What did you do on Friday night?

Scored wallpaper until I realized it was a bit loud and a bit late. Though the neighbors probably won't appreciate me doing it early tomorrow morning either. Then finished reading a book. Oh yeah, living large...

Show me the money!

I know that people get upset about how much money professional athletes get paid to play a game. I always find their passionate arguments about waste and the under appreciation of teachers comical. Don’t get me wrong; the fact that being 7 feet tall practically entitles you to a multi-million dollar basketball contract is patently absurd. But if we look at the business model, it makes perfect sense.

Athletes are an asset, and as an asset it is logical to pay them any absurd amount of money as long as it is lower than what they generate. Why should anyone pay Manny Ramirez $25 million? It’s not because he can hit a baseball at a Hall of Fame level. It’s because of the tens of thousands fans who will buy his jersey and attend extra games during the year just to see him. It’s because of those ridiculous dreadlock hats that were so contagious last year. So if you want to blame sports for being financially irresponsible, you really need to point your finger at the general public.

By the way, if you want to make the argument that the general public is idiotic, you won’t hear an argument from me. But sports are a form of escapism, just like going to the movies or reading a good book. And sometimes forgetting about your life for a couple of hours is worth a dollar or two. But that’s just me.

Part of the sports business model is completely upside down, but we’ll talk about that later.

Beep

            The thing about the beeping is that it’s relentless.  When the room is dark and quiet I can feel it, and it seems even louder.  Sometimes during the day I can hardly notice it anymore because it blends in with the rest of the noise.  The conversations of the day, the television, phone calls… it fades behind the sounds of life.  But at night it haunts me louder and louder, until I can hardly stand it.  I can’t sleep anymore with all this beeping.  Sometimes I cry out because it hurts so much to hear, like my ears are drumming through my head. 

            In the mornings it’s not so bad, because I know that it will slowly fade away as the sun rises.  I can feel it in the morning, but I know that it doesn’t own me.   I’ve made it through another night, and for that I’m eternally grateful.  It becomes the rhythm of my life, just a sound that I hear softly.  It’s a steady bump and a bump.  I enjoy my mornings after a long night of the sound.  But the beeping is still there, it’s always there.  I’ve given up believing that I can ever get away from it.  The sound follows my life like a soundtrack, and it’ll follow me until I die.

            I miss the mornings in the afternoon, because I know that my day is always getting closer to ending.  And when the darkness comes and the rest of the world goes quiet, the drumming in my head picks up.  The gradual decline to faintness of the morning reaches almost nothing by lunch.  This is my ecstasy.  But then it picks up, beat by beat through the rest of the day.  At dinner I eat my food with the rhythm.  Spoonful of peas… beep.  Small piece of meatloaf… beep.  I love me some pudding… beep.

            But then the darkness falls and I’m alone with the sound of my life.  Breath in to the rhythm, breathe out to the rhythm.  It’s how I know that I’m alive.  Beep.  It’s the sound of living, and I get scared when it’s dark and quiet.  It’s louder and louder each and every night.  When will… beep… it stop… beep… oh Lord… beep.

            I’ve been in this hospital room for weeks now, breathing in and out to the rhythm of my heart.  I’m tired now.  I’m afraid of the dark, I’m afraid of the beeping, and I’m afraid it will stop before morning.

WTF

You schedule an appointment with me for 4:30 in the afternoon, the last time slot of the day. It had to be the last time slot, that was the deal. And by appointment, I mean you call me, we talk, you want to get together so that we can chat some more, and you ask me to schedule you a specific time. The last time of the day, it's the only one that will work.

And then you don't show up...

This wouldn't really matter if I had another appointment at 4:00, but my previous appointments ended at 2:30. And I was starving, like diabetic shock kind of hungry.

Then I call you, and I'm nice about it, because that's my job. You apologize, several times, we both know that you are the asshole. But I'm still super nice, "don't worry about it," "not a problem at all." Now, I know that you feel kinda bad, but I could have made you feel much worse. Oh yeah, you would have felt pretty shitty if I let loose on how much you ruined my afternoon. Because, like we both know, you are the asshole here.

Sometimes being nice to other people feels like I'm being mean to myself.

Old thoughts revisited

I started re-reading Stephen King's "On Writing," today after several years, and it brought back some old memories. Not having much to do with Stephen King, but let me explain.

I highly recommend King's book about writing as a craft, because it lacks the normal pretension of most instructional books. To put it simply, he explains himself and his writing from that perspective. The book describes his process, rather than THE process. Because, quite simply, there is no THE way to do anything. I'm not even a big Stephen King fan, because I find the horror genre rather boring. I have read some of his work that I really enjoy, but a large portion of his collection is irrelevant to me. This is not a criticism, because he is one of the more capable writers of the last 100 years. It often seems that critics believe being popular equates with a lack of talent. But King knows his audience, and that is his strength.

Part of his book reflects on his brief teaching career, which made me remember some of the things we all went through in our English courses. I remember thinking at the time (and even did a senior project on the subject,) that english courses in many ways ruin the subject for most of the students. Think back to your first memory of books. Do you see Dr. Suess? Where the Wild Things Are? Goodnight Moon? (which I still don't understand)

What are your early memories? I liked books, I liked stories, I liked being read to. I liked books. So did you, or most of you. Or anybody who discovered video games a little later in life. What happened to our enjoyment of books in school?

Well, we read books that we didn't necessarily like. This is all well and good, because you have to read different types of things to understand the language. But on top of reading some of the least interesting and more critically acclaimed literature of the last century, we analyzed it to oblivion. And frankly, if you think about any topic long enough, it gets boring. We weren't allowed to enjoy the books we read for the story, because the story wasn't the important part anymore. The essay about the story was the important part. And that is bass-ackwards if anything ever was. Why do english teachers justify their jobs by focusing on every part of a novel other than the reason it was written? It's the story, stupid.

On that note, let's talk about writing. I used to write essays and have to agonize over a thesis statement so that I could submit that before I was even allowed to write the essay. My entire idea depended on my teacher's opinion of a single sentence. What do we think about people who form an opinion on extremely limited information, such as a single sentence? It's moronic. Like voting for president based on their tie.

Now I get that writing an essay is different from creative writing, and the importance of learning grammar before attempting more serious work. You can't know when it is appropriate to break the rules until you know the rules. Sometimes a fragment is a good sentence, sometimes it's the best sentence. Usually it's not, and you have to learn why before you can make that distinction. Also, structure is important because it keeps you on topic, and focuses your efforts. But seriously, how many teachers did we have growing up who read the first sentence of every paragraph (Thesis, topic sentence, topic sentence, topic sentence, conclusion) because they didn't have time to read the whole thing? And what did this teach us about writing?

Maybe we learned some grammar, maybe we learned some focus, maybe we even learned how to write our college application essay. But what did we lose? The story. Even an essay on the availability of widgets in India has a story to tell, and if we only learn structure we have no idea how to convey that idea. We lost the reason for writing in the first place.

That's the biggest problem with "school english," it takes away the purpose of language from our tools of communication. Books lose their story when we're searching for a thesis statement in the first chapter. Writing loses the beauty of communication when what we say is less important than where we say it. It's like an actor who knows exactly where to stand for their scene in a play, but has no idea what to say. Yes, you need to know where to stand, but it's more important to know why you are standing there.

Little children love sitting on their parents laps to read a bedtime story, but too often they lose that love when a teacher tells them that the why and how of a book has nothing to do with the story.

But hey, that's just me...

Bad Story Time

It's been awhile since I've written anything, so this is mostly shite. But I did get a Valentine's Day reference in, which is a stretch for me.


“You really need to tell her how you feel,” Mark said casually, without any of my prompting whatsoever.
“Tell who how I feel about what?”
“You know who I’m talking about.” It’s true, I did know who he was talking about, why he was talking about her was a completely different question.
“Do I?” He looked at me like I was an idiot… which was at least partially accurate.
“Ah, you must be talking about Michelle again. Why exactly are you infatuated with this girl?”
Mark drank his beer as if he hadn’t heard me and stared straight into the mirror across the wall.
I probed. “Do you have any reason at all?”
I knew better.
“I really don’t think this is an issue of my infatuation, it really seems like your issue. You’ve been pining over that girl for the last six months, and it’s making you miserable. You just have to make your move. Actually, you need to make any kind of move at all, just out of principle.”
“Says the man who has been in love with the same girl for the past 15 years.” I knew that this would at least partially change the subject, as Mark was adamant about his bachelorhood to the point of absurdity.
“I’m not in love with anybody but myself, thank you very much. I just happen to think Christine is a special person. And it hasn’t been 15 years.”
I thought for a moment on how best to keep this conversation away from my Michelle. Yep…
“How old were we when Christine moved into town?”
“I don’t know, sixth grade?” Bullshit, I’ll bet he remembered the day.
“Alright, and do you remember Valentine’s Day that year?”
“Not particularly.”
“Really? Oh I do, I remember your squeaky voice and how you wouldn’t shut up about the new girl. And you bought her a Valentine, even though we were all supposed to make them in class the day before. Mrs. Brown ‘everybody gets a valentine no exceptions!’” I mimicked her mousy screech. “So we all made ridiculously stupid valentines to pass out in class the next day, but you had to get one special store bought one.”
“So?”
“It was all lacy and perty!”
“Seriously, that was sixth grade.”
“Yep,” I responded, “and you haven’t gotten over her since.”
“Let’s say I concede that I had a crush on her when I was twelve, where are you going with this?”
“Let’s say you also concede that you have a thing for her now, even if it’s just a little hang up.”
“For the sake of argument.”
“Okay, how old are you?”
“32, just like you asshole.”
“So you’ve been smitten for 20 years, I was being generous earlier.”
Mark sighed his beaten sigh, which was always my favorite. It was the closest he’d ever give to a concession.
“I think she’s coming tonight, she usually shows up on Fridays,” I said.
“With Stewart, generally.”
“The tool.”
“To the nth degree.”
Just then Justin walked up. “Whose the tool?”
“Stewart,” Mark grumped.
“Ah, we still commiserating over Christine?”
“No,” Mark grumped again.
“Stewart being a tool has nothing to do with Christine,” I chimed in. “Stewart being a tool has something to do with God punishing mankind.”
“I’ll give you that.” Thanks Justin, I really needed your support. Tool.
“What we were supposed to be talking about is how Charlie here,” I’m Charles, “ needs to get off his ass and make a move on Michelle.” Mark redirected. “That’s what we should be talking about.”
“Ah,” Justin paused, like he always does. “You really ought to make a move Chuck, or I might just make a move for you.”
“And how is your marriage?”
“Solid as always.”
“You’re one lucky son of a bitch,” I shot back. “No way that you deserve Lydia. She must have some emotional self-esteem problem or something.”
“Get em while their young and don’t know better.”
“Yeah, you got married at 20, let’s say that I enjoyed my 20’s enough to not want to be you.”
“You sowed your wild oats, I started a family. It is what it is.”
“Cheers to that,” Mark toasted.
Yes, cheers to that. It is what it is. And we aren’t talking about Michelle, so I’ll take it.

In the beginning...

Sometimes I guess you want to spout off without having any “real” consequences to your actions.  Or at least I do.  And based on my life I probably shouldn’t globalize my own predilections, as I’m an odd bird to say the least.  But anyways…

            Sometimes I feel like saying things that don’t particularly matter, and for no particular reason.  I just feel the need to get things out of my system.  I really do hate the term “self-expression,” because of how remarkably pretentious the very idea is.  But in a way it is true, sometimes I just want to express myself.  I suppose this is a way to accomplish that goal with little or no risk, as it’s a fairly anonymous venue.

            So there, that’s why this thing is, and why it will continue to be until it no longer is.  And for some reason I do not currently have anything that I want to say, so this will have to do for an introduction.

 

C