It's Just a Joke...really

ESPN has made a politically correct move and suspended one of its reporters for statements he made about a female colleague on the air. Supposedly, he made negative comments about the outfit she was wearing, and after that the heads at ESPN went nuts. The commentary has been all over the place since then, with people either saying it's much ado about nothing, ESPN overreacted, or Kornheiser should be fired, skewed and napalmed with extreme prejudice.

Why am I talking about this? Well, because it brings up a subject I've wanted to talk about for awhile, and that's the whole idea of comedy and humor.

Years ago, when I was in the service and out of the Academy, I was required to attend a basic training unit (I attended a lot of them as part of my assignments while working for CID and CI). I remembered I was in this battle of wits with this really stupid PFC. He was trying to insult me, and my response was to take every insult he waged, agree and then use an additive process to show how he was now contradicting himself. By the time I was done, he looked really foolish, wanted to fight, and let's just say that the situation did not end well for him.

BUT right after that, and because of that, it got me to thinking about humor. I was a very flippant young man at the time. I was quick to use a cynical response to unarm an opponent, and much of my humor was directly insulting in some way. At the time, I thought that was what constituted "funny".

Well, at that time, I made a decision because I felt really dirty after that conversation because even though EVERYONE was laughing with me, they were all laughing AT HIM, and something didn't seem right about that. I began to see humor as something that could be very negative. After that day, I made a vow to avoid ever using negative humor that hurt someone else. I no longer found it funny, and therefore, I would no longer try to gain favor for using that style of humor.

What I discovered is that there are very many people who ONLY know that type of humor as "funny". As I was reading through the responses to the Kornheiser story (the guy who made the stupid comments about his female colleague), I started to notice how many people would say something like: "you people don't understand humor, so leave him alone", and all I could think was that perhaps a lot of people don't understand humor. The ability to poke fun at someone else's expense should never be considered funny to an enlightened community, yet there is so much of that type of behavior in our society. From political pundits to late night talk show hosts, negative humor is used so much at the expense of other people. Oh, we justify it by using such comments as "he's a public person" or "he or she should have known better". But in the end, it's humor that comes at the expense of another individual.

One solution to this problem for me back then was to think through each attempt at making a joke. How I used to do this was think to myself, "would everyone find this funny, including the subject of the humor itself?" If the answer was no, then it wasn't funny to me. It took me many years to cement this into my psyche, but it was something that had to be done because I was no longer finding insults or negative commentary to be funny. I don't even find it funny when it is done by very good comedy folk; I tend to be the only one in the room who doesn't laugh, and I have come to a comfortable understanding that I'd rather be that person than the one who joins in with them.

Unfortunately, very few people agree with me. Or they agree, but in the end they practice a different processing when it comes to such humor, no matter how much they claim otherwise.

What I'd like to add to the interesting part of this observation is that I do succeed in creating a lot of humor on a daily basis, both in my writings and in person. But it's never negative towards an individual. Oh, it may still by cynical and biting at times, but there's never a person sitting in the next cubicle, thinking "I wish he wouldn't use me as the brunt of his jokes all of the time."

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This Blog Post Proves How Cool I'm Not

Turns out that social networking scientists have finally discovered that teens don't think blogging is cool. The article is here. According to PC Magazine, only adults seem to blog these days, and unfortunately, teens don't think we're cool for doing it.

Um, when have teens ever thought adults were cool anyway? And why is it we're all concerned about what teens think? Honestly, are we all sitting around at the mall, waiting on the next issue of Teen Magazine to discover what teens think are cool so we can all go ahead and do that "thing"? At what point did adult coolness (yes, it does exist) revolve around the coolness of kids who aren't old enough to vote. Of course, it should go without saying that voting isn't cool, but that's another issue, and we won't get into that here.

I'm completely at a loss to understand how the gauging of coolness somehow came down to what teens think. When did we suddenly care what children think before deciding what to do? It's almost as if someone did a corollary study that went something like: Harry Potter is popular = Teens like Harry Potter = People who like Harry Potter are cool. I don't buy that.

Yes, marketers are interested in what teens like because teens buy products. That's about as far as it goes. But guess what? Adults buy things, too. And quite often, they buy them without a single thought about what teens want or care about. It's like the argument about music where somehow we have to believe that a music group is cool because young kids like the music. Well, that model is killing the music industry because guess what? Young people are more likely to illegally download music. It's not because they're evil. Okay, young people are evil, but that's beside the point. The reason they are more likely to download music illegally is because they have grown up within a culture that has seen music as a free commodity due to the growing online presence of music (that is easy to download without paying for it). Older people grew up with record albums and then CDs where they mostly paid for the music. So, they tend to continue to pay for music.

Well, the music industry has historically tried to appeal to the younger crowd because that's the crowd that paid for the music. But that younger crowd grew up and no longer likes the hip, cool music that gets put out as brand new (some do, most don't). So, newer bands that appear might appeal to younger people, but they're going to make less money because fewer people are willing to pay money for it. Therefore, if a band really wants to make money, it needs to appeal to an older crowd (not teens). But because so few new artists do appeal to the older crowd (and the industry keeps wanting to sell us compilation CDs of old groups), we're not buying as much music anymore. So, of course, the music industry is convinced that everyone is illegally downloading music because no one wants to buy the new stuff (that appeals to the audience that doesn't like to pay for music).

Again, the music industry cares more about a demographic that doesn't buy their music than it does the demographic that might buy its music. Kind of a ridiculous revelation, isn't it? Well, this is because they aren't paying attention to the bigger picture, which is that they need to appeal to an older crowd that is not seen as "cool", which is pretty much the revelation that is being shown in the original article. We're so concerned about a group of kids that are so insignificant to the grand scheme of things that we're willing to call ourselves not cool, even within our own social circles, where teens don't belong.

It's kind of crazy on that level.

So, I'll continue blogging, even though it's not cool to teens, who wouldn't read what I had to write anyway. But if you are reading, I guess that makes us both not cool. But I'm okay with that. I gave up trying to be cool back when I was a teen, a time ironically when I was supposed to be cool.

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The audience as shadow

You might say I've come to a conclusion of sorts. I realized that the whole online thing isn't really working for me. I have a blog, but no one really reads it. I have a Facebook account, but no one really communicates with me on there, and all I end up receiving are notifications of how someone is having a bad day or how someone found a lost turtle in Farmville or something stupid like that.

For me, the whole online thing never worked out. Never found a girlfriend online. Never found conversations. Never got into online gaming, aside from MMORPGs. Really nothing on the social fabric has been my thing through online.

Yeah, I play World of Warcraft. And I still will. I'm just going to take a different direction on everything else.

I'm not leaving online. I'm just dumping everything social networking that's online. Never worked for me. Adds more frustration than anything else.

I shut down my facebook account yesterday. Figure no one will really notice. Or care.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to start to shed my web site as well. I've been paying $10 a month for YEARS to a company that has been getting my business that amounts to me talking to myself. Sure, I have a friend or two who reads the blog, but honestly, I can hold a coversation with those people in person. I don't need a blog to communicate with them.

The website was an experiment in beta for me because it was how I was going to keep in touch with my writing fans. They never materialized. Neither did my career as a writer. I've been writing for vanity alone, and I'm the only one pretty much reading it. What's the use in that? It's like keeping a diary and leaving it out all of the time in hopes that someone will accidentally read it. What kind of game is that?

So, I'm going to be shutting down my web site over the next few weeks. I might blog here and there much as a smoker still tokes up every now and then but knows that he shouldn't, even though he swears he quit the habit a long time ago.

I've found the whole social networking experiment to be interesting, mainly because it works for some people, but it didn't work for me. I'm a writer, not a blogger. I need an audience. It's never been about me or about writing for myself. Without an audience, well, I'm nothing. It's like being in the 1991 August coup in the Soviet Union, being Boris Yeltsin and then trying to stop the coup by talking to yourself in the shower. It might make you feel better at the time, but if there's no one listening, it doesn't do any good. If Yeltsin never had his audience, all we'd know about him and those days in August was that some fat Russian guy danced on a tank. But then, we'd probably not even know that. He'd just be some fat guy with a lot of things to say and no one to hear him.

That's what I feel like. I have a lot to say, and no one ever bothered to listen. Oh sure, a few did, but they were just being polite. And I reciprocated by listening to them. That's social networking, not writing. Never been my thing. It's like small talk. Never did it, and it's probably why I don't handle dates well. I hate small talk. It leads to nothing and is irrelevant. I hate irrelevancy, which is exactly what my web page has been all of this time.

I stared this web site with the idea that the audience would eventually come around. It never did. I thought I had a lot to say about politics, being a strange, anarchist political scientist. No one ever bothered to listen. You have to be someone with media clout. That's not me. I write humor. People find that irrelevant. So nothing comes of it. I thought I had a lot to say about writing, but no one cares, and everyone else ia a writer. Just ask them. They think they are. So who cares about what another one has to say? I thought I had a lot to say about communication theory, but again, no one cares.

And like the Pearls Before Swine cartoon where the pig is constantly being reminded by the rat that his blog is irrelevant, I'm tired of pretending it's ever going to change.

So, if you have any final comments, please do so soon, because soon there may not be a place to do so. It's okay if you don't comment, however. I'm kind of used to it. I can go off into the sunset without the attention. I'm kind of used to it.

If this ends up being my last post (which is probably not the case), I wish you all well and hope you find what you're seeking in whatever venue you seek it out. I'm saving myself $10 a month and going back to realizing that only my stuffed animals ever really cared what I had to say. And sometimes I suspect they're just being kind because they have to live with me.

Stuffed animals can be that way sometimes....

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Dreams that get in the way of sleeping

I had one of those dreams last night. You know those dreams, the ones that cause you to wake up and question whether or not you were really dreaming. It was really bizarre, one of those circumstances where a whole story was being crafted in my head, and even when I went back to sleep, the story continued from before.

I woke up several times, convinced that I need to remember this story, and even tried to edit it in my head during the moments I was awake. And then I went back to sleep and continued dreaming it again.

I don't often have dreams like this. Most of my creative writing is designed in the conscious world, where I am completely aware of what I'm doing when I do it. This was different. It was a story that was trying to create itself, and I even found myself editing it while I was dreaming it, telling myself that it needed to change in one way or another.

It was an interesting story. I'm still thinking about it today. It was one of those dystopian types of stories, something I've been writing a lot of in the last few years, but it took a really interesting direction, something I wouldn't have done if I was crafting this story myself from scratch.

I wonder if the subconscious world tries to write its own stories sometimes and has to do it in this sort of manner because my reality based writing won't let that subconscious take over like it did while I was dreaming. For all asides, it was an interesting story, and I'll probably revisit it at some point when I'm not involved in any writing projects already.

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Fort Hood suspect is now conscious

New York Times article

As a writer, one of the things that constantly rings out to me is awkward dialogue moments, because I find those to be the most interesting to write. When I read this article, all I could think about was awkward dialogue. Not because I could see it or hear it, but because I could imagine it.

Imagine the nurse or patient care specialist who first has to confront this guy who just went nuts and killed over a dozen of his fellow soldiers. How does this professional handle the conversation that is certainly to emerge from the alleged criminal's first conscious moments? How do you handle a conversation with someone that you probably would never hold a conversation with on your own ever because of the horrific nature of what he just did? Yet, this person who is there when the criminal wakes up is required to give adequate service to this patient. As a human, I can't imagine ever wanting to have that conversation. I mean, how awkward would that be? But as a writer, I would want to be a fly on the wall just to hear how it would emerge, just to know how do people handle intense moments like these? As a writer, I can only imagine and try to reproduce such moments, but in the real world they happen.

I'm just glad I'm not the one who has to be the participant.

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Publisher's Weekly's Gender Problem

Publisher's Weekly announced its 2009 list of best books. Here they are:

Cheever: A Life
Blake Bailey (Knopf)

Await Your Reply
Dan Chaon (Ballantine)

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon
Neil Sheehan (Random House)

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
Daniyal Mueenuddin (Norton)

Big Machine
Victor LaValle (Spiegel & Grau)

The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science
Richard Holmes (Pantheon)

Stitches
David Small (Norton)

Shop Class as Soulcraft
Matthew B. Crawford (Penguin Press)

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
Geoff Dyer (Pantheon)

Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
David Grann (Doubleday)

The problem? There are no female writers on the list. And to be honest, I'm kind of not all that concerned. It's a list of the ten best books for 2009. It's not like women haven't been on the list before. I sometimes wonder if political correctness really needs to be as inclusive as it is sometimes.

Oh well. I didn't make the list either, so I'm thinking there's a legospaceman bias as well, but that's just me.

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New Novel Begun

The National Novel Writing Month has begun. I started this morning with my new novel, temporarily titled, Plato's Perspective. It's a mainstream novel that has a bit of a futuristic setting to it, although it is not really science fiction but a political novel that has to do with Plato's Republic and his attempt to integrate education with the concept of the myth of metals (each person falls into one of 3 metal classes). My first jaunt into writing it has resulted in 1875 words. The goal is 50,000 words (about 200 pages), so let's see how this all works out.

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It's really the little things....

Little by little, I'm acclimating to Michigan and my new life here. For some reason, I thought I would be regretting the move across the country, but I don't. Not even a little. Sure, I'm freezing in the mornings because I don't own a coat, or I own one but have no access to it as it is in California. Unfortunately, the coat I had was a one of a kind type, and it is very hard to find anything similar here. Sizes are hard to match, and that one was just a perfect coat. I haven't found anything here. It seems like the stores realize there's a Winter coming up, but all the jackets seem geared for Spring. Or they're just stupid looking. Anyway.

I have a few pieces of furniture now. Nothing spectacular, but I have a table, which I'm using for a desk (it was delivered a few minutes ago). The desk/table cost me $25 (which included delivery), and it is perfect for my needs. I'm buying another smaller one from her to hold my TV, which is another thing I bought a few days ago for $40. I am finding most of my stuff on Craigslist, and I think it's great. My 20 inch Magnavox TV is pretty nice, and it's nice to have access to television again. My apartment includes free cable, so now I can take advantage of it. I thought the ScyFy channel was missing (it says channel 22, and I have no signal for 22) but it turns out the channel is 73, and I've been able to watch Stargate Universe on my own TV finally.

Little by little, I'm getting on the right medications. Dealt with a PA the other day who didn't understand that I didn't understand what she meant when she read back my lab results in doctor speak. I kept asking her what she was talking about, and she would explain with more doctor speak. NOT a very customer centered PA. One of the first lessons in communication is making sure the person you're talking to you has a clue what you're talking about. Therefore, you don't speak in jargon to someone who is not someone in your field. So far, this doctor's office hasn't impressed me that much. I called on Friday stating I am out of medication, so I need the doctor to call in the prescription. I explained the urgency. Nothing happened. Little things like that. The doctor is okay; her staff is not.

I'm getting ready for the national month of writing, or whatever it's called. I still haven't decided what novel I'm going to write in November, but I have to do that soon because once November comes, I don't have a lot of time to think about it after that. I need to be writing. But that's something I'm looking forward to.

All of my stuffed animals are here now. They don't seem all that grumpy, even though some have been traveling a lot, and others have been at my sister's house just stored in boxes. I promised them we're home for awhile now. No more traveling or storage.

I keep forgetting I don't have the eating capacity I used to have before. I bought some cheese and chicken quesadillas from Costco yesterday, and microwaved two of them for lunch today. Could barely finish one of them. Every time I eat, I think with my eyes, not my stomach. So I ended up wasting a whole quesadilla. I guess in the old days I would have forced myself to eat it. At least I'm not making that mistake anymore.

Well, that's all for now.

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Life on the Duane front

I moved into my new apartment last week. It's really nice and pretty large. It has a washer and dryer in the apartment, including a dishwasher and a microwave oven. It's a one bedroom, but honestly I don't need any more space than that. It also comes with a detached garage, so whenever I get a car, I'll have a place for it.

I'm still having real eye sight problems, even though I'm on the proper medication these days. Not sure why it's taking so long for my eyes to bounce back, but I have real trouble reading with my glasses now, and I'm really hoping I bounce back quickly because the last time I had this problem, I ended up in the emergency room of the hospital. I had some blood tested the other day, but the doctor never got back to me, which I hope is a good thing (last time they sent the police to escort me to the emergency room).

Haven't had the opportunity to do much writing lately (really hard when you can't see the screen of the computer), so I'm hoping to get into that soon.

Michigan is already getting a bit cold, and I don't have a proper jacket yet. I left my two larger coats with Kat, and I figured it would only be a short time before I'd get them, but I'm freaking freezing now, and I don't anticipate I'm going to see them any time soon. I have to walk a long distance to the bus stop every morning and evening, and that walk is really, really cold. My thin jackets I brought with me aren't doing me that much good. I bought gloves two weeks ago, but I accidentally lost them on the bus, which means I won't have gloves for awhile (can't afford to buy another pair yet).

It's pretty funny living in an apartment with absolutely no furniture. I can't afford any yet. Yesterday, I bought an office chair for $15 from someone on Craigslist. That much pretty much blew away the last of my money for the next week. But at least I have a chair to sit on in my apartment. Hopefully, next week I'll be able to buy a few new pieces of furniture so that this place isn't so empty here.

The job is going well. I like the people with whom I'm working, and the work load seems all right. Getting used to the work atmosphere, and all that seems to be working. Eventually, I'm going to have to buy a car, because I live way too far away from the bus, and there's no way for me to even get to the local store without a car. I tried going to Meijer's supermarket the first day I moved here, and it was the longest walk I've ever had to do, and at some points the sidewalk just disappears, leaving you at the mercy of speeding cars that don't seem to recognize pedestrians. It's really not safe for someone without a car on that road, and as Winter approaches, it's not even conducive to survival.

Not much more going on. This posting may sound somewhat negative, but things are actually pretty good. I've been having a bit of a time getting over the whole mugging some time ago. That really messed me up badly. My right shoulder is still hurting pretty bad, as is my head and neck at times. My doctor recommended me for physical therapy, so I'll start looking into that as soon as I can start affording the co-payments for that. $20 a pop might not seem like much to others, but when you have absolutely no money, it is somewhat significant.

This has been my first weekend in my new place, and it's been nice having my own place to myself. Things are working out, and I'm grateful for that.

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National Novel Writing Month

One of the projects I'm planning to participate in during November is something I've always wanted to do. It's called National Novel Writing Month. It takes place from November 1st until the end of the month, and the goal is to write a 50,000 novel in that time period. This should be an interesting experiment for me. It's not the first time I've written a novel quickly. Deadly Deceptions, a mystery/suspense novel that takes place amongst US counterintelligence agents in South Korea, was written during a two week leave I took once while in Korea. But not every novel has been that quick, judging from my last one, The Ameriad, which took me over 5 years.

So, I'm thinking about which novel I'd like to write next. I'm allowed to outline it before writing it, so I might get on that soon. I was going to be rewriting The Armageddon Project, renamed To Touch the Unicorn, renamed to 72 Hours in August, but it is really a rewrite, and that doesn't seem ethical in a contest that is supposed to be "new" work. So I'll be thinking about my next NEW project.

As for other things, starting to become comfortable in my new job in Michigan. Having trouble finding an apartment because of my old bad credit (plus the last 4 or so months of being destitute and not having a job), but have to keep believing things will work out for the better.

That's all for now.

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Killing A Character and then it comes back

This is the memory of an event that happened while I was writing my ninth novel, The Teddy Bear Conspiracy. This isn't a story about the novel, but something that happened while I was writing it.

One day, when I had finished a long session of writing, I was in one of those head spaces where the rest of the world didn't exist, and all I could think about was the story that was in front of me. It was a somewhat critical point of the novel, too, because one of my important characters, named Tina, was killed as a progression of the story. It was a difficult choice for me, because this was one of those secondary characters I really liked, and my original thought was she was going to make all the way through the novel. But at one point she HAD to die, because it was one of those turning point moments where nothing else made sense. So, after agonizing about how I might save her at the last moment, I finally killed her off.

I was really tired as I had been writing all day, and I was trying to finish up the follow up to that particular scene, when there was a ring of the doorbell in my apartment. I worked on the second floor, so I climbed down the stairs, wearily, not really thinking about what I was doing, but because I lived in Daly City, and you didn't just open your door to ANYONE, I asked "Who is it?" to the person on the other side of the door.

She said: "Tina."

My jaw dropped, my body started perspiring almost immediately. I mean, I'd been thinking of nothing but Tina this whole time, and there was this person at my door with the same name. Coincidence, obviously. Had to be. So I said, "Um, what do you want?"

"I used to live here," she replied through the door. "Can I come in?"

I about freaked out right then and there. I mean, this didn't make any sense, but I was thinking it was her. She came back. She didn't want to be dead, and now she was here. I kept thinking, okay, Stephen King writes this kind of stuff, but this sort of thing doesn't really happen. I mean, does it?

So I tried to look through the spy aperature to see if she looked like I had imagined "Tina" would look, but I couldn't see anything. It was like she wasn't there.

"Um, I'm not opening the door until I can see you through the peephole."

I stared through it again and then this little, tiny woman appeared before me. She had to back up a bit because she was a bit too short to see if she was standing in front of the door.

It wasn't Tina, or at least the Tina I knew. So I opened the door.

It was a friendly Hispanic woman who said that she used to live in my same apartment and was wondering if any mail had come for her as she took a long time to forward her address. I then remembered there was some, but we had given it all back to the postman the next day each time we received it.

So, she thanked me and left.

It dawned on me then that it was from her letters where I actually got the name Tina for that character. I had seen her mail come every day for a few weeks, and the name just stuck with me.

But that was what happened when I killed my first major character. She came back. And she wanted her mail.

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World Without End by Ken Follett

To tell the truth, I was anxiously awaiting the publication of this novel. I had read the previous book, Pillars of the Earth, and it goes down as one of the better books I've read during my lifetime. So, when I discovered Ken Follett was writing a sequel, I was extremely excited.

I managed to get the book in South Korea while I was there, so I have somewhat of a rarer edition (a small paperback rather than the much larger sized book they were selling here in the states for much more money). It's the same book, however, and it runs at 1025 pages. And there's so much greatness in it, too.

The story picks up where the last one left off, but several generations later. In the previous books, Tom the Builder had finally managed to build his cathedral, which was the goal of his entire life. In the sequel, the descendant of Tom is a young man named Merthin and his brother Ralph. The two brothers, a young girl named Caris who Merthin likes, and a peasant girl named Gwenda all go on a little journey into the woods where they come across a knight fighting for his life against heavily armed assailants. They step in and help the knight, who then reveals he's the holder of a secret letter that could bring down the kingdom. In order to hide out, he decides to leave his lord/lady's service and become a monk, hiding out in a priory for the rest of his life, knowing its his only chance at survival. His enemies will leave him alone as long as they realize that the letter will get out somehow if he should ever meet his death.

The story takes place over the lives of these four young characters as they grow up and constantly come at odds with each other, or become partners, or lovers, or mortal enemies. Merthin becomes a great builder, much like his ancestor (wanting to build the highest church in all of England), Caris becomes a great healer, and through a series of unexpected turns, one of the most powerful entities in Kingsbridge Priory, Ralph becomes a squire, and then a knight, and then an earl, who knows nothing but violence and an immoral exchange with the world, and Gwenda becomes the wife of a peasant man who is constantly at odds with Ralph, which leads to so many ups and downs throughout the rest of her life.

The story is very well written, very well researched, and brilliantly crafted. At one point, you think you know what's going to happen for the rest of the novel, and then something comes out of nowhere, but in that period of time, it seems so natural. The plague hits Europe during this time, and it becomes a character as well, constantly reappearing to reshape the landscape of the novel, changing a quiet village into a chaotic free for all area of horror and anarchy.

The book can be read without reading the first novel, but I'd honestly recommend reading Pillars of the Earth first, just because there are moments where knowing the old story kind of enhances the new story. Plus, the first book was brilliant. But I'll go out on a limb and say the second novel was just as powerful.

This is the kind of book that should eventually fall into the classics literature charts because of the scope of what it attempts to do. When I first read Pillars of the Earth, I was shocked that this came from the suspense author of Eye of the Needle and Key to Rebecca. I loved those books, but for such a different reason. I also read and disliked his The Modigliani Scandal, not realizing it was one of his first books, and even he admits "They are too short, however, the characters have no past and the action often moves too quickly for the reader to enjoy." He even predicted readers might be disappointed and write him negative letters. After reading that novel so long ago, I was so glad to see that even he admitted there were problems with that novel.

But World Without End is definitely one of his best. I highly recommend it, although it's one of those books, like War and Peace, where you won't be sitting down at 8am and finishing it before you go to bed. It took me a LONG time to read that one, but I'm happy that I did.

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The Bear, the otter, and the fox: The Art of Deflection in Writing

To those who have read James A. Michener’s Poland, the mention of a bear, otter and a fox might make complete sense. To those who have not read this wonderful book, it probably makes little sense. So, some explaining might be necessary.

You see, in politics today, politicians have become experts at a technique called deflection. Rather than focus on the issue at hand, they create an issue that seems much more important and then focus on it instead. Hopefully, this results in people forgetting about the original issue. Quite often, the secondary issue sounds important but has little ability to be resolved, like the infamous “War on Christmas”. Yeah, it sounds big and dangerous, but it’s really a paper tiger. Critics claimed that when President Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scandal started pointing towards impeachment hearings, suddenly there was a need for NATO to bomb an Eastern European country, and that was all the White House could talk about. So, deflection has been with us for awhile.

But when it comes to writing, it’s different. Some writers attempt deflection in genres like the mystery novel, where you believe that something is happening but eventually you realize it’s something completely different. However, Michener did something in Poland that few other authors have ever achieved, and few actually attempt.

In Poland, a noble family domesticates a bear, an otter and a fox, and these three animals live in harmony together. Meanwhile, huge events are taking place around them that involve political intrigue, military threats and epic squabbles between different families. Yet, the three animals live in peaceful harmony together. From the story’s perspective, any number of connections can be made between these animals and other entities both in the story and outside of it, but what’s most significant is how Michener handled this unlikely, triangular connection. If you read the story, you find yourself hating the continuous, repetitive story of the three animals living in harmony together. I remember getting really disturbed every time he got back to those three characters together, thinking, come on, get on with the story. And then, during a scene where soldiers are attacking the noble family that owns the animals, the family is killed, the animals act like domesticated animals and come to their rescue, and are killed one by one as they try to protect each other from men with guns. It is over in moments, and I remember being left with a nagging in my chest, saying, “You can’t do this! Not to them!”

It was such a brilliant technique that I have looked for it ever since, and even tried to include it in some of my own writing over the years. The author makes you hate a particular character by continuously droning on about that character and then with a sweep of a pen, they’re dead and gone. And it’s almost as if you need grief counseling to get over the shock of losing those characters that you came to hate so much but now realize how much you really needed them.

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The problems with anonymity, the Internet and being unknown

A couple of stories came across my desk today that I found to be important. By the way, I don't really have a desk where stories come across it, or even a place where something like that would ever happen. I'm lucky if I can find a story after an exhaustive search on the Internet. But it sure sounds good saying it because I like to think I'm as important as those big guys that have stories that come across their desks. Anyway, so this series of stories came across my big, Oak desk today, forcing me to push aside my security briefings from the President so I could focus on them. What? It could happen. Really. Anyway...

The first of the stories was about a young woman who got outed on the Internet by telling all of her blog fans that she was who she was. We all know the story: Boy meets girl. Girl meets alien. Alien destroys most of Manhattan before we find out it was really just looking for a gas station. Oh wait, different story. Sorry. In this story, here, Virginia Montanez, was writing a blog that criticized the Mayor of Pittsburgh. People were starting to figure out who she was, so she outed herself to avoid having someone else out her first. Boy, she showed them! And then her job fired her. Turns out she worked for a nonprofit that probably didn't like being seen as the employers of someone who made fun of the mayor, and well, we know how that sort of thing works out.

Yesterday, after Kat and I finished fighting off ninjas that were trying to destroy Union City, we went to see the movie Julie and Julia. It was a cute movie about a young woman who decides to cook her way through Julia Child's famous cook book. I won't get into the details to avoid ruining the movie for you, but at some point the aliens do fight back and we end up with a great cliffhanger where evil supermonkeys save Paris by stopping the evil Dr. Massachusetts. Or something like that. Anyway, the movie itself was actually pretty good, but something about it really bothered me. It's based on a true story, from the perspective of the young woman who wrote the book/screenplay, and what bothers me is that she was an unsuccessful writer who couldn't get her book published and gave up on writing, but then somehow made it famous by writing a blog about cooking.

Now, I've been writing a blog for years now, and aside from two other people, my stuffed animals are the only ones who read it, and that's just what they tell me to avoid an awkward evening alone with me when I confront them about it. Part of the joke of the movie is how only her mother reads her blog, but then out of nowhere, suddenly she's got the most successful blog since Hitler blogged about his trip across Europe in the early 1940s.

How does this happen? Why do some people have the most popular blogs on the planet, yet the rest of us can't seem to get a reader even if we kidnap people and put them in front of a computer that only goes to my blog with its browser? Believe me. I tried it, and somehow they managed to find lesbian porn instead of my site, and I fixed the computer to ONLY go to my site. I just don't understand.

So, one of the things that bothered me was that the moral of the story seems to be that if you can't get published as a regular writer, do something outrageous and ridiculous, blog about it, and then you'll have a writing career. Does anyone else have a problem with that? I ask that figuratively because I realize that my stuffed animals are the only ones reading, and they just stare blankly, like they are too cool to give an answer of their own. Stupid stuffed animals and their "I'm better than you are" airs they put on!

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Why I Was Not Meant for Academia

I just received an email from the National Communications Association concerning its annual conference. I have to share a few paragraphs that were included for the big conference speech.

This year's Carroll C. Arnold Distinguished Lecture, "Discursive Struggles of Relating," will be presented by Leslie A. Baxter, F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor at the University of Iowa on Thursday, November 12, 5:00 - 6:00pm. in the International Ballroom South at the Hilton Chicago.

Relating is a cacophony of disparate, often competing, discourses. Meaning-making emerges out of this dialogic agitation in which discourses bump up against each other in ongoing interplay. This view of relating is the central tenet of Relational Dialectics Theory, a theory of communication and relationships developed by Baxter and her colleagues and grounded in the philosophy of dialogism articulated in the 1930s by Russian literary and cultural theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. Baxter will discuss the discursive struggles that animate relating in a variety of relationship types and will discuss, as well, some broader implications for how we can approach the study of communication from a dialogic lens.

It's this sort of thing really bites at me every time I think about the fact that I'm part of this academic community. First off, who are we trying to attract to this discipline if we keep making the discipline so ridiculously complicated sounding? One of the first lessons I learned as a writer is WRITE SO THE AUDIENCE UNDERSTANDS. One of the things that really gets on my nerves with academia is the desire for academics to sound really smart and really intelligent by using big 5 dollar words when dime and penny ones will work just as well.

What is this lecture about? Um, after reading it about ten times, I think it means that this professor, who studied a lot of stuff by a Russian professor named Bakhtin is going to talk about how difficult it is for people to talk to each other; essentially, if you talk to someone long enough, you start to develop meaning in your conversation. Yeah, of course it's difficult to talk to each other when you use words and sentences that nobody else understands!

I wrote a paper years ago that pretty much pissed off every academic reader who read it. It was entitled, "How Political Science Has Brought About the Demise of Political Science". Basically, it said that we tried so hard to be "science"-like that we made simple things complicated. In the end, we excluded other people from joining the discourse (conversation, for those who have not attended Dr. Baxter's lecture), because we wanted people to think we were really smart.

I'm starting to realize why I was never really meant to be an academic. I understand it all, and I love learning more about what we don't know, but I can't stand the posturing and the desire to be perceived as smart. I'm a Socratic (the early kind) who truly believes that not knowing something is so much more beneficial than claiming to know something. I guess that's why my calling was to be a writer. I like to communicate with people (not search for meaning-making through dialogic agitation). I like to be able to say what I want to say so that many people understand me, not just the people who work hours and hours trying to get through my sentences. To academics, I'd be somewhat of a luddite, if you interposed technology to be a desire to communicate, I guess. But what do I know?

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Digging through the cobwebs of the writing addict...I mean attic

I've been working on a personal project lately now that other things aren't falling into place (like a job and survivability...little things like that). Some of you know that I have over 100 short stories that I've written over the years, plus a number I've lost count of concerning articles, plays and other such stuff. So, I've been trying to nail down all of my short stories so I can start sending them back out again.

You see, I used to have a writing career. I really did. It was starting up and looking pretty good. Then I started dating a woman who I loved more than the world itself, and she kind of messed with my head by convincing me that I wasn't a good enough writer to be writing professionally. I was so in love with her that I actually believed her and stopped writing. Later on, I realized what had actually happened; she considered herself a writer, even though she had never written anything, and it bothered her that I was prolific and actually producing a lot of writing. At the time, she was too perfect in my mind for me to ever believe that something like this might be going on. Anyway, we don't need to watch network television to realize that sometimes guys are stupid. I certainly was.

Anyway, I was actually producing a lot of stuff back then, and I was actually becoming somewhat known. Editors would comment on my submissions, talking about previous publications of mine, and it just felt like it was only a matter of time. And then stupid Duane stopped writing and selling for over a decade. Yeah, really.

So over the last few years, I've been trying to relaunch my writing career. Two years ago, I finished what was obviously my hardest novel ever to write, which was a Greek epic foundation novel (that's also my first humorous novel as well). Then just recently, I completed the rewrite of a series called The Deck Const, which I intend to be writing for the rest of my life (just finished the first novel of the series, called Rumors of War).

Now, I'm going through agent rejection hell, which is really bizarre but part of the game. Most agents have switched to wanting to receive emails instead of letters, and while this might seem like a good thing because of the cost, I have this theory that people don't take email as seriously as they do regular mail, so when they get query letters, they really don't take them all that serious. So far, I have gotten the impression that most agents tend to take some kind of weird pleasure in automatically rejecting anything that comes into their email boxes. I get the impression that I have as much luck sending spam to a sex site than I do getting a writing job from an agent.

Anyway, so now I'm working on my old short stories, and it's like visiting old family because some of these stories were written two decades ago, back when I was a much different writer. Some are newer, like my latest short story "Precipice" and the previously published and award receiving "Buried Memories". But others are really old, like my very first short story, "Looking for Gold in a Lead-Lined World" which was a combination of humor, Dystopian science fiction and US-icon criticism. It's such an interesting little experiment to look over some of this old stuff and then think, "is that something I would write today?"

Anyway, just some thoughts as I quickly run out of money and embrace homelessness, insanity and glorious levels of depravity.

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Finishing one project to start another

Okay, I'm going to try to ignore the depresso stuff and just get back to the writing stuff for now. I closed out my Facebook profile for awhile because it was getting really annoying to read the updates and to realize that things just aren't working out for me, and to be honest, I just don't want to deal with the drama that site tends to create and foster. So, enough with that.

I finished the edit for Rumors of War, and I've sent it out to an agent as a query in hopes of finding a potential representative. I've also sent out a batch of queries for the other novels as well. I figure nothing's going to happen if I just keep thinking about it rather than doing anything about it.

And that brings me to today's discussion: New projects. One of the things I've always disliked about writing is starting a new project. I don't mean the writing of a new story or novel, but beginning the preparation work for a new idea. Rumors of War was easy because the background for it was completed years ago. The Ameriad was easy because the novel itself was started half a decade ago. But now I find myself needing to start my next project, and I'm not sure what project it is I want to finish. I also realize that my time may be limited, so I have to do something and do it fast.

Unlike a lot of other meticulous authors, I suffer from what is called prolific writing. I write and I can't stop writing. You'd think that would be a good thing, but in reality it sometimes gets in the way of preparation because you want to be writing far more than you want to be preparing for the writing. And sometimes that preparation is so damn necessary. An example is my novel Thompson's Bounty. This is a novel about pirates and the Coast Guard. It also takes place in the 16th century. I wanted to just start writing it, but I knew nothing about sea travel, the Coast Guard or even pirates, unless you counted my many trips through the Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland (before the movies were made). So I had to stop writing and actually do research, including taking a trip on a Coast Guard cutter to understand what a trip like that might be. I even got to watch them do a drug bust, which got incorporated into the story, although not as a majorly important part of the story.

That's where I am now. I have a couple of stories running through my head right now, including a rewrite of one of my earlier novels that has been rewritten about five times (starting as The Armageddon Project, to To Touch the Unicorn to its current state of 72 Hours in August). I also have a novel that has been fighting with me for years now called A Simple Life. It keeps coming back to me like a little kid that wants to go out and play but you never have time or the energy to entertain him. It's my first mainstream novel I want to write, but I'm not sure I'm ready for it yet, and even worse, I'm not sure I have enough time left to finish it.

So, that's where I am with my writing career. I don't talk about it much because it's been elusive for so many years now. I've tried so damn hard to make it happen, but it never does.

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Thoughts and Ruminations

I'm writing this mostly for myself rather than for anyone else. I'm figuring that I'm going to be closing out my web log soon as my renewal of my domain name is supposed to happen this coming month, and I don't really have the money to pay for it, so I'm figuring the blog is going to end up going into the ether forever soon. So I figured I'd get the last bit of juice out of it before giving it up forever.

Things haven't been working out well for me lately, which is not surprising. It just hasn't been one of those years. Nothing I can do about that.

I went for a one day screening for a job the other day, and it was somewhat of a no-brainer, but apparently that doesn't really mean anything because I didn't get that job. Nor have I been able to get any other job for that matter. It's like I'm living in this fake world where it keeps going on around me, but I'm not part of it. And no matter what I do, I can't become a part of it. I try, but it seems like life has pretty much just given up on me.

It's like one of those great epic stories (not that my story is all that epic) but I've often wondered what happens to the hero after the big story is over and there's no obvious sequel planned. Not everyone gets to be Indiana Jones, reliving new adventures over and over again because those adventures just seem to come to him. No, some of us got our one big grab at the brass ring and we've been holding on for air ever since, never realizing the oxygen supply was severely limited when we went on autopilot.

I've been working on finishing up some of my novels, so I can at least say I got something accomplished. I worked pretty hard on revamping my Rumors of War novel, which is the first part of an epic arch story that I've been planning for a good part of my adult life. It's unfortunate that I'll never get to finish that epic. But I suspected it was going to outlast me anyway. I spent most of the day rewriting major sections that needed work. I'm hoping to have it completed by tomorrow. Then I'll send it out to be rejected before allowing it to disappear in the ether with everything else.

I never succeeded in getting a decent agent to sell my novels, so most of them will disappear into the ether eventually, never to be seen again. I think I'm okay with that. Galileo kept his secret manuscripts to destroy at the end of his life, but I think that secretly he always wanted them to be published after he was gone. I'm not the same. To quote one of my published pseudonyms, Davina Marconis:

I’ve finished the poem I was going to write
For the world
And I’ve kept it hidden here.
But like Galileo’s secret manuscript,
I will keep it to destroy right before I die
Yes, my poem can change the world
But this world doesn’t deserve it.
Crito, Asclepius can have his cock.
But that’s a gift from Socrates
When I go, I’m leaving nothing
Not even the memory of the fields
Of Laramie
And uncertain beginnings.

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Um, teddy bears concealing drugs? That's the plot of one of my novels.

I should have figured it would happen. One of my later novels, The Teddy Bear Conspiracy, is essentially about this:

$30 Million Worth of Heroin Seized in the Bronx.
Traffickers Concealed Heroin Bags in "Build-A-Bear" Toys: 12 Arrested

Okay, it's not exactly that, but it's pretty close. That means that a good portion of my novel already happened in real life. Well, it's sort of different, but it's pretty hard to feel good about marketing a book when there's an article on the DEA site, here, that could be a synopsis of my novel.

Well, for the record: My novel doesn't have heroin in it. Nor did the teddy bears either. They had the formula for a new drug in it. And these guys were arrested for $30 Million. My criminals were pulling off a job that was worth $1 Billion. So it's a bit different. Plus, the bad guys were a splinter group of the CIA, and there was no DEA involvement at all (the novel was written before the DEA was doing anything more than going to Colombia and getting killed by drug lords).

And also, no teddy bears were harmed in the writing of my novel. Well, one of them. But he deserved it. Stupid teddy bear and hiding my diet Dr Pepper on me!

Anyhoo.

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I left my heart in Bollywood

Okay, this came out of nowhere, but I had to share it with you. I was contacted out of the blue by a somewhat infamous Bollywood director who is working on an avant garde film project. He had actually seen one of my plays a very long time ago (I won't even get into the implausibility of someone remembering a play from that long ago AND remembering the name of the author). Anyway, the play is one that Christie probably knows because she actually performed it with me during Forensics. It's called "Girls" and it is about a man who has undergone an experimental treatment to cure violent tendencies (he just happened to be a child abuser in prison for multiple crimes of that nature). Anyway, once cured, he is being released after his time has been completed in prison. One of his young victims decides that he never got the justice he deserved so tracks him down, picks him up in a bar, and plans to finish him off to pay him back for the secluded life she left him with, where she has been scared of interacting with other people for the last twenty years. Anyway, dark subject....

So, I was asked if I could turn this play into a screen play for a short bit in a larger Bollywood film. So, I did. And now it's in their hands. Because it's one of those experimental projects, I'll probably get mostly screen credit as payment, but it was something that took me a few hours, so it's not like there's a big loss.

Anyway, just thought I would share that now I'm going to be a big Bollywood writer. hehe

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Article published in Artifact now online for viewing

A copy of the issue of Artifact where Buried Memories was published is now online. You can see it here. This is the short story that won the Charles Clerc Award this year.

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One of those things writers REALLY hate is now crossing over to programmers

I was reading some advertisements for programming needs (people wanting to hire programmers), and I have to quote the exact wording (sorry if this is YOUR ad, but honestly, there's no excuse):

I have a great yet simple idea for an iphone app but dont have the time to learn how to develop an app with the iphone sdk.
If you are well versed with the iphone sdk, maybe you can help. I am willing to split the proceeds from the sale of the app, which I plan to sell for $2.99. 60% me 40% you.

Believe it or not, this is something the writing community has been plagued with for as long as there has been a writing community. I remember getting my first query from some "wannabe writer" who basically found out I was a writer and immediately had to say: "I have this great idea for a science fiction novel. Why don't I tell you the idea, you write the novel, and then we'll split the profit?" Now, think about that for a second. Is that really worth it to a writer? Do people honestly believe most dedicated writers don't have so many ideas already that they just don't have the time to write them out? I know that I have so many projects on the back burner that I will probably die long before I get to most of them. I certainly don't need Cousin Larry's "great idea" about a houseboat that can fly and has feelings.

That's what I'm starting to notice with the programmer gigs. Honestly, someone has a quirk of an idea and then wants a programmer to make it happen. And then like the quote I just included, the "idea guy" thinks he deserves 60 percent of the profit for having the idea. Honestly, who in the world would sign on for a stupid deal like that? Nobody. Except someone who has no ideas whatsoever, and if that person exists, he probably has very little programming skill available as well. It's different when it's a company that wants you to write code; that's an actual job with benefits. Some random guy with an idea is not a business executive making corporate decisions. It's some random guy with an idea who is too lazy to learn how to code for himself.

Part of what makes this so funny is that these people actually believe that the idea is all that is necessary without realizing how difficult it is to actually write a novel or to program an application to its fullest extent. The idea is often the easiest part. If you don't program or don't write, you'll probably never know that, which is why so many of them find they can't link up with the "right" people to do the job they want done for them.

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Customers Get in Our Way of Business....

Living Situation
Since being back in the states, I've been living with a friend in Oakland. It's an okay situation, but at the same time I'm highly allergic to cats, and she has two cats (plus two others that hang out outside of the house). For some reason, animals really like me, and they jump up on my lap and want to hug me and rub against me and just be all kitten-like with me, and that's cool. But I'm highly allergic to them. So that doesn't go very well. I've been getting really sick, so I might have to find my own apartment sooner than I was planning.

Wifi...or why I am starting to hate younger people in trendy businesses
One of the things I find myself needing since being back is wifi. In Korea, it was everywhere, and finding it was not much of a chore. Here, in the states, it's become a consumer product so companies do everything they can to charge you for it. The old "go to Starbucks" for wifi doesn't seem to be the norm anymore. I've walked into a couple of Starbucks, and they just don't have it.

A Peet's Coffee Shop is located close to where I live, and I decided to go there because they advertise wifi on their window. I went in and decided to order a vanilla bean frappucino with carmel, and I really felt bad because I was making this poor employee guy actually break his routine of reading some magazine he was reading behind the counter. With his tiny goatee and $700 "I'm a rebel" haircut, he stared at me as if I was some piece of garbage that accidentally rolled in through the door. When I ordered, he sighed. Yeah, he actually did. It was like he was going way out of his way in order to serve me. I was friendly and polite the whole time, and that just seemed to make him into even more of an asshole.

When I finally set up my laptop to write, I tried to access the wifi, and of course, you need a password to do it. So I had to go back to Mr. Special and ask him for a password. Without speaking to me, because I was so obviously beneath him, he printed something out on the cash register, without looking at it, and without even looking at me, he handed me the paper without ever making eye contact. That's how I got wifi access at Peet's Coffee.

Trying to find a job
It's not been easy. I really need a job soon, and I can't seem to find a line on any. I apply and apply, but I get generic responses, if I get a response at all. This does not bode well for the future.

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Fallout 3: A computer game looked at from the perspective of good writing

I've been spending the last week playing a game called Fallout 3 on the PC. Now, this might be perceived as a "geek" post, because I'm talking about a computer game here, but that's not what I wanted this to be. Instead, I want to talk about the writing in this game, because while I've read a lot of books in my time, I have yet to experience the writing that you find in a game of this magnitude.

For starters, the game is a sequel to a series of post-apocalyptic games called Fallout, which is also a loose sequel to a very old 4 color game called Wasteland. Like the very first Wasteland, the premise is that there was a nuclear war, and you are leaving one of the vaults where people escaped to, and you are seeing the new world for the first time. It's a dangerous, horrible place filled with tons of radiation, and the adventure you have is completely unique to you. There is always a strong mission within the story itself, but you're free to do whatever you want to do, and you don't even have to solve the original quest itself if you don't want to. Or you can. The choice is up to you.

Fallout 1 and 2 are considered amongst the greats of roleplaying games (rpgs) in computer gaming history. The story is almost identical, although in the sequel (Fallout 2) you play the descendant of the original vault dweller who leaves into the wasteland to explore. Fallout 3, well, it's like they went back and redid the whole story from scratch, and it's a wonderful adventure because of it. The whole thing plays like it's brand new, and the interface is a lot like a first person shooter, although a better comparison would be to Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, which is not surprising because Bethesda is the company that did Oblivion, and the company that did Fallout 3.

But I wanted to talk about the writing. One of the things that makes Fallout 3 unique is that the story and the way the story is told is just magnificent. This isn't some "look, there's a bad guy, aim your weapon and kill him" kind of game. Everything you do has moral choices, and even the way you go about doing things has so much richness behind it. In the story, you are "born" to a father who allows you to choose what your character is going to be like, and you actually grow up with that father leading you through some of your most important events in your childhood, up to the point where he escapes from the vault and leaves you to follow after him. The way this is done is told so well.

You have a portable device that you use as your inventory and character screen, and it also acts as your way of handling data within the game. It's where you first receive a radio signal from something called GNR. Then you receive another radio signal from something called the Enclave, which is the successor of what used to be the United States Government. Then as the game goes on, you receive other radio signals, including a really stereotypical Chinese broadcast that keeps telling you to stop doing the dirty deeds for those capitalist pigs that are sending you to your deaths in the war against China.

What's really cool is the uniqueness of those radio signals. GNR is run by Three Dog, and he's the coolest dude in the capital wasteland. You can eventually meet him, and he's just as cool in person as well. And his news is timely and up to date. It's like listening to a regular radio station. Or you can change the signal to the Enclave and listen to patriotic reports and music from President Eden. That's just a scratch on the surface of the radio stuff alone.

And that has little to do with the whole story itself because you have so much land to explore, and almost every little place you go to has some huge back story to it that you can delve into. Or not. The first city I went to was called Megaton, named after an unexploded nuclear missile that crashed into the center of the town. It is surrounded by the Children of the Atom, who worship the Atomic Bomb. The rest of the city isn't all that sane either as their sheriff is some guy in a cowboy hat who wants to instill "frontier justice".

There is so much going on in this game that I am in awe of the greatness of the writing. You turn a corner, and then suddenly there's a story of something you hadn't expected before. The whole adventure takes place in Washington, DC, so you can imagine the different types of stories that can occur. The time line is a little different as well, as the universe of Fallout 3 kind of veers off from ours after World War II, leading into some Twilight Zone-ish kind of world where things are just "different".

I don't play a lot of computer games anymore, mainly because I find them to be really redundant and boring. This game, however, redefines what computer games should be because it put the story back into the world and never compromised. There's a reason it's being hailed as one of the best games ever made.

If I ever get involved in computer game creation again, it will be for this type of game because this is how storytelling should be.

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The Relevancy of Television Media in the 21st Century

First off, when I use the word "media" in the title, I don't mean news. I mean the communication term of media, which is a form of communication that influences people widely. Yes, the "media" might do that, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about something much more subtle, but much more significant than television and radio news. I'm talking about television programming.

Last week saw the end of a television show that received rave reviews from those watching it, but at the same time it was a genre that appeals to a niche population, meaning that even though it had a huge impact on the people who experienced it, it made very few inroads to the mass population at large. The show I'm talking about is a science fiction show called Battlestar Galactica.

For those who don't know much about this show, it was a remake of an old cheesy television show from the 1970s, that involved the attempted genocide of the human species and the survivors' quest for a mythical planet called Earth. Meanwhile, they are hunted by a relentless, myopic enemy called the Cylons, a robotic race that seeks to destroy humanity for unknown reasons. The old series was cheesy by today's standards, but during its heyday, the 1970s, it was actually a very serious television show dealing with some pretty heavy issues. Today, we look back at the really bad special effects (they had the same space battle used for so many different fights that you knew exactly what was going to happen when the good guys started to do a maneuver because they only had about three big space battle special effects) and we laugh. So, when the idea came about that they were going to redo the show by today's standards, people who were big fans became very excited.

Then they made changes. And the fans went nuts. One of the biggest changes was that one of the main heroes, a Hans Solo-like character named Starbuck, was going to be a woman rather than a man. Man, the fans went crazy over this. They were so upset. There were Internet newsgroups created just from the people who said this would forever destroy the show. And then Dirk Benedict (the guy who played the old Starbuck) actually said he liked the casting of the woman for his character, so the fans started to shut up, even though they still mumbled under their breath when no one was looking.

The new show had some big shoes to fill, and right off the bat they did it. Characters that were known and loved by old fans were different, and not just because of one gender switch. Characters that people knew started doing things those characters would not have done in the 1970s, and then revelations appeared, and some well known characters were then discovered to be evil Cylons, throwing the whole, old Battlestar Galactica into flux. And then things kept changing so that people had no idea what to expect.

This continued during the four years that the new show was on the air. There was nothing that was sacred, other than the search for Earth. And even that fell apart in the telling of the story, which threw everyone for a loop. Without going into details, let's just say that expectations were one thing, and the revelations were another.

During this time, the show examined some sociological boundaries that no other show has ever taken head on like this. Genocide, the gray area between good and evil, the destruction of one's ideals, power grabs, strained friendships, trust, forbidden love, merits of assassination, religion, torture, and all sorts of other huge issues were tackled without throwing it in our faces. We saw real people dealing with horrible issues as their world was crumbling around them, and in the end there was always a shining light glowing through it that no matter how low they brought themselves, that humanity's greatest asset was that they would survive this and build again one day.

Unfortunately, the show ended last week with its finale. What this has done is create a vacuum in television space because for too long we've been given crap for television. I was talking about this show with a coworker one day, and she said she didn't like science fiction, like that, but liked "real" dramas, like Gossip Girl. That's part of the problem with the science fiction genre. It is often treated as if it is less than it really is because they see a space explosion and immediately think of it as some glorified video game. No other show on television has ever tackled the myriad of issues that this show did. Unfortunately, people like to throw names like "geek" around when they realize people are talking about a show like this. Instead, it's considered "right" to focus on much weaker shows like Monk or Gossip Girl, and then use that as the standard to which other shows should compare.

That's probably going to be hard to justify in the future, because a show like Battlestar Galactica has raised the bar for other shows in the future. Even shows like LOST are finding that they have to raise the level to be seen as relevant when something like BSG is in their area. The writing on LOST has gotten excellent lately, which I attribute to being a part of the BSG effect. You can't just get away with doing something stupid like we've seen on shows like Heroes, which continues to try to prove itself to be relevant but in reality is just pushing forward, trying to pretend to be innovative, but is becoming time consuming, boring and ridiculous, even when they put forth a somewhat good show. Unfortunately, and maybe this is for another argument and another day, but most of the good shows that break new ground all tend to be science fiction based, like X-Files, LOST, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and Babylon 5.

For me, this means that television shows are starting to realize the importance of writers, because there's no way this sort of thing could have been put forward without great writing. This was the same thing when Babylon 5 was on the air. No other show did the things that television show did over the five years that it aired. Unfortunately, when it finished its run, nothing ever stepped up to take its place.

My fear is that now that BSG has showed the world what important programming can do, will others pick up the slack, or are we going to end up with tons and tons of stupid programming, which equates to a new Law & Order in some new location and multiple variations on stuff that's been done to death? I hope not. But because people tend to avoid some of the greatest programming out there, I'm assuming we're going to devolve again, at least until something as big as BSG or Babylon 5 comes along again.

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Publication of "Buried Memories"

For those of you who might remember, my short story, "Buried Memories", which won the Stockton Arts Commission 1st Place Award for Fiction in 2007, it is being published in Artifact in March. It's a strange story for me because it was the first romance I ever wrote under my own name (I've written a few under another name). The uniqueness of this story was that it fit more into the kinds of stories I tend to write under my own name, those that have some type of psychological twist to them. This one involves the story of a man who has finally been forgiven for betraying her 20 years ago. The story is told backwards in time in five year installments, leading to their date before they are to be married. The story also follows the continual growth of a tree they planted on the day of their marriage.

The next year, in 2008, I received 2nd place for my short story, "Simple Girl", which is a psychological study of what it means to be "simple" in a small town.

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Mixing Science Fiction, Future Fantasy and Magic Into Reality

My current novel is Rumors of War, the first of a series of books called The Deck Const. It takes place eighty or so years in the future after civilization has crumbled. The main character is The Soldier, and he's on an endless quest to find the lost talisman, The Deck Const. Anyway, without getting into all of the specifics, one thing I have found somewhat difficult is to integrate a very serious story of a tragic future with magical elements. The world I have created is one where magic does not exist, so it is not a typical fantasy land, but there are certain elements that transcend normality, such as seers and predestiny. This requires having to walk a very fine line of keeping it real while allowing the fantasy elements to shine through as well in a world where it might just not belong.

To do this, I've revisited the old style of magic inherent in religious history, where clerics would research advanced science to appear to be working magic, yet be following the simple laws of physics and chemistry. In a typical fantasy story, like my Reagul series, you can get away with having a magic user like a sorceror or witch, but when characters are carrying M16s and .357 Magnums, driving around in Humvees, finger waving and doing magic seems a lot more out of place.

One thing I have attempted to do is to keep the main character just as uncomfortable with magic in his world as I am. When something unnatural takes place, he feels it, and the story reflects that in the characters themselves who become very offset by magical elements, like a seer or someone who meets The Soldier and speaks of having known he was going to show up because of a prophecy that was passed down over generations.

The world itself is a lot more fun to play around with, as it begins in San Francisco, continues to Los Angeles and concludes in Las Vegas (for the first book). Each one of these places becomes a caricature of itself by becoming a full blown overrepresentation of what we know about these places (Los Angeles is ruled by movie studios that fight battles with real weapons; the people of Las Vegas gamble their lives on one chance to become nobility or slaves; etc.). The atmosphere of the world itself is extremely dark, and it has been a lot of fun to bring it to light with an equally dark character who is unsure as to whether or not his task in life is for good or bad, having lived most of his life before the quest in very gray areas of decision-making.

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The Instability of the Writer's Life

I was responding to someone's post on a message board today who asked how old I must be because I tend to have a story for practically every situation. And that got me thinking, because I have to admit that I've done a lot of stuff in my life. Way too many things. And I always find myself thinking I just haven't done enough.

But I think this is what makes a writer unique from the average person. Sure, there are writers who live very stable lives, but my life has never been anything approaching stable. I find myself completely reinventing my life every couple of years, because I'm never satisfied with my current situations. I keep thinking that there's something more out there, and I go looking for it. That's why I never stay in the same place for long. It's why I have so many different degrees. I keep searching for elusive knowledge and experiences, something that I never feel is satiated, no matter how hard I try to make it happen.

I think this is why a lot of writers and artists tend to be self-destructive, and quite often suicidal (no, not thinking that way right now...all is fine in my mind for now). Some of us are always looking for the next adventure, the next way point towards something different. And sometimes, we just can't find it.

I'm in South Korea right now and realizing that I'm not going to find what I'm looking for here. I thought it might be here, but I always tend to think that. I always think what I'm seeking is right around the corner, or across that next hill. But it's not. It's always the next town over from where I thought it was, and when I reach that next town, the yardstick gets pushed back a bit further. This is why I can go from West Point to Germany to South Korea to the intelligence services to making computer games to writing novels to publishing my own magazine to editing a newspaper to editing a fanzine to living in Prague to starting and finishing numerous degrees is various different disciplines to holding conversations with Carl Sagan and Timothy Leary to dating a professional dominatrix to dating twins to being engaged to a certifiably insane Taiwanese woman to becoming an investigator for a hotel corporation to doing undercover work for the government to....well, the list seems endless. I haven't even touched a smidgen of the experiences, but I always feel it's not enough.

I guess as a writer all of this makes sense because I always felt that one needs experiences to understand how to write, but I also wonder if these experiences have caused me to think differently than I would have liked to have been thinking. What if it's all just an illusion and that no matter what we do, it's not for any better purpose than putting one foot in front of the other until the feet don't move anymore?

Anyway, I don't have any answers. I'm truly Socratic in that thought process. I'm more concerned that I seem to be running out of questions.

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As the World Turns

Current health
I'm okay. My system seems to have been adjusting to all the changes I've put it through. I can read normally again, and I don't feel like I'm about to have a stroke every time I go to sleep at night (part of that was probably stress and self-induced symptoms, I assume). Now, I feel good. Hopefully, I'm out of the troubled waters for now.

The job
It's actually better than when I started. There is massive turn-over here, which is stressful in its own way, but for the most part, things are generally stable. The students like me ("love me", according to reports from the parents), and the parents are constantly asking why I'm not teaching more of the classes because they'd rather have the "star" of the Academy teaching their students than random Korean teachers. That feels pretty good to hear, but at the same time I'm not sure I'd want the workload that would entail if they did add all those kids to my schedule.

I generally like the people I work with. There was one woman working here was kind of annoying, with one of those abrupt attitudes that really didn't seem appropraite most of the time. The kids used to complain to me about her (she was teaching science), and I knew she wasn't getting along well with her subject matter. They let her go yesterday, so she's no longer with us. Supposedly, someone else will replace her soon. That seems to happen a lot. Sometimes, it's justified. Other times, well, let's just say that I'm not qualified to make such judgments. But the other teachers and my supervisor are pretty cool. I like most of them, and even though we don't have long, drawn out conversations, I think we get along just great. We lost one teacher I really liked; she taught mainly the Toefl classes (English second language program). I got the impression she wasn't happy here, so I don't know if she left on her own or if it was a decision of management. Either way, she left a few days ago and asked if she could call me on my cell phone, so I gave her my number. I liked her. I hope she does well wherever she ends up going. She was somewhat in tears most of the other day, so it's sad to see someone cool have to go.

My computer
This situation was another one of those "can only happen to Duane" nightmares. It finally arrived a few weeks ago, but Customs had it and wouldn't release it. They wanted me to pay for it because it had insurance on it. A Korean teacher talked to them on the phone, and finally I had to fax (then scan and email) copies of my passport and other documents before they would finally release it.

So, I got it home and turned it on. Started up, and then gave me "Disk failure. Put in system disk." Nothing worked. Basically, it took me awhile to discover that the computer could not see my hard drive. So I rebuilt my computer. Twice. Finally, after a week, it could see the hard drive. It started up. But now it couldn't see my keyboard. You see, I installed this Zboard keyboard some months ago, and without it, my computer refused to recognize any other keyboard. No matter what I did, I couldn't fix it. So I bought a new XP disk and reinstalled Windows XP Home edition (over XP media edition, cause no Korean place had media edition). It came up and worked. But then I had no drivers. Duane wasn't smart enough to copy his drivers, so now I had no Internet connection and it had been so long, I couldn't remember how to get this configured. Finally, I realized that the ethernet card it was displaying wasn't actually an ethernet card but a protocol. So I used my laptop and found the drivers that fix the ethernet card. Then I had Internet access. Then, slowly I was able to reconnect everything else that needs to be working in my computer (cause now I could download them directly onto the computer). My life was pretty much saved by having a laptop and a flash drive. I now have to find tons of software that I no longer have because the new XP doesn't recognize any old files. I don't even have a word processor. Hopefully, Kat will find that software and send it to me. Or I'll end up having to pay a ton of money to buy it again, and as everyone is scared to death of allowing software downloads from Pirate Korea, I probably can't order anything directly from the US online. But I'm back up and running, so that's good. Plus, my computer starts up a lot faster when it doesn't have a ton of other software that refuses to stop loading first.

My writing
Not much to say. No success here. I received a copy of the book 2009 Novel & Short Story Writer's Market which I ordered from a British book company I buy a lot of books from these days. I've been pretty happy with them so far.

My degree
University of the Pacific still hasn't updated my transcripts to reflect I have a master's degree. But then I understand I'm not the only one who hasn't received an update from UOP, so I'm not panicking just yet. Kat is going in tomorrow to see what the status was on the printing of my thesis, which according to my understanding should not be a problem towards awarding my degree. But we'll see....

That's about it. Not much else going on. No social life whatsoever. Not even trying. But that's okay. I gave up on women a long time ago because they're all icky and have cooties. Calvin, Hobbes and I aren't letting any grrls in our club treehouse.

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I think I'm getting better

Today is the first day where I've actually been able to read while wearing my glasses. For those who haven't been following my blog or facebook notes, I've been having trouble seeing with my glasses on because of a medical condition. The belief was that over time the condition would start getting better (hopefully) and that my sight would start getting better as well. That was weeks ago, and I was really concerned during this time. Today, however, I've actually been able to read normally unlike previous times in the recent past. There's still a bit of fuzziness, but that just means there's still more to adjust, but for the moment, let's just say it's so much nicer being able to read this way and not get a headache every fifteen minutes from not using my glasses.



Not much else going on. My thesis is still going through its Kafka-esque journey of approval from the Graduate Deparment. My God, I never thought ONE person could make it so difficult for a thesis to be accepted. Turns out she "lost" it last week by placing it on her file cabinet, or her desk, or wherever it was in her office. Kat had to point at it and say "there it is", and the women STILL tried to blame Kat for her own screw up. And this is the school that said I wasn't "qualified" to work there when I applied to be an employee while attendng UOP. Apparently, the word "qualified" has a lot of humorous definitions at University of the Pacific.



So, I am assuming I graduate this month. Who knows? They'll probably do something else really stupid. Everything else up until now has been a nightmare with this process. Why are they doing this? It's not like I was an enemy of UOP or the Graduate School at any time? Everyone else seems to be doing just fine with the process. Is it because I'm not physically there and unable to micromanage the process, so they figure I'm easy pickens for screwing with for no reason whatsoever? I don't really understand this.



As for here, my boss is having me create something a little different than I am here for; he wants me to create a debate teacher's program, so that we can train English instructors, specifically the Korean ones, to teach debate as well as English. After my initial uneasiness with the project, I'm actually developing the plan forward. I briefed two of the teachers on Wednesday, and while I can see them being a bit apprehensive (they have zero debate experience whatsoever), I kept trying to reassure them that this would not be a problem, and that with some work, they can actually do pretty well with this. What I don't think they realize (or maybe they do) is that the completion of this project will make them a lot more employable in South Korea, because there are a few schools that do the English/Debate thing here. It's really hard to find qualified people to do it, because a rational debate teacher isn't going to want to go and ALSO teach English for three days of the week. Yeah, I guess I'm really not always the most rational person.



That's about it. Wanted to share some slightly better news than usual. Been doing a lot of complaining lately, although I had a good reason to be doing so. They don't really share any of the same holidays with the US here, so what we do get off is Christmas and New Year's. Unfortunately, both of those days fall on a Thursday, which is my normal day off, so that means they won't be anything special for me when it comes to work. They don't give compensation days or anything like that. I'll just have the normal days off, and have to console myself with the fact that at least I'm not having to work on those days as well. Being in a different country can be a bit frustrating sometimes.



I weighed myself yesterday, and I'm at 147 pounds, which is somewhat near (or at) my ideal weight. My clothes don't fit anymore, and that's a problem because everything I have to wear is many inches too big. I really don't have the money to go out and buy new sets of clothing. This means tightening my belt, which is also a bit of a problem because I've run out of notches to tighten up with, so I either have to buy a new belt, or I'll have to do what I did when I was poor: create a new hole in the belt. But can I really complain, however? I've lost a lot of weight, and it's not some crash diet where the weight goes right back on once I stop being on the crash diet. This is the normal way I eat every day now, and my weight has melted off as a result. I'm kind of happy, foodwise, so there's really no reason to complain.



I sent my novel, The Ameriad, to Ricia Mainhardt's Literary Agency, and I'm still waiting for a response. She's having one of her readers take a look at it, so we'll see what happens. I've received mostly rejections from everyone to whom I've sent my other stuff. As soon as I finish the final edit on Rumors of War, I intend to start sending out query letters to agents for that one as well. It sucks that it takes so much effort to get published properly, but I'm hoping that once it happens, it will all have been worth it.



So, how am I occupying most of my free time? World of Warcraft. I figured that if I can't escape Korea and go to America, at least I can escape Korea and go to Azeroth (the land of World of Warcraft). I've been playing on the Horde these days with my hunter, and he's now 43rd level. I'm in a pretty decent guild on one of the Oceania servers (playing here because at least that way I'm closer to the same time zone as everyone else). Yeah, I know some people treat the game as some geek thing, and that's all right. But it does occupy a lot of free time these days, and believe me, it's been a lifesaver over the last few weeks, because things haven't really been all that great, and sometimes it's really nice to have something like that to take your mind off of real world things.



That's pretty much it for now. I'm at work right now, about to get ready for Writing and Composition classes with some middle school kids. One positive thing so far about being here is that I've found myself really liking the kids. They may get annoying at time, but that's because they're kids, and that's what they're supposed to do. But they like me, and I feel they respect me as well. I listen to the classrooms of other teachers, and the kids seem almost completely out of control. In my classes, they participate, and we get along without that loud, racuous noise I hear from the other classes. I'm not sure why it doesn't happen in my classes, but I'm not a strict teacher either. I do make them laugh a lot, and I think that has something to do with it. It also took weeks of working with the kids before they started to warm up to me; I have one of those strange senses of humor that takes time to get used to. One day, with one of my classes, it seemed like things were never going to get better (it was feeling like a bad class), so I just started talking about how squirrels are evil, carry machine guns, and one must always be on guard to warn if squirrels might attack. That, alone, did it. The kids have so much fun with this little joke, that sometimes they'll answer questions, using squirrels as the prompt to lead them to answer even more questions. The thing was: I wasn't planning to use this dumb joke as a starting pointi to anything, but it just worked. Another day, I talked about mind-controlling teddy bears, and it just worked great with another group of kids. It's partly because it's absurd, and kids often live in an absurd world where things don't always make sense. It creates a strange bond between the teacher and the students, when both can joke about the same thing, yet still manage to get the work done that is required. Anyway, I'm just pontificating about something I don't really understand anyway.

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The problems of getting sick in a foreign country

I finally got to see a doctor today, and they ended up admitting me so they could put me on an IV. Unfortunately, they want to keep me for a week in the hospital, and I just don't have the time to do that because there's no way in the world my job would allow me to miss that much time. Yeah, I'm not kidding. It's just not an option. My employer lives in a different world than that of reality, and I can already see how such a request would go over. Basically, it wouldn't go over at all.

So, I'm trying to do the best I can without being admitted into a hospital for a week's stay. My blood tests haven't been all that great, which means something has to be done, and I really am starting to run out of options.

Spending my day off on a hospital bed with an IV coming out of my hand was not exactly what I had intended for today, but I can't really fault them for trying to save my life now, can I? One positive piece of news was that my potassium levels were not actually the problem (something I thought was the case, as this is why I ended up in the ER right before I left for Korea). Same symptoms, different cause.

So, I have to go back for more testing on Thursday, and they'll probably admit me again for another day's worth of IV fun.

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Current word count for Rumors of War: 22516. Took a few days off because of health reasons. Will try to get back to finishing this. On another note, my old agent got in touch with me today by leaving me a phone message. She's going to take a look at The Ameriad, and there's a slight chance she might be representing me again, although it still feels pretty much like a long shot. That's how the whole publishing industry seems these days. A long shot.

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An update from the depths of Hell...I mean Korea

It's sometimes hard to figure out if I like it here or really just hate it. I find myself wishing I was home a lot, or wishing I was anywhere else but here. If I had the choice to do it all over again, I would never have come here. There are just so many things that are screwed up, and it gets really frustrating.

Example: Today, I was informed that the "government" will not give me my medication that was sent to me from the states without me having a prescription for my medication to present to them. I don't have a prescription because it's my medication from the states, being sent here because I forgot to bring it. There's no grey area. No prescription, no medication. I guess they think I'm trying to smuggle in weed or something, even though it's in pill form and comes in bottles marked as the appropriate medication that it actually is. An easy Internet search (looking up the medication will show you it IS the medication claimed) could be conducted, but they are "too busy" for that. So I guess my medication is going to be thrown out instead of delivered to me. Another reason I hate this place.

I can't even do simple little things that I might enjoy, like play the new Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization. I can't play it because if you don't live in North America, no one will sell it to you. You can't even download it anywhere because they've blocked off South Korea for distribution. I was able to buy a game I really didn't want called Titan Quest, but it doesn't work properly on my laptop, so that was yet another waste of money for something I don't even get any pleasure from.

My writing career sucks being here. I can't send out queries unless the agent takes email queries, but when you email an agent, they don't take you seriously and just delete your emails for the most part. I can't send in short stories because mailing to the states is inappropriately overpriced. So, I can write, but that's about it.

The food. I can't stand most of it. I have a hard time going to a supermarket here because when I get into the meat section, the aroma nearly causes me to vomit. Did I mention that I really hate it here?

The people I work with are okay, but they have a really bad habit of speaking only in Korean and then wondering why I never know what's going on. Today was a good example of that. We lost one of our teachers (he quit a few days ago) so I had to take over his class on English writing. I found this out today, about an hour before class. The head teacher asked me how come I didn't have a lesson plan already made up (an hour before class). I said I just found out about the class. She said that everyone knew, and how come I didn't? Yeah, that's the kind of thing that really causes one to sit up and hate where they're at.

And medically, I'm really having some problems here. I have a condition I can't seem to fix, and if it's as bad as I think it is, I've been living with an imminent heart attack coming at any time for about the last three weeks now. No one seems to understand the significance of needing to get medical coverage taken care of, mainly because it's not happening to them and, in the words of one very sensitive Korean: "You haven't had a heart attack yet, so you're fine."

On the positive side, I bought a really nice 22 inch flat screen LCD monitor for my computer for the equivalent of 22 beads and trinkets (about $140). So I hope someone gets some great use out of it after I collapse on one of these upcoming days.

I also read a really good science fiction book called Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I'm now reading the next Cliff Janeway novel by John Dunning.

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