Nothing like having a moderately annoying song from your wife's favorite movie and one of your favorite songs of all time stuck in your head simultaneously to get you to realize how random a human brain can be.

Not to say this is a new or recent or particularly shocking revelation.
If I recorded fifteen seconds of the stuff that comes out of my mouth when I'm alone and bored, it would probably be turned into a superweapon for its sheer ability to force individuals to shoot themselves just to release the blood pressure in the brain.

Lately I keep hearing people complain about how this healthcare bill will turn America into a tyrannical state, a socialist state, a communist state, a living hell....etc etc etc.

Just amazes me how ignorant some people can be.
Now I'm not saying I think the healthcare plan is a gift from God, nor am I saying it was culled with a rusty fork soaked in fetus blood through a mound of satan's excrement.
I'm simply saying that "we the people" ALWAYS have a tendency to blow things the government does out of proportion.
...at least, those of "we the people" who actually follow politics.

I'm happy to say I am not among them, mainly because I USED to be a disciple of conservativism to an obscene degree, then a hardcore liberal....and at no point in that time could I ever be HAPPY with anything the government did.
My zeal for keeping "them" out of power or making sure "they" weren't going to "get" me kept me from enjoying so much of life.
So, I keep to my own nest, worrying and concentrating only on what is in my direct control.

But I digress.
Anyone saying the government is out to control every aspect of life needs to brush up on their history.
Never in the 20th or 21st century has the U.S. government reached the depths of corruption and powermongering it reached in 1798, when the Federalist-controlled Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Congress was fighting an undeclared naval war with France (sounds kinda like the war on terror, but at least they were fighting a COUNTRY), and many Republican-Democratic politicians and civilians were protesting the policies and actions of Congress and president John Adams.
SO, the Federalist Congress passed the Acts, to ensure that no word, spoken or written, could be projected criticizing the government.

So before you scream and cry that the government is out to get you (especially anyone who was cheering that the government was "of God" under Bush), READ YOUR FREAKING HISTORY.

Blogging all the way...

And now, some of my favorite quotes from P.C. Cast's Divine by Mistake:

“Cliches are the bane of educated mankind.”

“I’m Freud’s wet dream.”

And my all-time, use-whenever-not-in-familial-company quote:

“Don’t fuck with an English major.
They keep lots of useless information trapped in their heads.
Once in awhile they let some of it out and it bites you square on the ass.”

So yeah...go out and get Divine by Mistake by P.C. Cast NOWWWWW!!!

"Let's kick this pig!"

It's a weird feeling to have random scenes from Down Periscope flashing through your mind, along with random lyrics from Maroon 5, while swearing up and down the haze of ten thousand perfumes, all of them overpriced and horrible, exuded by the "lady" who just walked by smells like barbecued pulled pork.


Two days of bondage remaining, before I get the first Christmas Break in 3 years in which I actually get to SLEEP IN!!!

Bet the wife will keep me busy, though. Gonna make me work for that new self-cleaning electric razor.
Bye bye blades! Have one left, and it's gotta last till Christmas!
Meh. I'll probably shave with it one last time, then chunk it, and just use my old electric till then...I'll just look like a mountain man for awhile.

Studying Government while reshelving Theology

Curious as to the results of my mother-in-law's memorial service.
Maybe a lit candle will bring joy and fond rememberance.
Or maybe pictures will bring a resurgence of depression.



I think to live in fear is not life.

Doesn't even matter WHAT you're fearing.
Hell,
Death,
Taxes,
Bethany PD....

Doesn't matter.
Spending even a moment fearing something which is not directly in front of you preparing to harm you is a waste of time, energy, emotion, sanity...plus it screws up the sex life.

"Mr. Sonar! Play me a dirge."

Just four more days of Fall '09.

I took advantage of RateMyProfessors.com to check up on next semester's profs, and the results are in.

Health professor: "OMG LOVE HER!"
Spanish professor: "Best Spanish teacher at UCO!"
Creative Writing: "Fun guy! My favorite prof!"
Marriage: "She gives you a study guide that only comprises half the exam. She expects you to know statistics that the average person needs to be told."

WTH? I was hoping BEING MARRIED in "Marriage" class would guarantee me at least a B!
Oh well. Maybe flashing the bling-o-matrimony'll still net positive results.

Trying to read Shakespeare, write about P.C. Cast, and memorize all 44 presidents IN ORDER makes blind puppies cry.

Enjoying a Sunday evening...the last of the semester.
Cranking out pages of writing to cram every last second with stress and proper citation format.

Just finished FINALLY finding my inspiration and motivation for my Craft Essay.

One thing I love about P.C. Cast, at least in the Divine series (Divine by Mistake, Divine by Choice, Divine by Blood) is that she not only doesn't use the stereotypical "fantasy language" (archaic diction and syntax, etc.), she actually makes FUN of it.

Her heroine Shannon, who narrates the first two books, is an Okie English teacher (much like Ms. Cast), and thus throws around language like a chew toy, in a style of speech and writ to make a college Composition professor turn into a pillar of salt.

It's hard to describe to people who haven't read it why Divine by Mistake is one of my favorite novels of all time.
I grew up saturated with fantasy.
One of the first books my dad read to me was Tolkien's The Hobbit, and later I became addicted to Middle-Earth, as well as Lewis' Narnia and adventures of Dr. Ransom.
And as amazing as all that is, it maintains a certain British quality in its wording, not simply because of the authors' origins, but because they wish to convey a certain style of speech and narration.

Ms. Cast's writing throws all fantastical pretense out the window, throwing Okie slang and an amazing mythical world in a blender and hitting Liquefy.
What results probably won't turn any heads in the uppity, prudish world of "literary criticism," but it definitely has a permanent reserved parking space on my shelf.

Parents

Seems like the only parents who take their kids in public fit under one of two categories:

Chaos:
-apathetic
-more focused on what they're (the parents) doing instead of what the kids are doing
-tune out kids' screaming/crying/tantrums/running into other people's way.
These annoy the crap out of everyone in the vicinity, more concerned with MY business and what I'M doing than on what the kids are getting into.


Abuse:
-slaps the child who is screaming or crying
-grabs/wrenches limbs

-screams at the child, not for acting up or disobeying, but for embarassing the parent

These should be fined or jailed, if only for having the AUDACITY to do this kind of thing IN PUBLIC.

Essentially, they have failed as parents because they have failed at PRIORITIZING.

Once you have kids, your dream of becoming the next Kurt Cobain is OUT THE FREAKING WINDOW.

If you have fun, you have to plan it so either your kids are having fun WITH YOU, or someone else is taking care of them FOR you.

You can't just go off and do something you want to do, because YOU are no longer the most important person in YOUR life.

Older people complain about kids going to hell in a handbasket these days.

But it's not the kids' fault.

It's the PARENTS...you know, the OLDER PEOPLE'S KIDS...who have screwed up.

I think before our respected senior citizens get their Depends in a wad, they should consider whose fault it really is, because more than anyone else it is THEIR kids, and THEY had arguably more influence on the people their kids turned out to be than anyone.

Wifey wants to learn BJJ...

...and I think it's hott!

I got her hooked on MMA a few years ago via The Ultimate Fighter tv show, and since then it's been AWESOME, especially as she's picked favorite fighters and (more sexily) been able to call out grappling and striking techniques in the midst of a fight.

Since I got her hooked, we've had some freelance grappling sparring, especially since she has such awesome leg strength and flexibility from years on a swim team.

Thus...I avoid the legs in those situations.
It's freaking amazing to hear "Oh crap, you're in side control," "you will NOT get that kimura!" etc.

Plus it's good exercise, if we could spar regularly.

Recently, we watched a mini-marathon of The Discovery Channel's series Fight Quest, which is hosted by a professional MMA fighter and an Iraq war vet, who travel the globe learning and fighting with various martial arts after training with masters.

Lauren and I knew many of the names in the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu episode, since the Gracie family was responsible for the initial creation of what became the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
However, watching MMA (which generally doesn't allow the use of gi's) did not prepare us for the wide variety of joint locks and choke holds which BJJ employs, all of which are at least useful in a real fighting environment.

Rickson (pronounced HICK-son) Gracie came to the U.S. in the early 90's to promote the martial art his grandfather Helio created from a combination of Japanese jiu-jitsu, judo, and aikido.
Rickson would travel around putting up $10,000 that he could beat anyone within a minute.
His proposal drew all manner of "tough guys," including Iowa champion wrestler and alley brawler Pat Miletich (who later would become one of the first UFC champions..after picking up BJJ of course).
Rickson never lost a single dime in any of his challenges, and used the opportunity, once his opponents regained consciousness, to give basic instruction in this new martial art.

And now my wife wants to learn it, and I'm excited as all hell.
We're already interested in it.
Doing it as a couple means we have no end of conversation material.
We're both badly overweight, so this is a shot at getting in shape AND learning a martial art AND having a self-defense system available in case we ever aren't packing heat.

Just wish it wasn't so fucking expensive, aside from books and online videos.

A Literary out-of-body experience

Recently had a first for me.

I'd been working on my novel, and had spent hours redesigning her, as Joseph Campbell calls it, "special weapon," trying to redesign the scenario by which she comes by it, and by which she first uses it.

I put so much effort into it, I felt like I was THERE in the alley, hearing/seeing bullets, seeing her heroics.
Moreso than usual.

To the point that later, when reading a bit of Dragonquest before American Government started, a tragic moment in the story, which usually would have made me a LITTLE unhappy for the characters, almost brought me to TEARS.

It's like I'd so primed my imagination in the act of creation, that diving into someone else's work made me experience it on a deeper level than I ever had.

Makes me wanna figure out how to get myself there more often, not only for my own writings, but so that I can go back and re-read novels that have been collecting dust on my shelf for awhile, and get a vastly deeper experience of them.

Cynicism!!

Today at work, I realized how cynical old people can be.

One of the librarians I work with has a Masters degree in Creative Writing, and another in Library Science (hence his job).

I thought it'd be cool to chat with the guy, especially considering my recent enrollment in UCO's Creative Studies degree program.

To put it mildly, I was wrong.

One of the big concepts being discussed in my current Creative Writing class is that publishing is not the end-all and be-all of writing.
The act of writing has inherent benefits, such as expressing vague emotions in words, recalling experiences, and giving the writer windows into his or her own soul.

Either I was making a bumbling mess of describing this concept to the librarian, OR (more likely) he has become calloused and bitter over time.

Even SAYING "publishing shouldn't be your only goal as a writer" elicited dirty looks and tone of voice that could only be described as haughty.
"Well don't you want people to read what you write?"
...as if I were a moron.

I responded that I'M reader too, and I derive pleasure from reading my own material, even if all I'm doing is marking it up with a red pen until the page resembles a slasher movie set.

I added that if the only person who ever gets to read what I write is my wife, then that is enough.

If I enrich ONE reader through my abilities, then as a writer I have accomplished something great.


I say this still harboring a desire to create literature of such wit and depth that it gains me a small sliver of immortality, even if I turn out to be a literary one-hit-wonder.

HOWEVER, that sliver can wait.

For now, my goal is to write, not to be published.
I've had two poems published already, quite proud of myself for that actually.

But my short stories continue to pour from me as I gain inspiration from a million sources a day, while my novels await my next view into the windows of my characters.

Well now that this piece of crap is up and running...

Sometimes I wonder if fanfiction isn't the most difficult form of literature to produce.

Required of a usually amateur author is matching someone else's style, stepping into THEIR world and trying to prod THEIR characters into doing new things.

Seems a tall order to me.

Of course, when an author or screenwriter has created an entire planet/galaxy/universe or a massive period of time for their hundreds of characters to exist within, writing fanfiction gets easier.

For example, Star Wars.
This is about as big a setting as you can get: a galaxy, off-thatta-way-somewhere.
Using George Lucas' characters within that setting is optional, as the novels which have succeeded the original six movies have given solidity to hundreds of planets.

Holy crap. Let me say that again: hundreds of PLANETS!

Millions of novels have been written merely chronicling events happening on THIS ONE PLANET!

BUT I guess describing the life cycle of a gravel maggot on Tatooine doesn't do much for firing the human spirit.


An example I've recently uncovered are Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern, a series of over thirty novels set on a distant planet called Pern.
Where George Lucas used physical space to separate the parts of his story, Anne McCaffrey spreads her stories over centuries, which is the time it takes for the primary nemesis of the series, a spore ("Thread") which devours all organic matter, to reach Pern via a wandering planet.

In each novel, it has been around 200 years since the last fall of Thread, so that most people treat it as myth up until the first Thread enters the atmosphere.
I find this to be a wonderful way to re-use a conflict, especially because it gives a great insight into the human condition: we never learn.

I've wondered what it would be like if an average citizen (as opposed to one of the heroic dragonriders) were thrown forward in time a la Quantum Leap from one Threadfall to another, as Pernese society gradually rejects the high technology which the original colonists from Earth brought, and adapts to a more feudal lifestyle.