Progress

I have set a goal for my “bad” story. I want to finish it at around 40,000 words by November. At that point, I plan on starting a different, “good” story for NaNoWriMo.

Currently, I have about 8,000 words. If I write an average of 1,000 words per day, I will meet my goal. I have chosen to make my goal flexible, however. While I may write over 1,000 words on some days, on others I write none. Part of the aim of this is to make myself a more disciplined writer, but I am at a point where I am able to not follow this plan perfectly and still live with myself. Which is itself a victory for me. So I am winning already! :D

That emoticon is only half sarcastic.

Something that held me up when writing today was naming. On the one hand, names should sound natural and fit the person they are given to; on the other hand, I really like it when names have extra meanings. One of the things that I am learning while writing this abomination of a novel is to strike a balance between those two concepts. At least, I think I am finding a balance. I want to avoid everyone being named John and Jane, but it does not make sense to have characters named Aries and Amaterasu in a contemporary Earth setting. I believe I got it right with George, who, in addition to having a pronounceable name, alludes to St. George.

I must admit, when I found out I passed the 8,000 mark, I got a little excited. 8,000 is close to 10,000 which is a quarter of the story I plan to tell. I can only hope that as I pass more milestones, the exhilaration continues. Ideally, I will become addicted to the rush, and will be compelled to write out of habit. Muhahaha!

First an emoticon, now an evil laugh? What have I become?

A hack, probably.

Being Sick Sucks

The past few days I have been afflicted by a foul cold. It started with a sore throat and became a sinus infection on day two. My head felt like it would explode. Today, day three, things are winding down. There is significantly less mucus trapped in my skull and my throat has made a full recovery.

I should not complain too much; I have been very fortunate to have not caught anything in a long time. This is a big deal for me, as the medication I take for Crohn’s Disease lowers my immune system.

It is particularly nice that I am feeling better as I am meeting with a couple of friends tonight to work on a personal project. More on that later.

I know. The suspense is killing you.

Low Hanging Fruit (2012)

I found James Adomian’s debut album to be good. Not incredible, but good.

Adomian is known around the Earwolf podcast network for his inventive, lively impersonations (including a paranoid, defensive Jessie Ventura, a maniacal Richard Branson, and an addled Gary Busey). His first comedy album, which was released through Earwolf, shows more of his normal personality, although he slips into several voices throughout the record to hilarious effect.

I first heard the comic on a number of Sklarbro Country episodes, performing as characters for mock interviews. They have several recurring impersonators, but I find his personas to be my favorites. He brings a great amount of energy to the table. In a recent episode, the brothers Sklar interviewed the man himself, and this got me interested in his standup. On the page for his album, you can listen to a great track that tackles the homophobic advertisements for beer that air during football games. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to buy the rest of the album (for a reasonable $10). While the rest of the bits do not quite live up to the sample track in my opinion, I got a great deal of enjoyment out of listening to them. At first I was lukewarm towards some of his material, but I must admit that upon further review I found myself laughing more and more. Taste in comedy is especially subjective, so it is difficult to judge how much Low Hanging Fruit will appeal to other people, but I liked it. I am not a fan of most stand-up, but I do appreciate the occasional alternative comedian, and Adomian is now one of them.

Plus, I just like the guy. I have written twice before about my tendency to latch onto personalities I like and support their work. I do wonder, then, how much I actually enjoy the things they produce because I want to like their stuff. Has my opinion of something been tainted if I have a desire to hang out with person who wrote it? Does the fact that I first was attracted to these people because of the quality of their handiwork remedy this?

In addition to the Sklarbro interview, Adomian appeared on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. There he talked about growing up and coming to terms with his sexuality. As an out comic, he incorporates being gay into a large chunk of his act. I find his treatment of the topic agreeable; he talks about his sexual orientation as just another part of his personality, but is not afraid to utilize it to great effect. We need more people like him to help people understand sexual minorities as something more than stereotypes. But that is a topic for a whole other post (or series of posts).

Adomian seems to still be finding himself as a standup, but I feel that Low Hanging Fruit is a good first effort.

A Relatively Pointless Grievance

A friend on Google+ recently re-shared this story about Pope Benedict XVI issuing a statement against gay marriage. He tagged the post with the hash tag #nazipope.

This annoys me. Despite popular rumor, the Pope never actively supported the Nazi party. Whether he complied too much with Nazi rule is certainly up to debate, but to say he endorses Hitler’s views is a lazy exaggeration.

I am biased. I identify as Catholic (among other things), but I am not against calling out the Pope on this sort of thing (and there are plenty of things to criticize about him). Just leave the Nazi-calling to the Tea Party. Do not call him a Nazi, call him what he is: homophobic.

If by any chance that acquaintance is reading, I am not angry, just annoyed. And picky. And admittedly defending the reputation of a man whom I do not agree with. But I do not like inflating things unfairly.

The Looming Threat

I tend to feel inadequate at my job. I try my best to be courteous and nice, but always worry that I am not productive enough. One of my more pessimistic musings is that my niceness will serve only to make it a more uncomfortable conversation when I am eventually fired.

My boss tells me otherwise. It is possible that she is just being polite when I ask about my performance (she is an extraordinarily positive person), but it is more possible that I am just being down on myself.

Oh yeah, about my boss… I kind of maybe sort of broke her finger today.

She came in to relieve me of my nightly duties at seven this morning, and after some pleasantries were exchanged, she requested my assistance. In the process of emptying the dirty rags into the washing machine, the plastic garbage can that we pile the rags into got its mouth wedged in the industrial washer’s opening. It took some minutes of struggling, but with a loud pop, I removed the garbage can.

Immediately following this, my manager let out a sound of distress. I looked at her as she reacted to pain, eyes wide, for several seconds. Eventually she was freed. Though I could not see it from my point of view, her finger had gotten caught between the plastic and the metal.

When she showed me her finger, there was a deep indentation. No skin was broken, but I was nearly sickened by the mark, wincing as I imagined the pain. She has reported that she is okay and applied ice to her injury. She did admit, however, that her finger may be broken.

I apologized as best as I could, but I still feel bad about the accident. Hopefully everything will be alright—by the time I left, she was already in her signature good mood—but while reflecting dwelling on the incident, I could not help but think about how much I might be screwing up. This is a specter that haunts me. Sometimes when I am being self-deprecating I am aware of how ridiculous it is, but other times it more difficult to tell what is real.

I really should try to turn this worrying into something constructive and channel it into better workplace performance.

"...5, 6, 7, 8!"

I just woke up from an elaborate dream with mid-budget musical sequences about the (non-existent) salt mines of Pittsburgh, indie videogame development, elevated public transit, and falling for a girl who may or may not feel the same way.

While I cannot remember any of the songs, I remember them having actual lyrics. This feels like something that should not happen in a dream. When you read lucid dreaming guides, they recommend doing things that require a certain permanence not usually present in the nocturnal imagination to determine if you are dreaming—looking at your hands, gazing into a mirror, checking a clock for the time, trying to read text.

However, that last one is of note to me because in two fairly recent dreams (one was just a couple of days ago) I successfully read signs. What do these peculiar developments in my dream life mean? The optimist in me is promoting the idea that this is a sign that I am gifted in language arts. The rest of me, however, feels that particular explanation is a delusion of grandeur.

To make things even more surreal, I wish I had a Snuggie right now. We have one (a stunning cheetah print item), but I cannot find it, and I’m trying to use my arms to type while covering my torso with a blanket!

Pictured: journalism.

To the Moon (2011)

Roger Ebert once said that videogames, by their nature, could never truly be art (see the comment beginning with “Roger if you don't really consider games as art then would be it be fair to say…” and Ebert’s pithy response for a real treat (use Ctrl+F, kids!)). The resulting internet firestorm brought forth some interesting counterarguments. There was a lot of back and forth—too much for me to link to everything, so I’m not going to try.

Ultimately, I found some of Ebert’s arguments to have merit—like the idea that the mechanics of goal-and-reward-based gameplay are not conducive to artistic expression—but he misses the larger picture. In recent years, we have seen videogames that forgo traditional gameplay in favor of experimental interactive experiences.  Even outside of artsy (yes, artsy) indie games, there exists a genre which encourages the creative process (something which, as Will Wright points out, can bring strong emotions of pride when a player succeeds and guilt when they fail).

Anyway, this is all kind of a roundabout way of me saying that, yes, To the Moon is art. I will cede that the way in which it is art—essentially eschewing gameplay in favor of creating an interactive story—actually gives some credence to Ebert’s arguments about gameplay mechanics—the game had to become less game-like in order to successfully tell its story. Nevertheless, it utilizes what gameplay it does have to move the plot along and takes advantage of videogame elements to tell the story. I will also admit that upon misty-eyed completion, I wondered how the story would work in cinematic form. Whether it suffers from its choice of media is unknown. To the Moon did not need to be a game, but since it is, it makes the most of the art form.

The story itself deals with themes of loss, memory, relationships, and loneliness. The premise, which is better explained by this video than by me, raises some interesting questions about whether our actual experiences are as valuable as the memories we take away from them.

The main character’s narrative is told in reverse chronological order as the memory technicians jump back through memories using “mementos”—specific objects linked to different points in the character’s life. Most of the gameplay takes the form of exploring and finding significant objects within the memories. I confess that I found parts of “Act I” repetitive and slightly boring, but the plot was interesting enough that I retained the desire to play through. The game is around 5 hours long, by Steam’s estimation, and I completed it in three sittings.

I found To the Moon to be an enjoyable, cathartic experience. To quote my friend, who introduced the game to me on facebook, “Anyone who has ever been remotely interested in games as interactive storytelling should definitely check out To The Moon…”

Just Write Something

I sit on the couch, laptop in lap, staring at the screen. I have no particular topic to write about in mind, yet I feel compelled to write a blog post. Something about disciplining myself to write more regularly, perhaps?

A friend remarked that one of my entries seemed scattered and stream-of-consciousness, full of uncertain thoughts and backtracking. Part of me would like to think that I am, in fact, intentionally doing this and have succeeded in portraying my mind in print. Most of me knows that is not the case.

I made some significant progress last night in what I am starting to think of as my “bad” story. I am writing it to finish it—to actually have something novel-length—even though it is my weakest idea. It is a practice project, really. A generic urban fantasy that is entirely too much like Harry Potter. I caved last night and decided to specifically mention J. K. Rowling’s books. Yeah, this is definitely a practice novel.

They say that writers have a certain amount of bad words they have to get out of their system, the same way that artists have a multitude of terrible drawings they must work through before producing quality work. I just expelled 211 of them.

Sleepwalk with Me (2012)

I had the pleasure of seeing a screening of Mike Birgbiglia’s Sleepwalk with Me. I had to drive to Pittsburgh to see it, because independent cinema has no place in Indiana, PA, but it was worth it. The screening I attended was actually packed, and I wondered if I would get in when I saw that there was a line outside of the theater to buy tickets.

The film is the fourth incarnation of Birbiglia’s tales about his sleep disorder (the others being his appearances on This American Life (which produced the film), a one-man stage show/album, and a book). In each version, he chronicles his life after college as a struggling stand-up comedian, his relationship with his girlfriend, and his increasingly dangerous sleepwalking episodes.

The film certainly feels “indie,” but this is a good thing in my book. Birbiglia gives a solid performance as a version of himself, and the cast is rounded out by myriad comedians. Notable cameos include producer/co-writer Ira Glass as a wedding photographer, and Dr. William C. Dement as himself. The story is strong and the film weaves together the different plotlines deftly, unifying the thematic elements.

One of the few problems I had was with some of the main character’s dialog. It might be because I am familiar with his material, but some lines felt like a comedy routine shoehorned in instead of naturalistic dialog. Then again, the character interactions between fellow comedians just hanging out rang very true to me (based on hearing many stand-ups shoot the shit on podcasts).

I especially enjoyed the dream sequences. Glass said in an interview on Fresh Air that he normally despises dream sequences in film as cheap, and you can tell that special attention was paid to ensure that the scenes were uncanny but realistic.

I will admit that this review is heavily biased in favor of the movie. As I have noted before, I enjoy seeing people I admire get exposure. I was a fan before the film was even released. It was great (and sometimes a little surreal) to see comedic bits I know portrayed in cinematic form, like the stilted confessions of love featured on Wedding Story Tales, or the dismal lip-syncing contest.

Me, being biased.

I would certainly recommend this film to anyone with a sense of humor—or anyone who is a little weird. Fans of Birbiglia will get exactly what they expect, and new viewers may find themselves introduced to a wonderful world of awkward moments and strange conversations comparing abstract concepts to pizza, tinged by a healthy dose of self-deprecation.

Write the Bad Story

I had a really, really good therapy session yesterday. Not in the sense that I was depressed and felt better—I went into it in a good mood—I just made a lot of personal progress. Also, my therapist is really cool, so shooting the shit with him is fun.

We talked about the sort of thing that causes my project ADD. It manifests itself in other areas of my life, particularly other areas that involve creating, especially writing. I am ashamed to admit it, but I have a great deal of difficulty writing research papers. It is like pulling teeth. And yesterday, we identified that a form of perfectionism is responsible for this.

I start writing something, I get a chapter and a half in, and then there is no way I can continue it. Or rather, there is, but it is not satisfactory to me. I stop myself because producing nothing is better than creating something that is not good.

I need to aim a little lower, really. No one’s first novel is published—I should not be wary of what people will think about it. I should just focus on actually completing a novel in the first place. Academically, my new goal is to focus on writing a paper that will earn a C (because that is better than a zero and I will probably earn a better grade in the process).

Mind you, there are still some issues holding me back from moving too far along with my story—mainly the lack of a coherent conflict—but I have a lot of hope.

I am going into the coffee shop right now to write. And I better hurry, because I’m about to say something flippant to the two stereotypes sitting next to me in the area outside of the coffee shop: a girl who is “not” a slut and her gay best friend.

Wiki-Documenting My Mind

While going through the back catalogue of Writing Excuses, I was turned on to a piece of software known as WikidPad. The short explanation is that it lets you create personalized, local wikis about anything and everything. Naturally, this is a powerful tool for any writing that involves world building. Since I am flitting between stories that I want to work on, and was in the process of using word documents to write my story bible, I decided to give it a try. I was initially frustrated by a couple of issues regarding how the links are displayed hierarchically, and I have yet to find a way to create category pages, but after trying competing software, WikidPad seems to be the best option for me._­

If you need to keep entire histories of civilizations straight, or even just want an easy guide to your main characters, this could be a useful tool for you.

"What's the Deal with Fiber Commercials?"

I realize that in this post I risk sounding like Andy Rooney, who (God rest his soul) has probably managed to find something to complain about in heaven. I would guess that he is griping about the clouds being too fluffy or something, but I am not a fan of portraying the theme park version of heaven.

Anyway, onto the kvetching: Fiber One’s latest rash of commercials bothers me. They are predicated on the assumption that fiber has a reputation for tasting terrible. It takes this assumption so far that in one commercial, parents hide the fact that Fiber One cereal has fiber in it from their child in order to convince him to eat it.

This is stupid.

Since when does anyone think that fiber tastes bad? I have never known anyone to shy away from trying something because of high fiber content. Sure, some high-fiber foods do taste terrible, like broccoli, but that is not because they have fiber.

In conclusion, no one thinks fiber is terrible, Fiber One. You are dumb.

Project ADD

I think I have it. I made it a chapter and a half into something and now another story I have worked on pleads for attention. Is this a pattern of behavior that will doom me to never complete anything? Or am I utilizing my time wisely?: I am stuck in one story so I work on another.

The story that begs my involvement again is sort of a retelling of the King Arthur mythos, except not. But it borrows enough elements and characters that I think saying it references Arthurian legend is not strong enough. Perhaps “inspired by” is the term I seek.

A Shins song is playing in the coffee house as I write this. This is the perfect writing environment, yet I choose to spend my time worrying about writing instead of writing. Except for now. Now, I’m writing about worrying about writing.

I meant to write a review of Sherlock Holmes (2009), but this blog has morphed from its intended review format to something else. I enjoyed it, for the record.

Sanskrit and Super Bowls

I have a spiffy new laptop, and I am looking to name it something deserving. So far, I have discovered two Sanskrit words that mean “light weight,” which is appropriate since my old laptop was a monstrous desktop replacement with a 17 inch screen that weighed a ton. The two words are lagubhara and alpabhara. Both may be entirely too pretentious.

At any rate, I am glad to have a fully functional computer again. One of the more annoying issues with my old one (named Sophocles) was that the “q” and “2” keys did not work. Instead of joining my family and some family friends to watch the most recent Super Bowl, I was sequestered in my room, drinking wine. I spilled the libation onto my keyboard and ever since then I have had to rely on the on-screen keyboard to replace the dysfunctional keys. “Q” may not seem like an especially common letter, but when you take classes at Susquehanna University, it is.

I like to name my gadgets. I am not sure why, but I can think of at least two other people who do the same thing. They share a name, but not much else. Other items named include a Creative Zen MP3 player (Bodhisattva) and three external hard drives (Blueberry (the manufacturer provided this name), Fenghuang (it rose from the ashes of an old computer), and Svalbard). I never got around to naming my Droid X, though it was unofficially called “Number 13” (referencing Battlestar Galactica). My sleek Galaxy SIII probably deserves an appropriate moniker as well.