Now With More Buds

I haven't blogged in a week, almost exactly.  That's not conspicuous at all, is it?  Don't worry, I might start blogging more frequently again soon.  I start orientation next week.  The pressing concern for the moment is this:

I'm standing in a wedding on Sunday.  I'm excited, but it's in Ohio, and my wife has to work, so that means I'll be apart from my wife for the better part of three days, and as jazzed as I am I'm going to be exhausted, because I know like... three people who are gonna be in the wedding?  I don't know how many Houghtonites will be at the wedding, and that's really the only group of people I know of the bride's, and I know even fewer of the grooms.

Still I'm honored to stand and witness the marriage of two good friends whose distance from me is yet another prod making me yearn to invent teleporters.

Graduating from college seems to have been a subtle shift in anxieties.  Some would say the stakes are higher now than they were, though monetarily I would say no way in heck are they actually.  Except that the high stakes from college have rolled over in the form of student loans looming over my head, demanding to be paid.

But I feel less like there's a single pressing project I need to finish to determine the course of my future, and more like every choice I make throughout every day contributes to the life I'm leading.

It's terrifying, but in the same way as a dull ache is agonizing.

Subtle, and always there, applying pressure.

I'm slowly making my way through The Hunger Games, to the pleasure of my family members who think it is quite good.  I have personal taste qualms about the first person present storytelling, though I think Collins executes it fairly well.  I am most impressed by the wells that go unmentioned in the story, one of things so often overlooked in first person stories.  The narrator is not always a stand-in for the author, and his/her flaws are rarely explicit, since it's hard to be fully conscious of your own failings.  The first person narrator in an active story is never (if the story is well done and the character well-fleshed-out) the unequivocal voice of truth.

Honestly, my personal voice choices have edged towards the third person omniscient, with the narrator having verisimilitude with the author.  It's an old-fashioned preference, but there it is.

At the same time as I wade into the strange coincidental cousin of the film Battle Royale, my wife is finishing up with The Wise Man's Fear, which means I can nerd out with her over a lot of stuff and we equally anticipate the third installment of the Kingkiller Chronicle.  I had some small ambition to review The Name of the Wind myself after reading a particularly aggravating review written by a professional.  I have since procrastinated and haven't done much that could be considered creative in the last week or so.

But I have played Guild Wars 2 like its servers are shutting down.  That's what you do when an MMO releases, right?  Play it eight hours a day for the first week?  That's pretty much what I did.

Now I sit and scoff at my own buffoonery and resist the urge to play the game.  It's hard, okay?  I love that game.  It's a mild obsession, and I'm doing my best to be an adult about it.

It's not going anywhere.

Time marches forward and more cool stuff is on the horizon.  Homestuck continues to be fantastic, a new season of Doctor Who approacheth, The Hobbit comes out this winter, and people have finally stopped harping on the "end of the world" that's supposed to happen before the year's over.  I probably jinxed it by saying that out loud on a blog that gets broadcast to... ten people?  I don't even know who all reads this blog, though you're awesome if you do, whether you agree with most of it or not.

One thing I've noticed about my life now is I don't feel like I'm in an environment where I can say, "All right, now I have to work on this" and have that be accepted.  That's probably just my bogus feelings, but it's true.  I feel like, since I don't have a grade waiting for the work that I do where the value of that grade is a condition of my earning honors that can get me hired better, any work I do is just frivolous head-in-the-clouds creative stuff.  I'm not saying my family doesn't support my art, but...

I need an art space.  A place to sit down that is the place where the ideas and the words are blended in an alchemical concoction meant to be administered to as many individuals as possible.  Okay, that got away from me.

-shrugs-

That's it for now.  Bye guys.

OMGW2!!1!!

So I started blogging daily last year with a blog about how I would probably be talking about Guild Wars 2, and now it is the eve of the headstart launch of the game.  Suffice to say, I probably won't be blogging quite so often as I was before, not that I have been lately anyway.

But seriously, I'm probably going to stop playing any games except this one for a long time.  I'll try to keep people updated about my life, especially since job is happening soon and all that comes with that.

If you're playing Guild Wars 2, I'll see you in game.  Otherwise, I'll see you around.

Peace.

A Silver Carthage

Cook up a narrative
For how we have been selfish
Dash it with spices
A Fancy Car
A Sword of Light

Dance in the ashes
When the words fall apart too soon
Tap on the motes
The scraps of metal
Heaping toward a void where the sky ends

Swim in the river
Running with obliging tears
Mourn what we had
It was already gone
Always belonged to someone

Else

Are we locked in a dance of attrition or is there something
Worse
At work here
A beast
Or even an angel
Whose purpose is less important than its effect

We forgot the fleshy centers for all the shiny bits
And with all that gleaming metal we lost our nerves
The ones that made us tender to the touch of life
We burned
Like Rome or London except no one ever bothered to
Rebuild
So maybe instead it was

A Troy of glinting steel
A necropolis of toys ruled by an angel of fire
Roaring in the night while the city smolders
And here we are, raindancing on the skeletons
Of the finer things we wrung from life

Just look at me wearing only our ashes
Is this what we meant when we swore forever
How I tried to run away when I saw the flames
To some silent haven from the heat

But the tether we made withstood the fire
And I am trapped here in sight of you
Remembering how we laughed because
The world was bright with polished iron

Discover the embers
Hidden under the bookcase
Don't heed the god
Those precious coals
Were once stars

Blow on the starlight
So we can see the world as it is
Stoke the hope-seeds
Prayers of challenge
Maybe this

Is Carthage and not Troy
Someday it will rise again
Never the same as it was
But blooming anyway

Flowers ensconced in the fires of a demon
Still dying
Still growing
Still beautiful

And we will feel it all and watch with tears
Like human beings with souls
With nerves that end at our fingertips
It will hurt like hell never could

Smile like you did
Before we made a junkyard of our hearts
Let it be a shadow
Never the same as it was
But blooming anyway

Somebody's Baby

Let's talk about this song.  The one that follows.  If you were there for Forget and Not Slow Down you'll know the deal.

Somebody’s Baby

Jon Foreman

She yells, “If you were homeless sure as hell you’d be drunk, or high trying to get there, or begging for junk, when the people don’t want you, they just throw you money for beer.”

Her name was November, she went by Autumn or Fall.  It was seven long years since the autumn when all of her nightmares grew fingers and all of her dreams grew a tear.

She’s somebody’s baby, somebody’s baby girl.

She’s somebody’s baby, somebody’s baby girl.

And she’s somebody’s baby still.

She screams, “Well if you’ve never gone it alone well then go ahead you’d better throw the first stone you got one lonely stoner waiting to bring to her knees.”

She dreams about heaven remembering hell.  There’s a nightmare she visits and knows all too well.  Every now and again when she’s sober she brushes her teeth.

She’s somebody’s baby, somebody’s baby girl.

She’s somebody’s baby, somebody’s baby girl.

And she’s somebody’s baby still.

Ah.

Today was her birthday, strangely enough when the cops found her body at the foot of the bluff.  The anonymous caller this morning tipped off the police.  They got her ID from her dental remains, the same fillings in tack the same nicotine stains.  Her birth and her death were both over with no one to grieve.

She’s somebody’s baby, somebody’s baby girl.

She’s somebody’s baby, somebody’s baby girl.

And she’s somebody’s baby still.

She’s somebody’s baby still.

----

I don't have as much to say about this song as I did about the Relient K songs.  It's kind of really depressing, but it has this point that pretty much sums up how I feel about humanity.

It's bad, sad, and pathetic, but we still belong to someone.  Even if you disregard the thought of God, everyone has a mother, whether she was ever in the picture or not.  There's love somewhere.

And it'd be a whole lot better if we showed it to more people who need it.

There.  Nice and concise.  Now to live up to it.

A Few Scattered Thoughts

If I were a troll or a fool I could keep moving down the list of things I hold polarizing opinions about, but I found out a year or so ago that airing all my passionate beliefs is usually only good to make a whole bunch of people mad at me for silly reasons.  So instead of that—actually, not instead, since I had no desire of doing that again in the first place.

Rather, I wanted to talk about sad things.  Maybe I'll save it for tomorrow or some other day that I have more time and energy to discuss it, but I want to talk about Jonathan Foreman's "Somebody's Baby," because I think it says something important about humans and our worth, a worth not squandered by our decisions.

And maybe, why that matters as a philosophical concept.

I wrote a poem this morning after returning from driving my wife to work.  The concept behind it was something like a person who wants to be a hero, but ends up screwing up in the worst way and pretty much literally ruining everything.

Insofar as the speaker in a poem can do anything "literally."

I think "literal" is a problematic concept to deal with using language, given how heavily dependent on symbolism language is.  Our cultural definition of the word "literal" and therefore "literally" emphasizes the connotation that an act or event that "literally" takes place is stripped of most if not all of its symbolic meaning.  The thing itself transpires.  But if I were to tell you, using this data-based pixel medium in an Anglicized Romantic script, that "I literally just punched a beach ball right now," there's sort of this issue where your "right now" doesn't sync with my "right now," and that the transmission of the information "I literally just punched a beach ball right now" does not include the thing itself transpiring, just the idea that that's what happened.  Semantic space is a weird bunch of necessary hogwash we deal with constantly so we can get along being better than beasts.

Just to spite myself and my example, I didn't actually punch the beach ball, even though it is sitting on the floor and I could get up and "literally just punch" it "right now."

A while back (as in last year) I tried writing a poem every day, then just adding lines to a poem every day, and eventually that blew over because I don't have that much poetry in me unless there's a poetry class where my grade relies on me producing lines of verse, whether free or incarcerated.  Every once in a while I have a poem just kind of spill out of me, like this morning, but I don't know whether they're good until I look at them later.  That is what it is.

I've expressed this sentiment before, but I wish I could just spend all my time working on the various stories I want to tell.  It's hard to practice when I'm too busy consuming stories.  Yeah, that's definitely a familiar line of thought.  That apparently still hasn't stopped being a thing I'm working on.

What you've just read is what comes of this blog without direction.  Maybe it was fun, or maybe it was annoying, or maybe you skipped to the end to see if I had any news about something interesting.

Spoilers, there's no news.  Well, actually, I guess there is up there closer to the top of the post.  I... guess you could read this blog post in a non-linear fashion?  Maybe you won't get too lost.

I will now let you go and refrain from ranting about how I feel concerning non-linear storytelling.

It's a complicated mess.

Ciao.

I Just Wanted to Be a Hero

All I wanted
Was someone to say,
"There.  That's a hero.
Look at the people he saved."

All I wanted
Was just
A little glory
To share with my friends.

I never wanted
All of this—
The silence
Wrapping us in;

How the creaking
World-wheels
Grate
Against their splinters,

And some moments
If you're listening
You can hear
The whimpers of the dying.

Sway Ring

Hmm...
This soap box is getting a little creaky...
And...
Sudsy...

Anyway, I've got more stuff on my chest I'd like to slough off.  Maybe a shower would do it better, but hey!  What else is a blog for?  Today, let's talk about swearing.

I know what you're thinking.  "Man, eff that ess!  This is bee ess, and I'm not effing gonna put up with that noise, eff-wad."

Or, you know, not that.

I'll sum up my grievance with swearing about as briefly as I can.  It makes you stupid.

Now, there's an article on cracked out there citing studies that suggest maybe venting your frustration with vehement words can increase your pain tolerance and have other health benefits, but you know what?  That's a $%^#y way to deal with your problems.

Here's how swearing makes you stupid, and makes everyone around you more stupid.

At least in today's society, swear-words are words that are being pared away from their meanings, like skin off a potato.  This is because the words are used outside contexts they were originally intended for.

Like telling people to get their "S together," or saying that you "know your S."  These sorts of uses for a word that's supposed to mean "feces" equate the contents of a person's life with something as strongly negative as our solid waste.  And seriously?  You want to compare your life and that of others to useless waste products?  Constantly?

Dumb.

Or, you know, using "F" in its several forms as nothing more than extra syllables to nominally improve the rhythm of your speech.  Because that's really worth it.

Or asking God to condemn people and things into the fires of hell, when you don't believe that God or hell exist and thus what you've said amounts to a great big pile of vague maliciousness.

So maybe what I mean to say when I say "swearing makes you stupid" is "swearing effectively communicates useless, non-constructive concepts" like senseless anger and ill-will that if you're honest with yourself you probably don't really mean.

And you know what the prevalence of this is doing?  It's setting powerful precedent for stripping things we say of meaning, turning the sprawling and magnificent edifice of language into so much drivel.

Actually, I don't know if I have anything else to say about this.  Say what you mean.

I'll try to do the same.

There.  No more soap box.

So I got a job yesterday.  I am glad of this.  I'll start after I get the background check sorted out.  That means my wife and I both have jobs and we can start earning a good bit of money.

And maybe not stay in my parents' house anymore.  And, you know, start living something that resembles a normal life.

Because to be honest, where I was at this summer was a sort of limbo.  It'll be good to move on.

Peace out.

Taller Ants

I'm just gonna sort of...
climb up on this soap box...
and...

HI GUYS.  Tolerance is dangerous.  Ah—ah—ah!  Hear me out before you string me up by my uncivilized beliefs.  I've got stuff to say.

So let's say you have neighbors, and these neighbors are different than you.  No, they don't have different levels of melanin or denser muscle construction or a condition that leaves them with a height deficit—or rather, if they do have any of these things it doesn't matter for our discussion, because seriously?  They're different because they make different choices with their lifestyle.

Choices you disagree with.

Now there's a couple ways this can go down, depending on whether you care about the choices they're making.  For the purposes of this thought experiment, let's say these folks your neighbors are Meat-Eaters.  Shudder.  Or not shudder.  The experiment's flexible.  Now also for the purpose of this experiment you and your family don't eat meat.

Here's some ways this can be the case.  Your family could have a pretty poor biological disposition towards meat, one that makes it either untenable or merely unpleasant to consume meat, so meat just isn't a thing you do.  Your family could also hold animals of any kind in such high regard that the thought of killing them and stuffing them down your gob leaves you in a case of the sweats.

In the former instance, it's unlikely you would have anything against the choice to eat meat, other than perhaps a lack of the perspective of those who can actually and literally stomach the muscle (and other organs) of beasts.  In the latter instance you have a choice to make.

You can disapprove of your neighbors' Meat-Eating, or you can shrug it away as just a different life choice than yours.  Someone who wants to make things simple would call these the intolerant and tolerant choices, respectively.

And yes, to make it clear, in our culture "tolerance" now refers to whether you disapprove of a life choice you disagree with or just impassively disagree.  If you didn't think that, reanalyze your definition.  It's fine to disagree with that definition of tolerance (and thus intolerance), but just know that—at least as far I as I read the culture—that's what people in a public mean when they're talking about tolerance.

So how is this "tolerance" dangerous?

Our cultural pressure is towards not caring what choices other people make with their lives, even friends and family.  We're not supposed to disapprove of things, except "intolerance."  So the only thing we're really supposed to disapprove of is disapproving of things.

When you don't care about the choices other people are gonna make, you're not going to do anything about it.  When you disapprove, it's entirely possible you'll at least going to say something to them.

But you're not going to go kill them, or cuss them out in their homes, because let's face it kids, that's just unconscionable behavior.  That isn't "intolerance," it's straight-up honest bigotry.

You know what's not bigotry?  Saying, "I think what you're doing is wrong, and I think you should stop."  And if they don't stop, but what they're doing doesn't warrant putting them under house arrest or some such, then you let it go, because that stuff can poison you.

You see, I hate homosexuality.  The lifestyle choice.  The lifestyle itself.  I think it's disgusting and wrong and sinful.  But it's just a different shade of the adulterous lifestyle, which I also hate and think is disgusting and wrong and sinful.  So yeah, there's a couple dozen million people in the US whose lifestyle choices I disapprove of.  And I don't mind saying it.  I also don't mind saying I think what you're doing is wrong, and I think you should stop.

And like other things I disapprove of, it sometimes makes me angry to see people making what I believe are dangerous, harmful mistakes.  But you know what, I'm not gonna kill you.  I'm probably not even going to get in a shouting match with you unless you press the issue with me, because I'd rather not have this get to be a big hairy mess that ruins the things we've got going.

I'm a middle child.  People pleaser and all that.

But okay, so you can get harassed for "intolerance" if you tell someone you think what they're doing is wrong and you think they should stop.  You know what that discourages?  Standing up for causes.

So let's say your neighbors are Meat-Eaters, but the meat they happen to be eating happens to be people.  And you really, really don't like that.  You think it pretty well desecrates the dignity of human beings, and that's just not okay.

But what if our culture says, "Eh, we've got a population surplus anyway."  Remember, this is a thought experiment.  I'm not saying our culture has espoused this unthinkable position, but I am saying that groups of people have decided to approve (or at least look the other way from) terrible things in the past, and it's probably going to happen again.  So culture's like:  "Let them eat their people, since they aren't actually killing anyone, they're just getting hobo meat from the morgue."

And you're still thinking not okay.

What do you do?

I'm gonna put my foot down here and say that cannibalism is never okay.  I've got really good, Christian friends who disagree with me—or at least I think they do.  There is a sort of debate about what happens in extreme conditions.  Now for me, if we're all caught in the wilderness and the only hope for survival is for a person to eat a person, I honestly believe it's better for everyone to die.  That is one quantification of the value I put on human life and the human body.

So in this hypothetical scenario, I'm gonna say it's definitely wrong for your neighbors to be eating people, and they need to stop doing it.  I don't care how old their tradition is or how well-ingrained into their cultural psyche it has become.  You don't eat people.  Stop it.  In fact, I think it's probably something they should be forced to stop doing.

I mean, I'm not going to go kill them in their sleep or cuss them out in their homes, because that's just unconscionable behavior.  But I might organize a group of like-minded people who are horrified by these neighbors' behavior, and we would use proper channels and social pressure to make the neighbors stop eating people.

Is that fair, whether or not we succeed?  Even though these people-eaters might be devastated by what happens—even though it ruins their way of life?  Or is that intolerance, and thus unacceptable?

Now you're probably thinking "there's a world of difference between people-eaters and homosexuals."  Yeah, and killing babies before they're born.  It's a great big world of difference.  Sure.

Not everyone agrees with how much distance there is between adultery and murder.  And if you espouse "tolerance" there isn't much room for you to disapprove of that disagreement.  I hope I've made clear that it isn't right to go campaigning against the rights of people for shelter and food, but I don't believe the pursuit of happiness gives you permission to do everything that makes you happy.

We're sick, humanity.  We like things that break our minds and our spirits.  We self-destruct as a force of habit.  It makes us "happy."  Especially when we don't know a better happiness.

I think the pursuit of happiness is a little more about the search, about weighing what is good and what is bad, and a little less about doing whatever you first think is good for you.

So yeah, you may not be convinced that tolerance is a dangerous thing to espouse, but that's okay.  I'll let you keep believing in the idea so long as you don't cram it down my throat.  In fact, let's just not cram things down peoples' throats, okay?

Feel free to comment either at the bottom of this post or on The Facebook, so long as you can keep a civil tongue.  Let's disagree, even disapprove, without resorting to maliciousness.

I'm probably gonna soap box about something else again tomorrow, in case this really wasn't your cup of tea.  Don't worry, this isn't gonna go on as long as Forget and Not Slow Down did.  I honestly don't have that much to rant about.

Okay that was a lie.  But I'm still not gonna go on about this kinda stuff too long.

Also, I have a job interview today.  Woo.

-shrugs-

Back?

I am astounded by how a single week away can throw a hitch in your carefully crafted schedule.  And by carefully crafted, I mean teetering on the edge of not actually a schedule.  Now I've got to build up daily blogging and morning runs all over again.

It will be worth it, though.  It was last time.

There's also job-searching to do.  Oh boy.

You know what's on my mind right now (other than super heroes)?  It's the fact that this will be my first fall away from school in about seventeen years.  Do you know how strange that is to me?

So strange.  I don't really have anything else to say.

My friends and I are coming up with superpowers.

There's that.  Good to be back.  By for now, folks.

Tales From Further Off

August 2nd, 2012:

I have had quite a bit of time in the last few days to work on my creative projects without the distraction of the internet, or the need to deal with dishes, trash, or bored little sisters.  It has led to some writing, some drawing, some reading, and admittedly some playing of Game Boy games and copious napping.  Nevertheless, I have had time once again chisel away at the ending to Talas Ke, my first great work of fiction, ten years in the making and filled with the changes a boy makes as he grows into a man.

I have time to make casual observations, especially about my writing style.  For a very long time I could only write from an individual character’s perspective, either because of pride or because I could not stand the tone of my writing when it was not written from the limited third person.  This has shifted since I did much writing of Talas Ke—shifted to the point where I am finding it difficult to write with the same hard-line limited third person perspective that in some ways defines the narrative that is Talas Ke.  I find myself backing away to offer a clearer perspective than one character can offer to the reader, especially now that so much is happening.  To be frank, I feel stymied by that old style, having learned the merits to an omniscient narrator and picked up a stronger love for the old fantasies that used it than ever before.  I have grown as a writer, and it’s a hard line to walk when you have to make choices about how to finish your story.

I could end as Kvothe threatened to begin his tale.  I could say, “They lose one for the sake of the whole, and though peace is claimed, it is a brief and bitter peace.”  Not so succinct as “I loved, lost, trusted, and was betrayed,” but you get the picture.  Neither of these really suits a story spanning hundreds of thousands of words, except as a sort of parody.

I could be stiff and brittle, playing judge to the complex emotions the characters are struggling through.

I could be florid, letting it all flood through the cracks in their masks.

What makes it more difficult is that I fear much will change about the tale when I rewrite it, and I’m conflicted as to whether I should finish the story before I start such major revisions or if I should rework it all from the beginning, and save myself the loss?

Who am I kidding?  There will be a loss, whether I finish this story now or never finish it at all.  It is that kind of story, I am sad to say.  I’m not sure whether I know how to tell a story that isn’t about loss.  Not one I would consider good, anyway.  To lose, to have broken, is to be human.

To hope is also to be human, but a certain sort of human.  A stubborn one, one who breaks and fades but simply will not end.  It is this character that engages me, the broken-but-not-gone, whether the breaking was their own doing or not.  Perhaps especially the ones who broke themselves.

As I have said before, I find that I am my own antagonist.

Aside from that knot of life-threads that is Talas Ke, I’ve also done some work on my Hearthstead comic, which is depressing in its own right.  The subject matter was my choice, if that reveals a particular bent I may have.

I may have said I don’t like stories that end without hope, but I never said my own writing isn’t filled with hardship.

The emotional atmosphere of my drawing is a little more relaxed than all that, when I’m not trying to tell an explicit story through it.  When I’m working on my drawing—techniques, representation, all that—the intensity is a quieter one.  I am silently pressuring myself to improve, to become something better than a scribbling amateur so that I can take more joy in that art than I do now.  

I would say that music brings me the most joy, but even then my drive to improve (both composition and performance) makes me critical and obsessive.

Maybe all these things I’m admitting to reveal that I am an artist, or more likely they reveal that I am a perfectionist who suffers because my passion lies in places that cannot easily be perfected.  Don’t expect every creative person you meet to sound such dark notes about their artistic lives:  I have always believed myself a bit of a freak, and you are perfectly entitled to be an artist who feels vastly more joy in your work than consternation.

Perhaps I should stop listening to this cello quartet play a song called “Oblivion.”  It couldn’t be affecting my mood in the slightest, though.

You may have noticed in all that ranting that I made a reference to The Name of the Wind.  Well, I’m re-reading that book this week while at campmeeting.  On a related note, I probably ought to have brought The Wise Man’s Fear with me as well, since I seem to be plowing through the first Day rather quickly.

If you haven’t read the first two thirds of Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicle, do so.  Unless you despise fantasy (I ask again, why are you still reading my blog?), or have that same sort of qualms that keep you from reading Homestuck, since their content is roughly similar in maturity level (that is, Homestuck has oodles more swearing, and the Kingkiller Chronicle has lots more sex, and both have lots of violent deathiness).  The best part of the storytelling is that much of it is done by the protagonist, in a framed narrative sort of way that makes the story that much more delicious.

And emotive.

Now, I have taken this long break to present you these words, which you are nearly finished reading.  It is time I returned to the task at hand, involving a certain character trying to redeem his entire race before they can [spoiler].

God bless.