| So, I realize that I just started updating the site again, and the last thing my two remaining fans want to hear is that I'm not going to be updating it as much as usual in the next month, but unfortunately, that is probably going to be the case. In case you hadn't noticed the stylish logo at the top of the page, I would like to let you both know that I will be participating in NaNoWriMo 2006, which means that, beginning tonight at midnight, I will attempt to write a 50,000-word novel in a month.
I really wanted to finish a draft of my first novel before I did NaNoWriMo, but that's taking me so long, I'm just going to put it aside for now and see what this experience will be like. If I'm successful, I think it will also help me finish that novel, and the two or three unfinished stories I've written in the last year or so. Incidentally, even though it's a little late in the game, if anyone would care to join me, that would be sweet. My brother, who is a musician and composer, decided to make his own contest, which he did not name. I will take the liberty of naming it now: NaMuWriReMo (National Music Writing and Recording Month). Anyway, he's going to write and record an album of 10 full-length songs in a month. So be sure to check back all month to see my progress, or visit my official NaNoWriMo page. Maybe I'll post some updates on my progress here, but somehow I feel like most of my free time will be spent on this. Fifty thousand is a lot of words. Whoo-boy. What did I get myself into? |
| It must be weird growing up in a city, for a lot of reasons. But I think one of the weirdest parts would be trick-or-treating. It seems especially weird in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, because there's a lot of kids and a lot of trendy shops and restaurants. I was walking home from the park, and 7th Ave., which is the main drag, so to speak, was swarming with kids in costumes.
At first, I thought they were all just coming from school, since there are two or three right nearby, and were on their way to trick-or-treat, but I quickly realized that they were already trick-or-treating. I walked past the Aveda salon, where there was a line of kids waiting for candy, and then saw similar situations at the law firm, the real estate agency, and the bar further down the street. The bagel shop looked like it was the busiest, and as I walked by, all I could think was, "What if someone wanted to buy a bagel right now?" Anyway, it just seems weird to me to trick-or-treat at businesses, like the kids I saw coming out of the creepy bodega near my apartment. But I guess when you live in a city, especially this city, and especially this neighborhood in this city, that's the only option you have. |
| Well, folks, we've been having some troubles with the nerdy server, apparently, hence the uncharacteristically long absence. I think everything's all squared away now, so I'll be updating again as often as possible. Stay tuned for some exciting new stuff. |
| Wow. Is he ever stupid. I'm reading
this interview
he did with Radar, and I...I just...I don't know; it has left me
speechless. I'm having a really hard time believing that:
a) a grown man does not know either the nominal or the adjectival definition of the word "sloth," nor can he understand the adjectival form after reading the nominal form in a dictionary; b) anyone, especially someone in Hollywood, could be unable to name the seven deadly sins in a post-Se7en world; c) a born-again Christian finds no fault in not knowing either the ten commandments or the seven deadly sins; d) anyone could be ignorant of the irony in talking about how much fun it is to do cocaine and have anonymous sex in the same breath as talking about his newfound faith in Christ. |
| I'm not sure why, but every once in a
while, I seem to get a lot of action on my myspace page. Granted,
most of it is bots or webcam advertisements or whatever, but I tend
to be inundated with fake myspace messages and friend requests at the
same time as I'm getting a bunch of real ones. Like, I've gotten two
or three legitimate friend requests, and at least two legitimate
messages from people I actually know in the past couple of days. But
then I've also gotten about ten requests from girls with "the angles"
or bands that suck.
Is there something in the air that's causing people to remember that they have myspace accounts? Because that's sort of the only time I look at mine, is when I'm really bored and want to see whether anyone put up new pictures. Is this just a really boring week for everyone, or what? |
| For some reason, I have not felt like
doing anything for the past week or two, inclduing, of course,
updating this website. I sit at my computer for hours, and it looks
like I'm working, and it's kind of like working, because, I mean, at
least I have the document that I'm working on open. But I just can't
seem to bring myself to do anything worthwhile.
And something in an email that a friend sent me yesterday really struck me, where she said that her decision to pursue her master's degree would have been easy if she hadn't had to worry about the money. And I realized, even though it seems so cliche and shallow, that I seriously would have so many fewer problems if I just had money. It's like how America is criticized for the stupid things we complain about, like existential crises or relationship problems, while other parts of the world are starving and dying of preventable diseases. But, as Dr. Melfi says, if we are freed from having to worry about those kinds of life and death issues, why shouldn't allow ourselves to examine the other questions and problems of our lives? I doubt that, at some point, people are going to just go, "Well, we solved all the problems of humanity. I guess we're done," and then we'll just disappear in a puff of smoke. There will always be some other problem that will crop up that would have seemed trivial before we solved the more serious problems. So, while I don't think that money solves all problems, or that whiny rich people are justified in being whiny, not having to worry about money frees you up to worry about things that are actually important to your fulfillment as a human being. I really think that I would be much more productive if I weren't always thinking about money. As it is, I can't concentrate on anything, including the work that brings in my money, because I can't stop thinking about, "maybe I could be doing something else that would bring in more money, which would conceivably free me up to do more of the things that are actually important to me." But rather than spending that wasted time actively seeking more profitable ventures, I just squander it looking at youtube and The Comics Curmudgeon and Dinosaur Comics. There is seriously something wrong with me. Maybe I'm having a midlife crisis. |
| So, I was just re-watching an old interview on the
Daily Show with Senator Rick Santorum and a
couple of things occured to me during his defense of his position
that gay people should not be able to marry.
1) He says that the best family unit is father-mother-child(ren). He admits that gay couples might be able to raise children, and that single parents might be able to raise children, but that the best case scenario for the child's sake is one father and one mother. The problem with this point, and I'm disappointed that Jon Stewart didn't call him on it, is that no one, particularly not Rick Santorum, is protesting single parenthood. If we're really going to lump single parents in with gay parents, they ought to be abhored to the same degree that gay parents are, as they clearly are incapable of raising children properly. Single parents ought to be forced to remarry or give up their children. The children's development is at stake here, and we can't take any chances. Unless, of course, the censure of gay marriage has nothing to do with children. 2) Santorum talks about how marriage has been steadily declining for years, with the rise of divorce, cohabitation, homosexuality, et cetera. He says that these issues are as important to him as gay marriage (see above), but the question is whether any of these trends have really had such a damning effect on society. Jon Stewart touches on it, when he asks whether we were better off with racial segregation and heterosexual marriage or whether things are better today. The fact that our society has made so many advances in social equality, rational thinking, and embracement of differences casts doubt on the line of reasoning that the breakdown of marriage is causing the breakdown of society. 3) Why do single people get the shaft here? As I have said before, whatever reasons the government initially had for granting special rights to married couples are, by this point in time, moot. I heard a story on NPR yesterday about two elderly sisters who have lived together their whole lives in a house, and now one of them is very sick, and if she dies, her sister will probably lose the house because of her inability to pay the estate taxes, which would not be an issue if they were a married couple. How is their situation any different from a childless married couple? What "contribution" to society is a childless married couple offering that grants them the privilege of tax-free inheritance? The answer is none. I'm not saying that siblings should be allowed to marry, but rather that we need to reexamine the whole premise of marriage rights, and determine a more equitable, egalitarian way to grants those rights. 4) It's not so much that I'm easily distracted as that I'm incredibly focused on the wrong things. Like, while I was eating breakfast this morning, I checked onegoodmove.org, where I watched an old "Even Stevphen" clip from The Daily Show. This got me thinking about how funny this segment always was, and how much I missed it, which got me over to youtube, so I could watch other old "Even Stevphen" clips, which I did, and then I happened upon the Santorum interview, and decided to re-watch it because I really can not believe what a clueless jerk this guy is, which then got me thinking about all the things I just wrote about, which then got me thinking that I should write them down, and that pretty much brings us up to date. Except I watched the first clip at about 9:30, and now it's almost 11:30, and I haven't done any work yet. This happens to me a lot. 5) You would think that, for the number of times I have written about gay marriage, I would remember how to spell the word "marriage." But I don't. Every single time I type it, I put the "a" before the "i." Every time. 6) Doesn't it look weird to have the period inside the quotation marks at the end of the sentence ending with "i"? It just seems strange to have a single letter and a period inside quotation marks. It looks so asymmetrical. If I were in England, it would have looked like this: I put the "a" before the "i". Is that any better? I'm not sure. |
| Review: Who Wants to be a Superhero? SciFi Channel - - - Thursdays @ 8/7c |
The sad reality of “Who Wants to be a Superhero?" is that it is meant to be an earnest, suspenseful reality show. Frankly, even lampooning reality shows has become tiresome, but this premise has the potential to cleverly satirize both reality television and comic books. Instead, it merely plugs a different kind of weirdo into the standard mold for this type of show. Suspenseful music? Check. Insipid fringe celebrity host? Check. Token minorities? Check. Utter lack of self-consciousness? Check. What’s missing, however, is a clear goal. Obviously, the contestants are not expected to do the kinds of things actual superheroes do. Instead, they have to show their compassion, and intelligence, or something lame like that. Stan “The Man" Lee tries to hash out the basis for the competition early in the pilot episode, but it’s a pretty weak cover for the fact that no one really knows or cares what the point is, as long as everyone looks funny throughout the ordeal. The viewer’s role, on the other hand, is obvious from the start: we are supposed to laugh at these people and their tragically scarred psyches. Some of the contestants seem like they could be tolerable people, like the environmentalist (superhero name: Creature), who’s maybe just a bit of an exhibitionist—the kind of girl who was in the drama and recycling clubs in high school, and tended to blur the line between the two. Or the token fat person (superhero name: Fat Momma), who would fit right in as the office manager at your company if she didn’t keep saying “Fat Momma" all the damn time (seriously, how can anyone say that with a straight face?). Even the toymaker, and token homosexual (superhero name: Levity), is not so bad, for much the same reasons as the other two: he has normal, human concerns that don’t involve comic books and blatant escapism. The rest cover the spectrum from harmless and goofy—like the fan-boy’s dream, Monkey Woman—to creepy and unsettling. Feedback, for example, seems to be teetering on the edge of total meltdown, the kind of guy who is insult away from a brain embolism. The very notion that this contest is “the culmination of everything [he’s] done in [his] life," indicates dubious sanity. If he doesn’t win the contest, I’m sure I’ll be reading about his suicide later this year. And I wouldn’t blame him, either. This show is just cruel. Real talents—singing, dancing, businessing—can be judged, and, more importantly, they can be nurtured and refined. If you get kicked off the island, that’s just more incentive to work hard on your talent and show up those fickle judges. But failure on this show means that even your fantasy is flawed. Where can a real person be a superhero, if not in her own head? I guess the producers of the show are trying to illustrate the harsh reality of life that we rarely are who we see ourselves as. Haven’t we all felt like heroes at some point in our life? Well, Stan Lee and company are here to wake us up to the grim truth that we have been fooling ourselves all along. Honestly, I don’t see how one can take any other message away from this sadistic show. In spite of all of this, part of me really wishes I had heard about the auditions. I mean, you get to be a superhero! How cool is that! |