12 days of Awesome!

Captains Log: 12/16/2010,

It's a balmy 48 degrees up in this business today. By "this business" I mean the house.

Fire time.. booyah!

I will now boil tea atop the wood stove. After chopping the wood, to make the fire to boil the tea, the feeling of drinking that tea I boiled with my own competence will be tremendous. Not only that but I  will pour my tea into an empty bourbon bottle which gives me all the guilty pleasure of feeling like an alcoholic without the severe entropic side affects.

Now lets get down to business!

So this wonderful literary agent Kathleen Ortiz of the famed Never Ending Page Turner blog and Neo Agent Podcast is having the big bang of all blog contests. A contest of such epic proportions it incited me to get a twitter account.

Now this bloomin onion of all blog contests is not just a single serving of magnificence! Good lord no, that would be paltry and feeble! It is a raging 12 day event of glorious Christmas spirit. Today is the eighth day of awesome so if my maths is correct we done got FO MO days of solid Christmas joy to look forward to!
(Read the following in a Mayor Quimby from the Simpsons voice) So get out there and enter that contest!

Not only that but I have a partial out with Kathleen and I would be extremely giddy to win any sort of face time with Kathleen.

I do believe I hear the tea boiling so I will now go suckle from the teat of my competence.

Today is Gunna Be a Dope Ass Day

We as people, have created language, honed it, built upon it, and rely on it for our existence.
There is no other method of communication that we have.

But today, I see a certain amount of de-evolution in our language, spitting from our mouths and tripping from our fingers. Individual words and monosyllabic expulsions used to describe entire sequences of actions and events.

Fail

Awkward

These are the for runners in the degradation of language and communication.
Why even speak if you're not going to string together a series of descriptive words to form a sentence in order to adequately express your opinion of a situation or occurrence. In my opinion blunt single word, popular catch phrases deter thought and open the door to ignorance. It cripples conversation and permits all those who use them to hide behind blanket statements. It's inarticulate and tantamount to hitting to express emotion and opinion.

This is what happens to my friends when they use these words. They get hit with punches.

If your going to cavemanicaly grunt an opinion without further explanation or any indication of intellectuality for this opinion you're going to get struck with fists.....one to several times. Because if we're going to tear down the keystone cognitive communication that's supported thousands of years of intellectual progression, the once cumulative reason for our entire existence, the reason we call ourselves humans, I want to get some exercise while doing it.      

Like a Blueberry Muffin

To be able to write, to only just write, all you need to know are the words. To teach or to talk about those words you need to know more than that. but to just write, the words are all you need.

It's like baking. To bake you don't need to know that flour is called flour, sugar is called sugar, that blueberries are blue berries, or butter is butter. To talk about baking, or to inform someone how, you need to know what the ingredients are called. But to simply bake all you need know is precisely what those ingredients are. Then you will know how much of each to use, how to combine them together and when to make that blueberry muffin.

To write and nothing else, just know your words and how and when they should be combined to impart what it is you mean say.

Cavemen and Canadians

Two thoughts from the past week.


People always disqualify the Canadians in the scope of current, and historical attempts at world domination.
Meanwhile they are up there making delicious maple syrup and bacon quietly taking over the breakfast taste buds of the world. The most important meal of the day.

I was recently told that penis's are circumcised to prevent medical ailments and not just because it's a hold over from barbaric religious genital mutilation rituals. Yeah, maybe it was medically advisable in the stone age when cavemen weren't hygienically capable enough to properly take care of their own penis's, but we live in America in the 21st century.



 

Cavemen and Canadians

Two thoughts from the past week.


People always disqualify the Canadians in the scope of current, and historical attempts at world domination.
Meanwhile they are up there making delicious maple syrup and bacon quietly taking over the breakfast taste buds of the world. The most important meal of the day.

I was recently told that penis's are circumcised to prevent medical ailments and not just because it's a hold over from barbaric religious genital mutilation rituals. Yeah, maybe it was medically advisable in the stone age when cavemen weren't hygienically capable enough to properly take care of their own penis's, but we live in America in the 21st century.



  

In Memoriam

My brother and I went to see the screening of what was essentially a zero budget indie film last night.
The film was shot in Chicago in 18 days by the writer/director/editor/producer Stephen Cone, of Cone Arts.

The story centers around Johnathan a drifting and somewhat purposeless mid 20's man who is struck by the deaths of two local college students. The couple to their deaths naked from a roof. He sets out on a personal "investigation" to discover how, or why when really it's as obvious and straight forward as the facts in the article he read about it in. During his investigation he meets and becomes involved with the family and friends of the two students and then sets out to recreate the day of their deaths on film with the friends of the dead couple.

The first 30 minutes of the film are slow as it is mostly just Johnathan's aimless, unexciting life, but there are glimpses of things worthwhile to engage you. It could be hints at future intrigue in plot, relationships, character development, or story that keep you watching through this slow period you see bits of promise from all, only none are presenting themselves fully. But as Johnathan begins his haphazard inquiries to the friends and family you slowly begin to see (or feel) there is something more.

While it builds slowly the development does happen and it is done subtly and well. The plot itself is not gripping or really that prominent which is what makes for the slow build. It is all the other elements of character introduction, development, and story that come together to create something worth while.

What is shown is a very realistic taste of a strange personal journey that has no real explanation. This in part is why the plot itself is not gripping but rather the over all introduction and development of characters and relationships is what holds you. This introduction and then further involvement of each new character and the relationships they bring with them and go on to create with existing characters is a joy to watch. By the time the film comes to an end nothing really has become of the central plot. The satisfaction comes from the real and intricately woven connections throughout that continue to build and leave you with the lasting notion that they are still out there building.

The films strength comes from it's directing and writing which really shine during the scenes at the end that show all of the characters together in one location. Here in every cut you see the continuously evolving connections between each character. It is because of the writing that so much is happening all at once in these scenes and the directing that captures it.  

In Memoriam is definitely worth watching and will certainly be something to discuss with any who watch it along with you.

Till next time.

"when the ship runs out of ocean and the vessel runs ashore that's when we'll cry women and men!"

Smoke ten blunts a day it takes the stress away.

I've been stressed lately and I figured this out from getting high.

I don't like to get high often. I only dabble. Being health conscious pot's better then alcohol especially when vaporized. Even so I'll only partake once every 20-40 days. I prefer to get high at night on a Saturday in my own home with a movie to re-watch for a second opinion. I can recover all day Sunday, that's what it's there for.

Last weekend was a high Saturday weekend. I had planned it for several weeks it was to be so. Only it got turned on it's head and nut-kicked right in the sack. I got called away by an unavoidable invitation. Actually it was the cast party for the indie film I'm the lead in. But still I was upset.

I rearranged things.

High Sunday Afternoon. Never done this before. Not in the daytime.

But here's the thing. You shouldn't get high if you've got things you plan on doing. No, not because you won't accomplish them. But because that's not what Mary Jane is for. I scheduled out three hours of my day. I would inhale the vaporizer, run downstairs and make lunch. Then run back upstairs to take another hit, run back and eat lunch while watching weeds. Finish lunch and put the vaporizer away and run back down and finish weeds. It was all focused around weed and food. I wanted to enjoy the shit out of that food.

I have split timer. You can set one to count up and one to count down from a time you decide. The one that counts up is useless if you're high it just keeps counting up, you'll forget and just have to set the down timer to go off and remind you of the up timer. Only now you've forgotten what your mental timer is on the up timer. Was it 25 mins or 35? How long has it been since the down timer went off. YOU ARE FUCKED.

So this is how I passed my three hours of high time on a Sunday afternoon. Dashing between the food the weed and the timer. Reseting clocks timing my eating timing my streamed episode of weeds because of the interruptions from the timer (I couldn't just base the time off of the show's length). Timing the amount of time spent upstairs with the vaporizer and timing how much time I had left to actually be high, relax, and enjoy myself.

This is no way to be high. This is no way to live. Only it's how I've been living. The timer help me remember my schedule only serves to highlight the way I spend live my everyday life. I've been filling every moment of each day with an activity that has become a task.

Wake up, go to gym, shower, breakfast, Check personal email during Bfast time and respond, check blogs currently following, write comments on new posts, Work, work, lunch, work, work.....WORK GOD DAMN IT GET YOUR WORK DONE, Second workout, eat recovery meal while More blog checking, query updating, email responding, Edit, write, write, edit, something productive do something creatively productive to further your ambitions, do it, do it, DO IT!............. Dinner, while reading book, or episode of something good, something I can learn from something that will not pollute my brain. Dexter, weeds, californication, trueblood, breaking bad, nip/tuck.....DONE!. Shower, sleep.








DO IT AGAIN,



Catch yah on the flip side,

"and I am not the only boxer who's much to scared to write"        
 

And it Starts Like This

I've been carrying a piece of advice with me for a while that I'd like to share today. Before dispensing that advice it's only fair I tell you both how I treat advice and how I came by this particular piece.

People have given me plenty of advice, information, and suggestions that would be beneficial to live by. I don't, they bead for a moment and roll like falling water. Only occasionally will I catch one in my mouth taste, swallow, and absorb. This is usually because the idea or concept has already been scrambling through my mind in the first place, half articulated in broken thoughts.When I hear it summarized I swallow because I like the taste of confluence.

Like I've said though it would be in my favor to live by more of the advice I've received and I don't.Maybe it's because I'm still young and have to live the negative side of the concept before I can retain it. As I continue to learn through experience maybe I'll gain enough to know I should swallow a good piece of advice when I taste it. That is probably what wisdom is. The ability to differentiate between what is worth listening to and what is not.

The advice I'm thinking about today comes from an eighty year old Trumpet player. I used to work with him as a day job maintaining the 40 acre property of his old stone farmhouse in the backwoods of Pennsylvania. Frank grew up in Chicago the seedy parts during the 40's and 50's the seedy times as the son of a Czechoslovakian immigrant. He played the Trumpet and was doing night gigs with the big bands of clubs and dance halls at 14 to help support himself and his father. Over the years he's played for the Dallas, Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia symphonies and preformed a standing ovation earning solo at Carnegie hall.

One day while sweating our way through replacing a row of fence posts there began a struggle. To replace a rotted and wobbling post you must first pull it out. Or break it off from where it's rotted in the ground and dig that "Son of a Bitch! BALLS!" out. It's usually a struggle and the previous outburst is what Frank projected when the fifth post that day snapped. Settling back against the wagon we used for carting our tools Frank caught his breath.

"You know Alex?" He said to me in his gravely voice that always reminds me of Louis Armstrong singing "What a Wonderful World."
"My father always used to say to me that cursing is just a lack of vocabulary."

I count Frank a wise man. I think that even if we don't always follow the advice we've received, there is value in remembering it. Frank told me this over five years ago and his father told him over forty. While both of us don't always adhere to the lesson it is certainly useful to remember.

Especially for a writer.  


Until next time,

Balls

PS.

Here is an article on Frank imparting some wisdom during a seminar on Tonguing and Articulation. (Trumpet stuff.) Midway through the second paragraph is a classic Frank moment.