there are always posts unwritten

Not much blogging in the past week because not much is really going on. I’m working through the first draft a The Brilliant Beacon! story, one involving radio dramas in the 1940s. At the store, we’re gearing up for the release of Modern Warfare 2, which I desperately want to play but have no money to buy because I’m accumulating a massive credit card deficit applying to graduate schools. So far I’ve applied (at least in online form) to five of my planned eight schools. The two stories I’m using for my writing sample are in pretty good shape, but my personal statement is all over the place.

Also, I do eventually want to write a post about my experience watching Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door movie, which is one of the singular most disturbing movies I’ve ever seen, even though it was not nearly as disturbing as the novel of the same name. Also been watching the second season of Castle, which continues to be a really fun show. And then there’s also the potential to talk about the games I’ve been playing: how Uncharted 2 was the best-told video game story I’ve ever played, how Brutal Legend misses a few opportunities, and how Borderlands became a serious time sink that I had to stop playing because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop if I kept going. And also how much I want to play Modern Warfare 2 partially because of an alleged scene in which you play as members of a terrorist organization. I have a deep and abiding love for narrative innovation in games, and I’d love to see what happens when the player is forced to play as a character who, to progress though the game, is required to do things that the player may not actually want to do. It all goes back to what I thought was so terrific about the latter levels of Bioshock. It seems that games are finally starting to play with the idea that they are in fact a game through which players must progress to reach the goal of completing the game. More of this after I finally get to play the game.

Also, there’s a post or two in my current reading of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, a book that I can’t yet decide whether I like or not. Nonetheless, it had gotten me thinking more carefully about the idea of death and the afterlife, and also about the use of terrible similes to affect literary-ness. That could potentially lead into an enumeration of all the things that I do not want to do in my graduate school fiction. Which could lead into my thoughts on Stephen King’s really excellent definition of literary fiction vs. popular fiction (extraordinary people in ordinary circumstances vs. ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances)

But, for now, it’s early for a Friday evening, but I have to open my store tomorrow, and I’m kind of tired. So this tease is all the blogging I’ll be doing. Not much to wait for after a week of silence, I know, but that’s how it goes. Consider this a preview of possible coming attractions.

And, yea, I realize the first sentence of this said that there wasn’t much going on. But it never seems like a lot until you list it all out like this. So, in the meantime, go read/watch/play something good.

Halloweak, is more like

Somewhere along the line, Halloween got sucky. I loved it as a kid, dressing up like Batman, going to school in disguise, being someone else. It was a period of encouraged imagination, and, even more, people gave you candy for it. It’s like everything a kid could want all rolled into a single day.

Now it just depresses me. I can appreciate the desire to laugh at what scares us, but Halloween to me has just become absurd, a mockery of fear rather than a veneration. Plus, some women feel the need to dress, frankly, like naive strippers. Maybe there’s something wrong with my Y chromosome, but when I see women dressed like that in real life I feel saddened and offput rather than hot and bothered. Yes, ma’am, I see that your boobs are hanging out and you’ve got high heels that reach to the moon. How’s that self esteem thing going for you?

But, it’s only one day. There were a ton of cute kids waddling around the mall tonight, so the joy of seeing them having fun and being kids definitely offset my jaded attitude toward the holiday. I wish sometimes that I could feel that way about it again, but that ship left the harbor long ago, and part of growing up, I think, is remembering it fondly but not wishing to go back to it.

Happy November, The Internet.

Paranormal Activity

It took some doing, some marshaling of courage, but I finally saw Paranormal Activity today. I love the idea of horror, but just because I love and respect a genre does not mean I’m not affected by that genre. I still get creeped out, and, hyperbolic reviews aside, I had heard from people I trust that this movie was genuinely terrifying. And, yea, it was.

Horror, especially film horror, is a genre that is freighted with a ton of cliche. I mostly don’t watch comtemporary horror movies because they have a tendency to fetishize and conflate sexuality and violence–the most egregious offender of this was the first Hostel movie, which I loathed unreservedly. Horror is a film genre in which we expect cheap jump scares, loads of boobs, and very little actual terror.

Paranormal Activity is a film very much in the vein of The Blair Witch Project. Simply, the film is a reconstruction of alleged tapes left behind by a San Diego couple after documenting an apparent haunting in their house. Micah, the boyfriend, is mostly behind the camera, framing the action, with his girlfriend, Katie, on screen for most of the picture Part of the reason the movie is so effective in its conveyance of a sense of terror is this immediate narrative perspective. There is no degree of disconnect from the narrative and the characters–because the movie is being filmed by one of the film’s characters, we are never taken out of the world by artful camera work or manipulative editing. Instead, we are simply there with characters as these events happen. Shots go on longer than expected (which ratchets up the tension), the action is often out of frame (included the movie’s single sex scene, which we never see, instead taking place in the lost time between cuts), and sometimes Micah actually misses things because he has to quickly grab the camera when things start to happen. It’s a very naturalistic form of storytelling, and it’s perfectly suited to the horror genre.

In much the same way as a video game conveys horror, this movie literally makes the viewer a part of the immediate action at hand. It’s fantastic.

The movie is cut into clear demarcations of day and night, the former serving as times of reprieve from the tense, silent events of the night shots. Eventually, even this certainty is violated. Despite of its naturalistic filming, the movie does follow an escalating plot arch, with simple, almost benign events occurring in the film’s first half. After that, it’s a pretty amazing example of tension-building.

After a few years of half-hearted Saw films and flat-out insulting Hostel movies, the financial and critical success of Paranormal Activity signals to me that both film intellectuals and the general movie-going public have grown tired of the gratuitious gore and context-less sex. Instead, this movie, like District 9 before it, proves that something genuinely interesting can come from a genre with a shoe-string budget and a clear creative vision, and, most importantly, that people will go see it.

Paranormal Activity did more with $11,000 than any of the Saw movies did with millions.

See it. Support good horror.

space between selves

I recognized the guy working at the smoothie place today. Last time I’d seen him, I was in high school, and he was the bass player in a Rochester punk band that eventually achieved a modest level of success. The band changed their name to something dumb, signed with a major label, released one album, had a single appear in a Madden game, and then, by all accounts, sort of imploded. I remember that guy from when I used to see the band play, before all of that other stuff started. Back then, he had seemed somehow large and important, a guy who had taken the dream that so many kids at that age have and was actually doing it. I wanted to be him, I remember.

I thought when I saw him that he would be sullen, or angry, taking this new job as a smoothie maker as a step down, but he was very polite, smiled as we talked a little bit; I didn’t tell him that I recognized him, and that was partially because, even though I knew who he was, I didn’t. He seemed lighter, happier. He had a lot of tattoos, but most of them were covered by the long sleeve shirt he wore. I often wonder what it would be like to get tattooed so young, and to have to live with their permanence after the time in your life in which they seemed absolutely necessary had passed. I don’t know if he was trying to cover them up, or if the long sleeve shirt was just his way of dealing with the ink.

Like perhaps he didn’t resent that former self, that maybe he was instead carrying those marks with some kind of pride, as if he used them as a way to measure the growing space between who he was and who he is.

We all different ways of demarcating the space between selves. I look at pictures of myself from high school and wonder who that person was and what he would think of the person typing this right now. Because it’s so easy to look back at our past iterations and he embarrassed or ashamed of how we looked, what we did, or what we thought, but those old selves are indispensable because they are lower rungs on the ladder leading us to where we’re going.

The next time I feel embarrassed about my former selves, I’m going to try to think of that guy, carrying his old, irresponsible ink with him with a smile, happy for who he is just then, relishing before because it got him to today.

going

It’s so late it’s almost early, and sleep is leaning against the backs of my eyes. I’ve been listening to good music and playing guitar for the past hour, and I feel very clear and very certain, and I want to get it down. Because so little right now is certain, and, actually, it’s better off that way. Because knowing right now where I’ll be in a year would be like turning to the middle of a book you haven’t opened before.

I have a place I want to be. I don’t know where it is, but I’m working to get there. The work is not hard work, but it is work that’s hard to do. In the process of trying to convince a school that they want me there to do the work that I can do, I reinforce for myself the reasons that I want to do those things. By making a personal statement, by working on my writing samples, I’m not putting my goals on paper, rather I’m clarifying them in my mind, so the act of writing the statement is actually a formation of goals and desires. I want to write my stories, I want to teach eager students, I want to spend my life around people and books and good stories wherever I find them. I want to live with the woman I’m apart from now, I want to share something special because we all only get one go around and where I’m at is not where I want to stay.

There are things to be done, and sometimes it’s the things we want most that we try to want the least, because it’s always easier to do nothing. To do nothing requires nothing of us but out acquiescence. To do something different, to do what we want, requires from us courage and effort, and neither of those come naturally to anyone.

This a moment in which I understand that the only way to get to where I want to be is to put one foot before the next and go there.

vivid images of the worst possible thing

I’ve always been overly cautious and prone to worrying. I’m exponentially worrisome. The terrible thing about being a vivid worrier is that, even if the thing I’m worried about never actually happens, for the moments in which I’m worrying about, it does. I feel the emotions and think the thoughts I would if things had actually come to pass.

Case in point, this afternoon I rushed out of my house and drove to work. Ten miles away, I was suddenly struck my the fact that I couldn’t remember if I had turned off the space heater I run in my room. It was something that I always did without thinking, an automatic action. But I couldn’t remember if I had. It was too late for me to turn back and double check, and the entire rest of the drive I had these vivid images of the heater sparking, flames leaping up from the carpet, first little things without real direction, but, with no one home to check them, they grew into big hungry things that bit at the walls. I saw my house in flames, knew with a terrible certainty that that was going to happen. I called my step dad and told him that I couldn’t remember if I’d turned the thing off, and, in his usual nonchalant way, he said it would probably be okay. Probably okay.

I was not becalmed. I called my mother just before starting for the day and asked her if she was going home right after work. When she said she was, I told her about it. She also reassured me that it would be fine, that the things were designed to not start on fire.

And even though I was sure that she was right, that, if I even had left the thing plugged in, it likely would not started a fire. Still, I waited for some sort of message or confirmation. Sat through dinner with my phone on the counter. Even though I knew that it would all turn out to be nothing, I could not help but imagine my enormous bookcase reduced to cinders, a big black-charred hole in the roof, the bones of the interior beams showing through. I saw my dogs as black husks of ash in kennels still red with heat. I thought of all of my writing, all of my work, in the house, pages burning, hard drives melting.

And how selfish was that? In my terrible imaginings, and the concern that hit me lowest was what I would lose in the fire. It felt terrible, that compounded guilt.

For that moment, the weight of the deed was on my conscious. I thought about where we’d stay, how’d we live, if I would still have to go to work the next day. In my head, all of this had already happened. We had lost everything and it was my fault. Entirely my fault.

Later tonight, my mom called the store and said that not only was the house still standing, but the space heater in my room was unplugged. She then dropped an NCIS reference on me, saying, “Be like Gibbs and trust your gut.”

But it’s hard to trust your gut, what you know is right, when your head keeps conjuring all these vivid images of the worst possible thing.

I was born on a tuesday

Apropos of nothing, the guy comes over to where we sit at the bar.

“‘Scuse me guys, but this guy does a great bar trick.” He motions to another man, who stands aloof, his attention elsewhere. This friend is a slightly vacant looking man, eyes never fixing on you when he talks, always seeming to look at something just beyond you, blinking a lot.

“You tell him your birthday,” the first guy says, “and he can tell you the day you were born. He’s got the calendar cycles memorized.” He spins his fingers around to suggest a cycle.

A few of us try it, and, sure enough, after thinking for a moment, eyes to the ceiling, he offers the correct day. And then he rattles off when our respective next Saturday birthdays will be, other bits of calendaric trivia. The first guy, who has proffered his friend for our amusement, is soaking up the praise. The calendar man himself merely says, “Oh, thank you for the compliment,” when we share our amazement at his unique talent.

I think he was probably mildly autistic, but what I kept thinking about his slightly drunk friend, who presented him to us in the way that a ringmaster might present a performer, or a freak. Step right up, kiddies, be amazed by the Amazing Mr. Mental.

But the date guesser didn’t seem to feel used or even inconvenienced. The whole thing had the feeling of something, if not rehearsed, then at least performed over and over, in bar after bar.

“He just got back from Russia,” the ringmaster says. “Before that, he was in Europe, New Zealand, China.”

Before they left, he told me that my birthday would be a Friday, and that my next Saturday birthday would be next year. He said it will total confidence, as if he was telling me that apples are usually red and that the sun is the color of fire.

I checked after he left. About that last bit of prediction, he was actually completely wrong. Yet he had said it with the same confidence as his totally correct statements, as if, to him, there was no difference between the true and the not.

how to build a snow man

First, it has to be the right snow. Big-flake, Bing Crosby, stick to the ground snow that won’t let you run your fingers through it, snow that muffles and crunches when your foot comes down. It can still be snowing, or you can wait until it stops; your call. If the snow came unexpectedly, there will still be the leavings of the lawn’s last mowing beneath it. You take a handful of the stuff, compact it into the shape of the inside of your first, and then you roll it, as if rolling out a carpet, along the ground.

Eventually you will be rolling up big ribbons of snow, leaving the stark, perplexed grass behind. There will be grass stuck in the snow, but don’t worry. This is October and there will be more snow. What you’re doing now is reminding your yard what it means to board snow people. For now, just keep rolling. The snow will come up like laying down sod in reverse, a snow burrito. Whenever you feel like it, turn the snow roll a quarter turn and start to roll again, to even things out. Whenever it’s big enough, roll it somewhere with good lighting, a place of prominence, because your man is going to be standing there at least until November, dying sooner only if some punk kid happens along with delusions of martial art. When it’s in place, you can start your second ball, the torso ball. This one need not be as big, unless you’re making a misshapen man for fun.

Don’t worry if the snow ball you’re rolling cracks and falls to pieces. You’ll be able to see the layers of the thing, like a broken jawbreaker, seeing the ribbons of grass spiraling through the cutaway snow like the sparkling layers of a geode opened by a skilled lapidary.

It doesn’t matter what you’re making because anything is more than what you had before.

You can stack as many parts as you like, vertical for humanoids, horizontal for reptiles, and do not be shy about fashioning grotesque, exaggerated sex organs for your creations; you are not the first to do this and you will not be the last. Men have been fashioning all kinds of things into penises since time immemorial, so feel free to indulge these inner urges. Breasts are fine too, but women in your group will be critical of them, noting that they are likely lop-sided and disproportionate. Pebbles or acorns can be added for nipples, if you like.

You can use anything handy for facial features and accessories. Carrots are popular for noses, but you can also use doorknobs, extra shoes, old boxing gloves. Buckets should only ever be used as hats; never as a brassiere. Coal is alright to use for eyes, but who has coal handy anymore? Apples work, as will most citrus, but you will have a flock of crows violating your creation in a few days, so be warned. If you’re making a snow scarecrow, this will add to the effect.

Twigs and sticks can serve as appendages, but they aren’t very original. Mats of grass can, of course, he fashioned into rudimentary hair pieces, and as long as your snow women have none on their faces or under their arms, no one driving by will be terribly offended.

Give your snowman an old coat to keep him warm and giggle at the irony.

The important thing is to have the guy smile. Bananas will do for this, as will a simple curvilinear line of stones, or a loop of red licorice if you’re really creative. He won’t be around for long (but who of us really is?) and it’s the least you can to do make his brief stay pleasant.

concerning boobies

The NFL is recognizing Breast Cancer Awareness month by dappling in bits of pink all over stadiums and player uniforms. Aaron Rodgers wore a pink sweatband tonight, and Brett Favre wore pink shoes. It’s an interesting item of consideration. Football is typically thought of as the ultimate man’s sport (well, at least here, in a country that’s never heard of rugby), where big manful guys rage around on a full-contact chessboard. Seeing them in pink is, well, it’s funny.

But why breast cancer specifically? And is there a correlation between the advertisements one could see at the Metrodome tonight touting the newly released Cheerleader Swimsuit Calendar? I don’t want to claim that the NFL is insensitive, but why breast cancer and not, I dunno, brain cancer, or leukemia? Well, because American culture loves boobies, holds them in esteem over all other female body parts, and, perhaps, the thought of the mammaries riddled with cancer is fearsome enough for the male population that it warrants these superficial displays of concern. Because no guy ever fantasized about a woman with really, really good bone marrow.

It just seems incongruous that an organization that so objectifies and exploits the female form (gotta sell those swimsuit calendars, so, bounce titties, bounce) would so boldly and with no self-awareness promote breast health. As if there’s anything healthy about the kinds of breasts that perhaps the men who watch NFL football so rabidly would prefer. Nonetheless, big, mountainous boobies filled with saline are great, but, never, no, never, we never want our boobies filled with cancer.

Here at least, fourth grade feminine wisdom hold true: Boys are weird.

an estuary of seasons

Autumn finally showed up, making her bold, drizzly proclamation, and today she and summer had a tussle, one final argument before the changing of the guard. The storm started in the morning and went all day, dropping rain in sprinkles and heavy sheets, lightning in scattered flashes, thunder like rupturing quarries of invisible stone. The chill set in and held on through the rain, reminding us at once of the summer that has been spent, this storm the brisk final note of that warm sonata, and the winter that’s waiting, just ahead, like a bandit around the pass, chilly pistol in hand, chamber loaded, hammer back, patient.