Xmas
After hearing multiple admonishments to help “put Christ back into Christmas”, I’ve decided that I would do my part. From now on, I will be referring to the holiday that I celebrate every December as Xmas. It has nothing to do with mangers or nativities or loose women claiming they got knocked up even though they were virgins, I swear, Joseph, really. It has to do with the pure essence of the season, the thing that puts a warm glow in the heart and the bright glimmer of joy in the eye.
I am, of course, talking about toys.
It’s Just One Day
How many times have we told that to ourselves, just before we completely overindulge in high-calorie, low-health food? It’s one of those things that we tell ourselves to rationalize away the self-sabotaging stories. Others, like “there are no calories at a party” or “no calories if the food comes from someone else’s plate” are meant as little jokes, something everyone can chuckle over since they know it isn’t true, and yet at its core, it’s still rationalization. Read the rest of this entry
Modern-Day Myths
It seems to me that sometime shortly after Man began taking his first tottering, uncertain steps without using his knuckles, he became totally, utterly bored. Reality was so disenchanting and dull. The tribe was unimpressed by the truth of the deer Grog brought back from the hunt: sick from disease and weakened by thirst and fever, the animal fell behind the pack and just sort of laid down on the ground and Grog just hit in the head with the big rock. It’s Truth, but it is also Dull. So one day, Grog decided to embellish the story just a little: now, Grog let fly with a rock just as the majestic deer was in mid-leap across the stream that would forever deny the lucky tribe their tasty venison, and his powerful throw that struck the deer in the head saved them all from starvation.
On the one hand, it’s true: Grog hit a deer in the head with a rock, killed it, and took it back to camp where everyone fed. It’s just the circumstances behind the Truth that are subtly changed. And thus, as Man realized how exciting the world could be, he began to copulate like mad to fill this exciting new world. And along with all of the children who would, millenia later, be genetically honed to become department-store perfume salespeople and middle managers, the Myth was born.
It might have happened something like that. The Truth is undoubtedly more dull and obvious.
Perfectionism
There are a lot of perfectionists in the world. Perhaps you yourself are one of them, or know someone who is. Many famous people are perfectionists, especially artists of all stripes, honing their craft or whatever they are working on, striving for exactly the right sound or feel or look. Take Ralph Ellison. He wrote Invisible Man, a highly successful novel that was judged at one point as the best American novel since World War II (world wars being the demarcation point for literary eras, apparently). That was pretty much it. He published a collection of essays, but he was too much of a perfectionist to ever finish the sequel to his novel. He apparently had over 2000 pages written when he died, but wasn’t close to finishing it. He was even unsatisfied with Invisible Man, a book so remarkable that I didn’t entirely hate every word of it when I was forced to read it in high school (have no fear, I didn’t read all of it, but the parts I read weren’t excruciating like most of the rest, but especially Moby Dick and The Scarlet Letter, oh, and The Red Badge of Courage, god how I hated them). I can picture musicians being the same way, tweaking individual notes and sounds until just the right sound emerges.
What a horrible-sounding way to go through life.
Video Game Review: Dead Rising 2
I mostly review things that have been available for a while. It’s rare for me to hurry out and get The Latest Thing, so when I review something, it’s after the whole marketing blitz. Bob Harper’s DVDs were the rare exception, and that was just kind’ve coincidental timing. I still write the reviews, though, for two reasons. One is that I want to, and I don’t care whether it’s timely or not (next week: the Robocop Movie Review!). The other is this: if you knew you wanted it when the product came out, you bought it already (and it’s always more fun to read a review if you own the product or have seen the movie, since you can either get your opinion reaffirmed or get properly worked up over the review’s idiotic points), and if you didn’t want it you aren’t going to based on a review, OR you were undecided, and this, THIS is my chance to tip you over the edge in one direction or another and help nudge you into the proper choice in the matter. But, yeah, mostly for reason #1. Read the rest of this entry
A Month After Hitting My Weight Goal
It’s been about a month since I hit my weight goal. I say “about” because I can’t remember exactly when I did and am WAY too lazy to actually do, you know, research. I’ll call it a month, since it’s a great way to shorthand it. I think it’s close. Well anyway, it’s been a month since I hit my goal weight. I wondered what would happen when I did. Would things change? Would I go back to old habits?
Turns out, no, everything seems to be the same. That’s it! Thanks for reading. Read the rest of this entry
As Sam Said, Well, I’m Back
NaNoWriMo is over. I lost.
It was a struggle, even at first. I didn’t want it to interfere with my life too much, which is laughable in a way – I want to write 50,000 words in 30 days, but I don’t want to spend the time doing it. Mostly, I didn’t want to interrupt my home life, which I enjoy far too much to spend solitarily plunking away on a laptop. Plus, my laptop doesn’t actually have Office installed, which meant using a bunch of workarounds and additional pain-in-the-ass measures that made it more difficult than it needed to be. Excuses? You bet. I’m chock full of ’em. Read the rest of this entry
Something Brief While I Take A Noveling Break
So far, so good. I’ve hit (or ever-so-slightly exceeded) the 1,667 word daily quota each day. I haven’t been able to build a buffer yet, which isn’t great, but I’ll still take it. The site this year adds some interesting stats, like how many days in a row you’ve made quota, how many words you need each day based on your current output, things like that. It’s funny, because if I write 5,000 words today and 500 tomorrow, that would be well above a two-day quota, but since the site would call that 1 Successful Day and 1 Unsuccessful Day, it makes me want to hit the minimum at least every time. Ahh, the incentives that stats bring.
A couple of things I’ve had on my mind the last few days: Read the rest of this entry
Chapter 8 Excerpt from The Storm of Anticus
From yesterday’s output:
After an interminable score of heartbeats, Beans appeared with Crumb’s arm slung over his shoulders, supporting the man’s weight as they staggered down the short set of stairs from the inn’s door. Crumb had his large, hairy-knuckled hand pressed tightly against his neck as his thick lips moved in what seemed like a never-ending stream of curses. Villios could see the slow ebb of blood seeping through the man’s fingers and was thankful – a pierced artery would be doing much more than just seeping. Read the rest of this entry
Winter in Derenemyn 