Two Things I'm Fuming About Today

Working at Barnes & Noble again puts me back on the front line of the culture war again!

First of all: Happy Holidays! That's the first thing that I'm aggravated about. When I'm at the store (or in general to people I don't know) instead of saying "Merry Christmas!" because it's "religious neutral." I like saying "Happy Holidays" because, I think, it is respectful of the possibility that the person that I am speaking with might not necessarily share my religious beliefs but this year though I'm being met with this amazing backlash. It's the norm this year for my telling someone "Happy Holidays!" to typically be met with "No! Merry Christmas!" and, frankly, its pissing me off.

Now, here's the thing. When I'm Johnny-at-the-Counter at Barnes & Noble, I've just finished ringing out your order and the line is twenty-five or thirty people deep, let's be clear here, my goal in wishing you a "Happy Holidays" is to respectfully wish you a "Happy Holidays" in such a way that won't offend you. That's all. It's not a call to arms against Christmas despite what your pastor, priest or FoxNews may be telling you. Furthermore, I don't really NEED or even CARE if you're Christian, so your insisting that "Merry Christmas!" is the way to go is virtually meaningless to me. I repect your privacy and I respect your relgious beliefs and all I ask in return is that you a) do the same for me in return and b) don't get angry at me because I am catering to a wider group of people than you are willing to acknowledge.

What I simply fail to realize is why, in a country DOMINATED by Christianity, Christians feel the need to pretend that they are being persecuted still. No one is burning you here and I don't see anyone being fed to the lions and this point dovetails with the SECOND thing that is annoying me.

Phillip Pullman's HIS DARK MATERIALS. Specifically, THE GOLDEN COMPASS movie and book.

The sheer volume of these books that I've been seeing returned is actually pretty high. Adults who've been buying them for kids for Christmas and are now returning them on account of their perceived Atheist slant. I've read the books and I'm here to tell you that they are probably worse than you think they are but JUST BECAUSE A BOOK CHALLENGES YOUR FAITH DOES NOT MEAN THAT IT IS EVIL!

Where are the days gone to when people could look at and understand other peoples' points of view and reject or assimilate those views into their own beliefs after some bit of rational consideration. Where's the critical thinking, the empathy, tolerance, and willingness to be openminded? I just don't get it. THE GOLDEN COMPASS was an okay book (the sequels were a little better) but yes, they are at LEAST agnostic, and I'd probably argue that by the time the protagonists accidentally kill God and the Metatron has gone on a rampage and murdered people, the book has probably crossed over into some level of atheism.

But that having been said, some of the things that Pullman pulls out of his hat in those books are more creative than you're going to find anywhere else and to simply label them as atheist is both inaccurate and overly dismissive. I'm not saying that 8-year-olds should be reading them and I would say that if your kids are reading them, you should probably be reading them too because they are definitely books that need some guidance to get through, but screw all the Bluetool soccer-moms out there and their overblown, FoxNews inspired moral indignation. Get down off of your high-horse / SUV and put on your thinking caps before you inspire a flock of mindless Christian clones that can follow real good, but can't think their way out of a bag.

Happy holidays,
Jason

The Idea of Order At Key West

So I was wasting some time on my lunch today and found an online version of my favorite poem ever. There have many different poems over the years that I have been assigned or inspired to read, but none have ever been so beautiful to me as this one. In terms of the pure usage of language to express a feeling, I'm not sure if there is anything superior to this, unless maybe something by Dylan Thomas.

In the spirit of my using this page as a catalog of things that I feel are noteworthy, here it is in its copy-free entirety.

Don't ask me for an interpretation of it and don't ask me who "Ramon Fernandez" is either. The first is too difficult for me to presume to explain here and the latter has been the center of debate for years.

The Idea of Order At Key West by Wallace Stevens

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.

It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

If you're interested in learning more about Wallace Stevens, go here.

30 Minutes of Bull Crap is More Like It

Right now, I would like to punch Steve Niles in the head. I would like to punch him once and then punch him again, just so he knew that the first weak and poorly thrown punch I had thrown WASN'T an accident. Who is Steve Niles? He's the comic book writer (my dream job) who built his career from the comic book series 30 Days of Night (now ridiculously popular, having spun off 4 graphic novel sequels, a book series, and, oh yeah, a Josh Hartnett movie.) And yes, I want to punch him.

Why, you may be asking, do I want to punch him in his stupid head? Here's why:

My graphic novel class voted for our last reading in class to be 30 Days of Night. I'd point out here that the majority of the class did NOT vote for this, but it did receive the most votes of any of the options. I think it got 5 votes out of a class of 20. We didn't have to have it read for a few weeks yet, but as all my books are boxed up now, I was between reading other things, and I got a super-nifty % off any book from Barnes & Noble coupon, I figured I'd go ahead and just buy it and read it now. Oh yeah, the other reason I hurried to buy and read it was because, over the last couple of years, I've heard so many fans rave about the book that I honestly thought it would be, AT LEAST entertaining. I bought it last night.

I started reading it when I sat down on the bus this morning and I finished it when my bus pulled up to my stop, with a hearty "WTF WAS THAT?" that may have actually been out loud.

I would like to tell you that I was so offended by the violence and depravity of it that I felt a chill through my jaded, horror-inundated soul, something that visually would stay with me long after I had turned the final page. But it wasn't.

Here's what 30 Days of Night IS:

• a three issue comic series that should have just been a movie to begin with and by-passed that whole "graphic novel" medium.
• 80 pages of abstractified, minimalist art that showcases gouts of blood and unclear, non-specific imagery at the cost of any real clarity of storytelling.
• a high(er) concept action zombie sotry that needs to call it's zombies "vampires" in order to justify the "hey-I've-got-this-great-idea-for-a-vampire-story" concept.
• a collection of horror stereotypes and cliches as characters, who act out the most ridiculous lines and actions possible.
• really just a flaming pile of poo masquerading as art.

Now, why do I want to punch Steve Niles? Well, first of all, he created this thing and second of all, he is WAY too successful for it. I love horror. I write horror. And I have deep problems with the marketing and popularity of something like this. NOT critical popularity, mind you, but it IS popular and it shouldn't be. He created 80 pages of violence and nihilism draped across the most rickety scaffolding of a plot he could. He made a dumb story for dumb people and rode it to popularity and it pisses me off because, accounting for taste is fine and good, but crap is still crap.

It has splashy, bloody art; hero sacrifice; a bunch of "fucks" thrown in here and there just to be "edgy;" and a faux-"Underworld"-by-way-of-"Dawn of the Dead" premise that he should be apologizing for. Niles seems to have forgotten the "book" in "comic book" and the "novel" in "graphic novel."

Maybe the movie is better. I can't see how it could be worse, but honestly if the movie runs longer than the 30 minutes that it took me to read the book, it would HAVE to be.

Jason Ellis: Crusader for Public Change

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

So, after typing the entry the other day where I spoke about how expensive NKU parking passes are now, I was filled with equal parts self-righteousness and indignation (some of the indignation was even fiery indignation,) and fired off an email to Dr. James Votruba, President of NKU. Here it is:

Dear Dr. Votruba,

I am writing you because in many ways I feel personally violated by NKU. I have attended NKU since 1999 and have mostly attended night classes on a part-time basis. Happily I will finish my degree in Spring 2008. I love NKU. I love the atmostphere there and I would like to teach writing there once I attain my MA. So please understand that this is not an "individual vs the establishment" scenario.

Dr. Votruba, my issue is this. Currently this semester I only need to park on campus Monday nights between the hours of 6 and 9PM and yet I have had to purchase a $160 parking pass and am paying the same amount as any student who must park on campus 5 days a week. This is unfair and, I feel, wrong. At such a price coupled with such a low frequency of usage, I'm essentially required to pay $10 per visit ($3 and change per hour!) in order to attend my class. I commute downtown everday and can park in the Carew Tower complex for an entire daytime 8 hour period for less than that.

I'm not writing this to you to ask for a refund or reimbursement. That would be unfair as well to others in my situation. All that I ask is that my complaint be acknowledged as a legitimate unfairness, a "falling through the cracks" so to speak, and would strongly urge anyone on campus in a position such as yours to more strongly consider non-traditional students into your plan as you move toward establishing NKU as a worldclass university.

Sincerely,

Jason Ellis

Happily, I would like to report that at 2:00PM EST, Dr. Votruba responded to me in something other than a form letter:

Jason, I appreciate you taking the time to write. I can understand your frustration. Our problem is how to develop an approach to student parking that recognizes the differences in campus attendance. I’m not an expert on this but it seems to me, intuitively, that it would be a very complex undertaking. However, by copy of this email, I am requesting that Vice President Ramey consider your concern and determine if there is a realistic way to respond. We’ll see. On a much more positive note, congratulations on your upcoming degree. You and I will meet on the stage of the Bank of Kentucky Center if not before!

As well, less than an hour later, I also received an email from Ken Ramey, NKU Vice President for Administration and Finance:

Jason,

Thank you for your insightful comments. We are currently reviewing our parking operations and comments such as these will help us to structure a program that may prove more equitable. Congratulations on your achievement and good luck in your pursuit of your MA.

Best regards,

Ken

Now, let me be clear here. I wasn't writing them originally to try and get my money back. That's ridiculous and, as I said in my original letter, for me to have been reimbursed would really have been unfair (but, yes, it would have been probably more gratifying). No, I just wanted some validation, which I think I received.

I would also like to point out that they both emailed me on Saturday after my original mail was sent on Tuesday. . .

So, for me, this is enough. I feel better about it really. Rationally, I knew that probably most people on campus knew that it was, in some ways, unfair, but it's nice having them acknowledge that the parking on campus is FUBAR.

Introducing The INTERROBANG

I know, I know. Many of you right now are looking at this and going . . . "wtf?" It's a "P" with a point under it or maybe a D that's been caught in a lazy breeze. What's an "interrobang?"

Well, I found this today on (of all places) Wikipedia, and, this being my 50th blog post and all, I thought that the story and usage of the interrobang would be a good jumping-on place for something that I've been wondering about how to post on for awhile now.

Consider what follows a mixture of an amateur course in literary theory, typography, and contemporary society:

Irony is a problem. There are two types of irony that I'm concerned with here: situational irony and verbal irony. Situational irony is, as defined by Wikipedia, "a discrepancy between the expected result and actual results when enlivened by 'perverse appropriateness'." The key there is a discrepancy between the way things are and the way they are intended to be. An example of irony would be a college class that is devoted to teaching students why they shouldn't be in college. Verbal irony is when you say something that you don't mean. Someone saying "Yeah. . . . your new shoes are awesome!" when they are being sarcastic about it is an example of verbal irony.

The problem of irony (to me and many others) is how do you tell the difference between someone writing "Yeah . . . your new shoes are awesome!" when really mean it and "Yeah . . . your new shoes are awesome!" when they are being sarcastic. It's all in the context, but in a world of buzz clips and thirty-second news headlines context has been all but dropped from the program.

The solution to the problem? I give you (see above) the interrobang!

The interrobang is not really a new thing. Typographically, it's been around for years apparently, but I had never seen it before today. It's fantastic. It's a combination of a question mark (typographically, an interrogative mark) and an exclamation point (typographically known as a bang), hence interrobang.

The complication, of course, is that you've never heard of the interrobang before. In handwriting, it is obviously easy to write out but the interrobang isn't included (for now) on the character map in Windows, so including it in your instant messenger and email conversations is pretty much impossible but luckily though many people online have started looking to the close captioning system that deaf or hearing impaired television viewers use as a sound proxy for a solution. It seems that when something is spoken ironically by a character, the cc system punctuates the sentence with a "(!)" to denote the irony.

So, if you're a smart aleck, and you want to be very clear about what you are saying and you are saying it, I suggest using either the interrobang or, until it is embraced by the world, the (!).

Update - I forgot to source this before, but you can find supplemental information at Wikipedia or at this interesting little site too. Also, you apparently can access 4 different varieties of interrobangs in the Wingdings2 font of any Microsoft Office program by striking the "~" "^" "}" or "_" keys.

Try to live a singular life!

I was in class last night at NKU but had an appointment on campus before class, so I was there about two hours before my class started. My appointment only lasted about five minutes of course, so I was left with almost two full hours to waste on campus . . . in the rain.

I wasn't particularly annoyed by this though because our classroom is always empty for hours before our class starts and I knew I could just wait there for a bit and read next week's assignment. The downside to this is the lack of any real windows in the room, which sucks. There are windows there but they are only a crappy horizontal row of windows over seven feet up the wall at the back of the class. It's almost as if they were placed there only begrudgingly as an afterthought just to let some meagre amount of natural light in.

After I had been sitting there in the fluorescent bath for twenty or thirty minutes, I thought I could hear the rain pick up outside and really start to pour, so I stood up on my desk seat to look out the windows onto the plaza below. It was pouring! Pouring! And I was on the third floor, so I was in a really good position to see people waiting at the doors of other buildings for the rain to slack off some.

And then there was this girl. We weren't more than twenty yards apart so I could see her very well. She was very close to the building I was in and walking across the plaza very slowly really with a hoodie on, but the hood was thrown back. She was quite soaked and didn't particularly look very happy to be out in the rain. She nearly walked into a very large puddle but stopped at the last second and stood still at its edge. I could see from my angle that the puddle was only a couple of inches deep at most, but was several feet in diameter and at the edge of it she just stood there, looking down at it. For several seconds in the rain.

And then she did the most amazing thing. She started dancing. In what seemed to me an almost complete unselfconsciousness, she did a little series of tap steps across the puddle, sending up little silver splashes of water out around herself and then, just as quickly as she had started, she stepped out from the little puddle and continued on her way, smiling as she went.

I'm reasonably certain that I was the only person who saw this happen and I have to wonder if she'd have puddle danced if she had known I was there, but what a delicious sense of freedom she must have felt for just a few moments. Maybe a feeling of singularity and uniqueness, that in all the world at the moment, for just those few seconds, she was dancing and everyone else was not.

I know that its a common truism that "everyone is unique" but there is a far cry between having your own combination of interests and personality that makes you "unique" and doing something that makes you singular.

For a time when I worked at the bookstore, Julie would drop me off at work every afternoon and then I would get a ride at night to a White Castle that was close to the interstate where Julie would pick me up about 11-ish, two hours after the book store had closed. Many nights as I sat there at a window watching the snow fall and reading (Crime and Punishment and Ulysses are two books I remember reading there) I was really struck by the singularness of my activity. There's a really amazing feeling you get when you realize that no one else anywhere could be doing what you're doing right then, at that second.

Here's the deal. As brutal as it is to hear this, you're aren't unique. Not really. And neither am I. 99% of the things you do in your life everyone else is doing too. The details might vary wildy, but in the broadstrokes your life is mostly like everyone else's. It's just a sad fact determined. We're just not that different.

But that's what makes singular moments so special because most people most of the time AREN'T breaking the routine and so, if you do something outside the norm for yourself it's probably outside the norm for a LOT of other people too. So, I encourage you all to be odd and maybe not necessarily make it a secret. Read Ulysses at 11 o'clock on a snowy night in the dining room of a White Castle and hold your book up for everyone to see it or tap dance in a puddle on a rainy afternoon, because those are what inspire others to do so too. And relish the fact that just for (if nothing else) one moment in your life, you did something that no one else was doing, no matter how trivial that one thing was. THAT is a singular moment and it's beautiful and full of grace.

Something short for your review . . . . .

Below is something I found tonight on an older computer I still have which was really my primary computer during the first few years of college. Its a poem that I wrote on 9/11, literally on the morning of the attack. I turned it in for an incidental assignment shortly after I wrote it and the professor gave me a good mark on it, but also told me not to share it with anyone because it was simply too soon to make some of the comments that the poem makes.

I thought it was lost and forgot that it had been saved on my laptop, so when I found it, I was actually very happy. I've reread it several times now because I think its probably the most honest thing I've ever written and, for all its melodrama, I'm nonetheless very proud of it. I did and still do agree with the professor though. I think still today it is too soon to say some of the things that it says, but at the same time I find it jarring in a way that maybe is good and maybe is just as applicable today as it was 6 years ago.

I hope you read this and think honestly on it for a few minutes of your day. The title is a new addition. It had never been titled until now but I think that this is really, with the perspective of a few years now, an appropriate title. Comments in the TalkBack please. That's all.

Lost

Lady Liberty,
what is that running down your once chaste inner thigh?

Who tattered your gown and stole your torch,
violated you, left you cold,
sweaty, ripped and bloodied,
for passers-by to point
their fingers, shake their heads,
call you a "cautionary tale."

The day dawned a bloody sunrise,
but don't let this seed of terror
blossom from within your womb,
to stagnate and sour your waters.

Dash it from your ever virgin body,
and raise high again;

stand now with more open eyes
hued in all the American colors,

and most of all,
let Freedom ring.

Bus Stop

Yup. I've still got it! When I was waiting to catch the bus tonight, a woman hit on me. Seriously, she totally did.

Here's what happened. For those of you who don't spend time in Downtown Cincy, there are strange periods of nearly absolute abandonment interspersed throughout quite busy periods during the day. One of these moments of near-zombie-apocalpyse-type desolation is between 4:50 and 5:05 during weekday afternoons at the Saks bus stop outside Carew Tower. Before this time and after, the bus stop is really quite bustling but during this time it is nearly vacant for almost a full 15 minute span. I know this because I've waited through this period several times.

Today, at very nearly 5 o'clock, I walked outside of Carew Tower jamming to Radiohead on my iPod and joined three women standing at the bus stop. They were all talking very closely huddled and I assumed they were friends. I was standing possibly twenty feet from them and really paid them very little notice at all. After a couple of minutes, a Southbank Shuttle picked up two of the three, leaving me now with the remaining woman who proceeded almost immediately in my direction and said something to me. I had no idea what she said. As I said, I was jamming. I unplugged one earbud.

"I'm sorry?" I said.

"You listening to an iPod?" she asked me. She was in her early to mid-20s, neither attractive nor unattractive really, and looked to be of vaguely Hispanic descent, though this could be wildly wrong.

"Yup," I said.

"How much are those?" she asked. I was about to be mugged.

"About $299, I think."

"Ahh," she said, "I'm meeting someone downtown. He was supposed to meet me here at 4 to buy me a dress and then we were going out tonight but he never showed up. He just wants me to help him pay rent, but he doesn't even bother to buy me anything any more" - I know what you're thinking here because I was thinking it too and, though I have no proof of this, I don't think she was a prostitute - "what do you think about that?"

Because there weren't really words to describe what I was thinking at this point, I said nothing, overtly aware of the one earbud still dangling from my ear. I imagined Radiohead leaking from the earbud dangling down my chest, pooling around my ankles and sliding into the gutter to be carried to the river and onward into the sea . . . . .

"Huh?" she said. "He's just using me, isn't he?" I have no idea what she meant by this and then she played her trump card. "I should have known this would happen, because he's Jewish. I've dated Jews before and they always treat me like this." NOW I was fascinated.

"Yeah," I said. "That sucks."

"What sucks?" she asked me.

A pause here on my part, not knowing how to move our conversation forward. "You know, that he'd be using you and all. Because he's Jewish," I said.

That must really have been the correct choice on my part, because at this she nodded, smiling, and said, "Yeah, I'll never date Jews again, or Italians either because really don't know WHAT they want. I dated a German guy once and he treated me really well though. And a British and an Irish guy too, and they both treated me real good. What are you?"

Wha-? How does one respond to this. . . . . I knew where it was going now - seriously considered saying I was Chinese, but decided that that could in some way be mistaken for charm. Sticking with the truth, "Scottish," I said.

Priceless! "Ahh," she said. "I've never dated a Scottish guy before. I bet you'd be real nice to me. But I bet you're married though, huh?"

". . . . yup," I said.

"Yeah," she said. "All the good guys are."

Now, this conversation could have ended here and I could have walked away creeped out enough as it was, but continued to tell me how she had a two year old son that she had "left" in foster care and how she guessed she would have to leave him there because all of the guys she ended up with seemed to like smoking and drinking and, since she didn't want her son being raised around a smoker, she would just as soon he stay in foster care. This was delivered in a sort of strange monotone dramatic monologue, interspersed with pauses to ask me what I thought of this and my replying with "Ewww, that really sucks" because really, what DOES one say in response to this?

Where am I going with this? I don't know. I could take it in several directions I guess. Perspective wise, I make a joke about her being weird, make an issue of how "creepy" she was, point out the fact that she was probably just a very troubled person, or try to elevate this to the fact that there are people like this literally just wandering around downtown. I'm not sure how to explain it any better than I have. I didn't give you everything. There were other things she said that, for the sake of this record, really don't matter. Just things about how she has the freedom to drop what she's doing here and move back to California or Florida, etc etc. I don't know.

I don't know.

Pushing Daisies and Pattern Recognition

Ok, ok. I know. I've been posting a LOT less this past week, but I have a good reason. I've been busy with a) school and b) THE NEW TELEVISION SEASON!!! And of course my wife and children are spattered throughout there as well I think.

But regardless of that.

Two things I wanted to post on tonight.

First of all, Pushing Daisies. It's great. It's on ABC Wednesday nights at either 8-9 or 9-10. I'm not sure which and don't feel like looking it up right now. It's really fresh and different from most of the other crap you'll ever see on t.v. and honestly, after watching an episode of it, I feel about it almost as strongly as I feel about The Office. It's going to be one of those shows that will just make your life happier because its in it. The website is here and apparently they are rerunning the pilot episode this Friday at 9PM. TAPE IT. WATCH IT.

The second thing I wanted to write about is a quote I found today in a book I'm reading. The book is Pattern Recognition by William "Neuromancer" Gibson. It's good so far. For you readers, it's an SF-ish Crying of Lot 49, heavy shades of Pynchon throughout, but not quite as PoMo. Good stuff though. Not very dense. But here's a quote that I found that rather struck me:

"Of course, we have no idea, now, of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which 'now' was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents' have insufficient 'now' to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile."

It's a modern day, post-9/11 SF novel - I can't sum it up any better than that without giving plot details - but there's something in that that rings very true to me and speaks toward our current condition. Maybe we all thought Y2K would just wipe us all out, but does anyone really have a clear sense of where we're heading in the next 50 years? Most of my ideas of what the future is going to be like are rooted in the 1950s vision of tomorrow. . . .

Thoughts On Dining-In at Taco Bell

I sincerely hope that none of you will be put-off by that title, because, though the title may sound somewhat trivial, it is my sincerest hope that this particular be anything but.

First of all, let me begin by saying now that I do try to not eat much fast food. I really do. Its just not feasible to avoid it sometimes though. I know, I know. It is avoidable, but, honestly, the convenience is just too . . . well . . . convenient to not go with fast food occasionally and usually my fast food of choice is McDonald's. I know its not good for me and I, like most good American consumers, just really don't give a shit. Lets not kid ourselves here. When you crave a hamburger - no when you crave french fries, you crave McDONALD'S french fries. McDONALD'S hamburgers. I think deep down, like Baudrillard said would happen in Simulacra and Simulation, McDonalds' simulation of a hamburger has become, for the most part, the reality of what a hamburger is, etc etc.

But where I usually, typically, 99.99999% of the time do NOT go is Taco Bell, mostly because a) they don't really serve food there, and b) because they were featured prominently in Demolition Man (come on, don't even pretend you don't remember it!) Honestly, my going there tonight was a product of absolute laziness and convenience: I was too lazy to leave Mall Road tonight to get food and Taco Bell is, conveniently, the only fast food restaraunt on the aforementioned street. So I went to the new, nifty looking "prototype" Taco Bell and my life may never be the same again.

First of all, for those of you who have never been into this store, I really recommend a special trip to it. Sure, there're no fountains, marble or brass to be seen anywhere, but nonetheless the restaraunt is exhibits a certain allure. It is designed well: richly hued walls, contempo-abstract art adorning the walls that only, upon the third or fourth examination, yield the graffiti-ized Taco Bell logos hidden within, a bright spacious dining room furnished with obviously well-made, heavy tables and chairs, and a clear and open view of the kitchen area. When I first entered the store though, I noticed none of these things so much as the scruffily-bearded man-child (17 or 18 at the oldest) sitting at a table closest to the door, his arm slung in practiced non-chalance over the chair back and who was glaring at me. Our eyes met. Remembering my jungle training, I looked away to the menu but from the corner of my eye, I could see he continued to stare. I returned his gaze. I could feel the cackles on my neck begin to raise as he released his pheromones into the air. An attack was imminent. I moved fastest. "How's it going?" I muttered at him, and returned my attention to the menu. From behind the bar, the portly and somewhat jovial young lad who, ostensibly, would momentarily be taking my order giggled mirthfully and called out, "Hehehe, Jeff's intimidating the customers again! Haha, Jeff you're messed up!" I was pleased. I had passed the first test.

Next, with Jeff behind me, I moved on to the next ordeal: the menu. Taco Bell's menu is what I assume menus on Big Rock Candy Mountain would be like. Nothing is more expensive than $3.29. Nothing. Dropping any dead presidents at all there will yield a veritable cornacopia of delights. Considering now the novelty of my position, I decided to attempt to order the closest-to-well-balanced meal that the establishment could offer: 2 grande soft taco supremes (classic but delicious,) fiesta potatos (the only "side dish" that Taco Bell offers,) a water to drink, and an Apple Empanada (for dessert.) The young man proved so adept at his job that he managed to devote nearly no attention to me whatsoever during this exchange. Impressed was not nearly the word I would use to describe how I felt. I took my cup to the soda fountain and only now began to take stock of my fellow wayfarers who were sheltering from the storm here with me. A woman about my age, well dressed, with a young boy wearing a really quite neat X-Men shirt and a young couple so comfortable with the prototype store that they were able to make-out nearly the entire time I was there.

At any rate though, next, after a somewhat protracted amount of time, my order was called and my food presented to me. My food was actually delicious, but that's exactly what I would have expected. Let me explain. My 2 grande soft taco supremes (three adjective for one dish! decadent!) were each a soft taco shell slathered in melted cheese, with another soft taco shell loaded then with "meat," cheese, lettuce, sour cream and MORE melted cheese. My potatoes were small hashbrown-type products slathered in a swamp of liquid cheese and then thickly frosted in sour cream, and my empanada was, basically, one of those cheap Hostess fruit pies only deep fried. Heaven only wishes it had dishes so delicious as Taco Bell's delicacies and, honestly, I wished deep down that I had bought a large Baja Mountain Dew to wash it down with because surely the only drink suitable for washing down such delicacies is Mountain Dew.

At this point, Jeff the Door Man, Portly the Money Taker, and rather loud woman with poor teeth who I believe was the manager got into a rather loud argument as to who was the most "hardcore." The makers-out took a break from eating their burritos to make continue their preferred activity and I, feeling less than "extreme," was unable to finish my last grande soft taco supreme. I wadded up my trash and now, for the first time, took note of my tray liner. Displayed upon it, was a series of rich, delicious looking foods (steaks, cheeses, whole grains, etc.) along side Taco Bell's promise to deliver the highest quality product to me and my family. Looking up, I saw a family of grandparents, parents, and several children come through the door and begin to discuss what they'd be having for dinner and, in that moment, I was stuck by truly how fortunate we all are for living in the U.S. during the 21st Century.

This story was entirely true.

What has gotten into me?

I mean really! What has gotten into me? Since school started this semester, my lifestyle has completely changed.

First of all, Guild Wars and I are taking a break. We're seeing other people and just really taking some time off. Is it permanent? I don't know. I'd like think its not; that our separation is just a temporary thing what with the added preasures of my school load this semester and all. We have really become very different from one another and our relationship had really just become a matter of going through the motions. Maybe in time we'll find one another again, but for now I'm living the life . . . .

. . . and trying out new things. Like hiking. I've sort of taken up hiking now that the weather has finally shifted from Summer to Autumn and it has given me an opportunity to get some needed exercise as well as get into the landscape of my area a lot more (mixed mesophytic forests in case you were interested.) So far, we've gone hiking at Cliffs of Boone and England-Idlewild, and this next week we're strongly considering Tower Park as another local hiking option, though I'm kind of excited to "make a day of it" a little more and head up to the Miami Whitewater area.

I guess it was pretty natural that, after starting hiking, we would turn to mountain biking as the next logical step, but bking requires a bit more gear than hiking and I am fickle, so, while I'm interested in trying biking, I'm also a little hesitant. I've basically got a bike on donation for now (though it needs some work) and I guess all I need is a decent helmet before I can go flinging myself into trees and creek beds in the name of health and recreation. It seems fun though, and whatever gets me moving some is a good thing.

Another big change lately is that Julie, the kids and I have been going out to the farm a lot more, so I've been doing everything else a lot less (like posting on here.) We've been out there 6 of the last 7 days by my figure. Not all day in most cases, but a good portion of the days nonetheless. Obviously, part of the reason for this is my starting to buy my horse from my father-in-law, though honestly I'm not sure if I'm more active outside now because of the horse or if I got the horse because I'm trying to be more active outside. I think part of it is just that activity begets more activity and it IS hard work. Just riding around on a horse for 45 minutes when you're not used to it can be hard on muscle groups that you're not used to working out.

Now, I'm only going to sing one virtue of this new lifestyle. Over the course of the weekend, I was stung by ground bees, stumbled upon a snake, went riding 4 separate times, went out to eat at Longhorn, FORGOT to eat 3 separate lunches and/or dinners, watched 2 movies, went hiking for 4 hours, rode a bicycle for the first time in 1o years, fed and watered horses, mucked out a horse stall full of manure, almost got kicked in the head by my horse, beat my horse with a broom for almost kicking me in the head, helped take care of the kiddies, did homework, and bought a supercool toy! I can tell you what I ate at every meal over the weekend and what I did everyday in the order that I did it. Oh, and I bought a pair of hiking boots too.

Over the summer, many (dare I say "most"?) of my weekends were spent only playing Guild Wars, reading books and eating, though honestly it all ran together into a blur.

I'm not sure why any of this is the case, except to say that something during this semester has clicked for me. Video gaming has been on a downhill slope for me for a long time now. I love my Wii and spending a blood-spattered hour or so every couple of days killing Andy online is actually pretty cathartic for me, but beyond that who knows? As my loathing of my job gets worse and my relationship with NKU continues to change, I'm finding that I need some new releases in my life. I've also boxed up about 3/4s of my books and placed them into storage for me to get to later one if/when I need them again.

I still read of course, but I savor what I read a lot more now and, for some reason (I don't know why,) I'm digging in a lot deeper to the books I'm reading. I've been spending a lot of my computer time researching the contexts of the books that I'm reading. I guess school mode agrees with me.

I'm also finding that the role I play in my life has needed to change. I don't know if this is the same for anyone else, but I think the person that I get tired of being around the most is myself. It's stupid to say, but I annoy myself more than anyone else annoys me. And I think its really difficult to break out of behavior patterns that you have made for yourself. But I also think that the rewards that I personally gain from how I'm living now are better than the rewards I gain from the type of lifestyle I've been living previously. There WERE rewards there.

More later. . . .

On Vacancy: Not a Review, but Rather a Manifesto

So I just got done watching Vacancy. You know . . . the horror movie thing that just came out on dvd starring Luke Wilson and Kate "Jason's Other True Love" Beckinsdale and you know what? Despite all the negative crap I'd heard about it; despite the fact that it currently holds a 54% score on RottenTomatoes.com (officially labeling it a "Rotten" film) and that its average score on IMDB.com is only 6.5 out of 10; despite the "eh, it's OK"s and "it's about as good as anything else"s, I personally think it was pretty damned good. But you know what? I'm not going to tell you why because I have started to think that movie reviews are inherently hurtful for both the film in question as well as the viewing audience. Don't get me wrong though. I think my opinion is correct and, if you said that it is "eh, just okay," then yes, I think you're wrong too . . . . but I'll come back to that.

Okay, here's the deal. I've had enough classes on Film at this point and have watched enough movies over the course of my life to think (rightfully so or not) that I've got a pretty good historical perspective of film by this point. Maybe not enough to be a formal "critic," but certainly enough so that I can talk intelligently about a film within a historical and cultural context. Personally, despite being a writer, when it comes to movies I'm a sucker for good shot composition and editting. It isn't pretension that causes me to love The Godfather. Oh, and I hate Citizen Kane. Really. I hate it.

So that's a little bit of me and why I feel I'm qualified to speak to this. Now, as for Vacancy. Vacancy is in a rough spot that you've really got to appreciate. First of all, where's the gore? Its horror right? So where is it? Certainly there's not much of it in the movie . . . . maybe it all ended up in a Rob Zombie movie or Saw VII. Who knows? But its not in here. Next, its a movie about a pair of intended snuff film victims who fight back? You mean, possibly people who watch ultraviolent, exploitative films are in someway amoral? Well, considering that all the most of the under-25 crowd "loves themselves" a good Saw or Hostel, yeah, you just alienated half of your audience. I could go on. The point here though is that Vacancy was doomed from the start. It's a little piece of neo-Hitchocockian popcorn-friendly fluff that knows where it sits on the horror/thriller timeline and who isn't afraid of thumbing its nose at all the junkfood that the kiddies love to gobble up this time of the year at the movie theater. But that's just me.

But that IS just me.

I want to believe that we are still capable of making great art, whether it be a movie as great as The Godfather, The Third Man, or Casablanca; or a book as telling of the human experience as Ulysses or Great Expectations or Hamlet. As an artist, I refuse to believe that our ability to create "great works" is exhausted. Maybe I'm an idealist. Maybe to be an artist you HAVE to be an idealist. That could be true. It would certainly explain why I thought Black Dahlia was one of the better movies of last year. And so what if I am? I'm glad that I'm compelled to recommend almost every book I read to my friends. I'm proud of it. It shows I'm not as negative as some of you think I am.

I think the key for any viewer is to presuppose that that movie is good and that there is a fundamentally human idea that the film maker is trying to convey to you. Doing that will allow you to enter into a new type of relationship with the film where you actively look at each facet of the film to find that easter egg that you are expecting to find instead of lethargically allowing the movie to simply "wash over" you.

The Joys of Flex . . . Scheduling

So, recently I began taking advantage of my employer's FlexScheduling benefit which, essentially, legitimizes what was already an unspoken policy and gives almost all the employees here the right to work more flexible hours than a traditional Monday through Friday, 9:00AM-5:00PM schedule. So I now work four 10-hours days, Tuesday through Friday and every weekend is now a three day mini-vacation for me.

Let me sing the virtues of this system:

1. I'm the type of worker who really needs a large workload to stay motivated and, by compressing my workload into four days, the amount of work available to me at any given time is much more satisfying and consistent.
2. I'm also the type of worker who takes a little while to get warmed up in the morning. I can hit and sustain my peak productivity for longer periods on my four 10-hour days than I could on a five 8-hour day work week.
3. Frankly, working ruins your day and, honestly here, working an extra two hours each day really doesn't make that much of a difference once you're there. My philosophy on this is that if my day is already wrecked because of having to be at work, I might as well just work ten hours instead of eight and only have to ruin four days a week instead of five.
4. Needing to work ten hours each day at work coupled with trying to match my schedule to the TANK schedule has caused me, out of necessity, to almost completely forgo taking formal lunches where I would leave work to go find food. I pack now and have found that I tend to be much more satisfied with my lunches as well as spending less and eating considerably better.
5. The flipside to having a longer weekend, of course, is having a shorter work week. Being able to say that after Tuesday, I only have three days left for the week to work is really a great, unexpected relief.
6. And last, being NOT at work an extra day each week, keeps me much more satisfied and emotionally happy at work. I'm annoyed far less by the little things and people who, when seeing them five days a week, normally irritate me. Conversely, being at home with Julie and the kids more has put me onto a much more even keel. I'm no where near as frantic and prone to broad and sweeping dissatisfaction with my life.

So, all the points are obvious, really but at the same time, if the points really were that obvious, shouldn't more people be working four 10-hour days each week or at least have more flexible schedules than the hideous 9-5? I encourage everyone to try this. Speak to your employer about whether or not a truncated work week would be right for you and them.

Two Book Things I Want To Share With You All

Howdy All!

There're two pretty worthwhile things on my mind tonight that I'd like to share with you all.

First of all, I'm not a first year student (and have not been for some time now) but I still usually try to at least take a "more than passing glance" at the books that are chosen each year to be the First Year Student's Book of the Year. Its a good NKU program. Essentially, the idea is that all freshmen should be mostly in low level classes their first year so the First Year Students program gives out a certain book, arranges to have that book's author come to campus near the end of the school year and then facilitates the book being worked into classroom curricula throughout the low level class classes that most freshman would be taking. The end result is that the first year students tend to have very strong, intercurricular experiences with whichever book has been chosen for them that year. The books chosen tend to have some ongoing social significance and are usually fairly contemporary. Nickel and Dimed was one from a couple of years ago. Another was Autobiography of a Face. Both are very good books.

The book chosen for the 2007-08 school year is Lost Mountain by Erik Reece. I hadn't heard much about it (as I'm not really running in that circle these days since I don't work at the Learning Center any more) until my local Barnes & Noble started stocking it. They had been jokingly trying to pander it off on me for a couple of weeks, but I hadn't really paid much attention about it until my geography professor mentioned "sites of mountain top removal" on GoogleEarth. Though he didn't mention the book by name, the dots connected for me and, when I looked up the sites on GoogleEarth, my interest was piqued. I stopped at BN and read 50 pages of Lost Mountain tonight and it's good - really good actually - but I'm not going to buy it until I find out if I can snag a free one on campus.

Lost Mountain, in a nutshell, is about the ecological and economic woes brought about within Appalachia (specifically Eastern Kentucky) by a particularly nasty form of strip mining called "mountaintop removal" as the author visits what was once a real place called Lost Mountain monthly over the course of a year. For you readers, its a pretty fair hybrid of Silent Spring and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek that mixes a strong sense of natural awareness (ala Thoreau or Dillard) with a good sense of social and ecological consciousness (ala Carson and Mowat.)

I can't vouch for the whole book yet obviously (because I haven't read it all) but I can say that, providing he doesn't take a sharp turn toward the terrible, I think it is pretty safe to say that this is something noteworthy for most people, especially those of us from this area.

If you are interested in reading more "official" information about the book, you can click here.

The second thing I wanted to tell you about is something that has grown pretty dear to me over the last several months. In Spring 07, I took a class at NKU on Men and Women of the 18th Century. It was a 400+ level English course with Professor Roxanne Kent-Drury and I only took it really to fill a needed class requirement. I had already taken several modern British Lit. courses and a couple of Renaissance Brit. Lit. too, so Restoration / Enlightenment seemed to be a black hole in my literature background. It was okay.

But one of the assignments that Roxanne had for us was to edit and footnote one poem from a Renaissance Women's poetry anthology that she has been editting for the last few years. The anthology was originally published in 1781 and has not been republished since and so she has been working to create a critical edition of it by assigning one poem at a time to her students in all her classes. It was a viable method of doing the work except that it wasn't going fast enough, so she offered up independent, graduate level courses for interested students over the past summer to each take a poet and closely edit her. I signed up.

I chose my poet to be Mary Leapor not knowing anything about her. My portion of the overall anthology would be just over 120 pages, the largest single section of the book, but I figured, honestly, if I was taking this for a graduate level credit, this would help to pad my resume as well as situate me in good favor toward being accepted toward a fair graduate school, but I have to admit that I became fairly smitten with Mary Leapor over the course of the summer. She was a maid, reasonably low born and never lived to see any of her poems published (something which her employer / friend and her father undertook after her death,) but her wit and sensibility make her fairly accessible to the common reader. She was well read and quite literate for her time but her life was overshadowed with sadness: she never married and died at an extremely young age.

My project with Mary Leapor is, essentially, over now but the work on the anthology continues through this semester as I and another student have now signed on to generally edit the whole anthology and prepare it for publication. Unfortunately, our work, as it is an ongoing project, is not ready for public dissemination at this time however I can offer links to online .pdf's of Mary Leapor's work. I hope anyone reading this takes a few minutes of your day to download one of the two .pdf's (either is quite good) and give her poetry a fair try. I won't tell you that they are easy. It's 18th Century Literature and, as such, it's pretty dense by our normal standards, but I DO think that she is worthwhile and merits, if nothing else, a few minutes of your time.

If you are interested in reading more about Mary Leapor, you can use the links below:

• Mary Leapor (Wikipedia)
• Mary Leapor's Poems Upon Several Occasions Volume 1 & Volume 2

Both of the above files are quite large and may take several minutes to download and then initialize, but I encourage you, especially if you are already inclinded toward literature and / or poetry to sample through them, if for no other reason, the excitement of reading the books as they originally looked when they were published in 1748 and 1751 respectively.

Thanks for the Reviews

Hi Everyone,

On Friday, I posted a story on here and asked for some readers to see if it would sink or swim. I think it swims more than it sank but just the same I'll be rewriting into a final draft over the next couple of weeks, polishing up the rough spots and ironing out a kink or two. If anyone wants to read more, since responses on that one were pretty good, I'll also be posting another story on here (closer to my usual mode) here in a few more days too.

So anyway, thanks again to Julie, Mom, Andy, Debbie, Ryan, Kara, Bethany, and Margo!

Always more to come. . . .

- J

I want you to review me!!!

Hi All!

Okay, I've got a favor to ask for those of you inclined to help me out: if you have time, I have finished a story (I know, it's been a LOOOOONG time . . . . ) and I would like your assistance. It's only 7 pages long and is intended for submission for a couple of contests and local publications this fall. It's in .pdf format, so you'll need Adobe Acrobat to read it, but you've probably already got that.

Here's the link: The Lovers
* Important legal stuff: Please be aware that in no way whatsoever does the above SOLICITATION FOR REVIEW AND INPUT constitute any type of PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION. As of 8/31/2007, the above linked story is entirely a work in progress.

If you DO read the story, please comment. Particularly, I want to know if the story is clear, especially the ending.

This Should Make You Mad (and if it doesn't, there's something wrong with you)

Look. I'm not an activist. I don't "do" causes very often. I'm too cynical to be around the true believers out there and when I DO find debate I'm interested in I tend to play the part of the contrarian more often than not.

I do this for a very specific reason. I believe in free speech but what I really can't tolerate is people trying to sell me their personal beliefs as something that I should be interested in. I take as an article of faith that its our own responsibility to make our own way and develop ourselves as we personally see fit.

That having been said, what I've read today makes me angry. And not just a passing, "I've noted it and now its over with" anger, but actually angry enough to post on this and share it with anyone who'll read it.

CNN ran an article today (read it here)that has now been followed by a slew of other major media reports on this same topic, so I'm certainly NOT making history here by talking about this - in fact, as I type now, I'm sure that the debate has already begun to rage throughout the so-called "blogosphere" and if I'm just adding additional noise to said debate, so be it. Apparently every so often the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) posts a report on the situation on wages in the U.S. Now, I'm not naive. The IPS is so left that you can see where they're coming from a mile out, but just because they have an overt political slant doesn't necessarily mean they are wrong.

Findings of the report are as follows:

• CEOs of large U.S. companies last year made as much moeny fromjust one day on the job as average workers made over the entire year. These top executives averaged $10.8 million in total compensation, over 364 times the pay of the average American worker.
• The private equity boom has pushed the pay ceiling for American business leaders considerably further in the economic stratosphere. The top 20 private equity and hedge fund managers pocketed an average of $675 million, or 22,255 time the pay of an average U.S. worker.
• [a proposed tax break cap, if it had been in place] would have generated more than $1.4 billion from fewer than 400 companies. This would have been enough to hire 30,000 elementary school teachers for an entire year.

- information taken from "Executive Excess 2007," IPS 2007

Now, I'm hardly a liberal. I'm centrist at best. But just the same it pisses me off and it should make you mad too.

For those of you interested in reading the entire article, click on the arrow to the right of the file before and you can view it if you have Adobat Reader on your computer.

Memorable Quote

This is an short quote from a poem in the poetry anthology I am editting. Mary Leapor was a British poet from the early 18th Century. More on her soon. The project is almost over with now and I'll be in a better place to talk about it some with a little more perspective.

"In a black shade my wand'ring self I found,
A wood encircled by a thorny bound . . .
- Mary Leapor
"The Cruel Parent: A Dream"

I'm rather fond of it.

My Favorite Movies

So, I've concluded that most of you either either a) must not really know me or b) have pretty well defined ideas ideas about me that may not necessarily have any footing in the real world so I've decided to list my top 10 favorite movies ever. Guys that read this may ridicule me. I don't care.

My top 10 movies are:

1) Before Sunrise / Before Sunset - cheating I know, but they count as one movie whether you like it or not.

2) Garden State

3) The Godfather

4) The Shining

5) Alien / Aliens - don't make me pick between them, please, and NOT Alien 3 or Resurrection or that hideous AvP thing they filmed.

6) Chinatown

7) Raiders of the Lost Ark

8) Blade Runner

9) Seven

10) Batman Begins

and, because I just realized there aren't any comedies up there,

11) Wedding Crashers (which, I'm not sure why, but I find myself rewatching a lot lately)

Now, I'll be honest here. Depending on my mood, numbers 3 through 11 may shift around quite a bit. So the movies may stay the same, but their place on the list may change but I CAN say, unequivicably that my favorite movies are Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Garden State. I like "talkies," what can I say. . . Anyone surprised by that?

Does that say something about me as a person? I hope so. I would much rather be known as someone that lists those as my top movies rather than someone who would list things like Saw or Hostel. I realize its not widely acceptable to say judge a person by their likes or dislikes but I would argue, though it may well mean I am superficial, that those are an essential component of who we are. I think I would have a hard time socializing with someone who listed House of 1000 Corpses as their top movie.

If anyone reads this, I'd be curious to know what your thoughts are. What's your favorite movie and do you think that says something about you?

Against Stuff

Lifehacker made a good find today (like they do almost everyday.)

Paul Graham, computer programmer and author, has written a short essay on his blog on his feelings regarding "stuff" and the burden that owning that "stuff" can take on you. You can find the original essay here.

I think he's got a point. I know Julie would disagree with me. She loves her stuff. She loves shopping and furniture and clothing and doodads and thingies, and you know what? That's great.

But that's not me. I like clear, open spaces. I like some stuff, don't get me wrong, but I really feel anxious when I'm around clutter. I think his point is weakened a little bit when he talks about "book clutter" being fluid and not like real stuff. I agree with him when he says that, but I think it weakens his point a little bit.

He talks about Buddhism in the essay, but reading it I was more reminded of Fight Club and it's fight against Ikea culture. "You are not the things in your apartment."

But at any rate though, I like the essay a lot actually and feel a little inspired by it. Maybe I'll go home tonight and carve out a little corner of the clutter for myself.