Life is settling down into a rhythm. But it’s a strange rhythm of nothing, with each day bringing a whole lot of not much. No new news on the job hunting front. I have one job that I really want and think that I would be good at, and I’m into the second round interviews for it, so, I hope I hope.

I’ve had a lot of stuff that I’ve wanted to do, and I’ve ended up doing very little of it. My buddy J got back from school and plowed through two excellent full runs of television shows, several books, and totally annihilated Plants vs. Zombies, and I’ve done comparably nothing. Part of it, I think, is that I still feel in limbo. When I was at school, that was it, I knew what I was doing. Now, being out, I’m here, I’m home, but there’s nothing that I’m doing. My entire days are free time, and because of that, I don’t really want to do anything. It’s strange, doesn’t really make sense, and it irritates me because I have the Beacon story sitting there half-finished, waiting for some love, and another story that practically fell into my lap the other day when K and I were scouring the woods behind her house for a missing Beagle named Lucy. It’s just been hard to work up the desire to make that jump from zero to one.

I’m also writing a video game. I’m getting together with a college friend and his software developer buddies to work on a game, with the goal being to put in on the newly renamed Xbox Live Indie Games. It requires a drastically different narrative-building strategy than I’ve ever tried before, and I’m really excited about the potential of it. I’ve been drawing up story concepts and character ideas, along with brainstorming potential themes. It’s a fun process, but I’m worried that I may end up slowing the group down. But I also think that it has the potential to turn into something really cool. Yet another medium in which to write stories. I’ve written a couple novels, a couple short plays, one short screenplay. And now I’m writing a video game. I’m apparently just making my way to the various narrative buffets and finding what I want to put on my plate.

Writing is so weird because it’s what I love most, but most days I’d rather do something else. It’s sick, really.

Been reading some really good stuff, too. The last week or so was spent with Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts, which I came to by way of a link from House of Leaves‘ Amazon page. I’ll try to get a microreview up later this week, but I’ll say that I had much more fun with it than I did with House of Leaves. The Raw Shark Texts was a novel that remembered that it was, in fact, a novel and not some obtuse piece of film criticism. Great fun, with shades of Neil Gaiman and China Mieville sprinkled in there. Is it just me, or do the British seem to do fantastic literature better than Americans?

Next on the list are Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good for You and Stephen King’s The Green Mile (I know, a little late to the party on both).

Currently watching HBO’s 1998 miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, and it reminds me once again how much I love the story of the Apollo program. Apollo 13 was my favorite movie as a kid, and this is like a 12 hour version that covers everything from the early Mercury missions all the way to Apollo 17. Very cool, very well done, with an obscene amount of noteworthy actors.

What else?

Played through inFAMOUS on the Playstation 3 and thought that, while it was fun, the narrative was pretty weak and poorly executed. I also realized that I’m totally done with dichtomous notions of good and evil in video games.

Needed to take a blog breather after the Twilight project, but I plan to update more regularly from now on.

There seems to be a trend emerging.  More often in television we’re finding protagonists that seem to have preternatural awareness of their environments.  I’m thinking specifically of characters like Dr. Gregory House from House.  The trend continues in Dr. Cal Lightman of the new FOX series Lie to Me.  Whereas House’s skills lie in medical diagnosis, Dr. Lightman has extensively studied body language and facial expression, which enables him to very accurately determine the emotion that an individual is feeling, and also if they are being deceptive.  He’s a human lie detector, basically.  The science is certainly interesting, and Tim Roth cuts a mean form on the screen, but can the show hold up over the course of a season?

The first three episodes have thus far served to introduce the Lightman Group (the organization that Dr. Lightman heads), and their function as a resource contracted by government agencies and police departments to assist in solving crimes.

Where my personal interest in the show lies is in the idea that our emotions are readily apparent on our faces, often without our even being aware of it.  In a world that seems more and more predicated on notions of secrecy and deception, that idea is particularly compelling.  In this case, our very biological nature undermines our attempts to conceal information, which is where the central conflicts of the show come from.

In each episode so far, Dr. Lightman and other members of his group have engaged with mysteries, usually a main mystery investigated by Dr. Lightman, and a subordinate mystery often handled by his underlings.

And this is where my one giant concern for this show comes in.

It’s primarily a passive show.  The engine that drives the narrative–Lightman’s ability to accurately read emotions from people’s faces–is a skill that’s limited to only him; we do not share his abilities.  In that sense, we as viewers have little way of discerning for ourselves the actual events of the story and character’s motives.  More often than not, Dr. Lightman’s explanations serve as our only guide–we have to trust that he knows what he’s doing, and, most often, he seems to.  But, contrary to, say, a piece of detective fiction, there is little ability on the part of the viewer to follow along with the logic of events and come to a conclusion.

This dynamic could potentially force the show to rely on deeper and more complex networks of deception and secrecy in the narrative to pull of suspense and intrigue.  For example, a recent episode featured a complicated story of a murdered teenage girl.  As we go along, we find out that the girls’ mother is a  judge who hired one of her daughter’s private school teachers to take an SAT for the girl so that she would have a better chance of getting into a good school.  This in itself is not a terribly complicated scenario, but when you add drug-dealing, other cheating-kids, and a parent who is too quick to protect their own child, the web of deception grows to the point of narrative corpulence, and thus to some degree the verisimilitude is lost.  More than once, I thought to myself, “This kind of stuff does not happen.”  The show, which purports to be rooted in science, is dependent on an unlikely fantasy world to allow it to function at the level of entertainment.

Which is not to say that the show is not worth watching, because I’m having a lot of fun with it.  Tim Roth is great as the gifted perceptionist, and the supporting cast adds some flavor in juxtaposition to Lightman’s rather bland personality.  Best of them is Brenden Hines, who has taken an oath of radical honesty; he says everything that is on his mind, with no cultural filter.

There is already a sense of chemistry between the cast members that I think will only get stronger as the show progresses–if, of course, they can find compelling material for further seasons.

Given FOX’s previous track record for canceling decent and great shows, I worry that Lie to Me will likely fizzle out after it’s first season is over.  At this point, the episodes feel very self-contained, though the end of episode 1×02 did offer what could become and interesting over-arching plot involving Lightman’s past.  We’ll just have to see; TV takes time, and right now it’s too early to call it.

You can catch Lie to Me Wednesdays at 9:00 Eastern of FOX, or on Hulu.

I don’t understand perfume and cologne commercials.  They seem to universally depict stunningly attractive people in extremely unlikely situations.  A heterosexual couple dressed in flowing, tailored black clothing, leading a horse across a beach in a warm breeze.  A famous actress rolling in undulating grass, in a glow of golden sunshine, cuddling a puppy.  An aging Hollywood icon surrounded by photographers, her many diamonds glinting like the ceiling of a planetarium.  Another famous actress striding confidently through a mansion, toward the camera, shedding her gold jewelry and clothing as she nears.

Perhaps I’m dense, or maybe just not a part of the demographic, but none of these commercials have ever made me want to buy either cologne for myself or perfume for a loved one.  Instead, it makes me want to stay as far away from department stores as possible.

My window faces the southeast, so in the morning, if it’s clear, I get sunlight through my blinds.  It usually never is bright enough to wake me, but when my radio does–usually the thick, syrupy intonations of a Pentacostal preacher–I can tell immediately if the morning is clear or cloudy.  This morning, the sun was bright, intensified by the fresh coat of snow.  I pressed snooze several times, sleeping until my lunch meeting with J.

Spent the first few hours of my birthday late last night watching episodes 1×08 and 1×09 of Dexter.  Man, I’m really digging that show.  There are so many interesting themes and patterns happening, and it’s so much fun to keep track of them.  If the show had kept the equilibrium is had set in the first few episodes, I don’t think the show would have been nearly so successful.  But Dexter is changing, and the way that he’s adapting to that change is incredibly interesting.  1×09 dropped a bombshell that upset my entire view of one of the characters, and adds yet another layer of murk to Dexter’s already murky back story.

Spent much of the birthday proper doing homework and laundry, the former not as much as I should have.  More or less, my presentation for Sem on Thursday is set, so now it’s the small matter of actually giving it, making revisions on the larger paper, and handing it all in.  The stress, mostly, is gone.  What I have left is not insuperable.

Got some very nice emails from family and friends, joked with my father about the AARP calling me soon, and my pressing need for a power scooter.  Some very thoughtful gifts from K’s parents–they know how to treat a geek.

Tonight, reading stories for last workshop of the semester, and doing my last two composition readings for the semester.  There is something melancholy about that.

Finally, this, because I thought it was funny.

Okay, so one of the things I always look forward to on school breaks is reading–reading where my incination takes me.  Reading for myself.  I’m the kind of person who, if I know that I’m taking a long trip sometime in the near future, will obsessively think about the books that I want to take with me.  Clothes get thrown in at the last minutes, but when deciding what books to pack, oh, that takes time.

I’ve been making mental lists of the stuff I would like to read over break–

• Augusten Burroughs, Running With Scissors
• Michael Perry, Population: 485
• Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
• Stephen King, Just After Sunset

Definitely a slant toward creative nonfiction and memoir–Burroughs and Eggers are two I’ve been wanting to read for awhile, and Perry was something I picked up recently–read all about that here.  Kundera because a reading group I’m in is going to be looking at that novel, and King because, well, I loves him.  Apparently after he edited Best American Short Stories last year, he got more interested in going back to his own short fiction, so I’m stoked to see what he’s come up with.  Early reviews I’ve glanced at seem to be generally positive.

Also fiending for some video games.  I can’t wait to check out Fallout 3 and LittleBigPlanet.  My friend PK told me that Fallout 3 is likely his game of the year, and I generally trust his judgement.  And LittleBigPlanet because, even after only playing an hour of it at NG’s house, I fell madly in love.  That little SackBoy stole my heart.

As far as TV and movies go, The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dexter are all on the list.  Also, the return of Battlestar Galactica on January 16 cannot come soon enough.  After that midseason cliffhanger, man, I just want to eat it with a spoon.

I am charged with geek.

Have you ever noticed that whenever a film or a television program wants to flashback to something that happened earlier in a male character’s life, they will usually depict that younger version of the hero with the exact same actor only with longer, dorky hair?  Is this trying to say that in our youth we are by nature untidy, unkempt, and it is only when we become adults that we morph into these polished, well-groomed individuals?  Were we all so dorky and awkward in our youth?  I always have wanted to see a rendering of a time laspe between these younger and current versions of the character.  At what point, at what age did the hair come off, did he start to stand up straighter, did the braces get removed?  When did our hero become as cool as he is now?  I think it’s a natural tendency to think of ourselves as cooler, more put together than our past selves were.  But, take a picture of yourself now and look at it in five, ten, twenty years and see what you think then.  In our present, in our now, perhaps we are always cooler than we used to be.