I Think you're Trying to Seduce me.

Last night I had the pleasure of re-watching The Graduate, a movie I've seen two or three times before.  Like any good movie or work of art it has aged well, and it reveals something new every time I watch it. 

 No, there is no other scene in the movie.  This is the whole thing.

I also watched Ninja Vengeance, which is hands down the worst movie ever made for any reason ever.  It is the cinematic equivalent of what Patton Oswalt calls "A failure pile in a sadness bowl."  It's such a bad movie that I did not finish it - I always finish movies.  I finished Batman and fucking Robin, for christ's sake. 

I'm real happy for you, and Ima let you finish, but The Big Chill is the greatest baby boomer movie concerning themes of post-collegiate anxiety and the disappointing banality of modern suburban life of all time.  Of All Time!

What I wanted to write about was the matter of shifting identity in The Graduate - specifically, how one is supposed to identify with the character of Benjamin Braddock, but yet as I watched the movie with my roommates, we found ourselves pining for rumpus rooms, backyard swimming pools, and strong liquor out of kitschy decanters: the very things we're supposed to dismiss as shallow and empty. That sounds like a really great idea for an entry, but it's not going to be the one I do today.

Instead, I'm going to tell you about Ninja Vengeance.  I am doing this as a community service so that nobody else has to get drunk on a Thursday night, click through On Demand, and go through what I went through.

The two dudes hugging on the DVD box is the least gay thing about this movie

Now, the teaser for the movie said that this was the story of a young ninja whose motorcycle breaks down in a small town full of corrupt cops and the KKK.  I know, awesome right?  You're all like "holy shit, this ninja is going to fucking go buck wild on these hillbillies!"

(Hillbillies are kind of like zombies or Nazis - they're an antagonistic target you can just shoot and kill and beat up with no consequences because they're eeeeeevil.  This movie does nothing to make the antagonists even remotely sympathetic - you hope from square one that they all wind up impaled on their own pitchforks.)

So the movie starts with a credit sequence over a bunch of dudes karate wrestling in mud or something. The footage has been run through a black-and-white negative filter.  It all looks like a creepy X-ray which has the hilarious effect of making Stephen Hayes, a real-life ninja who plays the roll of ninja master / yoda / walking self-help book, look like Kenny Rogers. 

Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to cut their throats in their sleep

After this title sequence we see the guy who will become our hero riding down a country highway.  He is riding down the highway on a Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle.  I did not make that up.  He also has the kind of big feathered moussey hair that men wore in the late 80's, and we see that hair for the first time when he takes his helmet off to reveal that he basically looks like a wimpy James Van Der Beek. 

 

 Like this, but wussier 

This highway driving sequence is intercut with a young woman getting out of bed and dressing.  There's a little bit of side boob, and then she goes into town in a truck.  If it seems obvious to you that these two people are on a collision course, remember that I had to watch the damn thing. 

Ninja guy goes into a diner and hears some hillbillies making crowd talk. The waitress gets up from central casting and asks "sugar" what he'll have.  He orders oatmeal and fruit.  I want him dead. 

Ninja guy doesn't even get his food before two black guys and a white guy walk into the diner.  One black guy and the white guy just blend into the background, but the other black guy stands out because he's wearing John Lennon glasses and sports a high-top fade. He looks like a back-up dancer for Diggable Planets.  He also looks like he's got a bad case of ringworm.

The newcomers sit down and are immediately harassed by the hillbillies at the bar - one of whom is a cop, the kind of cop who walks around with his shirt open down to his belly.  The cop is also very obviously Italian, Jewish, or some sort of Mediterranean, which makes it weird that he's later revealed to be in the Ku Klux Klan. 

Proof that affirmative action works

A fight breaks out, and the two black guys and their white friend decide to just leave.  Ninja guy, disgusted at all this racism, gets up and leaves himself.  Unfortunately (for him and the viewer) his motorcycle won't start.  Redneck cop guy has a chuckle and tells Ninja Guy that that's what he gets for buying a foreign vehicle, and sends him to a mechanic up the road.  

Ninja guy gets on the pay phone and apologizes for being late to some "seminar."  This word comes up so frequently that it starts to sound weird.  Seminar.  Seminar.  Seminar.   I'm pretty sure this is one of those things you saw a lot of in the 80's like "Karate chop your way to the top," or "boardroom samurai" or some shit like that, something that tried to equate working in accounts receivable with snapping someones bitch testicle neck in half. 

Not even half this cool

Next thing, Ninja Guy is at the mechanic's getting his motorcycle looked at.  The mechanic names a bunch of auto parts that sound kind of like real auto parts if you're not paying attention, and then the movie gets a bit confused on its location - Ninja guy says he's heading from South Dakota to Texas, but the mechanic talks about getting one part from Raleigh, and another from Charlotte, and that these parts will be there in time to have the bike fixed by noon tomorrow.  While there may very well be significant towns named Raleigh and Durham in Kansas, I'm just going to suggest that this movie sucks. 

It's all pretty much the same

Sideboob girl is at the diner, and the Waitress tells her about the earlier altercation.  Sideboob talks about "getting out of here," and gives a lot of credit to Waitress for going to Hollywood and trying to be an actress.  A little kid comes out and calls Waitress "mommy," further reinforcing Waitress' stereo-typicality. 

Waitress is played by Carrie Armstrong, the only person from this whole mess with a photo-inclusive IMDB profile page. She's also not completely dreadful, though I can't help but notice that the producer's name is Karl Armstrong, and so I'm guessing she didn't go through a blind audition for this role. 

Outside the diner, Sideboob meets up with Flattop.  It turns out they're friends, and both of them want to get out of town.  They tell each other their life stories, including the part about how they grew up together and know everything about each other, and Flattop encourages sideboob to put her college application in the mail.  They go into a general store or something, and a big fat hilbilly in a flannel shirt yells for Sideboob to get to work, and for Flattop to get out of his store. 

Like this, but moreso

Ninja guy walks his way across town to a hotel, and on the way he sees sideboob having truck problems.  He offers to help (what's with this town and cars?) and he gets the car started.  They have some completely forced romant-ish banter, and go their separate ways. 

While this is happening, flat top is walking out of town when a bunch of trucks pull up. Hillbillies jump out, punch and kick the air in front of Flattop's face and groin, causing him to fall down, and then they throw him in the back of their truck, driving off with menacing hoots, hollars, and yee-haws. 


Ninja guy does a lot of really feeble martial arts moves in the back yard of the hotel - very discreet, Mr. Ninja, way to show off your secret dark art in broad daylight.  He has the first of several creepy and vaguely homo-erotic flashbacks to training on the beach with Kenny Rogers, who has a lot of nuggets of Ninja Wisdom, like adapting and feeling and such.  Then Kenny Rogers gives Ninja Guy a yin-yang necklace that he bought at hot topic and tells Ninja Guy to focus on it.  After that, Ninja Guy goes for a run.

As he's running, he hears the tortured screams of Flattop and jogs into the woods to investigate.  There, around a camp fire, are about half a dozen KKK guys kicking the crap out of Flattop. Then, in a moment of really shocking brutality, Open Shirt Cop takes off his hood and beats Flattop to death with an axe handle.  Holy fuck! 

Ninja guy runs right up to Flattop with very little interruption and announces that Flattop is dead. 
The hillbillies all come after Ninja Guy, and they trade blows for a little bit, but while Ninja Guy has some pretty sweet moves, he gets better than he gives and soon the hillbillies have him held fast.  These being hillbillies, however, one of them stumbles into the fire and his KKK robe goes up like a roman candle.  In the rush to put out burning KKK guy, Ninja Guy's detainers break their concentration and are overpowered.  Ninja guy escapes into the river and swims away.

Then the most colossal plot hole in history opens up and sucks this movie even further into crapulant crapitude:  Ninja guy gets to a 7-11 and calls the police.  Bear in mind that he saw the police at the diner earlier, he recognized one of the guys as a policeman at the bonfire - the cops ARE the KKK - but yet Ninja guy calls to report the police to the police.  Then he meditates on the curb, and apparently dozes off before he can realize how stupid he is, because the cops show up, kick him a few times, and lock him up in jail. 

Can't do a backflip, won't call the police

In jail, Ninja has some more fantasies about his ninja instructor, and Sideboob comes looking for Flattop.  Flattop's mom finds out that her son is dead, and Sideboob drives her to the police station.  Naturally, Ninja guy is being framed for it, and Flattop's Mom talks to Ninja Guy.  She leaves, and abuses the shopworn movie trope of the truth-saying black woman, which states that in any movie, a heavy-set black mother will always be right.  No exceptions.  She doesn't believe ninja guy did it, and that's enough for Sideboob to believe it too.   Flattop's mom walks home, and Sideboob goes in to dig up some dirt regarding Flattop's death.

While she's doing that, Ninja Guy breaks out of his cell - no, you don't get to see how he does this, which would be awesome and is therefor not allowed - and then rather than stealthily slip away, walks right into the office where Open Shirt Cop is talking to Sideboob.  Open Shirt Cop, shirt still open, reaches for his pistol and fires, but Sideboob hits him in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious.  While Ninja Guy handcuffs Open Shirt Cop, Sideboob rummages through a filing cabinet and finds Ninja Guy's necklace.  Since they don't have headshops or Spencer gifts in this small town, a yin-yang necklace is a big deal, and so she takes it.

They make their escape and drive away.  Their escape is intercut with "back at the police station" scenes where Open Shirt Cop's Dad finds Open Shirt Cop unconscious and in a cell, chastises him for failing at life, and then calls for a road block. 

While sideboob drives, Ninja guy suspects a roadblock (he's so smart - the cops were JUST TALKING about road blocks in the scene before) and so he gets out of the truck because he doesn't need anybody but himself, and he can survive in the woods (so he says).  Sideboob says that she knows the woods like the back of her hand, and chases after him. 

 I hoped for this, I prayed for this - it didn't happen.  Where is your god now?

They walk through the woods carrying on some excruciating expository dialogue.  Ninja guy says some fancy ninja word for using the elements to disguise himself, and then starts to smear mud on his face and shirt - not enough to actually blend in with his surroundings, just enough to look like he crapped in the woods, used his shirt to wipe, and then put it back on. Sideboob exclaims "Camoflauge!" and then they have a mud fight - throwing mud at each other, rolling around in the mud, and so on. 

Yes, you guessed correctly - this is magical disappearing-reappearing mud that is alternately on-and-then-not-on their clothes as the movie plays out.  Good call! 

They bicker back and forth while the hillbillies conspire to hunt them down. They find Sideboob's truck, and Sideboob's dad, Open Shirt Cop, and Open Shirt Dad magically figure out where the two are.  They catch up with the duo in the middle of the night, and there is another fight. The hillbillies have guns, and Ninja Guy and Sideboob are dead to rights, but Open Shirt Cop decides he'd rather fight Ninja Guy mano-a-mano.  It is loudly anounced that Open Shirt Cop was "trained real good" by the marines, presumably to make this fight more convincing, but given Ninja Guy's skill exhibited thus far, it's not like we need a lot of persuading.

 That's not how it works

In the fight, Ninja guy goes for the gun, gets it, and points it at the hillbillies who outgun him by a factor of , oh, infinity to one.   Rather than just order the hillbillies to pump Ninja guy full of lead and be done with it, Open Shirt Cop fights with Ninja Dude again in an attempt to disarm him.  Predictably, the gun goes off (no nod to Chekhov here) and blasts Open Shirt Dad right in the chest.  Open Shirt Cop holds his dad as he dies, sobbing and crying (which was probably just as embarrassing and uncomfortable for Open Shirt Dad as it was for the viewer) and swearing revenge.

Ninja Guy and Sideboob get away in all the confusion, and Ninja Guy has an unconvincing why-oh-why self-pitying moment:  why did I take the gun?  Why couldn't I avoid violence?  Why am I the only Ninja that fake-cries when he kills somebody? Sideboob gives him some there-there, and then we cut to the KKK hall, which is a lot like a Knights of Columbus hall with more bedsheets and confederate flags.  There, Open Shirt Cop says that his dad was killed by an black-o-cratic jew-o-sexual or something (wasn't really listening) and then starts the crowd to chanting "white power, white power, white power."  Every actor in the scene looks terribly ashamed and embarrassed, and half of them are very obviously just mouthing the words and averting their eyes.

This is about where I stopped watching.  At 87 minutes, Ninja Vengeance is 87 minutes longer than it has to be.  I don't know if I was close to the end, or just wading through the dregs of the middle, but brother let me tell you, I literally could not bear another second. 

THIS is a fucking ninja movie, goddammit

With a name like Ninja Vengeance, you expect ninjas and vengeance.  The ninja was a colossal wuss in some sort of self-doubting personal crisis of...well, we never really learn what the ninjas problem is.  He has a lot of angst, and is impatient or something, but we never really know why.  Furthermore, this is a ninja who doesn't really seem up on vengeance -  he talks a lot about avoiding fights and such, and even when locked up and accused of a crime he didn't commit, he's kind of like "Well *shrug* you know, balance and stuff, or whatever." 

This is not just a bad movie, it's also a boring movie.  Avoid at all costs.

A Bird, A Plane, An Existential Pain in the Ass

I've never been all that into Superman.  He's an American icon, sure, and in that aspect I've had my share of lunch boxes, action figures, and Underoos like any red-blooded Midwestern boy.  The comic?  Never really my cup of tea.  Superman gets shot and nothing happens?  Gee, where can I sign up for a load of that drama?!?

As H.G. Wells once opined: If anything is possible, then nothing is interesting.

Two for flinching

Here we have a big guy in a blue suit who can't be killed, who thanks to his super speed and flight only pays lip service to the limits of space-time, and who thanks to a host of other incredible powers need only acknowledge the laws and mores of society when it suits him best, usually when he is in the guise of Clark Kent.  He can look through women's clothes, beat up cops, and with a glance he could melt the face off anyone who offends him - this man does not care about your H.O.A. by-laws.

Earth could be like a waking dream to him, one in which the sleeper knows he is asleep, but walks on the cotton-candy border between the conscious and unconscious minds, one in which he could give his ego wholly over to his id with no mind on repercussion since he knows none is coming.  Like that same sleeper, he could enjoy any manner of indulgent impulse and, should he indulge to excess and tear the very world apart, he would only have to close his eyes and drift back into the waking dream (or, in Superman's particular case, fly to another planet - he's done it plenty of times before).

Screw you guys, I'm going home

But he doesn't, and that's the one thing I find fascinating.  For David Carradine's character in Kill Bill, the interesting aspect of Superman was his secret identity, and in that identity the character saw a criticism of humanity as being weak, clumsy, and incompetent.  That, supposedly, is how Superman sees the world into which he was thrust.

I don't agree.

Clark Kent is pretty "beta," that's true.  Then again, nobody at the Daily Planet can tell that Clark Kent minus Glasses plus Spit Curl equals Superman, so what does that say about the world at large?  I think we have to take bumbly-stumbly Clark with a grain of salt, not the first sprinkle of which has to come from the utter obliviousness of everyone around him, and the second dash coming from the dimness of the alter-ego when contrasted with the dazzling Alpha-plus-plus perfection of the hero.

Glasses are a little twee, but the suit is straight-up /fa/

In other words, it's not Clark Kent's fault that he sucks - he doesn't, really, not compared to, say, Jimmy Olson.  Arguably, Clark Kent is the most compelling aspect of Superman not because he is the Man of Tomorrow's ultimate criticism of the human race, but because he is the one thing that allows Kal-El to join it.  

In the guise of Clark Kent, Superman can express frailty, incompetence, and insecurity, and it is liberating and comforting.  He can hide behind those glasses just as all of earth must hide behind him when Darkseid, Braniac, or General Zod come knocking (albeit only ever for a moment or two, one last laugh with Jimmy Olsen, one last kiss with Lois Lane).  

 I said kneel, douchenozzle

This persona satisfies something in Superman that his Fortress of Solitude never can - that arctic fortress, a repository of esoteric knowledge in the middle of a frozen and unapproachable wasteland, is where Superman can go to gather strength.  Hell, for six months out of the year it's unrelentingly pounded by that energizing yellow sunlight that any Superman needs to grow up big and strong. 

But if the Fortress of Solitude is where Superman goes to learn how to fight, it is when he is confined to the ordinary every-man role of Clark Kent that he learns why.  Superman himself can no more be touched by the hearts of earth than he can be by its bullets and knives; but Clark Kent is pitiful, non-threatening, weak - he needs to be mothered, guided, and encouraged. Superman can only be admired and feared, but Clark Kent can be pitied and loved.

I didn't post any here - I have my standards of academic decency to maintain. 

There's a lot in a name:  Clark, presumably from middle English, is a mangle of clerk, or cleric - a scholar (Kent, we may assume, is just nice and alliterative.)  That one is pretty obvious.  Superman, however, is not as unsubtle as it appears.  

Siegel and Schuster (Superman's co-creators), while apparently no great scholars themselves, were nevertheless aware of Nietszche's concept of the Uebermensch - the superman.  But "super" has different connotations in German than it does in American English.  On this continent, we tend to make "super" mean good, so Superman is just "really extra good man."  In German, ueber means across, beyond, or above.  It means "over," (and most Nietszhean philosophers make clear this distinction by talking about the "overman," and not the "superman.") It's interesting, and telling, that Superman started out as a villain based on Nietszhe's concept of unrelenting perfection and fascistic morality. 

But the creative team behind Superman, perhaps inspired by Hitler's perverted interpretation of Nietszche's already dark and rigid philosophy, grappled with Superman's awesome power and lack of limitation early on, and they did what any loving creator would do:  give the Man of Steel something really awesome, and then make sure he knew that he could never have it, all while telling him he had to be on his best behavior all the time. 

Obvious metaphor is obvious

Enter Ma and Pa Kent - good Kansas farm people, salt-of-the-earth, America-loving, god-fearing and just.  What must that childhood have been like?  Taught the conservative values of the Midwest by parents who by all accounts were loving and kind but who surely must have known that their adopted son could kill them with a flick of his wrist if he was overtaken by a fit of adolescent angst.  

How do you put Superman over your knee?  

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter - a little temporary suspension of disbelief and some deus ex machina later and you've got "the big blue boyscout," the goodest of the good guys, and not good in some ambiguous sense, as in "you can just tell he's a good person."  Hell, the citizens of Metropolis think Lex Luthor is a benevolent philanthropist (no wonder these people need Superman: he's the only thing keeping the Metropolitans from giving all their money to the widows of Nigerian princes.)  No, Superman is a code-of-ethcis kind of guy, a look-both-ways kind of guy - the kind of guy who will, on a very solemn occasion, swear a pledge.  

got codpiece?

In Also Spraecht Zarathustra, Nietszche says that the superman must "go down" among the people to lift them up, and this is what Superman does as Kent, but Siegel and Schuster open an interesting can of worms with the dichotomy, and expose a critical flaw in the Uebermensch philosophy:  one so high (as Superman) can never descend so low, and one so low (Kent) can never lift so high.  Living above people, Superman can never be among them, and living among them, Kent can never be above them.

At the end of the day, Clark Kent is not some weak version of Superman.  Clark Kent was there first.  Superman is a strong, cold, and distant avatar of Kent.  He is pomp and circumstance, a symbol, and a force of nature.  He is a hero, and in so being a hero he is ready to die for the greater good. 

Everyone knows that Superman's "weakness" is Kryptonite, the radioactive chunks of his own home planet which rob him of his super powers, but this is only a mortal weakness. Kryptonite is no more superman's weakness than arrows were the bane of Achilles, or knives that of Julius Cesar.  Kryptonite is a tool, and nothing more.  

Superman's real weakness is people - don't talk to him about kryptonite - he'd eat a bucket of it to save Lois Lane's little toe.  He sees in us something worth protecting from a cruel galaxy for which we're not quite ready, and for him our frailty must be maddening - but he goes out and fights for us anyway because it's what he's been taught.  It's how he was brought up - in going down, the Superman himself was elevated into the rank and file of the warm-blooded and mortal.  He was shown love and compassion, brought up with human ideals and virtues, and grew to love and care for those around him. 

Superman needs people. 

I think that's nice. 

 "I guarantee you he blows his load like a shotgun right through her back"

Unsolicited Advice for New Writers From Someone Unqualified to Give It, Volume 20 - Don't Act Like You AIn't Got no Nikes.

A friend recently asked me how one goes about writing a book - he had a solid idea, and he's recently begun a fairly regular writing regimen, and so he figured it was as good a time as any to get cracking, and he was right.  There is no one way to write a book except for the way that everyone writes a book, which is to just dig in and do it.

With that in mind, I'll tell you what I told my friend more-or-less in the order in which I told him.


1) When confronted with a blank page, put some goddamn words on it. 

Every novel has an opening line.  Some are powerful and concise, some are mincing and weak.  Some get right to the point while others conjure up a bit of mystery.  This is completely unimportant when you are writing a novel as this is only an early draft and the only thing that matters is getting that first line on the page.  Go ahead and let it be sub-standard - in the first draft of a book, something is always better than nothing.

Oh Peanuts, just fucking go away already.  Take Garfield with you.

2) Go back before you go forward. 

The very first draft of a novel, for me at any rate, is usually a sketch.  It's not very deep, and it usually only runs about 15-20 pages.  Provided it doesn't work as a short story on its own, and it has enough meat to be a book, then I go back and write biographies for the characters and guidebooks for the settings.  I may know in the earliest draft that I just need a guy named "Charlie" to talk to my protagonist "Sam," but after I know that I go back and develop Sam and Charlie - I give them hopes, wants, needs, and histories beyond those which are diegetic.  Sometimes this changes the way characters interact and sometimes it doesn't, but it always makes the experience deeper moving forward.



3) Be sure of the story you want to tell.

As my friend explained the essentials of what will become his novel, he gave me a great number of details and several significant points of action. While most of what he told me is probably essential to the story, it is up to the writer to come up with creative ways to relay that information without overloading the reader with irrelevant detail.

One of the best examples that comes to my mind now is that of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment - we know that he's a student, and that he's read philosophy in a certain vein, though we're hardly privy to specifics.  Still, it is enough to balance and motivate the character.  We don't need to know more about his childhood than what spills out in occasional dialogues with his mother and sister, and we don't need to know anything more of his studies than what he reveals himself in his thoughts and actions.  It is an excellent example of knowing what not to say.

Stop staring at me!!!

4) Worry it the way a dog worries a bone. 

You've got to hammer on it every day.  If you can't bear to put pen to paper, then re-read it, go back and do some high-level edits (not too many: you'll second-guess yourself).  It's got to be as natural as eating and sleeping, which means that just like eating and sleeping, you've got to do it every day.

There are roundabout ways to get at it, too - in fact, if you find yourself staring at a blank page for more than five minutes, you're not doing yourself any favors.  As I already said, you can re-read or edit and in that way jump-start the process, but I personally like to start writing something else and then come back around to the task at hand.  This works for me because I...


5) Keep it fun. 

A lot of advice I've received has to do with keeping a sense of "play" while writing.  If you think you're sitting down to do something grave and serious, it's very likely that you have a passing fancy to write something gray, and that fancy will pass with the first ray of sunshine you see.  Writing that comes from a distinct mood or point of emotional impact tends to be self-absorbed and esoteric.  To that end, remember that this is craft, and not introspection.  Introspection belongs in your diary, craft belongs on the page.  It is work, yes, but you should love your job.  If you love your job, it quickly becomes play.

6) To write a good novel (or story, or poem), first give yourself permission to write a bad one.

My friend dove headlong into writing and then texted me later to say that what he'd written was "barely English," which is exactly what should happen your first time out.  The first one is not going to be very good - my old writing prof at Wayne State expressed some puzzlement over this pressure on an author's first novel because that used to be considered the warm-up novel, or the test-run novel, the one that had a short, small run to test the waters and prepare a marketing rush for the second novel, which was expected to be immeasurably better.

Oh man, a political cartoon - ZING!  That's gonna open a lot of eyes man - whoa ho ho!

Now it's a sort of sink-or-swim game, which works fine for radio, television, and the internet where audiences are both captive and diverse, but book readers are a more established and discerning crowd.  They are likely to recognize a first novel as such, and forgive its flaws and transgressions if the essence is good.  The second has to make up for those flaws, but the first, if tolerable, is tolerated.  Expecting gold out of someone's premier book seems to me like keeping someone in a shark tank and expecting them to swim (the sharks here are editors and their accounting departments ready to tear up a contract at the first show of weakness).

The author should expect no better of himself than an educated reader might - in fact, as a reader is his own worst critic, he should expect significantly less.  It's going to be a big hot mess that you put on that page, and later you can clean it up.  The important thing is to get it out!

Teen Suicide - Don't Do It!

I want to start off by saying that this is going to be a bit of a hodge-podge.  I've been working looong days all week and shorting myself on sleep, so coming up with a really coherent streem of thought is harder today than usual, and so I'm going to go ahead and write the way I'm thinking - more like dumping a bucket than turning on a hose.

1) I'm One Tough Nerd

Thanks in part to the jaded bitterness of my years, and also collaboration with people like the excellent Mr.  Object, I don't think that any politician has a magic pill, or necessarily even has a good solution.  If I were to throw in my lot with Rick Snyder for governor now, I'd just be succumbing to pretty rhetoric and my love of nerd aggrandizement.

 Fuck yeah! 

Be that as it may, the thing that bothers me is the shopworn accusation of "elitism" being thrown around.  Let me pile another stick on the fire of trying to beat this thing down:  Elite means Good.  When you accuse someone of elitism, you are effectively trying to mock them for liking things that are good.  What the fuck?  Do you not want good people (by which I mean excellent, not necessarily virtuous) running the show here?

No, the criticism is always "Well it seems like he thinks he's better than everyone else."

Guess what fuckhead:  he is.  He (or she, not to be exclusive) is educated, aggressive, motivated - he is driven, he wants to get things done, and he applies logic, reason, and skill to the tasks at hand.  He is stronger than you, or faster, or smarter - he is alpha, you are an Epsilon-Minus semi-moron fit only to work an elevator up-and-down at the barked commands of a loud speaker, rejoicing when the elevator reaches the roof, causing you to exclaim "Roof, oh roof!"

That's from Brave New World, by the way - it's a book that elitists like.

Demonstrably better than you.  

2) Baawww....neeeeooowwwww....BOOM!


In the last 2 days I've been hipped twice to the suicide note of Joseph Stack, the guy who flew a plane into an IRS office in Texas, and both times I think I was supposed to read it dumbfounded and agog, in awe of this pecuniary martyr who would throw his own flesh headlong into the grist mill of revolution, possibly snapping myself out of my own complacent stupor and fetching up those firearms I'm so keen on and pointing them against the petty and vulgar tyrants who run this nation.

 All images pertaining to this event have been replaced with pictures of super-sexy pole vaulter Allison Stokke.

That's not what happened.

I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about good writing - Mr. Stack's manifesto-cum-suicide note was not good writing.  Rather, the "Sui-festo" paints a long and rambling picture of a self-pitying narcissist with a martyr complex.  It's seven single-spaced typewritten pages of "I can't do anything because the Gubmint won't let me Baaawwwww" which only ever dares to look past its own self-absorption when it calls the populace at large "zombies" and attempts to goad them into "wak[ing] up" to "revolt."

You command, I obey

And for me, it's about as effective as a neck-bearded basement-dwelling conspiracy theorist calling me a "sheeple" (what's the singular of that?  Sherson?) while horse-laughing around their dim generalities about "power" and "control."  It's a condescending insult from a low position - inverted irony, being talked down to from the bottom.

Plus, Mr. Stack, did you really have to go there with the Catholic church?  Dude, there's like a billion of us.  Who did you think was going to do the uprising, baptists? They consider you an elitist what with your fancy college degrees and book learning.  The protestants?  Who do you think built "the system?"  Nope, best thing you could have done is appeal to the Catholics - we go in for martyrdom.

Worth living for, probably not worth flying a plane into a building for.

Now out of my own sense of guilt and propriety, I feel I have to say something like:  Kids, don't kill yourself.  it's bad.  Jenny, eat something.  Billy, if your uncle touched you, talk to a teacher, parent, or your rabbi.  

I personally think suicide is vain, selfish, and conceited.  I think people who kill themselves imagine that they get to get up in some sort of "second act" and fix everything that was wrong with their life.  I think they imagine seeing their own funeral and getting some sort of ghost-chubby as the mourners gather around and say "OMG I love this person sooooooo much, why did they have to die," etc. 

Being Cymmerian, I know that you don't get to watch your own funeral - you just get to go before Crom and answer the riddle of steel, and if you get it right you get to do eternal glorious battle in heaven, and if you get it wrong, he strikes you down to hades.  

Riddle of steel, pending.  Riddle of wood, solved.

But having been to funerals before, I can say that about 5 minutes after the fact, people will start to forget your name. Although he may have had precedent to believe otherwise, the "sheeple" aren't going to rise up over a plane flying into the IRS building in Austin.  I don't really believe that people are going to think too hard about it, and I think the most likely outcome will be a few insensitive jerks on the internet making fun of a poorly written letter capping off a woe-betided life.

Stay alive, lest it happen to you too. 

Dangerous Liaisons. Or Hobbies. Or whatever.

Gaming generally (40k, battletech, and D and D specifically) is probably my second or third biggest pastime.  I'm sure drinking beats it out just based on sheer quantity of time spent, and it might only be third if you consider reading and writing to be a pastime as opposed to basically my job.

Shooting is just sort of in the top ten.  I'm a good shot, but I'm no expert.  I'm only just starting to shoot at pistol matches this year, and I have to borrow a gun from my dad.  It's not exactly a burning passion of mine, but it's something I do for fun, and I do have a small collection of firearms. 

Let's put those two together, shall we:

I've got Prince Valiant hair, yes I do, won't give it up for anyone, note even you...

Last week, this Alabama adjunct allegedly (nice "condom journalism" there - allegedly, you're a douche) shot and killed three of her fellow professors when she was denied tenure. Presumably angry about having to park in the student lot for another year, she went on a rampage through the University of Alabama biology department and then, to really ice the cake, canceled her office hours.

But rather than focus on the obvious and understandable reason for Mz. Bishop's alleged snap (the pressures of the academy, publish or perish, apparently not liking brown people), the Boston Herald decided to point out that:

"campus killer Amy Bishop was a devotee of Dungeons and Dragons - just like Michael “Mucko” McDermott, the lone gunman behind the devastating workplace killings at Edgewater Technology in Wakefield in 2000."

I'm not linking to their article, because their old-media newspaper is not fit to line a bird cage, and I don't want them actually thinking that they've magically attracted readership.

 America has a sordid history of gaming and violence. 
 

Now, never mind the fact that by association, the readership of this blog and everyone I have ever met now thinks that I am a ticking timebomb waiting to go on some sort of murderous rampage and also that I am a virgin living in my mom's basement - the point of this post is that I deeply resent that two things I love (well, one thing I love and one thing I just kind of like) are being pointed to as nefarious.

It means bad - you can look it up if you want.


What the fuck does D and D have to do with anything?  The article (again, sparing you the trouble of reading illiterate drivel from a derp-tarded Bostonian "reporter") had to draw a comparison to this crime and another significantly more lethal crime that happened ten years before while making a tenuous connection in that both people played dungeons and dragons (the shooters also both wore clothes, and probably ate breakfast that day, since we're pointing out irrelevant detail sthat two people have in common) - never mind that Mz. Bishop played in the 1980's.  Apparently D and D is so traumatic that it can affect your fragile psyche 30 years after the fact.

Nevermind that the Wakefield killer, Michael McDermott, was very obviously a paranoid schizophrenic who'd been off his meds since, oh his entire life.  Nevermind that, allegedly, Amy Bishop killed her own brother with a shotgun in 1986 (probably thought he was an evil dark elf come to steal her platinum pieces). 

Per the DM's Handbook, this is worth 120 gold teeth, 1,200 silver teeth, or 12,000 copper teeth. 

No,  D and  D might attract crazy people, but it doesn't make them.  Coincidence is not causality. Admitting that you play D and D may get you some funny looks, but I think the culture at large has moved on from thinking that it means you can actually conjure up the power of Satan or anything to that effect.

Devil unavailable - son in law answers your seance.  Roll for initiative.

No, the more stigmatized hobby is doubtless that pertaining to firearms.  Folks on the right wing think I'm a fence-sitter for being a casual shooter and daring to think that *gasp* maybe I don't need to carry a gun every fucking single place I go.  Folks on the left think I'm some sort of brutal hillbilly or fascist survival nut for even daring to entertain the notion that it might be practical to defend myself.

Personally, this issue tires me so I'm just going to state my case:

When it comes to rights, I believe you use them or lose them.  A state can't give you rights, it can only take them away.  It's a lot harder to take away somebody's rights when they can shoot you.  Speaking of shooting people:  if you attempt to harm me or the people I love, or if you were to break into my home, I will blow your lungs out your back and only feel sorry for the cleaning lady who has to scrape you off my wall.  I don't give a shit what your motive was, if it was your first assault / robbery, whatever - it's your last.


Granola hippies, you are never going to get guns off this planet, or out of this country - not without some sort of draconian bullshit like we're beginning to see in Brittain and Australia.  Those governments you're trusting to take care of everything?  That's who we were shooting 230 years ago.  Why do you think they're suddenly all helpful and benevolent - because they're elected?  Cool - now tell me about big corporations and campaign finance reform.  

 Not likely to shoot back.  Or hold a job.

Contrarily, shut the fuck up rednecks - your constant blathering about armed societies being polite societies is completely at odds with your romantic (and false) notion of the wild west that you jerk off to, and the harsh reality of life in the cities of Detroit and Baghdad, both of which you refuse to go to for fear of (gasp!) getting shot.  I know it seems really simple on paper to just shoot everyone who would commit a crime against you (see paragraph above), but basically that's how Africa happened.  And Mexico.  And South Central LA. And the Middle East.

 Obama is not coming to steal your Thomas Kinkade commemorative plates

We have guns, guns kill people.  Neither fact is going to change in my lifetime.  America has the tiger by the tail on this one.  It's nearly impossible to get anything resembling reliable statistics on gun crime in this country, but it pretty much seems to be higher than all of the first world and just barely under most of the third.  This is justification  for gun haters to call for a ban, and for gun nuts to call for more munitions for self defense.

I don't like to politicize it, but I sleep with a Mossberg under my bed, and I encourage everyone to do the same. Whether you do it for personal protection, the principle of exercising your rights, or the idea that one day we may have to all form some sort of well-regulated militia to ensure the security of this free state, I say only:  citizen, army thyself - and roll for initiative.

.357 versus 25mm

Unsolicited Advice for New Writers from Someone Unqualified to Give It, Volume 19 - I've got Style

Heads-up:  Long post, only relevant to writers, not particularly funny.  Educational?  Yes.  Entertaining?  Borderline. 

Style is like time or space - nearly impossible to explain without referring to itself.  Go ahead and give it a whack:  explain time without saying time, or some other variation like duration or span.  Try explaining distance without saying "far."

 This is the song that never ends...

Now try to come up with a better definition of literary style than "the use of literary tropes or techniques."  This is a distillation of recurring definitions I've found across a collection of internet sources, each one of those in turn is either just as broad, or drives at one more narrow point in particular and sounds better, but doesn't necessarily mean any more - one of the better definitions of this type that I've heard explained style as "...the voice readers "hear" when they read your work," which is great, but I think tone and narration have that covered by themselves.

Style is everything present on the page - the word kind of sucks because in encompassing the whole mess of literary tropes and techniques, it ultimately means so much that it becomes meaningless.  It's kind of like people who say "god is everything and everywhere," well, what's the point? 

The point is that everyone can recognize style when they see it, so long as they have the slightest inclination to do so.  Read Faulkner, and you know you're reading Faulkner.  Read Hemmingway, and you know you're reading Hemmingway.  Read Terry Pratchett, and you'll think that Douglas Adams is phoning it in under a pen name.

Choose the one on the right.

It's more than just what the writer says and the tone in which he says it.  That's all well and good, but how does one get style?  You'll know when you don't have it because people will tell you.  They'll use words like "problematic," "inconsistent," or "crap sandwich."  

You'll know for sure that you're developing a sense of style when someone reads 2 or more of your stories and says things like "I notice that," or "you tend to," but someone can get a sense of your style from just one story.  Read one story by Carver or Joyce to see what I mean - while they certainly have distinctive tones to their work, there's more the distinction than just the way they sound. 

Regular readers of this blog know that I consider there to be six elements of Fiction: character, plot, narration, dialogue, theme, and setting.  Taking some famous author's, let's go element-by-element and find some distinctions.

1.  Character

Flannery O'Connor and Sherwood Anderson populate their stories with ignorant grotesques, caricatures of archetypes.  They are often metonymous and seldom self-aware.  Characters in Auster's New York Trilogy are barely characters at all, existing mostly as names.  Flaubert could throw plot to the wind so long as his characters remained truthful, complex, and convincing. 

Ask yourself:  Are my character's consistently living, breathing people?  Is what my character's do and say more important than who they are? 

2. Plot
Though the exact number is hotly contested, there do seem to be a finite number of plots swimming around. You could go through and explore every variation of man vs. man, man vs. nature, monkey vs. robot and so on, some (indeed, most) writers wind up with recurring action arks.  Jack London was a pretty obvious man-vs-nature sort of guy, Kate Chopin had a good handle on woman-vs-society.

Ask Yourself:  who keeps fighting whom?  What are my protagonists usually up against?  Why does this interest me, and why do I keep exploring this concept over others? 

3. Narration

When you read Faulkner, you are going to spend most of your time being screamed at by an angry drunk who evidently broke the period key off his typewriter.  When you read Carver, you'll barely know he's there.  Some writers have no compunction about editorializing while others would not dare pass judgment on the unfolding action.  Similarly, some schools of authorship reject ornate narration as so much "purple prose" while others heap lavish detail, alliterative flourishes, and dancing poesy on every nook and cranny.

Ask yourself:  What do I sound like?  Is my voice consistent?  Do I trend towards one tense or another?  one POV over another?  Am I poetic or prosaic? 

4.  Dialogue

Few stories exist with no dialogue at all, but they're out there - think of Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rains.  Most stories do have people talking, and there's a lot of room for decision here.  Do your character's speak in pointed monologues (Rand, Heinlein) or do they say little words that don't mean much (Mansfield, Stein).  Also, don't let anyone tell you otherwise - there is no hard and fast rule for setting your dialogue.

"This," he said, "is a fine method."
- But this is the one that a lot of Moderns used, she said.
He added: colons get the point across too, and like the m-dash method is a lot less conspicuous than quotes.

tl:dr lol

Ask yourself:  Why do my characters say what they say?  Am I filling in space with spoken words? Do my spoken exchanges reveal something about the speaking characters?  Does the dialogue move the plot forward?  How are you setting your dialogue, and why?


5. Theme

This is the stickiest prospect for a writer to handle because criticism of theme is usually the privilege of the reader.   Furthermore, themes don't usually develop until after a work is completed, and those themes can change as the society that receives them changes.  Nevertheless, someone is going to grasp at theme in your work, so you should at the very least know how you're coming across in terms of the politics of gender, race, and class - these are the big three that people jump on first, and the three you must be prepared to have thrown back at you.  How many times have you heard that Hemingway was a misogynist?  That Fitzgerald was an elitist?  That George Bush doesn't care about black people?

Ask Yourself:  What kinds of people keep popping up in my work?  Who is writ large on the page?  Who is excluded?  Do the black guys always die first, like in a bad horror movie?  Why?

6. Setting

The action's got to happen somewhere.  For my part, 80% of what I write gets set in rural Michigan.  Don't know why, don't care why - stories just work out better that way.  Joyce had a hard time getting out of Ireland, Hemingway may have written all over the world, but his character's almost always created little expat bubbles.

Ask yourself:  Can I be considered an urban writer?  A coastal writer?  A transatlantic expat?  Where is this action happening, and can it be set somewhere else, or would that destroy the whole narrative?

Basically exactly the same.

Some writer/teachers have produced some really great style guides, but the only way to really develop your own sense of style is to write, write, write.  Tired advice, right?  But it's the only thing that ever works.  I hope the examples and questions up above are helpful to you, but if not - keep practicing. Remember, style doesn't mean rote consistency or some dedication to doing things a certain way: it also includes breaking the rules, especially your own rules, in a fresh and interesting manner. 

This was a long one - man, did you really read down this far?  I feel like there should be some sort of reward for your perseverance.  Here, have an internet flashback:

Shot Through the Heart

Think hard - have you ever heard anyone say that Valentine's day is their favorite holiday?  Which do you hear more:  "Valentine's day is so awesome" or "Valentine's day is a dumb-ass Hallmark Holiday."  If you answered the last question with "Valentine's day is so awesome," think to when you heard it:  did you also hear the shrieking discordant notes of the Jared Galleria of Jewelers saxophone jingle?  That was a commercial - it doesn't count.  

Pic related

I think Valentine's day is a fine chance to go have a nice meal out, it's a passable excuse to blow off any manner of responsibility provided you have some form of date, and (this last point may be the most important: gentlemen) a bottle of semi-decent Chianti and a dozen roses is going to get you in some panties. At no other time of year is the slightest effort and consideration so richly rewarded with booty.

 Didn't even need the wine.

Of course all of this implies that you have someone with whom to spend this most hated of holidays.  If you do, you've got a nice little retreat from the monotony of the everyday, from the cold of winter, from the dreariness of the everyday.  It's gonna cost you the price of a night out, maybe some jewelry, but at least you've got yourself a nice bed warmer and a chance to get out of the house. 

If you don't have anyone, there's a very good chance that you're wallowing in the middle of a lacey pink depress-a-thon.

There are a lot of things to hate about Valentines day.  First, it always comes in the middle of winter.  It's nasty out - there are only two colors in all of nature's palette:  blinding snow white and grungy gray-brown.  The trees are bare.  The grass is dead.  The birds are gone.  Spring is still at least 2 cold dreary months away. Somehow, someone decided we should have a holiday in the middle of all this.

No hope, no hope at all. 

Second, if you're alone on Valentine's day, there is no way the world is going to let you forget it.  Maybe you're mostly okay with that, and I wish you and your cats all the best, but anybody with an ounce of sensitivity is going to notice the cold spot on the other side of their bed.  

Now you'd think this would be prime hookup time, right?  I mean, here you've got this holiday reminding everyone just how desperate and alone they are, so why doesn't everyone simply drop all pretenses, find some other lonely heart pounding Bourbon at the bar, take them to a hotel room and hit it like an ugly stepchild? 

Because desperation is a foul perfume, and two people hooking up on Valnetine's day like as not know that they are bottom feeding.  Remember, between the weather and the solitude we've got a pretty intense depression going on, and if you've ever hung around depressed people, you know that sexy isn't the first thing to come to mind.  

 She wanna do the wild thing.

When we think of spontaneous Valentine's day hookups, we imagine oh-well-what-the-hell flings, naughty little trysts between two people who ought to "know better" but just go ahead and throw convention out the window.  It seems like it ought to be spontaneous rough sex after a cheap bottle of wine with some funny story behind it - a bottle of wine that you bought at a gas station. 

But think of how this sort of hook-up happens.  One person calls the other and says "I was thinking, since I don't have a date and you don't have a date..." - it starts with a brutal reinforcement of loneliness.  I'm alone, you're alone.  The subsequent togetherness is secondary.  Both people have been reduced to "consolation prize" status.

Here's what it's really like:  two lonely people put forth the bare minimum of effort to lurch their way to an appointed rendezvous.  For the sake of verisimilitude we might say that the man bothered to shave, but for the sake of effect we will presume he did not.  He's wearing a flannel shirt and very comfortable shoes.  She is also wearing comfortable shoes, and she has her hair pulled back in a ponytail.  

We could...set the night to Mu-sic!

They go out to dinner - probably to Denny's, or Waffle House, or IHOP, somewhere cheap and informal for which they do not need reservations. He brought flowers, which was sort of nice, but it's not a romantic bouquet because he doesn't want to send the wrong signal - the bunch he's brought would look more at home on mother's day.  

The conversation is awkward.  Eye contact is nearly impossible to maintain. There's no chemistry except for a sort of bewildered eagerness to get to where they're going.  It's not about romance - it's about inertia.  They're in too deep, and now they are going to see this thing through to the bitter end. 

After dinner, they go back to her place.  It's closer. No springing for a hotel since that would just be a big waste of money.  Is her room clean?  No, it is not.  They leave the lights off. The sex is mercifully short, and he's dressed and out the door before the sweat dries.  They never speak of this again. 

 Yes, like that.

So couples, it's definitely your holiday.  Guys, you're probably putting up with a lot of pink hearts and saccharine cards, and your reasons are your own.  Maybe you're making a big production out of the holiday out of real  genuine affection, or maybe you're just playing along to get a little trim.  Ladies, Hallmark and DeBeers have been telling me for 33 years that you like this sort of stuff, and as none of you have broken me of the notion I will continue to assume that it's a pretty big deal for you. 

At the end of the day, we all have to take Valentine's day for what it's worth.  Singles, just remember that it's a Hallmark holiday, a perverse warping of the martyrdom of Priest Valens of Rome by the emperor Claudius - an event which in all likelihood never even happened (very poor records that are magically cleaned up right about the time the church needs a new saint). In that spirit, take the night to just fuck off - don't watch some sweet romantic comedy and think a bunch of misty-eyed if-only's;   Get drunk and watch Gladiator. 

Ladies, this is a good chance to squeeze something out of your man - a present, a dinner out - it's really your night and you can call the shots.  Guys, so what if it's a hallmark holiday?  So once a year someone comes along and reminds you to be nice to a lady? Don't act all put out, and remember that "put out" is probably the operative phrase here.