I sit down, I notice there's a quite cute twentysomething girl straight across from me. She writes at her laptop, I at mine.

I'm deft with signals in these situations. I don't feel like describing the duration and nature of brief moments of eye contact, but I'd classify the vibe I got as "polite attraction" -- there's interest, but ... something. Anything from possible complications -- a boyfriend -- to "much attraction dampened by a reserved personality". Not "overt attraction" or a shirt that says "love/fuck me", but enough to work with under normal circumstances.

Two things.

1) First, the stupid one: we're in a library. It's quiet. My first thought: breach the hallowed silence by leaning back from my laptop, sighing, and saying, "This really sucks." Not great material, but enough to get a (polite) laugh and put the ball in her court. Except that we're just far enough apart that I'd have to say it a little too loudly, causing library patrons to, I don't know, think less of me? Wow, that's really lame. But --

2) The important reason: I go to the library to write. Anything that endangers that is death, because the easiest thing in the world is to not write. Because if I'm thinking about the girl across from me -- or the girl I wish was across from me -- I'm not doing what I need to do more than anything.

Dammit, I really didn't want to write about this. Because no matter what I say, yeah, it wasn't an ideal situation, but you gotta throw shit if you expect some of it to stick. Yeah, I go to the library to write; yeah, I should protect that to the death. But no matter how I spin it, the truth is, I didn't talk to her because I was scared.

It looks silly when you throw it out there naked like that.

I couldn't tell you what scared me. Just writing the word makes me repaint the memories: no, I couldn't have been scared, that's not me, I don't define myself using words like that, let's take another look at the situation, figure out what really happened, find better words that we like. And then I think about how I felt at the moment I almost opened my mouth.

I'm still working on that fear of failure thing.

In fact, I'd love to visit a dating practice room, where I could hit on girls in succession and get rejected. You know, to get comfortable with it, to see that I can act a foo' and life will continue. Because right now, I'm afraid of something I haven't directly experienced since ... hell, I don't even know.

The other reason I didn't want to write this is that when I get to this point, after the stuff comes out, it's suddenly not as important. It's very post-coital.

I don't care about the girl; there are plenty of girls. I don't care that I didn't get a date from the library; I go there to write.

I'm just worried that when I do meet the girl of my dreams (preferably in a slightly more convenient situation), I won't be ready for her.

But then the confidence returns. I'm witty, charming, modest, intelligent, funny, modest, attractive, athletic, and possibly arrogant, but in a sweet way. I'll do fine.

I sucked today. I sucked! It was bad and I sucked, but it's over and I'll do better and if Natalie Portman (because Natalie Portman is my convenient "girl of my dreams" media icon), if Natalie Portman (who's newly-shaved head only makes me love her more), if Natalie Portman walks into the Orland Park Public Library tomorrow, or someone distinctly not Natalie Portman but possessing equal Quality does the same, I'll remember that I sucked and I'll throw shit and I'll do better.

Okay? You happy now? Can we PLEASE talk about something else?

Our Lady of the Blessed Sensodyne

2005-05-18T22:04:00.000-05:00

First, I'd just like to say:

   Avg. heart rate: 170 bpm
+  Workout duration: 31 min
---------------------------
=                      w00t

I spent my blogging time writing to other people today. So in response to this, you get to read this:

It's late and I'm tired, but I'm a good soul, so I'm gonna try.

First, I say this as someone who was given a full scholarship and still didn't think college was worth it. This makes me some combination of ungrateful, stupid, and knowledgeable. And water.

Number one, you're probably gonna fuck this up. Most people do. No shame in that. Whatever you think you want, you'll probably change your mind, and even if you don't, what you actually end up doing will hopefully be way cooler anyway. The point is, I don't think you should worry about the ends when the means is where most people run into trouble.

I think college is for two things:
1) to obtain a degree that ultimately becomes the equivalent of a check box on a resume
2) to learn what you need to be who you want to be

Lots of people get both. Some only get one or the other. Some drink a lot. But I don't think nearly enough people think about what they want out of school before they go, cause largely, they go cause they're supposed to.

Me, I went into computer engineering because a) I liked computers, and b) smart people are supposed to be engineers. Guess what? Computer engineering is boring as fuck. So I had a chance to make money, and not having any better plans, I went with that. Sometimes I regret not spending the time with people my age, but the experiences I had, I wouldn't trade them for anything. The only reason I'd go back to school is to study things for fun ... but that's because what I want to do doesn't require a degree. Your mileage may vary.

Anyway, that's where I'm coming from. Let's get to the good stuff.

You seem determined. Based on this, I can reasonably conclude that you're gonna end up where you want, and some silly institution of higher learning isn't gonna get in your way. You'll work hard, figure out more about what you want, and go for it when it's time. Well done!

So Colgate vs. somewhere else, to me, isn't about where you end up. You control that. I think it's more about how you get there. What kind of people do you want to learn with? Learn from? Are those people at Colgate? Are they somewhere else too? (Mentadent U, perhaps, or Aquafresh State?)

I think people are more important than programs. I think enjoying the experience is more important than the name on your diploma. (The school's name. Not your name, that's important -- having a degree in someone's else's name, not so much.)

So yeah. I don't know if that's particularly relevant, or patronizing or whatever. It's just not the end of the world. You make the best decision you can, you go, and you figure it out from there. If it sucks, go somewhere else. Do something else. It won't stop you from getting what you want unless you let it, so, you know, lean back.

Also, I think I fell asleep about three paragraphs ago.

Relic of the last millennium

2005-05-17T19:53:00.000-05:00

Had to send out a mass mailing to about a thousand people today. Stuff like this totally brings out my compulsive side, so I end up checking and re-checking everything until I finally send the damn thing, then I'm still paranoid that I did something wrong and everyone's gonna laugh at me. Funny how it always comes back to that. Anyway, if you're looking for more information about Dave Douglas, Greenleaf Music (can't wait til I get to redesign this), or how to hit/throw/fuck up a baseball, I'm your man.

While I was working on this, I realized that whenever I start a new web project, I use a file that I haven't changed since 1:09 AM on Tuesday, December 21, 1999.

That's right, I'm talking about my spacer.gif.

Lemme 'splain. See, HTML sucks. I mean, it's beautiful -- it helped revolutionize human communication -- but it sucks. It's great if you get off on paragraph tags and bullet points and blue hyperlinks and white backgrounds and Times New Roman, but if you really want to control how a page looks, you gotta lay the smack down, show it who's boss, specify the exact distance in pixels between elements and keep the page from wandering apart. The most common way of doing this is using a tiny transparent image; you can stick it anywhere and stretch it to any size without obscuring the design underneath. This file is typically called spacer.gif. Once you got one, you're set for life -- you can copy that baby over every time you start a new thing. The operating system tracks when the file was last modified, and that date stays the same even if it's a new copy. I haven't modified mine since the last millennium.

I'm totally thinking about starting a little quirky site for spacer.gif files. Web developers could upload their trusted GIFs in tribute of their many years of service. We could salute the spacer for invisibly holding the web together all these years. I could even do little spoofs, spacer.gifs in famous photographs, like a UFO sighting image, where we point out the invisible spacer.gif holding up the spacecraft, or maybe we could even --

Whoa, okay. I really geeked out there.

Horton hears a motherfucker

2005-05-16T19:49:00.000-05:00

So yeah, I fell in love at the show Saturday.

This is not as unusual as it sounds.

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, love starts on the first day. It starts small and cute, urgent but not vital, and it grows from there. Sort of like a piggy bank; you add to it each day until you stop, then you take from it each day until you're back where you started. (Or you smash the piggy bank against the wall and try to pick up the pieces.)

We're not gonna get into the who or the how or the why, if for no other reason than most people probably wouldn't describe how I feel as love. Hell, if I were really pressed to talk about it, I wouldn't call it love either; I'd say I was infatuated or smitten or like-stricken or whatever. It's love though, just like a baby is a person -- a smelly, funny-looking person, but a person nonetheless. And yes, I do enjoy insulting babies, mostly because they have stubby arms and can't fight back.

(I really believe in that piggy bank thing. I think every day you spend getting into a relationship translates into a day spent getting out of it. Some have postulated it's closer to a 2:1 ratio. Could be. There are bonus exceptions too, like leaving a relationship in order to date, say, Natalie Portman, that can drastically cut into the recovery time. Or you could drink yourself to freedom/oblivion. Whatever.)

So I'd say I was in love for a good day, maybe two. I should be back to normal around Tuesday or Wednesday, Thursday at the latest. In the meantime, if I suddenly burst into tears or react irrationally, you're welcome to make fun of me.

Angry eyes

2005-05-15T22:14:00.000-05:00

NEW CLOTHES!

Man, it's been ages since I bought ... anything, really. Living off my savings, I could always afford to buy stuff, but with no new money coming in (and no idea when that was going to change), I opted to be a stingy bastard instead. But now, freedom! Also known as hot new shirts and hot new pants. (Not new hot pants, though. My old ones are just fine.)

Had some great discussions with Kendra while shopping, though I managed to really piss her off. She turned red and her eyes got all narrow; I was expecting steam puffs to burst from her ears. I was only trying to say that you can affect more social change with lots of money than you can by yourself, but I certainly wasn't minimizing the efforts of those who get out and do the hard work. My bad. Really red, too. Angry eyes.

Oh, wait, gotta back up a day! Seussical, courtesy of the OHS Drama Department, was ... pretty good. It's a hard show because of the rhyme and the narrative zaniness -- easy to lose interp to the beat, hard to keep focus through the transitions. I think a lot of the actors struggled with that, but I thought the leads (particularly Jessi and Josh and especially Tricia) totally made up for it. Yay drama.

I also saw people I didn't expect to see. I don't know why I didn't expect to see them, but Emily and Jason and Cori and Kagiso and Ryan and Amanda and Elyse -- it doesn't get any better than that. Plus I got to play volleyball.

A little respect, a bit of sports, good discussion, some flirting, some love ... AND new clothes? What a lucky boy I am.

New digs, little messy

2005-05-13T23:58:00.000-05:00

So yeah, I felt like redesigning my blog today. Ta-fucking-da. Still a few things to fix, and the archives will have the old design for a bit, but I feel much better about the place.

I'm tired and hungry, so that's all for today.

UPDATE: I lied, I'm still here. I went through and deleted the image posts that broke the new design. (Don't worry, you can still find them in the Photography section.) So now, even the archives have the new design. And you don't care.

Girls in cars

2005-05-12T23:36:00.000-05:00

I've been putting off this topic for almost a week now, because every time I thought about it, I realized that it went deeper, and suddenly this tiny little observation became a big thing about what I really want from the women in my life.

But really, this all comes down to girls in cars.

I left college in the spring of 2000. Great move. (I only regret it when I think about playing baseball, but that's a whole different post.) But leaving college meant leaving people my age. Under normal circumstances, college-people are replaced by working-people, but starting a web design firm out of one's barn in rural Illinois, not so normal. I thought moving to Naperville for a year might help, but moving didn't answer the basic question: hang out with whom?

It's not that I've been totally alone over the past five years. I lived with my brother for long stretches, I hung out with his friends (who increasingly became my friends). I dated for two long stretches. I've kept in touch with the best people I know.

At the same time, I belong to no culture. I have no community, and the people I love are not where I am -- and even if they were, they aren't going where I'm going.

I am very much alone, and nothing reminds me more of this than girls in cars.

I don't know if everyone is like this, but the terms of my friendships have always been very different for girls than guys. Guys are for work and sport and advice; laughing, achieving, driving; flat tires and construction and brainstorming. It doesn't matter if we talk every day or once a month or never; to me, the friendship doesn't change.

But girls are waaaaay different -- I've always gone to my female friends for the emotional realm. For how I feel about what I do. For the crying.

The problem is, my female friends are comprised of girls I've dated. Actually, it's not quite that -- it's that it seems like everyone has one emotional outlet, and the girls in my life will always unplug me for the guy they're dating. That, or the girls in my life aren't people I should depend on ... or I'm asking too much from them. I really don't know.

Bringing this back, I'm cool with my male relationships. I've never been much of a fan of the male gender in the first place, so the few guys I'm close to -- Mike, Ben, Nate, Alex, Josh, etc. -- I'll take those friendships to the grave with me. (Not literally! There's a strict No Killing policy here at Life and Lore. You are welcome to stash some stuff in my coffin -- not sure how much space will be left though. Anyway, I like you guys. Carry on.)

I'm also not trying to dump on my female friends, cause it's ultimately not their job to make sure I have an emotional outlet. (Whether I should rely on a specific gender for that outlet is another debate entirely.) Their only job is to show up; we'll go from there. I'm the only one to blame for where I am.

So finally, finally, finally, we arrive at the point.

Nothing depicts my situation as elegantly as girls in cars. Seeing someone attractive in the vehicle next to me, someone possibly my age, someone I could possibly like, encapsulated in a exuberantly-colored recent-model steel-and-glass bubble, and there's really nothing I can do about it.

Shout and wave? Yeah, good way to start a relationship there.

I don't work in an office. I don't go to bars or parties or conventions or wherever it is that attractive, intelligent young women go to work and play.

Hold up a sign with my cell phone number? Ugh. No.

The few friends I have here, we have our own little isolated social circles -- good for shopping for clothes and general friendship, but not so much with the social scene.

Throw candy hearts at her windows? Okay, that's just stupid.

And it's not just cars, it's the women I see across a restaurant or on TV, especially on TV, where I know that if I could just get there, I could make great conversation and be fine, but that distance is so vast. To get from nothing to that is to impart:

Please, come here. Let me demonstrate that I am beautiful and smart and funny and sweet, that I am of the highest caliber, that I listen and have things to say, that I am everything anyone could want in a significant other, and if I'm not, I can at least come close for a couple months, during which we can have plenty of fabulous sex.

... and I don't think that's possible to get across to someone I have no basis for interaction with -- and if it is, it's not practical. I'm sure there are guys who are great at it, who get phone numbers at the grocery store or whatever -- the college education I skipped, maybe -- but it's not something I'm comfortable doing. Even if I got past feeling awkward, I don't like bothering people. Clearly, this is my problem.

The point of this isn't to bitch about how much my life sucks. My life doesn't suck. I love the people I have, and I don't expect anything more from them. This is about the people who should be in my life but aren't; that it sucks that they aren't, but there isn't a lot I can do about it; that even if I really wanted to try to find them, I don't have the time right now anyway.

Part of fixing this is finding a different emotional outlet than the opposite sex -- congratulations, you're reading it. Remember, I'm just venting -- I'm pretty happy overall, and I've lived like this for a long time. I also have faith that it's all going to change soon. I don't want sympathy, I don't need advice.

Just, you know, girls in cars.

Through the barricades

2005-05-12T21:31:00.000-05:00

I completely forgot how much I enjoy vocal trance. I used to pop open the trance internet radio stations (Digitally Imported, etc.) all the time. Then I stopped. Now I started again. Fabulous story. Fuck.

I said to ask me how I was, cosmically speaking, in a week. It's been a week, so ... I think I'm really good. I think. I'm fabulously busy: food, work from 8-12, food, writing from 1-5, food, workout from 6-7:30, food, freelance web work or whatever and suddenly it's 10 and I'm dead tired (and full). But I love the structure, I love ending the day feeling like I couldn't have done anything more. The only things that suck are:

1) I have no time for a social life. This presents no problem, as, for reasons previously discussed, I have no social life, which, for reasons previously discussed, doesn't bother me. At least, I think we discussed them.

2) I haven't figured out when the best time to blog is. Fear not, gentle reader, I shall not go quietly into the barren-blog night. I should do better next week.

I do have social interaction planned for this weekend, though! I'm seeing the fabulous OHS Drama Department put on Seussical on Saturday evening, followed by clothes shopping on Sunday. I know, you're thinking, wow, that's some hot shit. But that's the funny thing: it really is.

I seen it comin

2005-05-11T14:16:00.000-05:00

It finally happened.

Somebody checked out a copy of The Crepes of Wrath. It's gone.

Words fail me.

Underneath

2005-05-06T21:16:00.000-05:00

Drove into the city today for my weekly face-to-face work meeting. The job's gone well so far, and I'm really into what we're trying to do. I'm also very glad it's part-time; it's hard enough trying to write after only four hours of work.

Writing's been up and down this week. I'm getting there. It's ... the more I write, the more I learn -- but what I'm learning, I can't really share. Everyone asks about how it's going; I really try to tell them, and it never seems to work. Maybe it's like asking a magician how he does a trick: words can't convey the practice, and the magic is lost in the translation. You know? It's such a personal journey. What I discover, what I discover I'm hiding from, all the struggles and the breakthroughs -- it's like trying to tell someone about a dream, or that impossible shot you hit, or that one funny moment with the guys and the soda and the pause; you just had to be there.

Don't get me wrong, I hate it when people get elitist about the creative process. There's nothing mystical about my abilities or my inspiration or whatever. I'm just a guy with a hole and some stuff that might fill it.

I was gonna talk about girls in cars tonight, but I'm sick and tired and this is what came out. (Along with a healthy amount of nasal fluid, I might add.)

Blah.

Oh, and I'm ugly?

2005-05-05T22:07:00.000-05:00

It's come to my attention that no one likes the picture of me on the left side of the page. Please recommend replacements. (And yes, I realize this is like putting a 'Kick Me' sign on my own ass.)

Too many lovers, not enough fighters

2005-05-03T21:39:00.000-05:00

This isn't prompted by anything or anyone in particular, it's just a preface to what I think I'm going to write about tomorrow.

Never, under any circumstances, do I want your sympathy. I run across blogs where people constantly ramble about what's wrong with their lives, soliciting "aww xoxoxo we love you and you're fabulous and it's all gonna be alright kk" comments aplenty from their friends and whomevers. Which is both fine and well within their rights, but not something I wish to be a part of. I never, ever want you guys to feel that I'm bitching about something in order for you to cheer me up. I even resent the implication that I need cheering up. Now, if you want to write something fuzzy despite my warning ... well, fine, but I won't like it. You're obviously welcome to post whatever, but I'm far more interested in discussion than support or advice.

I write for me. After that, I write to let anyone interested know what being me constitutes. That's it.

Stay tuned, y'all.

Hit me back, just to chat

2005-05-02T22:19:00.000-05:00

Alex: My ex's divide nicely into 1) Cool Chicks, 2) Great Girls, and 3) Whackjobs
BigWillaeStyle: haha
Alex: how's your love life
BigWillaeStyle: Very very boring. My typical day is: breakfast, work my part-time job 8-12, lunch, write from 1-5, dinner, work out, more dinner, sleep. Not a lot of fun time.
BigWillaeStyle: It's all good though. I'm really not in the mood to date.
Alex: that's awesome
Alex: I wish I had your kind of ... centeredness
BigWillaeStyle: :) Thanks. I wish I had your ability to explore what's outside the center.
Alex: I wish I had your ability to stop the pendulum swing
Alex: I fly from months of booming energy and optimism to months of crushing despair and self-pity
Alex: it's really exhausting
Alex: I'm seeing two women right now - and with two design gigs, and four classes, I'm basically a wreck
BigWillaeStyle: Yeah. Especially the two women.

BigWillaeStyle: I totally hear you with the optimism and despair swings though
BigWillaeStyle: I get the same way ... but I guess how I feel doesn't translate into what I'm doing, or even how I am. Does that make any sense?
Alex: definitely
Alex: I think it's really impressive that in spite of your emotional state, your effectiveness and productivity don't waver
Alex: it's the mark of a pro
BigWillaeStyle: Yeah, I guess. Sometimes I feel like it holds me back though -- I wish I could go out on a limb more.
BigWillaeStyle: Don't get me wrong, I love that I'm writing, and I think I had to struggle with what I wanted over the past couple years to get here
BigWillaeStyle: but I'm really not sure if I did it because it was adventurous or safe.

Alex: why do you think you take the safe option?
BigWillaeStyle: Because I think my biggest fear is feeling awkward.
Alex: as in, inexperienced?
BigWillaeStyle: Yeah. Getting into places and situations where I don't know what to do and looking silly.
Alex: hmm .. do you think you have that fear more than most people
BigWillaeStyle: I think I do, yeah.
Alex: perhaps you think you're smart
Alex: and situations where you don't feel smart make you feel like you're somehow not living up to your own standards of smartness
BigWillaeStyle: I think that's a very good way to put it.

Alex: do you enjoy puzzles?
BigWillaeStyle: Yes, very much ... but I don't like doing puzzles in front of other people, unless I'm sort of "in practice".
Alex: hmm yeah
Alex: so treating a new situation like a puzzle would be problematic because of the audience factor
BigWillaeStyle: The thing I'm really dumb about
BigWillaeStyle: is that I hate asking for help.
BigWillaeStyle: And once I ask for help, it makes things so much easier
Alex: You and I, my friend, have that very much in common

Alex: I don't quite understand why I don't like asking for help
Alex: I think it's because I look at it as somehow surrendering
Alex: but that means that I'm not actually trying to solve the problem itself, but trying to solve it ONLY by whichever method I initially devised
Alex: asking for help would mean that I admit that my initial method was incorrect

Alex: do you feel like you're spread too thin
BigWillaeStyle: No, I think I cover the slice of bread exactly. Hopefully I can keep it like this.
Alex: that's really good - and rare for someone our age
BigWillaeStyle: If I had any social life at all, it would all go to hell. :)
Alex: hahaha

Guess who's back with a brand new rap!

2005-05-01T13:52:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Life and Lore, my babes.

I have a job.

My previous (and only) stint as an employee (as opposed to a vendor) occurred during the summer of '98, where I served as a Quality Control Analyst for Unicorn Manufacturing, a manufacturer of engine parts for Caterpillar. The job was provided to me through the Ford Academy of Manufacturing Sciences program at Oswego High School -- a two-year vocational blow-off class (but ultimately far more beneficial than, say, psychology with Mr. Neitzel). My primary responsibility for the first few weeks was sitting in the air-conditioned Quality Control Lab and not really doing anything; I ended up splitting my time between programming in QBasic and messing around with programming a ridiculously expensive 3D object measuring system that never seemed to come up with the same measurement twice. Then they started having production problems, so I spent the next two months checking threads with Lou (who was only a few years older than me -- great guy). This was terribly boring; take the part from the tray, screw it onto the thread gage, put it back in the tray, repeat, repeat, repeat.

But I digress. My new job is working part-time for two music labels, Premonition Music and Greenleaf Music, doing a combination of web development, writing and marketing. (As you can see, I have some work to do on the sites.) It's a pretty sweet gig though -- I still have time to write, and I really believe in what they're doing; the future of music distribution is unquestionably the web, and it's still up for grabs at this point. Part of my job will also be maintaining a blog, either directly for Greenleaf Music, or as more of a general independent music news/information thing. I also have a box of free music to listen to.

Other than that, it's pretty quiet around here. I'm finally getting settled in Orland Park, you know, with the bank accounts and the gym memberships and the places to buy stuff, that kind of thing. Ooh! And yesterday I got to smash cabinets! The guy who lived here before us, wow. His workmanship is kinda like watching a three-legged dog trying to run: sure, the dog gets the job done, but it looks pretty silly doing it, and you can't help but feel pity for how hard the dog is trying, panting, wagging his tail at you, looking up with big brown eyes, optimistic and completely oblivious to his shortcomings. It's the same feeling you get when you look at a crooked countertop affixed to a cabinet with nails, Phillips and flat head screws, AND glue. There are so many junky, mismatched cabinets and shelves in the garage and storage room ... well, the point is, smashing things is fun.

The writing is going okay. Last week was tough. Sometimes it's hard to figure out if planning, as opposed to committing actual story-words to paper, is "right" ... but what I'm writing is structurally complicated, and more importantly, when the words aren't there, it's usually because there's nothing driving them out. This week's gonna be tough, but if I can get through it, I should be back on track.

And as for "me", how I'm really doing, in a deep-down, heart-to-heart kinda way ... I really don't know. Ask me next week.

Good to be back here though, in front of my favorite audience. You're all beautiful. See you tomorrow.

Holy crepe!

2005-04-29T14:38:00.000-05:00

I just sat down in my trusty chair at the library ... and one of the copies of The Crepes of Wrath has been moved! It's clearly not even with the other copy like it was yesterday. Which can only mean ...

... somebody thought about CHECKING OUT The Crepes of Wrath?!?

Fortunately, sanity prevailed. For now. I'll keep you posted.

(And remember, real updates resume this weekend!)

If crepe is inevitable, relax and enjoy it

2005-04-28T14:07:00.000-05:00

So I took a closer look at The Crepes of Wrath when I sat down today.

1) The library also has Thou Shalt Not Grill.

2) This prompted me to look at all the other books written by the author, and oh man, the puns. My favorite: Between a Wok and a Hard Place.

3) The library has not one, but TWO, copies of The Crepes of Wrath.

The fun never ends.

Pun for the whole family

2005-04-27T14:05:00.000-05:00

So I'm sitting here writing, which often involves staring off into space. The only problem is that today, my staring-off-into-space focal point keeps falling on this very distracting book cover. So I thought I'd share.

The Crepes of Wrath

(Be sure to read the back cover.)

(tumbleweed)

2005-04-19T21:46:00.000-05:00

It's April 19th and I've posted one actual blog entry this month. Yuck.

This entry isn't gonna do much to change that though. In fact, I'm just gonna go ahead and take the rest of the month off. Expect a big write-up May 1st. Until then, my peeps.

I especially like the quotation marks

2005-04-12T12:28:00.000-05:00

Unintentionally Sexual Comic Book Covers are the best. My favorite is "The Rifleman". You must.

drained

2005-04-07T01:52:00.000-05:00

light in the attic

2005-04-06T23:04:00.000-05:00

What we build

2005-04-05T22:31:00.000-05:00

When you're designing, the very first thing you do is draw anything.

Doesn't matter what. Sometimes I start with the essential text and image components, but just as often I throw down colors and shapes; if nothing in particular comes to mind, I'll just start shading the background.

The empty canvas, the blank piece of paper, the white screen with the blinking cursor: death. Absolute death, and not a quick one either, slow; like cancer, or a very fat person sitting on you.

This isn't about designing or even writing, though.

In Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Phaedrus tells the story of a student assigned to write two pages about the town she lives in; she comes back the next day and says, "I couldn't think of anything to say." Phaedrus tells her to write about a street in the town. Again she comes back the next day with nothing. He tells her to write about a certain brick in a building on the street in the town, and she comes back the next day with five pages.

If you're in school or working, it's pretty easy to focus on the tasks at hand: answer the phone, help the customer, write the report, program the database. If everyone writes about a brick, you cover the whole building. You won't see the street and the town until you get a corner office, but you won't need to either.

Those of us who choose to step off the path get the blank piece of paper; it's our job to narrow it down to bricks. This would be easy, except there are so many buildings, so many streets, so many cities, with everything and nothing to say about each of them.

The very first thing you do is get rid of the white piece of paper.

Except I've been sucking at that lately. I've been running down the middle of the street while fears and hopes and dreams go rushing by, desperately trying to decide which building to describe while wondering if I'm even in the right neighborhood.

The tricky part, the insidious part, is when you pick certain bricks to avoid other ones. It's like, hmm, I don't really know what I'm going to do about this big important thing called my life, so instead I'll do my laundry and run this errand and go to work and read this and program that and hang out with her and draw and watch and listen and build myself a nice little building with three walls and no foundation, m'kay?

See, the thing about drawing anything, about killing the blank piece of paper as quickly as possible, is that sometimes what you make is shit. But you can play with shit. You can plant shit. Shit evolves. There's nothing wrong with building a crappy wall and tearing it down; a few bricks will always remain. There's nothing wrong with wandering down the street because you gotta figure out what needs to be built. But avoiding the wall because you're not sure what it should look like: death.

The very first thing you do is anything.

Wait! Come back!

2005-03-30T00:08:00.000-06:00

Hey! I have a blog! What a great idea.

First, here is the Ghostbusters theme song in list format.

Things I ain't afraid of:
- no ghost
Strange things in the neighbourhood (partial list):
- seeing things running through head
- invisible man sleeping in bed
Things that make me feel good:
- bustin'
Who you gonna call:
- Ghostbusters
- I can't hear you
- Louder

farm sunrise

2005-03-26T14:00:00.000-06:00

Nearly limitless fun

2005-03-25T22:52:00.000-06:00

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/

Natalie Portman hanging Scarlett Johansson a slider

2005-03-22T20:35:00.000-06:00

Hey! My brother and I are doing a for-fun fantasy baseball league.

if (you've never played before) {
     join;
} else if (you've played plenty and wanna try to beat us) {
     join;
} else {
     join;
}

http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/b1/register/joinprivateleague
ID: 250418
Password: 321123

Silly

2005-03-21T03:49:00.000-06:00

I've been jumpy lately. I think it started when I slept over in Orland last week and one of the shower caddies de-suctioned (fuck you spell-check!) from the glass door as I was about to fall asleep. Only one of them though, not the other, heavier-load-bearing one. Odd. Anyway, I keep hearing noises and literally jumping at shadows; I can't even write this without periodically glancing at the closed door to my room every few minutes, which, now that I think about it, is a little freaky. Me. Not the door. The door is made of wood.

Actually, it's more than just being jumpy, I've been impatient too. I didn't even notice until recently; I think it crept in while the guard was ... doing whatever he's been doing the past two months; wait, what have I been doing the past two months? And there goes the metaphor. Shit.

It's also odd that I didn't notice the impatience. For all the speculating I do around here, I really am very self-aware. (It's weird that "self-aware" has good connotations, but "self-conscious" has bad ones. Normally I'd use "self-conscious" here for the artistic appeal and bring it back to good ... and now I'm talking like Matchbox 20. Fabulous. Let's get out of here before -- nah, it's too late, the parenthetical is too big to come back from, I have to start a new paragraph -- no you don't! -- yes I do, are you crazy?, it's never been done befo -- HERE I GO! -- No, you crazy son of a -- AAIIIIEEEEEEEEEE) EEeee ... ahem. Anyway, the good vessel Me is usually a pretty tight ship. It's okay though, impatience is a great emotion to harness; just saddle it up and yank the bit back into that bitch's throat when he starts to complain. And yes, that was clearly over the top.

Obviously it's stress, so I'm going to try to keep it simple this week. Moving, writing, errands, time to relax at night. Simple.

As I was getting out of the shower this morning, I literally, actually, seriously said to myself, "This is the last time I'll get a fresh towel in this house. This is my last fresh towel." Then I ran through the wall, leaving a Lore-shaped outline and a small puff of speed-dust. (Meep meep!)

I've been programming non-stop for the past three days or so. I wanted to brush up on databases and dynamic content and such a little bit before I started job interviews. At least, that's what I tell myself; I think I really just found a fun project that's got me hooked. It's a little fantasy sports web application that pulls data from sources on the web and imports them into Flash via XML. It's actually going to make a sweet desktop background when I'm finished, and I'm a dork and I love it.

Okay, this is just silly.

Look for cool pictures of the house this week! Or pictures that are trying really hard to be cool in a transparent attempt to be loved and make up for a lack of self-esteem.

Silly.

Quixotically yours

2005-03-16T23:43:00.000-06:00

Wow, I'm really sick of talking about myself.

I've got a bunch of things running around: intelligence, creativity, atheism. How my interests cycle. Love. Nothing's really doing it for me though.

I've been wrong in this space quite a few times in the last year. Not so much inaccurate as painting in the wrong light, painting on too grand a scale.

The thing about grasping at windmills is that sometimes you end up tilting at straws.

That's okay with me; I like trying things on. And even though I think many of you would say that one of my least attractive qualities is how I play devil's advocate, that's just how I think. In the visual/aural/kinetic learning system, I'm definitely kinetic. That's true even conceptually; to learn, I need to own ideas, break them down into my own words and see how they work.

The point is, I've been grasping at lore a lot lately, but I'm probably just tilting at a life change.

It's hard to know if we want what we want because of what it is or how it makes us feel. Do I study because I enjoy learning or because I want to perceive myself as learned? Do I work out because I enjoy lifting weights or because I don't like the way I look? Do I write because I love writing or because I love the idea of being heard?

I think the answer is both, balanced in some unknowable percentage. That's cool. But if we don't even know why we want the things we want, what do we really know about ourselves?

The point is, I don't talk about humility enough.

In the "Life" part of Life and Lore, being humble is the anchor. Despite all my talk about greatness and ability and how much I love myself, I'm not convinced I'm intelligent or creative or attractive or even loved. I'm not positive my self-image is remotely accurate. I'm not sure I can make my dreams come true.

That's what I'm trying to prove.

The point is, I'm really sick of talking.

No one ever talks about the ides of July

2005-03-15T20:06:00.000-06:00

Welcome to Life and Lore, my homies.

Happy Birthday to Kendra! Yes, birthday greetings are part of the service here, though if I don't know your birthday (and I probably don't), I can't wish you a happy one. So post yours if you want some dap.

Someone named Phil Hartman called today to interview me for a job, but I'm gonna hold out for Chris Farley.

Actually, I have an interview lined up for the 28th that I'm looking forward to. Not crazy-go-nuts about it, but optimistic at least. I was genuinely excited when I started job hunting; I thought it'd be fun to work with people who were more creative than me. I'm not hearing back from those people though -- granted it hasn't been that long, but my enthusiasm is waning, especially because this isn't what I really want to do anyway. I thought getting myself on track for a solid web career was the smart thing to do, and maybe it is, but I'm going bust my ass writing (ass-writing? Is that like finger painting?) between now and the end of the month. If the interview goes well and the job makes sense, I'll happily take it if offered, but I'm not gonna bend over backwards when I think I can make it as a writer within the year.

This is everything I have scheduled for the rest of my life (so far):
Mar 19th: Uncle Joe coming over to take stuff from house
Mar 28th: Interview
Jun 25th: Tad's wedding

And the punchline:
Mar 24th: Dad @ airport, 9:35a
Mar 24th: Show w/ Barneses
Mar 24th: K's birthday party

See, this is why you can't take yourself too seriously. Fate is out there, right around the corner with a hot chick and a banana peel, reminding you that no matter what you do, you can't control everything; sometimes you're just gonna have to look stupid and like it, or in this case ... wait, what the hell am I talking about? This doesn't relate to having a busy day at all.

I don't know, friends. It's not a deep day, nor an especially funny one. It's just a day, with all the associated wonder and boredom and longing, a day that seems to bring me closer to what I want ... but I can't prove that.

Everybody from the 3-1-3 put your motherfuckin hands up

2005-03-13T17:13:00.000-06:00

Tiffany: Reading your blog, and thinking lately, I've been trying to figure out how you feel about yourself.
Tiffany: I feel like how you keep forgetting how young you are.
Tiffany: And that you're, like, spoiled by the success you've had thus far :-P
Tiffany: Am I being mean in saying that?

BigWillaeStyle: How I feel about myself?
BigWillaeStyle: I love myself.
BigWillaeStyle: I think I've made a lot of mistakes to end up at this place
BigWillaeStyle: but I think if I hadn't made them, I wouldn't be who I am, I wouldn't be writing, and I wouldn't give those two things up for anything.

BigWillaeStyle: I forget how young I am?
BigWillaeStyle: That's just an excuse.

BigWillaeStyle: "And that you're, like, spoiled by the success you've had thus far :-P"
BigWillaeStyle: This one I don't get.
BigWillaeStyle: You think I expected this to be easy?
BigWillaeStyle: You think that because I've been good at stuff, I expect that to carry me in what I want to do next?
BigWillaeStyle: Honestly, when I think of what I've done in terms of "success", I draw a blank.
BigWillaeStyle: I mean, web design was great for a couple years, but I should've either ran harder with it or stopped more abruptly
BigWillaeStyle: I don't consider myself successful.
BigWillaeStyle: Like I said, I can't think of any dreams that came true.
BigWillaeStyle: Writing is the hardest thing I've ever done. I love that it's hard. I want it to be hard.
BigWillaeStyle: But if you think that I expect success because of who I am, you're absolutely right. I don't intend to spend years writing in my basement at night until I'm finally "discovered" or some shit
BigWillaeStyle: I'm gonna write, write well, and sell it. If it takes a while, fine, but I don't doubt myself. If that's "spoiled", so be it.

Tiffany: By success I meant, you're very smart. And it seems like, and this is from an outsider, that most things come to you more easily than for other people.
BigWillaeStyle: Sure.
BigWillaeStyle: And I'm expecting things to be easier than they are because of that?
BigWillaeStyle: Because I've been trying to emphasize that, while this process is hard, I like the challenge; I'm not trying to complain about the difficulty at all. Did it sound like I was complaining?
Tiffany: A little.
Tiffany: Not complaining so much as "I thought this was going to be easy, but now I've realized it's not, and I'm cool with that"
BigWillaeStyle: Hmm.
BigWillaeStyle: I basically agree with that. I don't know if I thought it was going to be easy exactly, but the challenge was finding if I wanted to write, and if so, writing something I loved.
BigWillaeStyle: And so when I got to the other side of that, I kinda looked around and said, okay, now what?
BigWillaeStyle: I don't think I really judged how difficult the next part would be, I just figured I'd deal with it when I got here.
Tiffany: Yeah.

Thirty-five eleven

2005-03-11T21:22:00.000-06:00

I made my peace with the farm today.

I know that sounds a little ridiculous, but this is where I grew up. When other kids were walking to their friends' houses, when my brother was too young to play with, I was alone out here.

I used to sit in the second floor of the corn crib with the old loft door open, just looking out over the pasture and the fields and thinking and dreaming, sometimes about nothing in particular, sometimes about specifics, like when my cat Snowball died. (I think I also made a promise to avenge him, but we'll chalk that up to cartoon-inspired melodrama. How does one extract vengeance from kitty leukemia anyway?)

I used to take long walks to the creek behind my farm and revel in the exploration.

I used to scheme and dream about things that seemed so great. Things that would've been great had I actually done them, but that I didn't do. Not that building a space shuttle with Chris Spatz was very realistic, or that building a board game the size of the chicken coop was ultimately the best use of my time.

Standing on the concrete roof of the horse barn addition and looking out over the pasture and the construction, I thought about all those dreams.

Then I asked myself, "How many of those dreams came true?"

I can't think of one that did, ever.

Is that the measure of dreams, whether we accomplish them or not? Or is it enough -- is it the point -- that after our inevitable disappointments, we keep dreaming? Is it a testament to my spirit or my stupidity, that after years of thinking big and falling short, I still dream about greatness?

Regardless, it's who I am. I worried I might lose those aspirations if I failed at writing, if I had to grind out a crappy job and struggle to do what I wanted. I'm learning that adversity is only going to strengthen my resolve.

It's who am I, and it's because of this place. To me, a farm is a dream. It's standing on a plot of land surrounded by the horizon and saying, "This is my mark on the world." It's the idea that you can shape the world ... but also that the world stretches so far beyond you. It's the idea that in the simplicity of flat land and simple buildings, you can do almost anything. You can build huge board games and snow forts and tree houses and batting cages and office buildings, and even if you don't actually build all those things, you learn to see things for how they could be. You learn to see yourself for what you could be.

I made my peace with the farm today, because they can burn down the buildings and bulldoze the pasture and build a fire station and I'll always see it not for what it is, but for what it could be.

(I will avenge you, Snowball.)

finally finally finally

2005-03-09T22:10:00.000-06:00

I'm proud to announce:
http://www.allamericanrejects.com

Ben and I still have a little tweaking left to do, but overall it's one of the best sites I've ever worked on. So yay us.

"holy shit!!! to finally see it in action, the site looks FUCKING
INCREDIBLE!!!! you really killed it, dude. thank you soooo much!"
-- Mike

I'm stoked too, Mike.

A little on acting

2005-03-09T22:00:00.000-06:00

Kagiso: well...i'm having issues with a paper of mine.
Kagiso: iknowyou write....well...
Kagiso: could you give me some ...ugh...something?
Kagiso: lol

BigWillaeStyle: haha, sure
BigWillaeStyle: Whaddya got?

Kagiso: okay..i'm writing about acting..
Kagiso: and how actors generally never really hit it big on stage or on film
Kagiso: and this is.....my thesis? and my introductory paragraph...
Kagiso: In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy dreams of a perfect place in which there is singing and dancing, complete with a happy ending. Unfortunately, following the yellow brick road too, has its hang-ups. Lost in a world of optimism, many people cannot separate an unattainable dream from reality similar to those who aspire to act. What makes a person decide he or she wants to be an actor or actress? A friend's dad says that for every successful and paid actor in Hollywood, he could find one hundred who are struggling. How does Hollywood lure these unsuspecting people? Is it the glamour, the red carpet, the promise of an Oscar or the promise of ... FAME? Despite Hollywood's 'promise' or its glittery glam, many talented actors and actresses never make it to Oz.

BigWillaeStyle: What's your answer to this question: What makes a person decide he or she wants to be an actor or actress?

Kagiso: it's fun.
Kagiso: like's the camera.
Kagiso: the false hope that you can achieve fame quickly.

BigWillaeStyle: Why is fame important?

Kagiso: because it offers acceptance...money....and i guess power.

BigWillaeStyle: I definitely agree with acceptance. Fame validates us.
BigWillaeStyle: Is Oz then a metaphor for self-acceptance?

BigWillaeStyle: I think one of the greatest ironies about acting is that people who pursue it are often the people desperate for attention and validation, but in order to be a good actor, you have to really put yourself out there.
BigWillaeStyle: And in order to put yourself out there, you have to be comfortable with yourself.

Kagiso: right.

BigWillaeStyle: The other thing I've noticed in my experience
BigWillaeStyle: and this goes off my friend's experience working in Hollywood
BigWillaeStyle: is that a lot of people who want to be actors or moviemakers don't work very hard at it.
BigWillaeStyle: They dream about it
BigWillaeStyle: but they're just not very good, and it's not that they're incapable of being good, but they don't have the capacity to get better
BigWillaeStyle: they're not working and studying and asking questions and practicing and doing all the things you need to do to make it
BigWillaeStyle: I think the people that the industry attracts are often the least suited for it

Kagiso: can you name someone in particular/
Kagiso: less suited .

BigWillaeStyle: Hmm. Someone like XXXX XXXXXXXXXX.
BigWillaeStyle: Because she thinks she deserves it.

Kagiso: why.

BigWillaeStyle: I don't know why.
BigWillaeStyle: I think you earn the right to feel that way though.

Kagiso: how so.

BigWillaeStyle: I think the only way you "deserve" to be an actor is by working constantly at it. There's so much to study, so many different ways you can add to a performance that won't be there unless you add them to your toolbox. And I think if you don't do all that work, you don't "deserve" it. You might get it anyway, and that's fabulous, but the people who think they deserve it are often the ones who aren't asking questions of themselves and trying to improve.

Kagiso: Those who are seeking self-acceptance... are comfortable with themselves?

BigWillaeStyle: No, I think you have to master self-acceptance before you can master acting.
BigWillaeStyle: And those who are seeking self-acceptance shouldn't seek it through other characters.

Kagiso: but they willingly put themselves out there...proving self-confidence..?

BigWillaeStyle: Standing on stage and putting yourself out there are two different things.
BigWillaeStyle: There's obviously a difference between opening yourself up on stage and being natural and hiding behind your character.
BigWillaeStyle: XXXXXXX is the first example that comes to mind.
BigWillaeStyle: Always "acting", never "being".
BigWillaeStyle: If that makes any sense.

Kagiso: i see...i see.

Yeah yeah

2005-03-08T23:40:00.000-06:00

I know, you want entertainment. But I want fortunte, glory and sleep, so you're just gonna have to freakin wait.

Here, go entertain yourself.

n update

2005-03-07T07:11:00.000-06:00

Episode 59, Level 1

Mike gets credit for the strategy.

I don't care if you're the worldwide leader in sports, you can't possibly get away with this

2005-03-07T01:38:00.000-06:00

"I'm a little ticked at myself for not getting it done," Mickelson said after his 69.

From this article (hopefully they haven't changed the picture) titled:
Woods comes from behind to defeat Mickelson at Doral

Apparently he's not the only one.

Three seconds

2005-03-06T20:33:00.000-06:00

I had an epiphany Saturday morning. Not a big huge epiphany, more medium-sized, the kind you get from people talking about something semi-related, but not so huge that it comes from something totally random, like a bird crapping on your head or a cryptic message in your Alpha-Bits.

I've been thinking about this month's struggle in black and white terms. Winning is selling a screenplay or getting offered a great job in the meantime, losing is doing neither and having to move to Orland Park. It's so easy to think of future life-changing events like that, and get there and realize that it's just you and the choice between what you know and something new.

I've decided to accept.

And that's it. I'd rather do this on my own, but I'd rather ask my parents for help than work a job like the one described on Saturday. I'd rather start over and put myself through college than work with those people. I'd rather wait tables. Really.

I watched Burt Reynolds on Inside the Actor's Studio the other night. He talked about sustaining a head injury on the set of a movie in the 80's and being unable to get out of bed for almost three years -- not because he was paralyzed, but just because of how he felt, like his brain chemistry was affected somehow. He talked about how the people he thought of as friends abandoned him, and how people he didn't think of as friends were there every day. He talked about rage. How he carries the festering anger and betrayal from that period with him. How he can go there any time he wants. In three seconds, he said.

I don't talk about my rage. I can't even think of the last time I really showed it. It leaks out when I'm competing, when I'm challenged, when people doubt me. It leaks out in moderate amounts; it doesn't go further than that. But it's there. I can go there any time I want. Three seconds sounds about right.

Let's be clear: it's not guilt I'm talking about, or bitterness or even anger -- anger is a wound that bleeds but heals. Rage is a scar. Rage would put your fist through glass, so you don't let it; you keep rage simmering because there are always consequences when it flares. I got my rage in seventh grade; it's been compounding nicely since.

I bring up rage because I've always believed it gives me a gear that other people don't have.

So if I don't get an interview, if I don't get hired, if you don't understand that not only can I do the job I'm applying for, but that I could likely do your job in two weeks, that's fine. If you're not interested in my screenplay, I'll accept that. I'll write longer and run harder and eat better and I won't stop, not when I'm safe, not even when I think you might realize you were wrong. I'll keep running up the score, putting the damage on until there's absolutely no question. I'll wait tables or fix computers or clean up shit during the day and write at night for as long as it takes to create something beautiful, and I'll thank you just before I die.

Just give me three seconds.

It's always darkest just before it goes PITCH BLACK

2005-03-04T22:10:00.000-06:00

I bought new shoes today. They're black and fabulous, and thank you to the nice lady at Marshall Fields who recommended them to me. When I put these shoes on, the world feels softer.

On the way home I saw a Pontiac Sunfire with the license plate VIN DSL 8. I can only conclude the Vin Diesel ate the owner's original car, forcing him or her to buy a crappy Sunfire. That, or the owner is the eighth biggest fan of vehicle identification numbers and digital subscriber lines in Illinois.

Job interview tomorrow morning. My last personal job interview was probably when I tried to shake hands with a woman at the Iowa State Career Fair and somehow managed to grind her ring into another one of her fingers. She seemed genuinely angry. I'll try to do better this time.

a little hope for my pasty brethren

2005-03-03T23:32:00.000-06:00

If I were five foot two and attending the Air Force Academy, I'd totally dance like this.

Another bit of video funny: Office Space meets Superfriends

And continuing the comics-taken-out-of-context theme ...

inflatable clothing

2005-03-02T15:47:00.000-06:00

This picture makes me giggle. I especially like how the guy on the left seems happy and ready to skip, but the right guy has more of a hunched-over-and-resigned-to-embarrassment look about him.

Child Development

2005-02-28T17:08:00.000-06:00

Alright, I'm taking a big fat swing at this.

First, I think your points on teen pregnancy speak to the need to improve health education, not to require child development. Having a child is not inevitable; you have to, you know, bang someone. So either kids aren't banging safely (Health) or they don't understand that banging makes babies (unlikely). I think Child Development would help people understand the consequences of having sex, but if you're requiring this class because you're trying to prevent teen pregnancy, aren't you potentially skewing the material? It becomes like a D.A.R.E. thing, the War on Drugs meets teen pregnancy. (This Is Your Brain. This Is Your Brain on Baby.)

I also don't think you can base your argument on how useful the class is. There are dozens of classes that would be equally useful in life after high school: cooking and nutrition, home repair and construction, automobile maintenance, proper résumé writing, potential sexual positions, etc. (Actually, cheerleading and wrestling pretty much take care of the sexual positions.) You even noted the goal of high school education isn't based on usefulness; the concepts in higher-level math (rate of change and derivative thinking, for example) are more valuable than being able to calculate the area under a curve. High school is about giving you a broad foundation to build on as you specialize later in life.

So it's ultimately a question of necessity: why do high school students NEED child development? Why is sending them out into the world without testing their skills in this area neglectful?

To me, it's not; it's just not what high schools are there for. You can argue all you want about education being for the public good (and I'll agree with you), but the roots of public schooling are grounded in economics. People went to school to learn how to become a productive member of society and participate in the economy. I don't mean that in a sinister way either, more like, "Man, I fucking love underwater basket-weaving. I'm gonna go learn everything I need to become an underwater basket-weaver." High school is good at taking care of the basics: how to spell your company name, how to communicate with potential customers, why only hiring Aryan employees and naming your basket-weaving enterprise "Nazi Basket-Weavers" is a bad idea.

What high school isn't very good at is changing culture. (How's Character Counts going?) I think we all realize that how people treat each other is based on the world they grew up in, what others taught them about how to act, and simply telling people that Honesty is Important isn't going to change anything. Isn't Child Development an extension of that idea? I mean, having a class giving the facts about child-rearing is awesome, but isn't making it a requirement an attempt to change the environment our babies grow up in? Is it really going to be any more successful than cultural policy programs?

If they wanted to know the root of 1,234, most people would use a calculator. (The rest would just bitch about how Mrs. Williams walks like a penguin.) If they wanted to know exactly what happens in the second trimester or how to deal with a rash, most people would buy a book or ask a doctor. It has to be about more than the facts to make it a requirement, doesn't it? And obviously people had babies long before Child Development existed; if they needed to know something they'd ask someone who knew, someone who'd been through a pregnancy and raising a child before. If someone doesn't have that support structure in their life, is a class really going to change anything?

Having said all that, I don't think it's a bad idea, but I do know that I'd resent it like hell if I were still in high school. There's so little time, and I would be incredibly insulted that the school thought so little of my family and my personality that they decided I needed to be taught how to raise a child, especially at the expense of the rest of my education. How I raise my kids will be a direct reflection of how great my parents, relatives and friends are. Certainly there are people who aren't as lucky as I am ... but that's the problem with making it a requirement, there are plenty who are.

Every day, a second on the fuse

2005-02-26T23:10:00.000-06:00

Before I went to sleep last night, I decided to play a little N to wind down. Since I'd just finished all the levels, I went for a time trial on Episode 59, Level 1. That was around 2am or so.

At 7am, I finally climbed into bed and fell asleep.

I literally played one level -- a really small one too -- for five hours straight. Just dying over and over, trying to get the high score. And it's not like I played a bit and surfed the web and got a snack and went back to playing. I didn't stop. I'm not sure I even blinked for the first couple hours. I didn't get the high score, but I came pretty close. (I'm bigwillaestyle.)

Also around the web:

These pens seem pretty cool.

I also ran across an article about a woman I worked with. She's awesome, and you should read about her.

And finally, I wish I'd thought of this. Let's get a group together and do this abroad; we can challenge silly archaic laws like "women must wear veils in public". It'll be hilarious.

I started getting excited about fantasy baseball today. With football and basketball, I don't really get interested until a few days before the draft, but baseball always gets to me way too early. I end up looking at the stupid empty team page and the same rankings over and over until it's time to finally draft, then I look at the statless team page over and over until the season actually starts. It's brilliant.

While we're on sports:
a) Yay Bears! Muhsin Muhammad proved last year he can be a solid #1, he's tough and reliable, good addition.
b) I hope the Bears still draft Braylon Edwards. They'd better.
c) The Bulls are 8th -- 8th! -- in the Power Rankings this week. You have no idea how happy this makes me.

It would be fabulous to use this part of the entry to relate fascinating events in my life, but you basically know what's going on. It's just a quiet weekend before things start blowing up.

(Not literally. I don't blow things up, I swear. Not even balloons.)

Like the tic tac balanced precariously on the edge of my desk

2005-02-25T23:18:00.000-06:00

I ate ice cream alone today. It's been that kind of week.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure what the male equivalent of "comfort food" is. Beer, pizza, and action movies, I suppose. (Not that you should eat action movies.) But isn't the perception that you indulge in those things with other guys? What are guys "supposed" to do when they're alone and bummed?

It's not like I really care. I'm usually very upbeat in the face of overwhelming aloneness, it's just an icky week. I'm stressed about this next month and stuff I have to do, and I've been on the edge of sick the last few days, where you feel crappy but not crappy enough to feel justified. Plus Ben's riding me like the free Merry-Go-Round at Fox Valley Mall, or as I've taken to calling it, Nate.

Speaking of! While searching for jobs today, I was directed to this listing. I'm actually a very poor candidate for the position, but Nate would be an excellent choice. Apply thyself, my Great White Northmost friend.

I sent out something like ten résumés today, so we'll see how that goes. I'm eagerly awaiting the day when I no longer regularly write words with accent marks ... oh, and I get paid. There are so many relevant openings though, I'm pretty confident I'll end up somewhere challenging. Of course, "challenging" isn't always a good thing; it's a challenge to squeeze a set of encyclopedias into your rectum, but that doesn't mean it's something you should try. Believe me. I mean, if you can get past R-S-T you're home free, but it's not gonna happen. Well, okay, unless you're the goatse guy, then MAYBE. But then you've got other problems, though potentially a bright future in drug trafficking.

(Where the hell does the k in "trafficking" come from, anyway? Clearly it's borrowed from some other word that wasn't using it at the time, and trafficking was totally going to give it back, swear, but then there was that guy and the thing and time passed and trafficking just figured the other word would ask for it back, but the other word was too embarrassed and kind of a pussy anyway. Like navel. I think trafficking stole the k from navel, and we should look into giving it back. Knavel. There. Of course, that leaves us with "trafficing"; since that's equally stupid, we'll just scrap the whole word in favor of "I-got-the-shit-and-I'm-crossin-the-border-yo".)

Anyway. The job hunt continues.

Desperate for escapist science fiction, I watched The Fifth Element last night. UGH. I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to anything space/future related, but that was awful. I do like the new Battlestar Galactica series on Sci-Fi; it's not great, but again, I'm generous. It kinda reminds me a little of Wing Commander too -- and not the terrible, butchering-my-childhood-dreams movie with Freddie Prinze Jr., no! The great video games they were based on. Such awesome stories. They even had Mark Hamill, Malcolm McDowell, and John Rhys-Davies in the later ones -- the games are in their IMDB credits. I miss Origin very much. Fucking EA Games.

It was Java Chip ice cream, by the way. Does that make me less of a man?

Whispering your stories back to you

2005-02-22T21:42:00.000-06:00

Update: I beat that game, answering the question of how but most certainly not why.

Also, I'm watching the Bulls game, and I gotta say, Ben Fucking Gordon. For a little guy, he's pretty huge.

I promised something on fear and creativity, but I'm not really up for making it a big thing tonight. I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I have more shit to do. I was just thinking that when it comes to creating, people are afraid to try and fail. Especially with writing; it's always, "I want to write, but I don't have anything to say." First, you do, even if it's as simple as sharing your life experience, and second, how will you know if you don't try? It seems like we're afraid of wasting the effort, or that we'll start something but fail.

This thought is rapidly losing cohesiveness, I'm losing consciousness, and I'm still hungry. So I'm going to distract you with something while I beat a hasty retreat. Ready?

Hey look! What's THAT?

(clopclopclopopenslamspeedoff)

Around the horn

2005-02-21T21:52:00.000-06:00

Whew, okay. I'm back.

Superman is a Dick. Batman is clearly the superior super entity, and I'll fight anyone who disagrees (including Superman -- I have a bunch of those rock sample sets from family vacations, and I'm pretty sure there's some kryptonite next to the fluoride and the pyrite). If I haven't already told you about Typogenerator, you need to go play. Also, if anyone can get anywhere in this game, please let me know how ... and why. (Granted, it is pretty fun to impale the guy on the see-saw-axe thing.)

Lots of little stuff. I've been working crazy hard on the band website; it's going well. Hung out with Tiffany on Saturday at Ruby Tuesday('s? I can never remember) and Borders; we played a spectacular game of answering provoking questions with The Movie Book of Answers. I can't remember the specifics very well, but basically the book questioned my sexuality but confirmed our elitism -- so very much like high school. Sunday Kendra and I kicked around. I tried to convert her to Judaism, but she wasn't going for it.

Oh, and for the first time in years and years of not using the Windows Recycle Bin, I finally deleted something accidentally. I wasn't particularly worried because undelete software is amazingly good, but somehow all the programs I tried couldn't find a trace of the those files. It wasn't anything irreplaceable -- I've since replaced it -- but annoying, aye. Especially because I did manage to find EVERYTHING ELSE I'VE EVER DELETED, EVER. Grumble, grimace.

So that's my last few days! This week I'm getting my résumé out the door and doing web work. This next month is really going to be something.

Coming tomorrow: Creativity and Fear

When I fall

2005-02-20T23:31:00.000-06:00

I don't have time to write.

This blog turned one a few days ago. I don't particularly care; it's not like I've been updating regularly over that entire period. It's become a part of my life though, and I think it's going to be part of my future. Hopefully yours too.

I have no great insights tonight. (Whether I have them at all is very much up in the air.) Questions, sure -- I always have questions -- but no answers.

But I'm writing to tell you that there is so much opportunity in the world. So many chances for greatness, and in the smallest of places. Lore isn't just about carving your name on the tallest mountain in the largest type; it lives in the briefest details and the most miniscule moments. Sometimes greatness is laying down your sword in the middle of a fight, surrendering your pride and saying "I am the one to blame for this." Accepting that you are not perfect, that you will never be perfect, that it's entirely possible that every fear you have about yourself is true and you will die alone and uncomfortable. There is greatness in how you handle fucking up, because you will fuck up -- you may make the biggest mistake of your life tomorrow. (Maybe you're making it right now.) One of your many mistakes will inevitably be the biggest, you'll have hundreds of mistakes to choose from, and you won't even be dead yet. The question isn't what or when. The question is, how will you deal with it?

There is so much opportunity in how you deal with it.

If you had walked past me today, I wouldn't have picked you out

2005-02-17T20:31:00.000-06:00

Welcome to Life and Lore, my thugs.

I'm sitting here, and I gotta say, I'm not sure where this one is gonna go. So pop some popcorn, grab a soda, and get something funny on standby -- this entry could be pretty boring.

I've felt so guilty the last few days. Not just guilty; guilty, all slanty and shit, like stomach acid sliding back down your esophagus. Guilty, not for any one specific thing, but for allowing myself to creep back to where I am now. No, not back -- down. Further, but lower; simultaneously closer to the place I want to be and its exact opposite. Guilty for all the important choices and non-choices I've made, for the stupidest fuck-ups that absolutely don't mean anything, for that one time I punched Nate in the lip. Especially punching Nate, that boy ain't been right since.

Other than that, I've been pretty good. No, really. Besides, I don't want to talk about my low moments any more than you want to listen to them. Life, Lore, and the Pursuit of Happiness, that's the motto around here. Plus I got a haircut, which is the first line of defense against depression. I'm not even kidding.

Guilt is pretty interesting when you think about it in a biological sense. I mean, love makes us reproduce, excitement helps us fight, pain encourages us to keep our balls uncompressed ... and then there's guilt. Guilt's what we get after we fuck up; it's the emotional post-it note that reminds us, "Hmm, maybe that clubbing that baby seal wasn't such a good idea after all." We tend to think of guilt as baggage, something we have to drag home from previous journeys, when it's actually something we should remember to pack, so that the next time we're standing on an iceberg next to a pack of marine mammals while wielding a big stick, we think twice about beating the shit out of them. Metaphorically speaking. I like seals. But not Seal; beating the shit out of him is fine.

The odd thing about feeling guilty is that I generally don't feel anything. Not that it doesn't hurt when I stub my toe or sit down oddly and pinch my nuts. Definitely feel that. (And while we're on the subject, how in the hell did testicles survive natural selection? You'd think that evolution would reward the guy who can't be incapacitated by his own pants.) It's just that I don't judge my emotional state very often. I'm almost always happy in the absence of something specifically wrong, and even then I'm usually pretty upbeat.

Plus, I can always look at pictures of unclubbed baby seals.

Your popcorn is getting cold.

By popular demand

2005-02-16T10:09:00.000-06:00

A topless picture of Kendra, as requested.

Just when you think you've got it all figured out

2005-02-15T20:26:00.000-06:00

Haircut appointment at 7:15 this evening, but they call to ask if I can come in early, so I pull out of the driveway around 6:45 and head down Woolley to Douglas. At the intersection, I stop (always a good idea) to wait for a car so I can turn left. Pretty straightforward, right?

Except the car stops. Huh.

Naturally, I assume this person is an idiot. I wait, nothing. I honk! Nope, the car's just sitting there. Okay, fine -- but I can't pull out now because someone's coming from the other direction. I honk again. Meanwhile, a car has pulled up on the opposite side of the intersection; it shoots across in front of the other two cars.

And now the other car stops.

What?

Wait ...

... they made Douglas and Woolley a four-way stop?!?

Huh. My bad.

Lent, and so many possible puns

2005-02-13T12:59:00.000-06:00

A couple blogs brought up Lent recently. At first I scoffed; I think blogging about Lent is like one of those TV series episodes where one of the heroes gets put on trial for some crime he didn't commit in the middle of a season with an overall plot line that is in no way advanced by said trial; it's a perfect-little-bubble filler episode that drives you nuts because all you really want to know is what those crazy Goa'uld will try next.

But I digress. Since I want to talk about Lent a lil, I formally retract my previous scoffing. (Besides, it could be worse. We could be watching The OC.)

First, I believe religion was originally conceived as a vessel to teach us how to live, and in the way a copy of a copy of a copy loses detail, we've turned it into a reason why to live. I'm certainly not asking you to agree with that, only to understand where I'm coming from.

In the spirit of Christianity as a moral instructional manual, I find Lent very interesting.

I think the heart of Lent is the idea that we achieve happiness by living life as simply as possible. By cutting out something "essential" from our lives and not dying, we prove we don't need it.

It's certainly not exclusively a Christian idea; in fact, it strikes me as surprisingly Eastern. Not being very well-versed in theology, I can't say how common parallels between the two are, but if nothing else it suggests that living simply is something we should take seriously.

Now, I'm big on living simply. I don't buy things I don't need. I've never had a drink because I'm happy without drinking. (Though I am considering going by William in the business community, and those three extra letters are pretty extraneous.)

But my question is, why should simplicity be a universal goal? I mean, I like it, but why should everyone try for it? I suppose it goes back to harmony and community, right? Because if everyone takes what they want instead of what they need, there won't be enough to go around.

I guess that's why Lent surprises me. I largely associate Christianity with the conservative movement and the Republican party that seem to champion it. Yet the same groups promote an economic policy that says you're entitled to whatever you can get your hands on. They promote an environment policy that says, "Harmony with nature is nice and all, but we think energy sources are more important." And in the back row there's Lent, quietly clearing its throat.

(The call for simplicity is even more provoking when you consider how comparatively simple life was when these religions were conceived. We debate between a Prius and an SUV, when these people were debating between walking and riding a horse/camel/slave. Not to mention that their idea of a tchotchke was, like, an earthen pot.)

Anyway, I think how most people approach Lent is pretty silly: I'll sacrifice something because I'm supposed to, and give me ideas for what to give up, but don't tell me to get rid of this or that because I like those things or I gave them up once before and made it out alive. I don't see it as a trial (or a tribulation for that matter; Lord knows you can't have one without the other) to survive in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Wicket, but as a genuine effort to reduce your life to the simplest version of itself. If you're just cutting out something because you're supposed to and you absolutely know you'll go right back to it, what's the point? Just accept that it's part of who you are and move on -- unless it's something you don't like about yourself, in which case, why the hell are you waiting for the planets to align in order to change? Which isn't to say that it's somehow wrong to give something up and decide you need/like it in your life, just that if you don't really believe in what you're doing, if you're not going to execute the religion as it was intended, why do it?

All those questions are rhetorical, by the way. I understand that you may define the intent of Lent differently than I do. (Hopefully without rhyming.) Besides, you certainly don't have to justify your faith to me.

Just a little Sunday morning pun

2005-02-13T10:12:00.000-06:00

http://www.heavy.com/viral/married/

... they ran into the fire to help get people out. Ran into the fire.

2005-02-12T20:15:00.000-06:00

Speech meet today. Sectionals.

I didn't plan on going. I went to sleep without setting the alarm, figuring that if I was meant to go, I'd wake up around 5:30 -- but what were the odds of that?

At least they brought breakfast food.

The sectionals meet is brutal. The top three speakers in each event advance to State. We're in the toughest sectional in the state -- Wheaton Warrenville South and Downers Grove South compete for the state title every year, so that pretty much leaves one spot for all the other schools to fight over, and those schools aren't far behind. Brutal.

We didn't break anyone to State. First time that's happened since my junior year, I believe. Which is fine.

I'm really damned tired, so this might not be exceptionally coherent ... but since this is almost certainly the last time I'll do speech, I need to explain why I love it so much.

Part of it is what I told Vlad today: this is one of the few times in your life when you have a captive audience and something to say. From now on, you'll have to convince people to listen to you, and even if you manage that, there's no script anymore, no notecards or files of articles. You have a captive audience to interact with, an audience that wants to be there, that wants to learn and be delighted. Play with that audience. Enjoy it while you can.

But mostly, I love speech because it is a competition, and it is personal.

In sports, there's a clear distinction between who you are and what you do. You can make an error or give up a home run or swing and miss, but it doesn't mean you're a bad person. There's nothing personal, nothing subjective about striking out. It doesn't even necessarily mean you're a bad ballplayer, everyone makes mistakes. Imperfection is accepted.

Speech is entirely subjective, but more than that, the line between what you do and who you are is amazingly thin. We're not talking about how fast you can run or how hard you can throw a ball. We're talking about how you speak, whether people think what you have to say is interesting or not. You're essentially being judged on your ability to be a person, either yourself (as a public speaker) or someone else (as an actor).

The courage these kids display when they put themselves to the fire, that's what moves me.

It's the idea that as speakers -- as people -- we can improve who we are. Not just what we say but how we say it, not when we say it but why. That when we lend voice to our soul, we can learn to express it with poise, simplicity, honesty, and humor.

It is a competition, and it is personal. It's brutal -- but in the brutality, there's the raw glimmer of something beautiful.

Hurry, dere's no time! Get to da chopper!

2005-02-09T18:49:00.000-06:00

It's a brave new world, boys and girls! The movers come at 9am tomorrow to take my parents' stuff to the new house in Florida, so we've been packing and disconnecting like crazy go nuts.

The whole moving process has clearly delineated my parents' stuff from my stuff. For example, my parents' refrigerator goes to Florida, my food stays here. My parents' washing machine goes, my dirty clothes stay. Unless I leave them unwashed too long, in which case they run off with the food to get hitched in Vegas.

Speaking of dirty clothes, I have about 10-12 loads of laundry to do tonight. Though this is primarily a result of my stupidity, it also showcases the downsides of being freakishly tall; not only is it extraordinarily difficult to find clothes in the first place, but you can only wash so many XLT shirts and 34-36 jeans at once. Meanwhile, silly five foot two girls are stuffing entire wardrobes into washing machines all across America. Yeah, you heard me: silly.

I'm also running way low on sleep -- I'm making a break for it. You know, when you're trying to get your sleep schedule straightened out, so you stay up through the night and try to grind through the next day until you pass out around 8-10pm? Yeah, I'm tired. And I have at least eight more loads of laundry to do. (Yup, I did some stuff between paragraphs. Lore: Flaunting Time since ~~1981~~ ~~2005~~ look at me go!)

Finally -- and this is for the record -- if I'm found dead tomorrow, it will almost certainly be my own stupid fault, and I will be crispy.

See, I keep reaching for the stupid light switch, forgetting that we removed the stupid light switches and the somewhat-more-intelligent ceiling fans they controlled. Now, the wires are live, but death shouldn't technically be possible because the circuit can't be completed; the ceiling wires aren't connected. But since we're big on legacy here at Life and Lore, I'd prefer to shock the world in other ways, or at least go out with a better joke. If I do die, please ask Tony Kornheiser to rip me on PTI. "How stupid does he look right now? He reached for the light switch, there was no light switch, what a dope! That's it, that's the list, I win!"

Sleep! Hurry!

Scrabble

2005-02-09T01:26:00.000-06:00

I was certain my good looks would gar her to gam with me, but it turned out she had to stay at the office and sort through some bumf.

Words are fucked up.

Thrillseekers

2005-02-08T04:27:00.000-06:00

Sorry it took a minute for me to read DEITY, but here are my thoughts. The writing is OK, but I wasn't feeling the story at all. It's very slow and with too much stuff to get through before we begin to feel for the main characteer. Up until very deep in the story he just seems like a spoiled jerk athlete. I think if a person (reader /audience) doens't HAVE to stick with this story they'll ditch early on.

Let me preface this loosely-related story by saying, I was much more of an ass in high school. My father taught me confidence a little too well, perhaps.

There was a group of high school girls I absolutely couldn't stand. The Future Housewives of America, I thought of them as. I'm not going to go into a huge description, but they were some combination of conservative, moderately intelligent, kind, loud, and oblivious. Basically, the kind of girls who would tell stories about themselves with the same intensity that most people would reserve for ... I don't know, something interesting. You could already imagine them going to college for a year or two, meeting a guy, getting married and settling down. And they absolutely drove me crazy because they were the exact opposite of everything I thought life should be.

I thought of those girls today when I read that.

At the risk of creating a second introduction, I love to fight. I love competition. I love the improbable and the impossible and hardship. That lore thing.

I don't think you know anything about a person until you've been through hardship with them. I don't think you know anything about yourself until you know where the bottom is.

I thought of those girls because I could picture them going through life without risking anything and actually being happy with that.

Just to be clear, my bottom isn't very deep. (Insert butt joke here.) My parents, my upbringing, my genetic gifts -- I can only sink so far before I'm scooped up by a safety net. But the bottom still hurts, you know? It's not physical life and death, but spiritually I think it's the same for everybody.

So with all that in mind, bring it. Tell me I can't do it. Tell me it's wrong. I've had it far too easy. I could use the entertainment.

The difference between me now and in high school is how I'll say the last line of this entry. In high school, I'd say it to prove something. I'd say it because you needed to know it, because I needed to tell you. I'd say it arrogantly under the guise of matter-of-fact confidence, with desperation just beneath it.

Now, it's just how I feel. Deity will be a movie someday.

Super Bowls of yucky soup

2005-02-06T22:59:00.000-06:00

Mike and I watched the Super Bowl over at my parents' house. I love the Patriots. I don't think they played especially well, but yay championship. Though if I hear the word "dynasty" one more time ... it's like Christmas, where the word and the cliché has replaced the intent of the word. Drives me nuts.

While I was over there, my mom was sorting through old photo albums. I scanned a couple during halftime. For you, my peeps.

The Crystal River Rapids trip with Josh, me, John, Kendra, Sue, and Tai. I know it looks like Kendra is checking me out, but she's really angling for a piece of Josh.

Hey, don't knock it, Batman is cool. My mommy made sweet costumes. Unfortunately, not the last time I wore tights for Halloween.

I like presents.

Yucky soup! My brother and I used to mix the contents of Grandma Helen's pantry together, then we'd add baking soda and vinegar for the grand finale. If you look carefully, it looks like the soup is trying to claw its way out of the bowl.

Back to the résumé.

Progress may be closer than it appears

2005-02-05T17:50:00.000-06:00

Hmm, apparently I blog every day but Friday. I don't really know why that is. Though if you're sitting at home waiting for people to blog on Friday night ... crap, that's me.

Actually, I'm binge résumé-ing this weekend. Building a résumé (I'm already sick of typing "eacute") always seemed like a sucky thing to do, but I'm really enjoying it so far. It's fun to write things like, "Manage and develop smart, efficient media projects that build brands and foster access to products and information." It's corporate poetry, you know? The best words in the best order, except more like, the most high-impact words in the safest order. Not that every ... uh, personal qualifications document I've ever seen isn't mind-numbingly bland.

Two things I need to do:
1) Completely debrand internal websites so I can use them as portfolio pieces
2) Sort through all the "thank you" messages I've received to pick the best ones.

Not looking forward to the first, but the second proves how awesome the people I worked with are.

I leave you with this.

Actual screenshot from Adobe Premiere, but today I like to think of it as the progress bar of career launching.

Under pressure

2005-02-03T23:30:00.000-06:00

I think I'm going to get a job.

The screenwriting is going well, but I can't just count on deriving any income from it anytime soon. My writing is obviously going to suffer a little, but it shouldn't be too bad. A screenplay doesn't require the brute effort that a novel does; it's more about structure and strategy, and I've just finished working that out for my next project. So maybe it'll take an extra month. I'm still in it for the long haul.

I'm actually excited about working, and a little bemused. It'll be so simple! I can just go somewhere and someone will tell me what to do! And that's it? I don't have to constantly exert my self-control? I don't have to hustle up business? I can just ... show up? Brilliant!

So I'll start getting a résumé together, that'll be pretty straightforward. Five years industry experience, primarily in the financial industry (and I'm 23 ... it doesn't sound right, does it?) Advanced web design and development skills and proficiencies, excellent communications skills, hot, etc. I'll apply mostly for jobs in Chicago, but I'll look at New York and LA too.

Huh. This could be fun. For a while, anyway.

I wonder if I should have done this a long time ago.

Glory of the 80's

2005-02-02T20:01:00.000-06:00

I have a huge collection of stock photography from my web design days. Very useful. BUT -- some of it is really bad. Like this:

Nothing like celebrating diversity with a good arm wrestle.

But far and away, the absolute worst are the "portrait" images. They're all obviously from the 80s, plus it's hard to imagine what use anyone would have had for them back then. I'm pretty sure this entire collection is the collective result of a decade of photographers trying to get laid. Three of my favorites:

(I'm pretty sure the chick in the ceremonial raincoat is Kimmy from Full House.)

Anyway, if you're looking for crappy stock photos, I'm your man.

Movement

2005-02-01T18:49:00.000-06:00

There's something moving about cities at night. Even Oswego.

Walking into the library tonight, I felt peaceful. Spiritually quiet. Like Broadway on a winter night, where you're dwarfed by the size of the city and the night above you, but warmed by the light of storefronts and smiles. It's the harmony between a vast world extending into darkness and the spirit of ingenuity in mankind.

It reminds me of a day I spent in the snow.

There was a blizzard the night before, which meant tons of fresh snow and no school. I was playing by the ditch in front of our house and, you know, building snow lumps, doing whatever it is kids do with snow. And as I moved farther away from the house, I suddenly discovered The Perfect Spot, this pristine little niche in the valley between the bushes and the road. (So basically, the ditch, but that rhymes with niche. Unless you pronounce it like a presumptuous wannabe Frenchie. Kendra.)

It was a perfect little snow chasm; I immediately fell in love with it. I remember sitting there for hours with the snow surrounding me, not even building anything, just carefully pushing snow around, trying to sculpt that spot into something that was somehow it and more than it. Something beautiful and great.

I can still remember parts of it.

I was never very good at making things. I have no special capacity for mechanical engineering. I sucked at sewing in Home Economics and furniture-building in Shop. Hell, I can't even draw. So maybe it's because I have no special capacity for reshaping the world that I love it so much. Maybe I just love the grandness. Regardless, I wish I was better at it.

But it's both the blessing and the curse of humanity. At once we're struck by the wonder of a place or a song or a thing, and simultaneously we seek to make it ours, to break it down and understand it and master it. You move to a city; it's everywhere and unknowable, beautiful in size and mystery. But then you learn the street you live on and it becomes your street; you learn the way to work, then the restaurants and bars and neighborhoods, and before you know it, you're not a child anymore.

Because that's what this is all about. As we learn the skills to master and shape our world, we seem to lose our wonder along the way. We ground ourselves in the familiar and seek solace in the safe. We don't laugh as hard or smile as wide as we used to, but at least we don't cry, right?

We settle.

As I find myself settling, I look out over the city. I marvel at how wide the night is, how brave the streetlights are.

For every blizzard there is a fresh morning snow, and somewhere outside my door is the perfect niche.

Update!

2005-02-01T15:46:00.000-06:00

My brother admonished me for not putting his name on the Job Predictor list.

Mike, your ideal job is a Ping Pong Ball Inspector. (You can work with Becky!)

And as a special bonus, his nickname and his online tag:

Miggy, your ideal job is a Satan.
Gaiden, your ideal job is a God.

Brilliant.

Just a pretty blog in an ugly world

2005-01-31T20:58:00.000-06:00

I added a Cast of Characters page to the links on the right; it's just a picture and some background for people who appear in my life (and thus this blog) frequently. I'll add to the bios at some point, though if you're on there and you'd like to write your own, I would love that. (If you're not on there and you want to be, you should hang out with me more.)

Before I forget, Ben sent me a link to the Job Predictor the other day. Because this is a full service blog, I've entered the names of some Life and Lore regulars.

Becky - Ping Pong Ball Inspector
Ben - Top Gun Pilot
Erin - Permanent Temp
Heather - Housekeeper
Kendra - Chef
Lore - Traffic Warden
Nate - Soap Actor (i.e., River City)
Tiffany - Muppet Impersonator
Will - Anything where you can kiss ass

Best list ever. Discuss.

Also, this is amusing:
How to Kick Someone's Ass With an Umbrella (circa 1901)

Now, on to the good stuff.
(Editor's note: Actually, in retrospect it's not so much, which would be ironic if only you could flaunt time this flagrantly. And fragrantly, I might add.)

I saw a link today for a CaféPress book called How To Blog. Yeah, I know. But here's my question: if blogging warrants a "How To" above "How To Use Teh Intarweb", then there's apparently a skill besides writing involved. What is that skill? Entertainment? I'll go with that, if only because narcissism isn't exactly a skill (though if you're dropping $20 on How To Blog to get people to think you're interesting, perhaps you have a case).

So we're blogging to entertain each other. Cool! I'm certainly in no position to pass judgment. But what exactly makes a blog entertaining? It's one thing to use a blog as a replacement for calling your friends and telling them your great stories; that's an extension of your normal interactions with those people. But I wouldn't call you guys to ramble about the nature of blogs, the minutiae of my day, or to subject you to any of the other threads I sometimes follow in this space. Are those posts entertaining, then?

For that matter, do we derive entertainment from posts where someone is clearly eking out words to fulfill a perceived obligation to daily blogging? Would you rather read a half-hearted short post or not read one at all? And when did Carrie Bradshaw take over my Blogger account?

Meh. I write because I'm a writer; I did this for several months without telling anyone but Kendra. But I gotta say, it's way more fun to have an audience. So as much as anything, this post is about my appreciation for your interest in what I have to say. Considering my new occupation, it's very reassuring. So yeah, thank you.

(See? That sucked. Irony.)

Speech on Tuesday through Thursday, more web work, errands and household chores, and potential. Should be a good week.

Hiccups

2005-01-30T22:39:00.000-06:00

Welcome to Life and Lore, my peeps. (whisper: PTI)

The Web Design Renaissance continues! Plugged away on the band web project much of Saturday; I think this could turn out to be the best site I've worked on. (You'll see it when it's done.) Alex also called with a design project, so I finished off those three designs today. (The previous post's image is from one of the iterations.) Certainly not enough coin to feed Latrell Sprewell's family, but they'll be great portfolio pieces.

I also fixed a little thing on my brother's computer. His hard drive letter was F: instead of C:, and occasionally programs wouldn't install or run properly because programmers are stupid. In this case, it was Norton System Works. Should've taken thirty minutes. Twenty four hours later, I FINALLY fixed everything that fucked up. It wasn't really my fault. Well, maybe some. We'll say half my fault, half computers-sigh-argh-smash.

I thought about discussing compromise in design, but I'm not feeling especially contemplative at the moment -- the Webonanza has expended my daily required amount of creative energy. Do you guys have that too? It might be because if I didn't spend time creating, I'd be really fucking bored, but it's different than just being productive; if I run errands all day, I'll still have an itch to create something when I get home.

Different creative tasks have different energy requirements, too. I can sit and design web sites and graphics all day, but I sure as hell can't write all day. Writing has an effort cost as well as a creative cost. But writing is more rewarding in the long run, so it should be harder. I like it because it's harder.

It would be easy to stop writing right now. I need to figure out where I'm going to live and what I'm going to do for money. I need to get an agent for Deity. I'm adding some great projects to my portfolio; I could take up web design again very easily, and I'm at the hardest part of this next writing project, the part right after the beginning I've visualized, but before the script starts writing itself. It would be easy to stop writing right now, and it's the furthest thing from my mind.

The T in WTF

2005-01-27T23:56:00.000-06:00

Conference call cancelled today on account of illness. Feel better, Tina.

Nate and Ben assaulted my blog today. (I can't write "assaulted" without thinking "apeppered", which clearly means I'm broken.) Go read comments, dem are funny.

Worked on the new site today, work continutes tomorrow. I spent the day digitally stiching a bunch of snapshots into one seamless image. Sometimes I forget how much I've practiced that. Not the kind of thing you really talk about, unless you're trying to impress a girl. Heh.

And because I'm tired, you can look at this guy's image retouching portfolio. Nothing crazy special, but he's good.

Plus nobody I know got killed in South Central LA

2005-01-26T22:30:00.000-06:00

I really thought this was going to be a bad day. Just had a feeling. What the hell do I know.

Two weighty announcements!

1) I'm helping my friend Ben with a website for a band you may have heard of. I'll post details when it becomes official. Or contact me and I'll tell you.

2) I have a conference call about my screenplay tomorrow. Just feedback, but it's a wonderful start. It also means I'm on my way to getting an agent.

/littledance

Talked to Dave for a bit today; I should do that more. Had dinner with Donna and Heather and Jed and Jeff and Katie at La Cabaña. A good day.

Half of things not seen

2005-01-25T18:20:00.000-06:00

Today is my half birthday. I am twenty-three and a half.

I think getting older intimidates my peers more than me. Probably because I always felt older than everyone else. Anyway, I have no interest in complaining about how scary twenty-four is, or how I'll be twenty-five and then twenty-eight and thirty-five and old and dead. The only scary thing about getting older is that my chances of becoming a professional baseball player diminish. I'm not even kidding.

What's far more interesting is this: I started writing what would become my first screenplay six months ago. I'm writing another one. The next six months will bring amazing opportunities and the relief of change.

I'm not afraid of getting older because I honestly believe that every day brings me closer to where I'm supposed to be. Even on the days that I don't do everything I'm supposed to, even on the days when I don't do anything, I have faith. In myself, in what I'm doing, in other people to agree with me, I have faith.

I could, of course, be completely wrong. I may be begging my parents for money and waiting tables in six months. I have no counter to that.

But tomorrow, I'm going to walk into the Oswego Library with ripped jeans, a bandana, sunglasses, and Jay-Z on my iPod, and I'll be smiling for no particular reason. I'll say "excuse me" to the people who don't get the fuck out of my way, and I'll smile at the little kids who look up at me curiously. I will teach, and learn, and write.

Tomorrow, I'll be one day closer to something I suspect.

Tomorrow, I'll be one day older.

Thoughts of Lore (1/24)

2005-01-24T18:46:00.000-06:00

I started reading The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, but it's been slow going. I've heard that when you're writing fiction you don't feel like reading fiction; I didn't believe that at first, but it really seems to be true. I just can't seem to get immersed.

I'm supposed to lend Tiffany my copy of Patsy Rodenburg's The Actor Speaks, but I want to reread the last third first. I'll do that tonight.

While we're on books, Donna gave me a book that Karla left for her; it's called Successful Script Writing, and while most of the advice is painful, it does have the redeeming quality of interviews. I like interviews.

I need to do laundry, but the basement is partially flooded.
The basement is partially flooded, so the house partially smells.
The house partially smells, and I don't want to live here anymore.

Google released an updated version of Picasa that handles RAW images and all PSDs. They also included the ability to tweak brightness, color, sharpness, and other image elements; those abilities are absolutely useless to me and absolutely perfect for my mother. Golf clap, good show.

I like the White Sox's signing of Tadahito Iguchi. He's relatively cheap, the market for second basemen was pretty weak, and Japanese players have done a pretty good job making the transition to Major League Baseball. The ability to play the game is far more valuable than athletic ability; scouts just focus on athletic ability because if you're gonna invest time and money into a player, he might as well have a physical edge to start with. But guys like Jamie Moyer and Greg Maddux prove that playing the game is all that really matters. Go Sox.

My all-white-guy fantasy basketball team is in fifth place in our eight team league. But AK-47 is back, baby! Not that I have any chance to make fourth place. Moral of the story, kids: white supremacy doesn't pay. My next idea: a team of guys with colors for last names. (Because you can't win without people of color.)

Writing was a grind today. Some days, you just gotta grind.

Last week of full speech team for Maine East, then we're down to the Regional team next week. I think we can get someone to State, I just don't know who yet.

Diet Coke with Lime is pretty good.

I've been a Chicago Bulls optimist for the last three years. All three years, I've predicted playoffs. The last two, I've looked the fool, but now, NOW I'm a genius! Unless they don't make the playoffs, but c'mon -- the East is bad, they're on a roll, it's in the bag! (I'm Will, and I'm a Bulls optimist.)

CNN QuickVote: Do you think upping the reward for Osama bin Laden increases the chances of catching him? Technically, yes. Significantly, no.

The Nike Mask commercial was a good idea, but who the hell designed half those things? The wire mesh for Urlacher? The LT Gazelle mask? The Torii Hunter Venus Flytrap? Bad! Ugly! Good idea, meh on the execution.

Conservative Christians are protesting SpongeBob for promoting homosexuality. These are presumably the same people who want school prayer, government support of faith-based organizations, etc. Can't they just come out and say they want to tear up the Bill of Rights and start over? Seriously! Separation of church and state, freedom of speech, you don't want 'em, that's cool, but let's be honest here. Would Jesus misrepresent his political agenda? I think not.

Pubic hair is great for building a good lather in the shower when you've lost your little nylon poofy/scrubby thing.

I made a new shower playlist this week:
1. Ice Cube - You Can Do It
2. Lifehouse - Out Of Breath
3. Guster - Either Way
4. Jay-Z - A Dream feat Faith and Biggie
5. Tori Amos - Putting the Damage On
6. Eminem - Crazy In Love
7. Jars Of Clay - Worlds Apart
8. Vertical Horizon - One Of You
9. Barenaked Ladies - War On Drugs
10. Goo Goo Dolls - We Are the Normal
11. Tupac - Str8 Ballin'
12. Dido - See You When You're 40
13. Sister Hazel - Best I'll Ever Be
14. Tori Amos - Glory of the 80's
15. Green Day - Are We The Waiting

Becky mailed me Tom's business card. That's so cool! Oh, and I have to call Kendra back.

I bought groceries today.

The Patriots rock.

I'm done.

Smash it up

2005-01-22T21:43:00.000-06:00

This is the first in a series of CLASSIC VIDEO GAMES from my past. That's right, CLASSIC.

At one point in my life, I'm almost certain I was amongst the top 100 Super Smash Brothers players in the world.

I don't remember exactly when I started playing, but I remember playing Kendra a lot in the summer of 2001. I think my brother and I bought an N64 sometime after that; to this day, Super Smash Brothers is the only Nintendo 64 game we own.

I couldn't begin to estimate the hours we spent playing, but we got pretty sick. We toggled all the difficulty settings, the handicaps, everything to make the game as difficult as possible, but the computer had no chance. We turned to other people as a source of potential competition ... but alas, we simply outmatched all comers. With no challenges left to overcome, our Super Smash Brothers skills were abandoned to time.

Ness was my boy. He has a ridiculous throw-and-stomp combo; you can go way off the edges, beat someone into the ground, and then use the little sparky thing to zap you back to land. My brother was more of a Donkey man. I too enjoyed Donkey -- landing a big Donkey Punch or a Donkey Overhand Smash are two of the most satisfying moves in the game. Captain Falcon was another favorite of mine; he isn't actually very good, but because he's so fast and graceful it doesn't really matter, he's hella fun to play. Kirby and I were also known to rock it.

And of course, Jigglypuff.

See, Jiggly is pretty bad. He's got the Jiggly uppercut, which packs a pretty nice punch. Everything else is pretty much shit. There's this BZJING! move you can do, but you fall asleep right after you do it, so you're fucked if you miss. His only real plus, amazing range, is negated by his general puffy wussiness.

But if you can beat people with Jigglypuff, it's pretty freaking annoying. Plus they can't really get mad because Jigglypuff is SO CUTE, so it's even more obnoxious.

Me and Jiggly had it going on.

I wish I could cite specific records and stories, but it's been a while. Matches where a Bomb-omb blew both of us up, but one of us JUST flew off the edge faster. Time trial records. Beating the game on Very Hard without falling off once. Destroying Kendra for weeks at a time. These were the good times, my friends.

And if you're looking for a high-stakes game of Super Smash Brothers, you know where to find me.

Next Week: Super Mario Kart.

Ali Luxion (2004 - 2005)

2005-01-21T22:18:00.000-06:00

We gather here today to mourn ALI, who passed from natural causes today at the tender age of one. He was a fighter; his life, through tragically short, reached far beyond the plastic confines of his world.

I can't think of a better way to honor him than to tell you the story of how he came to be called Ali.

I'm living in the apartment in Florida with my brother.

The natural habitat of the fighting fish is relatively shallow water with lots of plant life, so when you keep one, you can't give him too much free space or he'll die. Of something. We have him in a fairly small bowl with a plant in it. Obviously, the bowl needs to be cleaned periodically.

I'd been putting it off for two weeks, mostly because you have to get the fish out of the bowl to clean it and the best option is to just reach in there and grab him. I'm not a particularly squeamish fellow, but grabbing a fish, not so much.

But at 7am on this particular morning, I immediately decide to clean the fish tank. No particular reason. Wake up, clean the fish tank, perfectly natural.

Half-asleep, I head into the kitchen. Still don't want to grab the fish ... but I have a plan! Pour the fish and his water into a plastic bag. Clean the bowl. Pour the fish back in. Simple, no intersection of fish and hands required.

I put the bowl over the kitchen sink, take the plant out of the bowl, and carefully start pouring the water into the plastic bag. But obviously, there's more bowl than plastic bag, so it's gonna overflow before the fish comes out. So I cut a tiny hole in the corner of the bag. Tiny. Hole. About a quarter of an inch.

Yeah. Fighting fish are actually smaller than they look.

Plop! Fish falls into plastic bag. I'm brilliant! My plan is working perfe ...

Fwip! Fish falls THROUGH TINY(!) HOLE in plastic bag.

Plop. Fish lands on rubber garbage disposal fins.

In moments like these, when time slows down as something really bad is happening, I almost expect God to swoop in and save me, you know? So I can laugh later about how I almost killed the fish but I didn't really because I plucked him from danger just before he fell to almost certain death in the bowels of a food grinding apparatus.

So I'm genuinely surprised when the fish falls into the garbage disposal a half-heartbeat later.

"ohfuck."

I'm seriously freaking out. Up to a certain size, you can pretty much kill stuff with impunity. Ants, flies, spiders, no problem. Grasshoppers and crickets, a little unpleasant, but I'll kill with probable cause. But fish! Fish are way past the line. Especially when it's a pet! I just killed my pet fish!

I'm still freaking out. Calm! Calm. Okay. WhaddoIdo? Okay! Maybe I can open the garbage reservoir under the sink. I look under the sink. I wiggle the unit. Secure. I look for screws. Nothing immediately apparent. I go look for a screwdriver anyway. I can't find one. I look under the sink again. Where is the fish? Is he in that? In this?

At this point it's been several minutes, and I'm getting that sinking stomach feeling. I killed the fish. I really killed the fish. He's gonna (the-opposite-of?) asphyxiate -- should I spare him the suffering by turning on the garbage disposal? Goddammit, I can't talk my way out of this, I really killed the ---

Clarity! Maybe I can reach down and grab him! I should run some water too. I turn the water on. I study the garbage disposal switch carefully, you know ... because maybe there's something resting up against it, and when I stick my hand into the garbage disposal, it'll, uh ...

I stick my hand into the garbage disposal (still watching the switch -- I like my hands).

No fish, no fish -- AHHH!

I touch something squishy and jerk my hand out.

IDIOT! BEING SQUEAMISH IS WHAT GOT YOU INTO THIS FUCKING MESS. And more importantly, the fish is alive! Hope!

I reach back into the garbage disposal. I feel around for the fish ... AHHH!

MOTHERFUCKER! GRAB THE FUCKING FISH!

I stick my hand back in. There he is. I wiggle. I cram. It's amazing how similar in size my hand and the total volume of the first stage of a garbage disposal is.

Almost. Almost!

To a heavenly choir, I pull a gleaming fighting fish through the rubber trap and quickly return him to his newly cleaned bowl.

He's alive. Fine even, though I never knew fish could glare quite like that. He's a fighter, I think. Ali, the Fightin Fighting Fish.

Fare thee well, Ali. May less dangerous waters lay ahead.

Of Dreams and Lore

2005-01-20T21:55:00.000-06:00

In the world I see, you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.
-- Tyler Durden, Fight Club
Chuck Palahniuk

Go, then -- there are others worlds than these.
-- Jake, THE DARK TOWER I: The Gunslinger
Stephen King

Some days, I wish the world was just a little bit bigger.

As long as man has existed, there have been frontiers. Rivers and prairies, deserts and mountains. Oceans. We're one of the first generations of human beings with nowhere to go.

Maybe the first.

Our parents had the promise of space. We're stuck with the failures of NASA. Jacques Cousteau showed them the wonders of the oceans. We get The Life Aquatic. We're realizing that living in space is a little trickier than that 60's Popular Science covers led us to believe, and the only underwater cities we'll live to see are along the Indonesian seaboard.

Why should we hurry into space? For our kids? Explorers don't seek out new worlds for their families. Hell, families are what people stay home for, or what they're escaping. To explore is to explore our individual selves, to find our unique midpoint between fortune and glory.

Pardon me while I hike through Canada.

You say Africa, Australia, Antarctica? I say GPS. I say satellite imagery. I say, what I dream of is bigger than places we've already been.

Give me a crashed airplane in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Give me a living spaceship on the other side of the galaxy. Give me nothing but a chance of survival, the threat of death, and the smallest opportunity for greatness.

Some days, I wish the world was just a little bit harder.

Of course it's ungrateful. How can I possibly be grateful? I don't know how heavy oppression is. I don't know what starvation tastes like. I don't know anything about hardship because nothing is hard.

Some days, I want to trade W-2s and fast food and high schools and colleges and cars for the chance to do it all over again, or to do it in a time and place that's so much larger than this one.

Then I think about my toothbrush, and the feeling dissipates.

Getting around

2005-01-19T20:55:00.000-06:00

I'm all over the place today!

I gave her the Mark Twain quote as an impromptu topic for speech team, I told her about the Paris Hilton bit, and I took these pictures!

And since we're on the topic of me and the Internet, let's see where else I show up.

This [ihsa.org] is from my trip to State for speech team -- I'm amazed it's still up. This [christyhauser.com] is a website I did, as is this [darleensinteriors.com]. Hah, and this [orchardvalleygolf.com] is when my family played in a scramble and really sucked.

That's about it for me. My uncles Dennis and Cliff return many results, along with a few other family members. And for reasons I don't understand, the Japanese seem to have named a starship after my family.

Today I did an ad image for Darleen's, wrote for a couple hours, and coached speech.

I've been kicking around the idea of doing a deviantART account for a while now ... thoughts? I don't know. I think if I'm really serious about selling my work, I should do something more professional. Plus, it's pretty easy to take random artistic photographs and throw them up there; I don't feel like I have a competitive advantage. I think I could do photography with both aesthetic and conceptual quality, but actually executing the concepts is essentially making photography a career, and I don't really want to be a full-time photographer -- the day-to-day work that pays the bills, weddings and such, not so much. I think I'd rather do it as a hobby, or possibly in tandem with a design / advertising job.

But who knows. Maybe someday I'll return enough results in search engines to make people actually care.

I am the only one to blame for this

2005-01-18T21:57:00.000-06:00

On April 1st, the Oswego Fire Department assumes control of the house I'm living in. Which means I'll need somewhere else to live. Which means living in Florida (parents' vacation house, meh), living in Orland Park (parents' house, nope), or moving somewhere else (aye). I've resisted moving without steady income, and I've resisted steady income by not having a job, choosing instead to live off my web design savings while I figured out what I wanted to do.

Which I now know is writing.

But we're getting down to it now. The matrix of possibilities is something like this:

1) I sell my screenplay, Deity, before April.
-- If YES, MOVE to NEW YORK or CHICAGO.
-- If NO:

2) I sell the screenplay I'm currently writing before April.
-- If YES, MOVE to NEW YORK or CHICAGO.
-- If NO:

3) I get a job.
-- If YES, MOVE to JOB. (CHICAGO, probably.)
-- If NO:

4) Of course I can get a job. I have five years industry experience, a portfolio of over 100 web projects, Wall Street referrals, a photography portfolio, excellent communications skills, and I'm pretty. Or I'll wait tables; the thought of having someone tell me what to do seems so refreshing compared to the last five years. (It'll suck again after a couple months, but still!)

5) That wasn't actually a matrix at all.

I need an agent to sell Deity. I'm currently leveraging my friend Ben -- he works for a Hollywood development company. Ben's given the script to people he works with, who will read it and hopefully like it enough to recommend me to a trusted agent, possibly one I wouldn't be able to meet without a recommendation. Agent sends script to studios, studios hopefully buy script. If there's no interest in that script, I move on to the next one.

I'll sell my writing eventually, but I don't know if it'll happen before I have to figure out what comes next. Regardless, my life changes drastically in two months. This is a good thing, and only the slightest bit scary. I can't wait to disappear into the world.

Is he crazy? No. Nope. No. A little bit.

2005-01-17T20:13:00.000-06:00

I'm slightly obsessive compulsive. Which is to say, I have the compulsions, but I've managed to avoid most of the obsessive part. I'm more like "suggestive compulsive"; it just kinda itches when things aren't the way I like them.

Like, when I go grocery shopping with my brother, it bothers me that he doesn't unload the groceries onto the belt properly. The rules are simple, people! You put the heavy stuff in front so it doesn't squish anything. The frozen/cold stuff goes in the middle so you have time to get it all together before it gets to the cashier. The bread and miscellaneous lightweight items go in the back.

But no! He just throws it all up there willy-nilly. Because who cares if the ice cream ends up with the bread? Cold bread, less frozen desserts, who gives a fuck? Cereal and scour pads, bananas and flavored water -- it's unnatural, I say!

Today my brother pointed out just how ridiculous my rules are, because I actually don't care at all how the items are arranged in the cart while I'm shopping. Perhaps it's the accountability of the cashier that causes my need for order, or maybe the switch from Dominick's' groceries to MY groceries.

It really doesn't matter either, because it's nuts ass fucking cold outside and nothin's gonna melt anyway.

But if you're grocery shopping with me, those are the rules. You wanna be cute, test me, put the smoked ham next to the Kashi Good Friends cereal, go ahead. Make my day.

Friday and Friends

2005-01-16T17:33:00.000-06:00

I wake up around eleven, do my morning shit and drive to the library for some writing. I head to the high school at three and coach speech until six, then go back home to grab some stuff. I run a couple errands and head out to Oakbrook for some shoe shopping with Kendra.

No, really, that's how it starts.

Kendra shows up a bit after eight. Of course, my freakishly large feet prevent Nordstrom's from selling me shoes, but I do buy a sweet Ike Behar shirt -- in large tall, baby! We head to the city for Friday Connection, a regular Kendra-and-friends bar trip.

KENDRA's APARTMENT
I arrive to hearty greetings from Jed and Aaron, and I meet Aaron's girlfriend. Aaron's wearing a black sweatsuit (as only he can). We talk about my writing, the source of the smelly feet odor in the apartment (which I could only smell once I sat down -- freakishly tall!) (probably Aaron) (I didn't mean that my writing was the source of the smell, it's the start of a list, see?), how nuts ass fucking cold it is outside, and Jed's desire to climb up the sealed fireplace in the apartment for an album cover picture. Then Kendra's ready and we head out.

We stand on the corner waiting for a cab. Nuts ass fucking cold. Finally; we squeeze in the back with Aaron up front.

"Do you wear seatbelt?" the cabbie asks Aaron.
"Oh, sorry!" Aaron says, buckling up.
"I can't move without it. Saved my life twice."

Two life-threatening accidents, I decide, is pretty good for a cabbie.

We pull up at Delilah's.

DELILAH'S
Kendra and I haven't eaten, so we start looking around for food. It's maybe ten or eleven at this point, the restaurants are closed, but there's a White Hen just down the street. Again, the nuts-ass-fuckingness of the cold is striking.

There are four taxis and one police car parked out front. I get a sub sandwich and water, and Kendra gets a food rectangle of some sort. We eat on the way back to the bar.

Delilah's is pleasant. We're all huddled up just inside the entrance, so it's hard to get a feel for the entire bar. Independent, good alcohol, slightly artsy, not too pretentious. There's some kind of Desirable Alcoholic Beverage kickoff, and we arrive just in time to get the last of the keg. Jed's brother Ben arrives and is promptly handed The Last One.

After that, it's just talkin and drinkin. Not that I'm drinkin.

TALK
Work, music, stuff. Oh, and:

WHO WOULD YOU RATHER DO?
I can only remember (consensus in parenthesis): God vs. Satan (Satan), Woman With No Hands vs. Woman With No Mouth (No Hands), Extremely Hairy Penis vs. Extremely Warty Penis (inconclusive), Guy Who Orgasms In Thirty Seconds vs. Guy Who Squeals Like a Girl at Orgasm (Thirty Seconds), and the one that started it all, [something] vs. Girl With Third Arm Growing Out Of Her Ass (obviously Third Arm -- SHE'S GOT THREE HANDS! Unless the third hand doesn't want to have sex and tries to stop you.)

THE GREEN MILL
Delilah's closes at two, and we take two cabs over to The Green Mill.

The most famous bar in Uptown if not all of Chicago, the Green Mill is one of famous gangster Al Capone's former speakeasies form the Prohibition-era roaring 20's (they still serve a mean Manhattan and martini) it has also been a hangout of Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson. The oldest jazz club in the US (and presumably the world), under Dave Jemilo's care, it remains one of the city's liveliest jazz venues.

Now, I know my uncle Dennis is a jazz pianist in Chicago, but I don't really know anything more than that. So we grab a table, and on a whim I look around ... and there's Dennis. Took about two seconds. Huh.

"Hey, that's my Uncle Dennis," I say. "He probably plays here."

It's really fun to say stuff like that to people who care.

So I go over and talk to him. Apparently he's been doing this for years. He says he doesn't do it as much any more because of the late nights.

Wow. Okay. I head back to the group.

The music is stellar. I'm not big into jazz, so I can't really appreciate the intricacies of the quality, but I know I love what I'm hearing.

Jed periodically yells, "Steve Hashimoto on bass!", which is apparently a tribute to the last time he was there and periodically yelled, "Steve Hashimoto on bass!"

Kendra's brother Shane meets us, and the Drinking and Talking continues, now combined with The Appreciation of Jazz.

(quotes not quite right, but close enough)
Kendra: "Will's uncle plays piano here."
Shane: "Dennis? Yeah, I was gonna ask about that."

Who knew.

Not long after that, the set finishes, they switch in some musicians ... and now Dennis is on piano.

He's got this fedora thing going, which I would never have guessed. Also, mad chops on the piano, and a new cheering section. For the next hour, I pay attention to jazz like I never have before, and somewhere between the riffs and the beat and the parts-of-music-I-don't-have-words-for, I can almost see a potential lifetime I'll never have.

Shane: "It's a pretty good place to hang your hat."

Amen.

SLEEP?
It's about four now, and The Green Mill closes. Two cabs take us back to Kendra's apartment.

It's really dawning on me (heh, almost literally) that I have to get up at six fifteen for a speech meet. I brought toiletries too, but a change of clothes, not so much. I'm wearing a dark blue turtleneck, but also torn jeans, a bandana, and the funk of bars. Not exactly typical speech meet attire.

I lie down sometime after four thirty to sleep. And I'm not tired. I don't drift off until sometime after five.

THE NEXT DAY?
I suck at getting up, except when I haven't slept nearly enough and I'm sleeping somewhere strange and I absolutely must get up, in which case, I rock.

I hit the alarm, get dressed, and I'm out the door in fifteen minutes.

The speech meet is at Warren, which is in Gurnee, which is about forty minutes north, which sucks. But the drive is surprisingly pleasant, I'm feeling pretty good, and I only have to call my brother once for directions.

SPEECH
I walk in at eight desperately needing to shower, shave, and change clothes. This situation will not improve over the next eight hours.

Donna tells me I didn't need to be there until nine. I can't decide if the hour of sleep would be good or bad. We hit the coach's lounge for food, and I'm immediately rewarded with sugary pastry goodness.

Between nine and five, I judge five events: verse, radio, impromptu, and extemp twice. In case you're not familiar, these are generally regarded as the most boring events in speech. But I'm surprisingly un-ill-equipped despite my lack of sleep, even through a couple hard-sucking rounds. It's also nice to talk to a lot of these kids; I don't know them nearly as well as the prior classes. They seem to think I'm good at clubbing, which obviously proves they don't know me. I "raise the roof" several times to indicate the extent of my dancing ability, but they remain undeterred.

FINALLY
I drive home just as The Tired starts to set in. And oh, the sleep.

There's nothing particularly inspiring you should take from this story. No great moments in the history of debauchery, nothing especially funny or sleazy. But if I decide to live in Chicago for any period of time, this night is the beginning of the reason why.