Deep Inside Joke

2011-03-12T22:58:00.000-08:00

I write from Omiya, about eighty miles southwest of the Gai-Jishin—the big quake. I have just begun a year-long contract to teach English in Japan. My company recruits native speakers from all over the world—America, England, Canada, Australia—and then gathers them together for a two-week training program before shipping us off to our schools.

I have just pretended to teach the words “pet store” and “guinea pig” when the world starts shaking.

We’d felt several smaller tremors beforehand, so we weren’t entirely unprepared. Seth, from L.A., had given us a primer on earthquake safety—stay away from windows and light fixtures, take shelter in a doorway or under a table. His smooth confidence had chased away our worries, and at first, the Gai-Jishin seemed no different.

Yet the rumbling grows, and so does our fear. Those of us new to earthquakes look to the veterans with panicked glances, trying to accept that this, too, is normal. Above us, ceiling tiles wriggle in their fixtures; to the side, windows thunder. Finally, a trainer makes the call: “we should probably get under the tables.” The floor bounces beneath us like a bus doing fifty on a dirt road.

Seth’s voice carries over the rumbling, reminding us of the advice he’d given not one day before. “Cover your heads!” he shouts, “and keep away from the windows!”

A thirty-second-lifetime later, the quake stops. The building continues to sway—not from further tremors, but from the strength of Japanese engineering. The buildings here are built to rock and sway, bending with the moving earth to keep its supports from snapping. In all of Omiya, not one building falls down, and the worst damage I see is at a grocery store, where a few dozen bottles of wine had fallen from a shelf.

As the training house rocks back and forth, so do the emotions of those within. Drunk on adrenaline, we take turns laughing, crying, puking, hugging. The trainers buried their heads in cell phones, giving us the play-by-play as news became available. “A five-point-five—pretty big.” “Tsunami warnings on the coastlines.” “BBC says it’s a seven-six.” “They closed the Japanese stock exchange.” “Seven-seven.” And then, “Sendai’s wrecked.”

A teacher sits down and puts her head in her hands. Sendai is the city where she’ll work when training is over. The thought is too much for her. She sits in silence for the next hour.

As for me, I am every emotion. Fear competes with confusion, concern, introspection, empathy, awe, and even a guarded titillation at the terrible uniqueness of it all.

I worry for my mother. Before leaving, I told her all about Japan—its nonexistent crime rate, its hospitability toward foreigners, and, ominously, its position on one of the largest fault lines in the world. Like our own Hawaii, the Japanese archipelago was forged from volcanic activity, rising from the ocean off the coast of Korea. “At some point this year,” I told her, “there will be an earthquake.” The words taunt me with every aftershock.

After five tries, I get through. It’s 3 a.m. Central Standard Time, and she is wide awake. I can hear her perfectly, but some quirk of cyberspace prevents her from hearing anything more than “I’m fine.” I’m immensely grateful just for that—though I know her maternal terror will construct a million other worries, at least she knows I’m alive. She tells me she loves me, and that she’s worried. The line dies.

There are twenty-five people in the training house, all writhing beneath similar weights. My trainers have the worst of it, as many have been working here for ten years or more. They have friends, wives, in-laws, children. As our de facto guardians they are forced to stay strong. But you can see it in their eyes. Theirs is the pain of our parents.

That night, my roommate manages to get on Facebook, and he lends me his phone so I can send word home. Fifty notices greet me when I log in. Family friends both close and distant bombard me with questions and prayers. My step-mother tells me Dad is a basket case. My best friend has written a calming post that explains how Mom has heard from me and that I’ve been confirmed as “fine.” Thirty people like his post.

All ten TV stations are crowded with the same pictures. A town floats into the ocean. Oil tankers sit piled atop crushed homes. Helicoptas fly over disaster sites and pluck survivors from rooftops. In the bottom right corner of the screen, a flashing map explains that the entire coastline of Japan is in various states of alert. The Tokyo region is thankfully yellow—many, many others blink red.

On one channel, an old woman sits crying in a white room. She wears a blanket on her shoulders. She is giving a one-sided interview, utterly unlike the other stories where articulate newscasters speak in a steady stream of reportage. She speaks in short, jagged bursts, stopping to weep before continuing her story again.

There is no need for conjecture. We can all guess the cause of the woman’s wailing. After three minutes, it is too much for me, and I change the channel to the image of a smoking nuclear reactor.

2010-10-18T03:18:00.000-07:00

Hey gang. If you're a gamer, I'd like to direct you to the sister blog to hear the story of The Astral Dew, a model ship made from Legos and empty Mountain Dew boxes during our recent gaming bonanza.

2010-08-17T18:15:00.000-07:00

"Fresh Air"
(a love letter to cigarettes)

Year by year, my number grows. It did not seem foul at nineteen, when the number was one. It began looking suspicious at twenty-one, when the number was three. The number was eight the last time I checked--eight years a smoker, eight years a fool.

The badness of it weighs heavier each year--my half-functional lungs, colds that last weeks instead of days, the occasional bout of nausea from an overdose of nicotine and cigarettes, yet always in such good company.

They say that, to quit, one must sincerely want to quit. There's parts of me that do, moments when I look at an emptying pack and think, "this could be it man--you could make this the last cigarette you ever smoke." Then I smoke it, and by the end of the cigarette I've already discarded my resolve.

My vice follows me. It sits on my counter and wedges itself between the cushions amid old change and pencils. It advertises itself at every gas station, because they know--damn them, they know--that sometimes that's just the nudge our addictions need.

We smokers are too generous for our own good. Where else will you find a community willing to surrender an over-priced product, to ask for them when your pack has fallen empty. Though it all came out in the wash, hundreds of dollars worth of cigarettes have been passed back and forth among my friends. The exchange is freeform, almost communistic, and those with more all too often find themselves supporting those with fewer.

When at work on a project, a cigarette is a breath of fresh air, an excuse to pull yourself away for five minutes and reflect on a big picture. Frankly, I don't know how healthy people do it--how else can you plan your breaks? What do you do with them?

The last time I tried quitting, I went mad with fidgeting. Yearning for the clarity that occupying my hands created, I tried all sorts of little tasks--pencil tricks, sugar-free candy, cycling, obsessive housekeeping, Nicorette, houseplants, magazines. Yet nothing replaced the perfect timing of the cigarette.

Snuffing a Marlboro Blend 27 is my own personal hourglass. I chain-smoke when I wait for things, measuring the bus's lateness in perfect five minute increments. When working, I offer cigarettes as rewards for certain milestones: just finish this article, then you can have a cigarette. Book your ticket, then we'll light up another one. There you go. Good dog.

It is so childish, so romantically absurd to hate loving a thing, yet I do, I really, really do, with cigarettes. They are the woman who won't let me break up with her, a spiteful succubus whose touch is not so much tender as familiar and somewhat skilled. The bitch. The beautiful, beautiful bitch.

Even as it's killing me, I can't help but admire them. I love the culture of smoking, the sit-down-and-talkiness of it. I love the excuse to leave a place of bland entertainment, to escape a concert and talk about how bad it is with other clever smokers out for fresh air. I look at filled ashtrays with proud disgust, the way one grins through a hangover at empty bottles.

I did a project once where I recorded and transcribed my friends talking. It was for linguistic study, and the researcher who hired me needed every um, er, and other little conversational anomaly written verbatim. Our sentences were quite naturally hilarious, consisting of things like, y'know, it's just like, funny things--y'know? A chorus of lighters flicked in the background--of nine voices recorded, eight of us had been smokers. Our conversations were interrupted with smokers' chatter: the passing of lighters, the bumming of squares.

And every time cigarettes were mentioned, someone would cough.

It was like the word "cigarette" reminded us of our bad health, and we coughed out of nervous reflex. We would cough to clear our throats before lighting them, as though making room for a the latest batch of awful. Or perhaps we were merely rinsing our palates, loosening the coating of tar so that we could taste what we were consuming.

This is, unfortunately, not an essay of resolution, not some long-winded announcement that I'm quitting. I finished the latest failure six weeks ago, and I'm not ready for another one just yet. Call it a meditation. Call it a rationalization. Whatever it's called, it's not called quits.

2010-08-09T22:58:00.000-07:00

As a fledgling freelancer, I approached Gen Con as both work and play, which is one reason I made it a point to attend Paizo Publishing's events. My favorite seminar-styled event, their freelance seminar featured three members of Paizo's staff with advice, warnings, and tips for potential writers. On the showroom floor, the Paizo booth stood out as a highly professional gold mine for quality Pathfinder products.

RPG Superstar, their reality show-esque game design competition, functions as a rapid vetting process for potential authors. Superstar begins with an open call for magic items, where hundreds of participants submit one magical item each. From these, a group of competitors is selected who then compete through a series of increasingly more intricate design tasks: monsters, mapmaking, NPCs, and at last an entire adventure to determine the winner. Paizo has drawn creative talent from finalists as well as winners, making it a great way to get exposure to the company.

The panelists also spoke of Pathfinder Society Organized Play. Like RPGA for D&D, Organized Play involves a standardized system of character creation and a series of modules ran by volunteer GMs. The modules ran in these events are written mostly by freelancers, and events manager Josh Frost described these modules as the bottom rung of writing for Paizo. Submission information is available online.

General exposure can also help someone step into Paizo's freelancing fold. Managing editor Wes Schneider spoke highly of Kobold Quarterly as a reliable source of talent, hinting that he and Wolfgang Baur traded freelancers with some frequency.

Publishing Event Manager Joshua Frost has written both the submission guidelines and covered a thorough forum discussion on the issue of freelance adventure design. His directions involved stern, direct guidance, with a focus on what not to do when submitting to Paizo. He spoke at length of their view on "PG-13" adventure design, and how violence toward children was not a topic that even the darkest of scenarios was willing to explore.

The spokesmen sounded excited about their projects and eager for new talent while still being clear about the standards necessary for publication with their rapidly growing company. Attendance was decent at about thirty people, and the event ran up to the wire with some questions still unanswered. Schneider invited anyone looking for more insights to the Paizo booth to continue the discussion, an offer which I gladly took up despite the constant temptation to drop hundreds of dollars on adventure paths, splatbooks, and other products.

As it was, I walked away with a single rulebook and a photo shoot of Paizo's ten ENnies, with the only silver medal belonging to a product which lost to another Paizo product. No bones about it, Paizo's Pathfinder system/setting is a dominant force in game design that.

2010-06-30T09:26:00.000-07:00

Success: I'm gettin' paid, meeting my financial goals as a self-sustaining, full-time freelancer. That's been priority #1, and it's working.
Failure: Quitting smoking. Just bought a pack today after a month of stolen drags and a week of bummed cigarettes. I want to try again, but I've been just so damned cranky.
Success: Cooking. I've reacquainted myself with my old favorites while making steady progress on--as the post-it note on the side of my desk proclaims--"mastering soupcraft."
Failure: I haven't ridden my bike today. I didn't ride it on Saturday either. It was not raining.
Success: Lost 20 pounds since last year.
Failure: Can't seem to lose 25.
Success: The Workshop. My workspace is beautiful. I've never had such a thorough inventory of my mind as I do here. There are books everywhere, and it seems like every space within reach of my laptop is sprouting post-it notes.
Failure: Still haven't gotten my printer from Jessie. The Workshop won't be complete without it.
Success: Friends. I've got good ones to keep me company in the current hermitage.
Failure: Friends. They're so neat that they're distracting.
Success: Laying a professional foundation. The blog has just enough on it that I don't feel bad handing out my business card. And I have a business card.
Failure: Shattered the one-a-day Mountain Dew limit this past weekend.
Success: Been good otherwise. Being out of Dew helps.
Failure: Wrote a blog about current successes and failures instead of working.
Success: I'm writing.

2010-06-25T18:59:00.000-07:00

Correction: I am withdrawing from the position of "Springfield Geek Culture" examiner. Here's the story.

On every Craigslist and every first-ten-hits-on-Google database of "writing jobs," you'll see ads for Examiner.com. This is not to be confused with D.C.'s Washington Examiner, but is rather a blogging site which lets their writers keep a little ad revenue.

I chose not to go with Examiner because it's not a sustainable writing job. Optimistic articles about how much "Examiners" get paid claim $10 in the first month. The one claim of making enough to be called a salary was made by someone writing on Michelle Obama--a choice I salute given how close the website's name is with the D.C. newspaper.

But with that idea played out, I'll be sticking to my current web content gigs. I just submitted my first three articles to wiseGEEK, and if they like those they’ll give me steady access to their database of questions to answer. My first batch was on database theory (it took most of today to scrape the rust off that particular part of my skillset), and I almost, almost signed up to answer the timeless question, “What are gonads?”

The goal for July—my second full month as a full-time freelancer—is $1200. It’s a modest sum, but enough to pay for room, board, a cell phone, and the peace of mind to work on fictional projects.

And as for Examiner—I wish them luck. Their business model makes sense, and I know firsthand the joy of seeing your name in a byline, or of getting a paycheck, however small.

2010-06-24T13:14:00.000-07:00

Why can't I fly? Because you don't have wings. Why don't I have wings? Because you weren't born with them. Why wasn't I born with them? Because you're human. Why am I human? Just shut up and eat your cereal, kid.

Mario Podeschi, Springfield Geek Culture Examiner

That's right, I have finagled the title "Springfield Geek Culture Examiner" out of the internet. My first post, Geek, serves as the blog's manifesto, and I'd welcome any input from my Springfieldian, Geek, or Springfieldian Geek readers on write-ups they'd like to see. I'll probably link to my favorite articles from DIJ, especially when they have to do with some aspect of my professional blog.

*****

Update: Springfield Geek Culture Examiner was not as cool as it initially looked.

2010-06-11T09:17:00.000-07:00

Deep Inside Joke is in construction. If you have been directed here by my business card, I'd like to direct you to the links above for some writing samples and niche biographies.

2010-06-03T19:41:00.001-07:00

Current goal: be a hermit.

The Hermit appears in Tarot. The speculative superstition has two opposing definitions for this card, one meaning a need for isolation, and the other a need to escape isolation and share information with others.

I've heard the critique so long it's become cliché, but it's one of those cliché-for-a-reason clichés: fortune telling only appears to work because it describes universal struggles like fears for family, conflict over where to spend your time, maturity, romance, dreams, and the like. Yet, there is power to such thoughts, power enough that they are sculpted into many artworks beyond those of the Tarot.

Other belief systems invite us to ponder our desire for isolation. Buddhist monks meditate in mountain temples while a Christian messiah treks through the desert with the devil to tempt him. Inside each faith's story is a glittering truth: that being alone is as terrifying as it is exhilarating.

It is a precious thing to have time to oneself. It happened rarely in the house of my youth, where the social lives of two parents and three sisters formed knots which I couldn't be bothered to untangle. Instead, I built secret places--chair-and-blanket fortresses and comfy nooks in trees, and I shamelessly crafted imaginary friends based on video game characters.

The friends that came after broadened my view of the world tremendously. Yet they also represent a constant struggle--the struggle for pockets of time which can sincerely be called my own. As with many hobbyist writers, my computer was a labyrinth of half-started projects, with hastily scribbled notes hidden in poorly-named filing logic.

Such writerly shame is common, I think, because good writing takes a remarkable amount of time and concentration. Simply proofreading a page can seem a monumental task, especially when care is given to research rules which have grown rusty from disuse. Eventually, there comes a time when most people accept that they will learn little more than they already have.

And why not? They have their own concentrations to keep. Many concentrate on work, especially those who enjoy their jobs and paychecks. Others concentrate on their own enjoyment, taking low-impact jobs so that they can continue engaging with fascinating creative masterpieces like multiplayer games and novels-turned-movies and Youtube-watching marathons.

A hermitage is necessary. I am not cutting myself off from technology, because I really like technology, and in fact I thought Thoreau was being kind of silly when he made his own cabin in which to study solitude. Technology frees my hands for other tasks, so that I can try to do just one task well. Yes, it would be quaint to chop my own firewood, but doing so would take hours more than I am willing to give.

Today is my first Work Day in the new house. The door to the Workshop is closed, not to keep guests out, but to suggest that they should knock before entering and respect my need for work. Every book I own is on display in this massive chamber, so that a visitor is invited to sit and join me for a time in this little hermitage.

With no car, I will borrow vehicles as I need them, and these will be for weekend long trips to conventions or a particularly important handful of friends. Mostly, though, I will be here. Working. Ten to six, Monday through Friday.

2010-05-27T14:33:00.000-07:00

Deep Inside Joke is in construction. If you've gotten here because of my business card, I greatly appreciate your interest. Feel free to call or email with any questions or requests for additional writing samples in the meantime.

This blog started in high school, but it is being revived as my professional face to the world. Soon, it will have a new and original art design as well as several writing samples available in neat pull-down windows. Huzzah.

I plan to update the blog once a week at first, both to keep it active and to further my web traffic. Topics will vary among my various niches: education, gaming, freelance writing, and so on.

I considered starting a new blog for all this, but I feel a powerful loyalty to Deep Inside Joke. I started this blog waaaay back in Y2K on the recommendation of one Ryan Hutson, who still stands as one of my most influential writing peers. Then came the Dark Time, when it was yanked from under my feet due to a scandal among church mothers whose children had been caught reading my somewhat blasphemous and vulgar rantings.

I'll be sweeping the archives into an out-of-the-way place so that employers don't mistakenly take a seven year-old rant about an ex-girlfriend to be a writing sample.

And by the way, if any of my readers know anyone who needs something written, please contact me immediately.

2009-06-05T07:49:00.000-07:00

And how odd that after such a fine day I should find myself at a hospital.

Full blown appendicitis, that's what I've got, and tomorrow they're putting me under to cut the damn thing off. I'm not sure if my drastic lifestyle changes have had something to do with it or not.

Mom would be glad to know that I'm the only patient in my room with a crucifix looming overhead. Were I a Christian man, I'd call this a blessing, but as a sensible man I'll just call it a one-in-six chance.

But I do wonder how many people have felt specifically chosen for divine protection because of that piece of wood. It's almost boggling.

One-in-six; such boring odds. No one would play the divine protection game in Reno. Maybe we could spice it up with the one-in-four of Soth Koreans being
Protestant. Let's add a variable for critical thinking skills,

2009-06-04T07:40:00.000-07:00

I didn't know why the rooster was crowing. Nor did I know why this was being juxtaposed with children talking into a news microphone, nor why this seemed so funny to the hosts talking in the background.

But there were subtitled, Korean ones, and then I heard a word I recognized: hamneeda. I usually hear it as part of kamsa hameeda--Korean for "thank you." So I looked at the subtitles, and sure enough, there were the characters for hawm and nee and dah. It's a common enough ending, though the subtleties escape me at the moment. But I recognized it.

Then a group of kids shouted samsengneem. Teacher.

Then the rooster crowed again.

Then the kids.

Then the rooster.

Then... this scientist looking guy sitting in front of two visual maps of soundwaves, like the kind I used to see on Soundforge and similar technology. He pushed a button: rooster. He clicked a button: children.

The patterns looked the same, making today the first day that I understood enough of a television show to be entertained by its words as well as its pictures.

Not that this was the only milestone of my day. I also had my first effective yell today. I don't often get angry, and the few times I have, I tend to approach it with a calm, eloquent bitterness. This does not work on 2nd graders, regardless of nationality. In order to succeed at my job, I have had to learn how to express anger simply, to find a part of me I've spent my life ignoring.

I borrowed some mojo as I walked past a room where a comrade was explaining to his class "books out--I'm not going to say it again!" in a booming baritone that he'd never used in my company. A pair of lower-level students provoked me, some ornery han-gooks who love nothing more than to see how far they can push until we softhearted Americans push back.

It started in the diaphragm, forte. I used the richest part of my register, about an octave below middle C, where I sing the high pitches of "Sixteen Tons" and the low pitches of "Piano Man." The chorus, simple--that's enough--and the verses decrescendoed to mezzo piano where the audience was still all ears.

A day of sounds, you might say.

2009-05-29T19:16:00.000-07:00

My pack of cigarettes is most intricate today.

With a pair of scissors, I cut half the filter off ten of them. By doing this, I've managed to take a standard grade Korean cigarette and make up for the frustratingly long filter.

One of these ten is upside down, making it my lucky.

Seven have been smoked.

Three are full length, intended as gifts to people whom I offer smokes to.

One of these is upside down, making it the lucky I give to people who I want to be sexual with. I learned this trick from China, who explained "one for luck, one for fuck."

Now, I begin my Saturday, which will consist of riding the subway first to a foreigner flea market, then to a palace.

It will be a good day.

2009-05-27T08:41:00.000-07:00

(Yeah, I'm writing again.)

Ambition to greatness is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it inspires us to greatness, to read for days at a time, to explore new levels of consciousness, to toy with a song until it is absolutely perfect.

But when you watch enough documentaries of great people, you start to realize that they all end the same way. They make it, and having made it, they pitter out and die. Some shoot themselves. Some waste away. But there is an inevitable change to the background music, a bold-faced post-commercial but that explains why we're watching a documentary instead of the individual.

I suspect our world has need for both the mad dreamchasers and those who follow in their wake, scooping up the pieces and offering them in tribute to our future.

2009-05-27T06:44:00.000-07:00

The Information Age has infected us with three new madnesses.

First is the madness of unknowing, where we throw our hands into the air and refuse to participate in the horror that is infinite knowledge. It gorges itself on distraction and shits out false confidence, repeating ideas that clever-sounding people say so it can sound clever to others infected with the disease.

The second is the madness of powerlessness, where we are stymied by just how little effort or participation does. It drives some to pick up guns and force a reaction out of the world, to test nuclear weapons, to snort cocaine, to write things down not so that information can be passed on, but in the vain hope that you'll catch someone nodding their head along to the tune of our private despairs.

The third is the madness of overknowing, which troubles me most. The internet has made it impossible to justifiably avoid information. Rare is the topic you cannot Google, and there are more necessary books and movies than we can possibly consume. It raises our standards so high that few of us can participate in anything, caught between the most sincere modesty mankind has ever felt with a bitter desire to matter to something.

These madnesses have redefined everything.

2009-05-25T05:30:00.000-07:00

Beloved programmers, I have an experiment I want you to help me with. I'd drop money if I had to.

My hypothesis is that this program would create a reasonable approximation of a writer's subconscious using accumulated blog posts, journal entries, or freewriting exercises. Each would be its own experiment.

If I am an absolute genius, then I might be able to predict your dreams, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The program creates a matrix with the following variables:

matrix (a,b,c,d,e) = master data
a = Test Subject's Name (basically a filename)
b = Neuron Name (a single word)
c = Neuron Strength (integer)
d = Connected Neurons (many, many, words)
e = Dendrite Strength (integer)
x = sample number (integer)

Before we go on, some key vocabulary:

Neuron: A single thought in your brain.
Dendrite: The electrical bridge connecting two thoughts.

Here's the theory behind all this: Whenever two neurons fire at the same time, the bridge between them becomes stronger. For example, the first time your mom fed you, your brain stitched the neurons for "mom's face" with "being full" together with a dendrite. Within a few months of this, this dendrite had grown to such huge proportions that you got very angry if mom didn't feed you while you were hungry.

Bear in mind that this is a gross oversimplification, as is this experiment.

This program would operate similarly to how our brains work, relying on only one form of input: words. The operator of the program (me) would then create an account named after the test subject(variable a).

Then, I would need to paste large amounts of text that would be sorted into various variables. When I hit "save," I would want it to, for this sample (variable x), count through each word in the pasted text, recording each new word as a new point in this complicated matrix (variable b). If a word already existed, I would want it to instead increase the neuron strength of that word (variable c).

After all this was complete, the program would then record under each existing word a list of all the other words from the writing sample (variable d). For each of these words, it would translate that word's neuron strength (c) into dendrite strength (variable e).

The program would then discard the original writing sample and let me enter another one.

This new writing sample (b) would follow many of the same functions. Many neurons would already exist, but new ones would be recorded under neuron name (b) and go through the same process above. But the neuron strength (c), associated neurons (d) and dendrite strength (e) would continue to grow as words are recorded more and more often.

That's the easy part. Next comes the graphing of that information.

The program would create a graph for any individual subject (a). It would draw a circle with a radius based on the neuron strength (c) and print the word inside it (b). After all the circles are drawn, it would then draw a line with a thickness (or possibly color) based off the strength of the dendrite (e) to each associated word (d).

For a sample of a similar program, you can check out the Gender Genie, which conducts a similar counting experiment with the purpose of evaluating gendered language.

Naturally, this graphing program will have to be a flexible set of functions so that we can limit some of these variables. We'd want it to kill off conjunctions and articles, and probably a few other common words as well. That's why I'd also need to be able to interact with this feature from a user-interface level, as it would involve some serious research and several changes along the way as I test different theories on this program.

I'd consult with a math friend to figure out the most scientifically honest way to limit outliers for the graph. I imagine that this would be based on the mean, median, mode, and range, and that it would ignore words with a low mode.

Lastly, make sure that the dendrites and circles are a different color so that I can manipulate the colors in my recorded graphics. If we're feeling audacious, you could even give me the ability to change colors in the program, and to perhaps draw lines around individual sets. Bear in mind that I could just do this in MS-Paint.

For an example of this style of data representation, you can check out Thinkmap's Visual Thesaurus, which represents synonyms in a similar fashion.

If we're feeling really audacious, we could even screw around with other forms presenting the results. Perhaps we could make dendrite strength inversely proportionate to line length instead of proportionate to line width, but this would probably require a precise, 3D representation with a rotating point of view as well as a lot of calculations.

Anyway, please give me your estimates for pay and time requirements. Naturally, I'd credit you in any articles I wrote on this theory.

2009-05-20T19:24:00.000-07:00

Fifteen minute powerwrite go.

By powerwrite, I mean I'm not going to stop, delete, edit, and so on.

It's been weird. I keep sitting down to write blog posts, then wanting them to be perfect, then giving up.

But then, I scribble out an email and it sounds, well, perfect.

So I'm just going to write this one, to no one in particular, in the fifteen minutes before I leave for work.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are my rough classes. More challenging students, more awkward schedule--if every day were like these, I'd go crazy.

But I don't go crazy, because I have Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The classes then are absolutely adorable, and most (though not all) are dazzlingly brilliant.

On days like today, I feel more like I'm teaching American grade schoolers.

On days like tomorrow, I feel like I'm helping build geniuses from the ground up.

Maybe this will change. I hope it will, as I get more used to having these classrooms. Discipline is definitely my weak point, and the kids smell my hesitation. When the moment comes to act with certainty and severity, I'm usually too caught up in the lesson, or in the vaguely-articulated goals of the classroom.

My inner monologue sounds foreign to me, even after a week. I've had to simplify my language considerably, and I feel like I'm using as many polysyllabic words in this blog as I can, just to keep them around.

My slow learning of Korean is also shifting things around. I catch myself almost mispronouncing my English words after practicing all these foreign syllables. The Romanized versions of these syllables include a lot of weird dipthongs, like "eo".

I have not done laundry yet, and it's about that time. However, this won't happen until I get one of my coworkers to explain the buttons to me, which are all written in hangul. My language acquisition is moving more slowly than the pace at which I dirty clothes.

Five minutes.

I'm studying my coworkers, both as teachers and as people. Jeff, who turned twenty-five yesterday, is a bad-ass, well-educated and fully-scholarshipped through his B.A. in philosophy. The others have their perks as well.

I've made one enemy, I think, a woman who I completely misread. I asked about religious skepticism, she turned the question around on me, and I gambled and lost with assuming she was agnostic. I quoted Religulous: "no, I don't believe in space gods and talking snakes." Heh.

They have Jehovah's Witnesses here. I have already thrown away two Watchtowers.

The Pepsi tastes good, but the Mountain Dew is off. For this year, I have switched brands.

Half the carton of Blend 27s is gone. Currently debating whether to quit when they run out. Strangely, I worry that I will run out of vices at this rate.

Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion and Fleet Foxes' self-titled albums have provided my musical sanity the past few days. About to explore Peter, Bjeorn, and John.

After my first paycheck, I am strongly considering enrolling in a Korean language course. My current curriculum is based off of a bit of critical thinking and a lot of my coworkers' conjecture. Structured learning would help. I know it'd be worth the money.

If I succeed, I will be very rare among the ESL community.

Last minute.

Had a nightmare last night. Already talked myself through it. It started with a dream about being home. Then my brain built on that premise with the natural conclusion that if I were in Illinois, then I was not going to work. When I found out I was fired, I started to freak out, and my mom hid in her room, and my sister kept following me around trying to have mean-spirited conversations with me, and I kept failing at texting DeJernet for support. Eventually, I realized that I was sleeping, and awoke exhausted.

Smoked two cigarettes, poked around on the internet, and went back to sleep. Terrific sleep that time.

Final conclusion: adapting to all this at once is a challenge, and I'm trying to keep my wits about me.

Time for work.

2009-05-15T21:18:00.000-07:00

Four days in, and I can almost read han-gul (sounds like hahn-gool), the linguistically dazzling written language of Korea.

It was designed about five hundred years ago by a team of scholars assembled by King Se-jong, a Renaissance man who really wanted to see his people--all of them--educated. At the time, the only literate people were scholars, mostly because the only written language was Chinese, which is really, really hard.

Se-jong's team based hangul off the Korean language, organizing it into syllables and letter sounds. Although the characters are reminiscent of Chinese symbols, they are actually very intuitive. Each character is a built-in mnemonic, inspired by the shape your mouth makes when making the sound.

To make the "ah" sound (as in "father"), they use the character ㅏ. The vertical line is your mouth. The horizontal line is your lips.

Do it now.

Pretty cool eh?

Naturally, it's not all that simple, but after a few hours of practice, I can already read half the street names in Korea.

2009-05-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

Twenty-four hours of travel, and I'm proper exhausted.

2009-05-05T10:11:00.000-07:00

On Death and Humanity

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein

Naked and crying in the shower, I realized that death really, really sucked.

I went over the logic again, trying to figure out if there was some hole in my reasoning. Death meant the death of the brain. I knew that sometimes the brain died while the rest of the body lived, and it seemed obvious that you stop being a person at that point. To not exist meant to not remember. All the experiences I’d spent my life creating, all the experiences I couldn’t wait to have—there would come a time when I would forget every one of them. I would not even be able to remember the act of forgetting.

Many atheists are driven mad at the end. I was fifteen years old when I learned that Descartes, after a lifetime of disbelief, converted to Christianity on his deathbed. Pascal had his infamous Wager where he argued that it was better to be Christian with the chance of being right than an atheist with the unpleasant choice between oblivion or Hell. A false binary, I know, but chilling nonetheless.

Oblivion, Hell—what was the difference? Oblivion was the one place the mind did not exist, the place where personality and education and relationships and memories simply stopped mattering. I looked desperately to other solutions, but each new religion seemed more ridiculous than the one that came before.
Reincarnation was as ridiculous as any virgin birth, particularly when you factor in population growth. Given the nature of life on this planet, reincarnation would be statistically boring. I imagined thinking to myself in a future body:

Hey look, I’m a blade of grass. Guess I’ll sit here and grow for awhile. Oh shit—here comes the mower.

Awesome! I’m a fetus and—oh wait. Silly lungs. Why didn’t you start breathing?

Bacteria. Again. Yay.

Paganism didn’t have the benefit of being the most popular superstition. Instead of praying for miracles and seeing God in everything, the pagans were casting spells and painting their nails black. Neither method seemed capable of winning my devotion.
The Eastern religions looked appealing at firstIn time, I caught on that it wasn’t so much that they were more right so much as right in different ways. Coming from such different cultures than my own, religions like Buddhism and Confucianism offered wisdoms and values that I hadn’t been exposed to.

But they still built temples and prayed before statues. No.

So what the fuck was I supposed to do? The fear of death seemed so crippling, so brutally simple, so viciously certain that I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with it. I even considered jumping off of something really tall, cheating my destiny by limiting my duration, quitting existence before it could quit me.

It bothered me that no one else would share in my fear. I had no one to talk to about death—the residents of Christian County would most likely use that as a way to try to talk me back into the local mythology. I wanted answers, difficult answers for my difficult questions.

I forget who first taught me the word “philosophy.” No children’s books explained it to me, and it wasn’t offered in any of my K-12 curriculum. I imagine it involved the Greeks, and that the teacher who introduced me to it had no idea what she would be unleashing in high school.

To teach myself about philosophy, I took a study hall and worked as a library aide. My initial text was Opposing Viewpoints: Philosophy, a collection of essays that covered both sides of a variety of issues. I formed most of my early opinions from the Viewpoints series, and I felt proud that I knew not only my point of view, but also the point of view of my opposition.

Based on the title, I think that was the editor’s goal.

After familiarizing myself with these basics, I sought to broaden my knowledge. I photocopied the bibliography, which stayed on my bulletin board for nine years. My constant contact with the THS library gave me the chance to order new books every day if I wanted, and many of them found their way onto my wish lists for Christmas and birthdays.

I was perhaps the only high schooler to be thrilled at receiving a copy of Plato’s Republic.

It sucked, by the way. Read Socrates instead.

Nietzche was a different story. Thus Spoke Zarathustra became my bible for a time, and it was the first book where I ever wrote in the margins. On the sides of those pages, I figured out how to deal with this whole death thing.

Nietzche was an existentialist—a philosopher who believed that the only reasonable certainty of existence is that we were currently existing in it. He, too, seemed concerned about death, and he called all the faithful cowards for inventing Gods to deal with their fears over non-existence.

He described the ubermensch, who my notes describe as an existential Jesus. Like Jesus, the ubermensch provided a perfect example for behavior. Intellectually courageous and informed by the collected wealth of knowledge from thousands of years of humanity, the ubermensch wasn’t so much a prophesied messiah as a worthwhile goal, a state of existence worth striving for. This struck me as profoundly important. The Christians had a point when they said that human beings were worse role models than the Jesus they described, and Nietzche’s imagined ubermensch filled that vacuum with something I considered far more sacred.

Nowadays, I’ve simplified “ubermensch” to “well-educated.” Existentialism was a crutch for me, a little something to get me over my hurdles of intellectual fear. It taught me to trust my observations as well, and to only accept that which existed in some way. The bologna—ghosts, UFOs, messiahs, Creationism, reincarnation, racism, trickle-down economics, and so on—had no place to a wannabe ubermensch.

I borrowed ideas from other philosophies as well. Hedonism looked like fun, and I still carry a bit of that with me. Hedonists seemed almost like existentialists to me in that they seemed to Get the Jokes about religion, but their answer to it was that, if this is our only life, then we ought to try really hard to enjoy it while we can. In response to this philosophical idea, I started drinking and smoking and flirting and gaming in earnest, balancing most of my decisions between paths of least resistance and a variety of hobbies.

Hedonism has since matured into a determination to enjoy myself wherever I am, a task which I’ve proven to be pretty good at. At times, it’s almost been debilitating—when you realize that you can be happy just about anywhere, there isn’t a lot of motivation to go somewhere else. I even considered taking a year off before going to college, just waiting tables at China Pavilion and reading and playing and hanging out with my friends.

And you know, that isn’t as bad of an option as people tell you. My buddy Greg, who really Gets the Joke, has been working at TGI-Fridays for most of his young adult life, and I respect him more than many people with college degrees. I’m jealous of the number of books he gets to read, and they’re all books he picks because he enjoys them, not because he’s going to be graded on them or because he wants them to outline his career. He’s a better hedonist than I am.

While existentialism helped me to strive toward thinking well and hedonism helped me enjoy myself while doing it, I still hadn’t fully dealt with the death thing. I continued thinking about oblivion in the shower, and these were my saddest moments. My hedonist side protested these unenjoyable moments, but my existential side wouldn’t let me hide from them. By then, I had been done with religion for a long time.

Then I started teaching, writing, and being a cool uncle.

Though I won’t live forever, I’ve started feeling like I’m making a contribution to humanity. Whether from the microscopic perspective of my students, friends, and family or from my macroscopic pipe dreams of being a noteworthy writer, I’ve found considerable comfort in having impacted my universe. This purpose, this symbolic immortality, has been the only joy I’ve taken from certain death.

This adds a third element to my philosophy: humanism, or modern humanism to be specific:

… also called Naturalistic Humanism, Scientific Humanism, Ethical Humanism and Democratic Humanism is defined by one of its leading proponents, Corliss Lamont, as "a naturalistic philosophy that rejects all supernaturalism and relies primarily upon reason and science, democracy and human compassion."(http://www.jcn.com/humanism.html )

Those last two words hold a particular appeal to me. I’ve listened with less-than-usual skepticism to the argument that religion, even if false, is a necessary ingredient to human morality. Yet, even with no formal code to go by, I still manage to live in a way that most people consider ethical.

Death still sucks, by the way. And that’s why we’ve clung for so long to stories of extraplanar paradises, divine judgments, and talking snakes. Our minds have no context for non-existence. Just as we can’t remember being yesterday’s sperm, so too will we not remember being tomorrow’s corpses. Our academic degrees, our encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture, our love lives, our charities—everything will vanish into nothingness.

And since we can’t take anything with us, we really ought to leave something behind.

2009-04-02T02:20:00.000-07:00

My first attempt at logging in to Blogspot failed. My primary address, "mrpodeschi@eiu.edu," was not in service when this blog began. As evidenced by the ".edu", that was given to me by a college.

In fact, I published very little. I won a few creative writing contests, got some pats on the head from my instructors, but for the most part, the bulk of my writing consisted of essays. These essays were great for me, teaching me to focus my writing and accept that structure helps readability. My words have grown more precise as well, as I have been listening carefully to the way that my professors, all with PhDs, have been communicating.

They choose their words carefully, saying "um" like Barack Obama, not because they don't know what they're talking about, but because they want to make sure that they are communicating complex ideas with clarity and precision. They use active verbs, powerful verbs, verbs like "reimagine" and "galvanize."

Let me give you an example of how powerful these verbs are.

I will be using a paragraph-long Transformers reference.

Megatron, the evil leader of Transformers' robotic bad guys, was transformed into Galvatron in the Transformer Movie (1986). Now Megatron's name had always made sense to me, as it was a common prefix: mega, meaning big. Galvatron certainly sounded like a cool name, but I never bothered to think about the meaning of that name. But galvanize as a verb references the process by which steel is coated with zinc using an electrical current. That is, electricity making metal stronger. I learned this origin while looking up "galvanize," which is more commonly used to describe something being roused or stirred to action. So Galvatron works on two levels: it involves strengthening metal on the figurative and literal levels. And that, as I see it, is very clever.

The thing is, I think I just successfully explained a pretty complicated concept. I left out some buzz words so as to not tackle two explanations at once, and I held back on proper Transformers nouns like "Decepticon," "Unicron," or "Optimus Prime." They weren't necessary. If I knew that this blog was being read primarily by Transformers-loving English majors, then I might have used these specific terms. It would be appreciated, I'm sure, to one audience, but the audience that doesn't get the joke starts to suffer.

I am in the practice of saying "I don't know." Take movies, for example. I generally ignore them until several people I trust recommend them. They're not a high priority, so they slip through the cracks. TV is even worse. Now that technology has equipped me to watch whatever, whenever, I have realized that I cannot actively sustain this information. I could cultivate the interest, but it would be at the expense of other interests, interests like teaching, nerd culture, literature, marijuana decriminalization, neuroscience, atheism, politics, back injuries, and a few dozen other little interests.

These broad collections of ideas are, I think, what makes a person educated. I don't have a degree in brain science--there's simply not enough time to get one. But I know enough about the general ideas in most field that I can engage with an expert on a subject and seek out information that suits my needs. It's great. Today, Quinton demonstrated how cool the internet April Fool's craze is. After about five minutes of Googling, I had discovered Michael Krantz, the guy who writes these intricate pranks for Google.

2008-05-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

The Last Post of Deep Inside Joke

Being sufficiently validated in my writing, I am ending this blog.

I first started blogging in high school. "Deep Inside Joke" had seemed a clever name, a before-and-after Wheel of Fortune puzzle that blended "deep inside" with "inside joke" to create a new, catchy, treasured phrase. I liked "deep inside joke" because it suggested that I was being truly revealing, giving people access to the inside jokes shared by close friends.

This premise has served DIJ for eight years. Through it, I have invited both wrath and affection, gratitude and spite. Old friends have been able to keep one eye on my life, just as I once spied on them through their own blogs. I have recorded dozens of gushing, overly-sentimental love stories, none of which I fully regret. I have pounded my fists against religion, attacked my father with adolescent cruelty, and undertaken adventures with Deep Inside Joke clearly in mind--and here I am, twenty-four, and about to receive a master's degree in English.

My blogs, you have noticed, have grown sporadic at best. For as much as I try to avoid the cliché of apologizing in each post for not having posted sooner, it's been implied in my words: I have not been maintaining this site. But I don't exactly regret it, either. As an English major as well as a gamer as well as an internet junkie, I type thousands of words daily, and most of these words are edited, revised, measured, assassinated, reborn, twisted, chopped, transported, abandoned, grown. By its very nature, a blog is a sudden thing, an often poorly-formed measurement of a moment. It has been useful, yes, and I owe a great debt to the blog for giving me a mastery over my own voice, but its time has passed.

This is the last page in an old journal, closed with a feeling of satisfaction and completion. I will place it alongside my journal from Mrs. Rogers' class, my yellow and green spiral notebooks, the composition notebook, and the three Moleskine gift notebooks. I will keep it online for as long as Blogger lets me, if for no better reason than the thrill I get from being naked in so public a window.

I will of course continue writing, actively, for the rest of my life.

2008-04-18T09:36:00.000-07:00

It won't be the most interesting writing, but I have to put down these notes to self. By writing my responsibilities in a permanent, quietly public place, maybe it'll put that touch of reality on it I need to get my ass in gear:

Note to self: On both Tuesday and Wednesday, you are presenting the drafts of your research paper arguments. You don't have to be done by then, but you need to have some shit written--seven pages each is a good goal. After all, that means you're halfway done with each.

Note to self: You made several promises to your comp class. You told the kids that they're getting their grades back, which means you'll need to grade periodically through the weekend. You also promised Melissa that you'd try to track down a scientific writing contest. Then there's the final exam to think about, and the essay question genre projects...

Note to self: You're cooking dinner for Anne tomorrow. Cleaning should happen, and a bit of menu planning. Don't forget the green onions you bought special for this.

Note to self: The Chicago applications need to be finished as well. You've got to pound out the details of your CV, get two more letters of recommendation into your file at Career Services, and get some shit sent out by the end of next week. The goal you keep setting for yourself and failing at, in case you forgot, was one hour a day until it's done.

Note to self: You may have plenty of short story ideas, but you still haven't started on your final grade for Moffitt's creative writing class. If you need a break but don't want to stop being productive, this could be a good diversion. And hell, if you get carried away/find your muse/drink too much coffee, you might as well spend a night perfecting it and then sleep in.

Note to self: Your grade is slipping in Fredrick's class. This research paper better be fucking good. (Of course my grading philosophy doesn't disallow any grading techniques--that's the point about contextual grading...gr.)

Note to self: Find out if you need another class for the summer, and what type of assistantship you're getting (research or tutoring).

Note to self: Phillip Simpson, 2 pm, conference room, today.

Note to self: Mom's still coming to Eastern on the 26th--consider the complications.

Note to self: With Greg's furniture gone, it's time to do some scavenging. As the undergrads start fleeing two weeks from now, you'll want to grab some allies and drive around looking for some more tables.

P.S. Buy some smokes.

2008-03-24T14:24:00.001-07:00

My creative writing teacher was quite proud to inform me that "Taboo", an incestuous love story I wrote for her class, was winning $50 from our campus' creative writing publication. Clearly, EIU is full of motherfuckers.

2008-03-18T00:20:00.000-07:00

Spring Break treated me right.

For one, Lucas lent me his car for a few days, which gave me the ability to drive home and scrounge up a used throttle for my car. With that handed over to the auto repair place that couldn't find one on their own, I should have a vehicle within the next day or two.

Not having a car didn't stop me from having a gaming bender over break, either. Five people made a special trip from out of town, the further being made by Kenny, who stayed and played for three days. While cleaning up some of the mess today, I calculated that 30 liters of Mountain Dew, 10 Little Caesars "Hot n Ready" pizzas, and about 20 taco-related products were consumed in my apartment over the past week. Good times.

I'm paying for it a little, though. I slept through class for the first time this semester and missed a meeting of EGSO, the English Grad Student Organization. Most of tonight has been dedicated to grading papers to hand back to my students tomorrow, and I'm woefully ill-prepared for my postmodern fiction class tomorrow night. I'm actually thinking about skipping it, knowing that I'll not bring much to the table with my current skim and wanting to give the novel we're studying an appropriate amount of attention.

Though the break was unproductive, I fucking needed it. It's been a fast-paced year, and my sanity required that I not think about school or my future for awhile. My breath caught, I think I can now end the rest of the semester with the same dedication I'd been giving it up until ten days ago.

By the way, I complete my master's degree at the end of the summer. After that, it's looking like teaching community college for a few years in the midwestern area. A few years in the trenches should give me the resume I'll need to be competitive in the 21 colleges that have the Ph.D. I'm looking for.

2008-03-04T14:49:00.001-08:00

Gary Gygax is at -10.

2008-02-16T21:36:00.000-08:00

Dear Superdelegates,

Every young American meets voters who are fighting the uphill battle of getting us to care about politics. When one of these voters convinced me to start paying attention, I was just in time for the Florida recounts and the election of President George W. Bush. Needless to say, I joined the many disenfranchised would-be voters who couldn't bring themselves to care.

Today, I am a twenty-four year old graduate assistant of college English. When I asked my students what they thought about the primaries, we had a startlingly mature conversation about our country's future. And on Super Tuesday, four out of the twenty-two of us proudly announced that we had voted in the primaries, and all for Barack Obama.

That's 18%, by the way. And since only 15% of America tends to vote in the primaries, I was extraordinarily proud. Not just of my class or of myself, but of my generation. It is so empowering to finally be both passionate and positive about my country's leadership, and to see my growing enthusiasm matched by my candidate's momentum primary after primary is filling me with a patriotism I never thought I'd be capable of.

On behalf of myself and my generation, please support the popular opinion. There's something remarkable happening, and I don't know if my convictions could survive if I looked at this primary and saw that the opinion we millions have worked so hard to voice is worth less than a hundred others.

2008-02-11T09:13:00.000-08:00

Those two woke me up last night when I was all set to have a full eight hours of sleep before school today, making me bitter enough to write an angsty revenge blog like that below.

Like half of Charleston, I'm also sick. The constantly shifting weather is like a bronco that finally threw me off, and I've been pushing through the past four days in spite of sinus headaches and bright green mucus. Haven't even been smoking. Blech.

2008-02-11T00:33:00.000-08:00

Jenny and Brad. Neighbors. Their wars soak through the cheap plaster walls.

Deluded heroes both, they hide their deepest pains from one another. And when their pains catch up to them, they believe themselves bearing something worse than the other. Brad struggles to get through school, burdened by the belief that he should be providing for him, and her, and the little him—Brad II—who steals his sleep nightly. This is because Jenny works late nights at a bar down the street, despite having a Bachelor’s degree in English. Does she not get a job in her field because it’s not available, or might she her professor’s memory give her pause, the professor who killed himself after she left him?

It does not help that she is more attractive than he. Though Brad II keeps them loyal, his father cannot help but dwell on how his more attractive fiancé enjoys work more than home, on how she cannot help but enjoy that young men and some young women continue to buy her drinks, on how she would have left him by now if not for Brad II.

Brad loves the child more, but the child loves his mother more. The second part is natural—children begin their lives loving most the breast that feeds them. But since the beginning he was the one who was most ready. His parents raised him to do the right thing, and the right thing was dedicating his life to his new family. He is baffled by her lack of appreciation.

I give them food on occasion, especially now that I live alone. They look at me with poorly-veiled embarrassment. They apologize for Brad II’s screaming, and I forgive them, and in the brief silence afterwards I mutely forgive them the rest.

2008-02-10T09:13:00.000-08:00

What the hell, I'll blog.

It's taken awhile, but I've finally accepted that my thesis wasn't the best. My proposal was flimsy, my qualifications limited. I reached beyond what Eastern was capable of giving me--this is not a theory school.

Instead, I've proposed a new thesis this semester, which I'm already very excited about: a creative thesis. I'm writing a novella, my most ambitious creative work to date.

Here's the premise: Mario Podeschi wakes up tomorrow-ish in a fifteen year-old body. Same twenty-four year-old mind. For a while he thinks he's dreaming, but then he attempts to make the most of it. There will be questions of sexuality (does a fifteen year-old girl count as jailbait?), of morality (can I stop 9/11?) and of practicality (how do I stay interested in school?). I'm excited, and already ten chapters in.

In other news, my apartment is too big for me. I was living with two other people last semester, but now they're both back where they started. It all happened very quickly--first I broke up with Kelsey, then Greg gave up on college and moved back home. Greg's old room doesn't even get used anymore--I might as well put a chair in front of it and forget it exists. The rent isn't unbearable. I just want someone else here. I've never lived alone.

Not that things are terrible. Teaching remains incredibly rewarding, and I'll have my master's degree by the end of the summer. Dejernet--my best friend from Cape Town--spends all sorts of time with me, and I've already finessed my way into her group of friends.

Speaking of which, one of them just won $114,000 on Wheel of Fortune. Crazy, eh?

2007-10-24T02:43:00.001-07:00

In the midst of my bitterness over having to delay my thesis until the summer, I have decided that I should write a half-comedic, half-critical book called At War With The Masters. This book would feature chapters dedicated to all the classical authors who have annoyed me, and each would provide the most negative, hateful reading possible.

This was inspired by an essay I just wrote about Jonathan Swift ("Modest Proposal", Gulliver's Travels), and my conscious decision to not let it turn into an eight-minute rant about how much of a dick he was. Though I was trying to be even-handed in my essay on his attitudes toward women, I was tempted to explain in no uncertain terms that his satires on women were written like an emo-kid who writes angry love rants about how bad he got his heart broken. I would shit on Hemingway for being an arrogant backstabber who eviscerated every one of his former allies in his memoirs, spit on Milton for being a delusional madman who was convinced he had been hand-picked by God to write the next Revelation, and piss on Dickens for always making the first two-thirds of his novels boring and needlessly verbose only to make the last third rush through all the good ideas he'd been saving. Somewhere in there, I'd also want to have a chapter that explains why Chaucer is the only classical author we should like as a person.

The book would be written for beginning English majors to help them get used to the idea that being a good writer doesn't necessarily mean you're a good person. It would introduce them to the side of many struggles that they don't get in their Milton and Hemingway courses, while at the same time trick them into learning all sorts of stuff about the biographies of the people they're studying. It would be the Colbert Report of English literature, a mockumentary that raises awareness through intelligent satire.

So yeah, I'm just a little bitter that my thesis prospectus didn't pass. Well, it didn't just not pass, it didn't even get a chance to pass. For those outside the field, a thesis prospectus is a short paper explaining what your thesis--the biggest academic work of your master's degree--is about. The way a prospectus works at Eastern is that you get three people to form a committee guiding your writing process: a director and two readers. The director is the main guy or gal, the one from the field your writing on who makes sure you're on the right chance. The readers are the extra eyes and ears who make sure the piece is readable. I was under the apparently false impression that the readers did not have a very active role at this phase, and that their main purpose was to watchdog my 70-page thesis rather than my 7-page thesis prospectus. Once the readers sign a form, it goes before a committee of several professors who debate the prospectus' worth.

I worked closely with my director for the past week and a half, doing revision after revision and losing hours of sleep, homework, sex, and gaming to get it done. My director--who happens to also be the director of the final committee--has incredibly high standards and finally put his signature on my prospectus. But it didn't get to the committee. It got to my readers, and one of them didn't sign. Presumably, he had some reservation about my prospectus, but I also can't disprove that he simply didn't get around to it. Now, admittedly, I'm one of many GAs who have been working on this down to the wire, but I haven't even gotten so much as an e-mail explaining what was done wrong or a suggestion for revision.

In short, I've been fucked.

The result of all this is that I have to take two extra classes next semester to keep my graduate assistantship, go through the prospectus process all over again, and work on the the damn thing over the summer. The chances of my getting an assistantship over the summer are not the best, which means that I'll be getting no tuition waiver for the credit I'll be receiving. Similarly, getting a job teaching is going to be harder with only my BA and a promise to have my MA real soon. This all boils down to a pricey three-month delay over one missing signature. Bitter. Yeah. Definitely.

I'll cope, though. I at least got selected for another semester of teaching composition, which will pad my resume` further while letting me do something I love. I'm also looking forward to revising my syllabus and cutting the lame parts that have been sprouting up lately. This will also give me time to tend to my rocky relationship, excel in this semester's classes, blog, and play some more D&D, so those are some other boons. All that silver is lining a pretty dark cloud though, and life would be a lot easier if I'd just gotten that damn thing signed.

The final irony in all this is that I've been doing mercenary proofreading for many of my colleagues, and that all of them have made it to the committee. And if all three of the prospecti I've been paid to proofread are approve for next spring, what a punchline that would be!

2007-10-11T15:39:00.000-07:00

Slowing. Down. And. Breathe.

Fuck. I'd heard the horror stories from last year's peers, but I had no idea that the grad school finale would be so hectic. I guess it's not just grad school--there's court, and car, and living on the square, and rent, and medical problems, and adjusting to living with Kelsey, and being thousands of dollars in debt, and...

Shit, stopped breathing again.

I'm not worn out yet, but I'm getting there. And with the fatigue comes that inevitable decrease in morale that I'm trying desperately to fight off. A frequent quote from my inner monologue for years now has gone like this: before you commit to this bad mood you're in, remember that you've only slept ten hours in three days. Your biorhythms are off, you're malnourished, and if you keep this up, you might even be hallucinating. Chill.

But when you're as tired and stressed as I've been for the past couple months, talking to yourself just makes you sound crazy.

There've been gasps of fresh air now and then, at least. My birthday weekend LAN party, for example, was terrific. I'd worked hard to get ahead of the game on my homework and enjoyed a full Friday and Saturday of being visited by long-standing and wonderful friends who joined me in glorious deathmatches and generous file sharings. It had been a long time since I'd seen Phil, or Aaron, or Quinton, or Kenny, or Lucas, and it had been a long time since I'd actually managed to lose myself in something so mindlessly nostalgic as a game of Half-Life or Age of Empires II.

World of Warcraft is a complicated diversion, as well. I don't play that much, and it's more of a couples activity with Kelsey than the dedicated hobby which Dungeons and Dragons has always been. Nonetheless, it can really absorb the time, and there's always this uneasy balance between how much playing is an appropriate indulgence and how much is debilitating.

The end of all this seems very far away, but it is tangible. A year from now, if I don't have a seizure, I'll be working--just working!--at some college, teaching freshman composition and not feeling like every hour is spent before it arrives. I'll be paying off debts instead of generating them, and there should be more beer with more friends on more Saturdays.

Until then, I will try to breathe.

2007-09-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, I know it's a weird way to get back into posting, and that this may be a lousy forum to advertise it, but in the very least this will help ME remember...

Kari Byron of Mythbusters is giving a lecture at the MLK Union Grand Ballroom this Wesdnesday at 8 pm. It's completely free, and there's a good chance I will be the only English major there.

Email me at mpodeschi@hotmail.com if any of my friends in the area might want to attend.

2007-08-23T00:57:00.001-07:00

Life is great right now.

I've taught two periods of my freshman comp class thus far. At present, I'm trying to portray an image of confidence while I wait for my actual attitude to catch up. Over an after class cigarette with a couple students, I confided in them about my terror, and they assured me that mine was the most interesting class they had this semester. Of course, some of my colleagues says that everyone loves an English teacher before the first grades come out... thus, the terror continues.

I am happy with my syllabus though. Today we got in a circle and discussed real-life "texts" in an attempt to construct our working classroom definition of the word, approaching "high school sluts", "the Axe effect," and Thank You For Smoking as examples. It was a good discussion, with a lot of participation from the students. After about a half hour of this, I spent a further ten minutes talking about the goals of the class and how they would be graded. Before letting them go, I described my plans for the next two class periods: a viewing of Colbert Report and some in-class writing on Friday, and the first genuine "lecture" on Monday. Despite my anxieties, I remain incredibly excited.

My living situation continues to improve. Naturally, there've been some wrinkles to iron out with the new apartment, part-time job, and first time living with a romantic partner. Work has gotten better, if only because the management has succeeded in their goal of trimming their staff. I even made my first pledge, a modest $25 donation to the Catholic church. The apartment is getting more homey, though we still lack the furniture we need for it to be complete. Lamps, especially, are a problem--with no overhead lights in the bedroom, the side-room (a kind of big closet/studio/office/spare bed cavity), or the living room, I find myself carrying the halogen back and forth with some frequency. And as for my relationship, it is feeling second nature by now. We have our chores picked out, have struck a good balance between conversation, leisure, school, and work, and all this without any loss of affection.

When the house gets more equipped, I'll finally be able to start planning our housewarming party. My co-workers are already hammering me for a date, as I kind of set myself up as the departmental party-thrower last year. It's a welcome burden.

Meanwhile, classes have hit the ground running. I already have a painfully dull high society novel to read by next Monday which has not done much for my hopes of the 1920s American Lit course. On the other hand, my History of Satire is looking terrific. I'm already set to do a report on The Beggar's Opera, and my pre-existing interest in satire looks like it will carry me through this with a well-earned but much-enjoyed A. My independent study starts Friday after my meeting with Hanlon, and though psychoanalytic theory is notorious for its density, I remain excited about the field. My biggest worry for the semester is choosing my graduate thesis--I want to have a 70-page draft complete by the end of the semester. First, though, I need to figure out what I'm writing on.

I have three options, all exciting:

1. An academic study of modern political satire with a focus on Colbert, Stuart, and South Park.
2. A creative piece, possibly in the fantasy-fiction genre.
3. A heavily academic study linking formalist (old school) theory to psychoanalytic (last year's cutting edge) theory.

Input is of course welcome. If anyone wants to audit the class, its M-W-F in Coleman 2721 from 2-3pm.

2007-08-08T12:10:00.001-07:00

Court date delayed--again! The new date is an impressive two months away: Friday, October 12th, already a month into the school year. It'll be the first of my classes that I miss.

The visit to Taylorville was productive though, even if I didn't get my legal business taken care of. I scheduled a doctor's visit to renew my pain prescription, finalized my student loan, and switched credit cards to save on interest. Beyond the boring adult stuff, I also managed to spend a decent amount of time with my mom, highlighted by a trip to a new Mexican restaurant and a vegetable picking with her and the nephews. She's handling the whole relationship hostility issue better too, respecting my desire to not be reminded of her disapproval until she has something new to add to her argument.

The night in my bed was an odd one. I started digging through my old books and magazines, and as the familiar smell of their weathered pages settled into me, I was hit by an incredible nostalgia. Reading old Dragon magazines in my underwear, I forgot for a moment about my back, my bills, my job and my degree. For an hour at least, I was back in my late teens, so excited about reading that I couldn't move my eyes fast enough. It's so much different than academic reading, too--one of my most purely hedonistic types of reading. Short stories, comics, articles on good DMing--I hadn't realized how much I missed it. The longing was without melancholy, though, as I have many things now that I didn't then. Call it a revelation: I am older.

Greg's visiting again, sleeping in the spare bedroom we refer to exclusively as "Greg's Room." Our stalwart friend drove all the way from Springfield yet again, this time after working a double shift at TGI-Fridays. Though I have work in an hour and a half and again tomorrow, he has time off until Friday afternoon, meaning that he'll be enjoying a relaxed and lengthy visit rather than one of those sleepless random days we squeeze in now and then.

I brought those old magazines with me to further explore my nostalgia. It's looking to be a satisfying week. And only thirteen days until my class meets for the first time!

2007-07-30T22:00:00.000-07:00

The typically frenzied final move went well. Bribing a co-worker with a pizza, recruiting a couple friends from the English department, and calling in a favor from an old director at the C.A.T., I now have the final bits of the old place sprawled through the living room and spare room. Desk, dresser, bed, and a couple bags of old clothes--when I get the couches from Mom's garage, I'll be set.

Work was taxing today. Written up again, this time for having a magazine on my table. They didn't exactly include that in training, and the three weeks of no complaints had certainly lulled us into a false sense of security. It turns out that Sylvia, the big boss lady, has just returned from her vacation, and she has been spouting fire and brimstone for the past couple days. We got a pep talk today, something along the lines of "you'd better not be enjoying yourselves too much, because this is where shit gets serious." Business dress on Monday, don't abuse your call-in privileges, et cetera, et cetera. With my class starting in three weeks, I'm not too worried, but it's been chilling to watch how the revolving door works so closely. Now I understand why they have the scaled raise system--they either break you, or they can you. Most of us must not have a chance.

I should probably shove the drawers into my desk and dresser, but my back's about shot for the day. I miss the old days when I could trudge through an entire day of labor with only some pleasantly sore calfs to show for it. I'm done for today though, sitting on my ice pack and popping my pills while I blog and watch Adult Swim. It'll calm down by tomorrow, and maybe we'll get this place looking a little more cozy.

2007-07-29T22:50:00.000-07:00

Last week I found out that I am one of the five graduate students who get their own class. I am thrilled. This semester, I'll be writing tests, grading papers--all the little things that I'll be sick of when I actually start doing this regularly. My temp job doing telephone surveys at Ruffalo Cody is only making the prospect of diving back in to my career that much sweeter. It's such a liberating feeling to know that I'm genuinely qualified to do something, that instead of begging for employment I'm actually earning it.

Ruffalo Cody is a terrifyingly complete machine. They handed me a written warning today for coming in from break one minute late. Ironically, my boss devoted at least five minutes to explaining why time management was so important. Had they idly informed me that I'd be coming in from my next break two minutes early, I would have shrugged and complied. It's the nature of the business beast, though--it's more cost-effective to prepare an excuse to fire me if they need it. With the school year about to start, though, I'm pretty well exempt from the efficiency scare tactics. I look forward to the sense of completion I'll have when I'm back where I belong, the sense that there is a good way and a bad way to do my job instead of just an obedient one. Again, I'm thrilled.

In other news, I secured a truck to help me get the last of my Charleston possessions into my apartment. That will mark the end of my lackluster finale at 1120 Edgar. The dramas will subside in time, along with the anonymous comments and the annoyance in the people who never wanted to get involved.

At present, I'm far more excited about my future. My court date is coming up soon, which should settle the now thirteen month-long ordeal of the accident. I should be seeing a small amount of money too, enough to settle down my credit card or maybe even to buy the new bed I've been dreaming of since my back got crunched. Then there's the thesis, bane of numerous graduate students before me, the single most important project of my college career. Grades schmades--this is what will determine if the EIU English department thinks I'm worthy of a M.A. or not. Once the false calm of summer passes, I'll be a frenzy of stress and over-achievement and pedagogy from August through June. I don't pretend to know what comes after that, either: Ph.D? Teaching? Writing?

2007-07-29T01:06:00.000-07:00

It's been a long year, but here I am in the living room, Kelsey sleeping on a blow-up mattress in our mostly furniture-free new apartment.

How much haven't I written in the past several months? I've repeated my Cape Town stories so many times that I don't even want to hear them again. The task of documenting my study abroad is one that I just haven't managed to get excited about. It exists somewhere else right now, the laboratory of my brain in fact. It's still getting poked and prodded, analyzed and re-evaluated; a shifting pandemonium of ideas that seem to sacred to commit to text prematurely.

As for the front of my mind, it's fixed on the dramas that have sprouted amidst my return. While unpacking yet another bag of old papers, I found a stack that belonged to my old roommate Chain. Last I saw him, he was furious at me for breaking a promise I'd made to him, undoubtedly augmented by the death throes of my friendship with his girlfriend. The first couple times I stumbled on his writing, I threw it in the junk pile with a childishly self-satisfied sense of revenge. After all, in addition to the hostility of our last meeting, I've found myself under a surprising economic ambush from his friend Nick, who up until now has said roughly twenty words to me in an entire year of living together. It's been a pain in the ass pushing aside two hundred dollars worth of accusations with old invoices and careful negotiations, but that doesn't compare to the grief I found in his handwriting.

Chain has been my best friend in Charleston for about four years running. I don't doubt that if he hadn't needed to go back to Chicago this year, we'd still be smoking cigarettes at sunrise and bouncing DnD ideas off of one another. I'm not ready to accept him as a lost cause just yet, but I have a feeling that any apologies I might offer are going to take months to set in. My current plan is to bundle up the papers I mistakenly ganked and drop them off at our old place tomorrow evening.

Though there've been some losses on the social front, there've been some terrific gains as well. Greg has already spent about a week out of the three weeks we've been here with us, sharing laughs, Dew, and dice for hours. Dejernet--my closest friend from Cape Town--lives only a block away, and we've already devised a plan to stretch a tin can phone across the corner of Sixth and Madison. Even Kenny stopped by for a couple days to sleep on our floor and teach us how to grocery shop.

In the meantime, I still endure a lot of flak for getting an apartment with Kelsey. I swear, sometimes I feel like my old friends (still friends, even if they have given me headaches lately) have a message board somewhere where they fuel the fire of hating my girlfriend/relationship. They'd almost have me convinced if it weren't for the new people we've met amidst the chaos; as no one outside the loop seems to have a problem with us, I've shouldered up to the weight of the gossip chain.

I am reminded of when I first started writing--age 17. I'd been wasting most of my time with Jake and Jason back then, shotgunning through all the classic coming of age moments from stolen cigarettes to parking lot wrestling matches. The beginning of the end came in Springfield, where we were summering with Jen "the Nerd" Bertonolli. Jen the Nerd was a short, brilliant, artistic girl who all three of us managed to fall in love with. I think I took my bros off-guard when Jen and I started sharing our writing with each other. Their only experience with my writing was had in making fun of a love poem I wrote when I was twelve. They all thought it was some game I was playing, some second skin I was trying on that didn't suit me. From then on, the rift grew along with my sense of self. The more I developed without them, the more they thought I was betraying them. I guess the reasoning was that, if I was trying to change, then I must have been unhappy with them. Let's see... what was that quote again? The most painful thing I heard at age 17?

"We didn't become friends with this Mario."

That's actually why I'm so loyal to Quinton. Out of the hundred or so friends I maintained in high school, he was the only one who recongized me as something dynamic. To the rest of the world, I was cast into a role ranging from "the sweetly flirtatious one" to the "ridiculously smart but lonely one" or even to the "iconoclastic adventuring one." Sure, I enjoyed all these roles, but they were just still-frames of a long and enjoyable dash through high school and college. Now I'm changing again.

Three years ago, I decided I should try this whole relationship thing I'd been putting off for so long. My record at the time was one month, which was a bit of an exaggeration considering how I didn't talk to the girl in question for the last two weeks of it. With the first attempt, I tried the macho-dick approach, setting my boundaries early on and always spending the bulk of my time with my gaming buddies. On the second attempt, I went for the ultra-considerate approach, driving over to Cari's place to scrape the ice off her windshield at 7 in the morning and spending hours on the perfect Christmas and Valentine's Day dinners and gifts.

I don't think I ever told her that holidays in general bug the shit out of me.

My third attempt is working in a way the others didn't. Most of it is from Kelsey herself, but a lot of it is also from me being in the right place to receive her. I'm well-suited to loving her right now. I've tried and failed to be the perfect dude as well as the perfect gentleman. But this, this is working. I am a dude and a gentleman, a nerd and an artist. It's liberating!

Here's a story from Cape Town that not many people hear. I would not shut up about Kelsey the entire time. And oddly enough, none of my friends and colleagues saw anything wrong with it. To them, it wasn't a question of "what is that succubus doing to our friend?". To them, it was a statement of "shit, that guy is really in love."

2007-04-18T05:22:00.000-07:00

I'm circling around on my sleep habits this week. You know how it is--you realize you've been staying up later and later, and the best way to fix it is to go to bed later and later until you've flipped ahead a full day and are waking up when normal people do.

I goofed off until about three a.m., watching cartoons and flipping through magazines. With a sigh and a fart, I headed over to campus and started on my presentation for tonight, getting it done about fifteen hours earlier than I'd expected. The excess time made the project far more satisfying--I think I might have exceeded expectations on todays assignment. Given that being a grad student doesn't insulate my peers from senioritis, I also suspect that few if any of my peers will have done the reading for today, meaning that they'll be grateful for any extra time I might use on my presentation. Heh, some things never change.

I'm getting to know the Coleman janitor staff pretty well. They seem to have one per floor, and I've chatted with all of them. The first floor guy is from Stonington originally, about ten miles from Taylorville. He likes to smoke Marlboro Reds in Coleman's center courtyard. He has a cool smoking posture too--this dancer/predator's crouch, back to the wall, like he's ready to pounce or pas de chat at a moment's notice. Second floor guy carries himself with more dignity than the other two, keeping focused on his work and going out of his way to acknowledge me when we bump into one another at five a.m. He was the first one I met--thought I was lost or that a door had been left open. When I told him I was a grad student, he chuckled and said I needed to stop reminding him how old he was getting. I noticed he's had an iPod this semester, probably a Christmas gift. Third floor is a wide, hairy guy who plays the oldies on an ancient clock radio until about 7 a.m. every morning. I see him the most, but I'm not sure he likes me intruding on his personal space. He seems antisocial, the kind of guy who would jump at the chance to be a morning janitor so he didn't have to deal with idiots all day.

The past two nights I've also ran into the paper guys. I want their job. They get to drive their beat-up woodie Volkswagon on the campus sidewalks, dropping off piles of newspapers at every dorm and department. The two package boys are the classic goon combo: one tall and thin, the other short and wide. They're right out of Twins or 101 Dalmations. If I ever get into organized crime, I'm finding those two out of principle.

7:45 a.m. This sleep editing scheme seems to be working out well. I'll have to head home pretty soon though--the campus police start handing out parking tickets at 8.

2007-04-16T23:55:00.000-07:00

Wow, I need a fucking break. I've been at the Writing Center for four hours now, plowing through a friend's seventy page thesis and commenting about four times per paragraph with grammatical suggestions. Her quotations and commas are particularly, week, and I feel like I've written "comma usage--omit for compound verbs" at least twenty times. It's good material, and studying it so closely has definitely committed it to my memory, but fuck--I didn't realize it was going to take this long. Forty-five pages down. Twenty-five to go.

Exhausting though it may be, I'm enjoying this work. It's fun trying to qualify all my statements in grammatical terms, to argue points and present options to help make this thesis the best it can possibly be. And don't worry, this isn't a six hour charity project--this Thursday, my client is taking me to Roc's Blackfront (the nicest bar in town) for an all-night open bar on steak night. In order to make minimum wage, I'll need to rack up at least a thirty-six dollar tab, which sounds to me like a wild and delicious evening on the town. I suspect she might also slip me a bit of money on top of that, given the amount of effort I'm putting into this project. Even if she doesn't, I figure that karma will cover the difference. Hell, maybe she'll be on a committee that decides to give me a research grant ten years down the road.

Strangely enough, I've been rethinking the go-to-school-until-I'm-a-professor route. I'm not burnt out or anything, but I'd really like to sink my teeth into my field for awhile, put some job experience on my resume instead of eight years of classes and little side projects.

Wizards of the Coast is my first pick for employment. I know it's a long shot, but I still dream about combining two of my favorite activities--English and D&D--into one career. I would have a blast proofreading the latest gaming supplements, catching all those annoying little errors that drive us perfectionist gamers crazy.

My gamer pals are naturally quite supportive. I'm a popular Dungeon Master and a decent writer, and everyone thinks I could make it in the professional game design world. My computer is riddled with incomplete gaming projects, ranging from The Complete NPC (featuring the climactic battle between Caesar and Dracula) to notes from my last three campaign settings.

Every now and then I put the call out to my homies to send me their article ideas, and tonight is no exception. Granted, I'll be completely distracted by Africa in three weeks, but in the meantime I'd love to sketch out a few more article proposals to Wizards. If anyone has any ideas, I promise to take them here or at my e-mail address, and I promise that any ideas that get printed will get as much acknowledgment in my article as my editors will allow.

I'll have this thesis finished within the next two hours. The coffee pot is still half-full, I just ate a sandwich from Jimmy John's, and some internet radio is keeping this empty building from getting too lonely in the meantime. This won't be my last late night break blog of the week, either--I've got a few dozen pages worth of papers of my own that I need to pound out in the next week as well.

Wish me luck and send me articles.

Especially you, Kelsey. ;)

2007-04-16T13:33:00.000-07:00

Dr. Moffitt and I were discussing today the difficulties of explaining that which comes naturally to us. Some sentences sound naturally awkward, and some forms of expression are obviously flawed. Consider this opening from a particularly entertaining essay we chuckled at in the Writing Center:

Even though people are busy, they should take the time to learn about tigers. Tiger mating habits, tiger eating habits, and tiger packs.

You can try to explain what's wrong with this sentence, but there exists a series of premises that such an explanation requires. What's wrong with the first part? Well, "even though people are busy" isn't an essential part of the essay, much less the thesis. Why isn't it essential? Well, it's just an apology to the reader the wastes space. Why can't you waste space? Because it's wasting space. What's wrong with apologizing to the reader--it's true, right? Well, it undermines your credibility. What's wrong with that? You don't sound convincing if you're apologizing for wasting the reader's time. What if you are wasting the reader's time? Why? Why? Why?

I'm forming a theory, though, about why teaching writing is getting more difficult and why explanations can prove so maddening: people don't read. It's not even that they don't read enough, it's that they don't read at all. There are theatre majors who have never read a play and English majors who have never read a novel. People don't instinctively know what sounds better and cannot hope to improve on their writing because they have no model to work from. If we instructors try to backtrack too much, we step into abstract notions of rhetorical grammar that cannot possibly be a starting point for education.

I've heard the opposing arguments, and they all suck. Some may say that we are living in a visual age, that students can still communicate, but only through other, less outdated media. Others believe that the practice of reading is a middle-class tradition--cloistering one away in solitude with a good book and removed from the "real world." Still more believe that writing should not worry about the specifics, that since we only retain 30% of what we read that we should be far more concerned with content than with form.

Ultimately, though, none of these practices lead to good literature. I guarantee that the writers of the snappy dialogue in all the wonderful television series floating around right now can write at least as well as I can. And how many of these screenplay writers were told that the gist of an idea is more important than the way in which it is presented? Even if any of them were told that, would they be naive enough to believe it?

So many of my ideas about writing were formed from reading literature. It started with R.A. Salvatore's fantasy fiction, which introduced me to the idea of action in textual form and the strength of the one-sentence paragraph. From there, I progressed to other, more abstract writing styles, from Auster's postmodern New York Trilogy to Chaucer's medieval Canterbury Tales. All along the way, I kept studying the semicolons and sentence fragments, working toward my current level of literature and still striving to improve on my style. I am constantly thinking about what I read, constantly trying out new techniques like repetition and modernist brevity and intentional fragments. I've written first person, second person, third person omniscient, third person limited, reliably, unreliably, very unreliably, objectively, journalistically, ridiculously, tightly, loosely, ramblingly, and experimentally.

So how then does one teach students who have never read anything longer than a magazine article how to write effectively?

2007-04-15T23:21:00.000-07:00

Three weeks from now, I'll be on a plane to Africa.

It all started when I didn't get my summer job here on campus. I'd applied to a summer grad assistant position, and thought I had it in the bag--I work extra hours, take care of statistics and computers; hell, I've gone out of my way to make it so this place wouldn't run without me! Add to that my physical inability to do the usual summer labor jobs, and it's easy to understand how one might think it was a shoe-in job. I still feel that I was the most qualified, and I can't really guess what it was about my CV or my resume` that ruled me out. Regardless, the net result is the same: I needed a new job.

I drably glanced at the business on Lincoln Avenue: Niro's Gyros, Taco Bell, Consolidated Market Response. Maybe, I thought. For just a little while. But fuck, wouldn't it be nice to get something out of my bachelor's in English? Surely there was a community college that needed someone to proctor a typing course or to teach some freshmen how to write. So I put out some feelers, chatting with my colleagues about substitute teaching and online paper editing. Fun ideas, but would it bring in enough to pay my rent? I mean, yeah, I could get a loan, but there's only so much inactivity I could take in one summer.

It was on a Wednesday two weeks ago when Dr. Bredesen suggested that I come with her to Cape Town, South Africa. It was on Thursday that she called me and said the university would hire me as a summer GA, waiving tuition and paying for my plane ticket. It was later that night that I received a packet that needed to be filled out by the next day. It was Friday when I turned it in, and it was Friday night when I realized

holy shit, I'm going to Africa.

My responsibilities include teaching a novel, conferencing papers, and making sure none of our seniors wander off alone. I'm using Bredesen's third world literature course from last semester as my qualifications and my passport from Jamaica to get me out of the country. We'll be visiting post-apartheid civil rights memorials, shopping from local markets, and going on safari. I'll be gone for one entire month, typing on borrowed computers and writing some far more interesting blogs than "yay campus press act!"

Expect a tan and a memoir.

2007-03-22T16:24:00.000-07:00

I have frequently been inspired to write by other good writers, but before now I had never had an awful poet inspire me to write. Not that his ideas stimulated me; no, it was the idea that this obnoxious author had actually been published.

He claims to try not to think too much with his writing, that he acts more as a conduit for the spirituality around him. He is quick to apologize for being poorly read, for just "feeling his way" through his writing. The resultant style is abrasively gentle and deceptively vague, a sort of transcendental machinegun of images that, though not possessing any original meaning, represent his feelings at the time. I suppose it's our responsibility to give meaning to them? Blech.

There were lots of ants, trees, and wind. According to one poem, it was they who "taught me about poetry." He talked about God a little bit, and Jesus, and more trees. 9/11 makes him sad. Mousetraps make him sad. I asked him if he was working toward a more religious theme, and he responded that, now that he's unemployed and living as a bum, he's had time to focus on the important things like Jesus and wind and stuff.

Frustrating, but encouraging in a way. If this guy can get published, maybe I shouldn't be so self-conscious about my own work.

This probably doesn't make sense to anyone who wasn't there. Sorry.

/vent.

2007-03-19T09:36:00.000-07:00

Great break. Kelsey and I were really at each other's throats last week, and I'll confess to being worried about our relationship. All that appeared on DIJ, of course, was that last creative piece that I wrote after one of our bloodier battles. I'd feel dirty putting more than that up here--it'd be too much like I was using my blog to talk at my girlfriend, a practice that I've never seen put to much artful use in online journaling.

Guess that's why that last piece was received quite like I was intending. That fight, by then, was done, and thus did not warrant that I "keep fucking fighting, a fighter!". Though I appreciate my friends' and anonymous commentators' support, it sorta stole the thunder from what I thought was a clever manipulation of letters and meaning. So it goes.

In completely different news, how about that College Campus Press Act? The DEN had a solid article describing the article and its unanimous passing in the state senate. The act, if passed by the House, will make prior review and similar censorship illegal at the college press level and allow previous censorship victims a legal recourse to their previous trouble. I am so geared to expect bad news that I was shocked to find something actually getting improved on rather than reworded and regurgitated. Free college speech? Hell yes!

A good day so far, and a good break behind me. Now I need to get back in the academic swing and try not to censor myself so much. After all, it'll soon be illegal.

2007-03-06T11:33:00.000-08:00

This morning, I am a Bukowski. Every line of every thought keeps building on itself until I'm both cold and fired up, both detached and painfully unable to leave. I chewed my right ring fingernail too much last night, and now it hurts with every O and L and period. But, like any good Bukowski, I keep using them.

My throat is sore from all those cigarettes. I couldn’t snooze at all last night; I didn’t collapse until five. I stole an extra fifty restless minutes from the alarm already, and even then I’ve not reached four hours. And now my eyes are bloodshot and my side hurts from the power-walk to not miss work and my hair stinks and my pits stink and this whole morning is fucking stinking.

But I’m here, and thanking this peer’s tiny kindness. She was behind just as I was, and as we retrieved the keys she grinned and said that, yeah, she’d take the first student. She said yeah, she was tardy more than I ever had been, that I’d picked up my share in shifts when she came running in at nine-ten or nine-fifteen. And the java has brewed. And there’s a little pleasure in that.

Of course, the coffee doesn’t cool my mood entirely. My blood still boils from yet another bloodshot Monday morning brought on from another late night wasted on another futile argument with my other. We fought about my sensitivity again, how I don’t consider her enough, don’t need her enough, don’t know how to meet her emotional needs. I’ve lost track of how often I’ve lost this conflict, of how often I’ve begged forgiveness until she’s decided she’s no longer angry.

Lousy morning. It hurts to type love.

Disclaimer: This conflict has come and gone, but I thought the rant was good enough to post.

2007-02-23T22:39:00.000-08:00

Dear Britney,

Your haircut is beautiful. Fashion is always changing its mind about what is beautiful--big, small, voluptuous, starved, proper, vulgar--but your choice is timeless. I have never been a fan of your music, and I have often ridiculed your pop culture image. But now, for the first time ever, I am in complete support of you.

Fuck capitalism, eh? We've been trying so hard to consume you. Even when you give us the finger and cut us off in a bold screaming earthquake of humanity, we pick up the scraps and sell them for a million dollars on E-bay. And you know that E! is already wondering how best to frame the scene where you cut off your hair in yet another true Hollywood story. Let's work together and drive every E-anything from the universe. Fuck capitalism. They can only sell your scraps now.

The media provides four general reactions, all grotesque. Among three million Google hits and 74 Facebook groups interested in your new look, most believe that you are crazy. Some continue to leer at you, saying that you're "still sexy" when you're bald. Several are dedicated to saying that you look awful. And a few even treat you with misguided affection, saying that "we still love you, even though you've lost your hair.

To hell with them all--I know the truth. You're sad, you're frustrated, you're angry, but you're not crazy. You get it. You get that we have consumed Anna Nicole and are in the process of consuming you. You get everything. And you're fighting it. Surrounded by a horde of paparazzi and a throng of drooling fans, you pushed past that bitch in the hair salon, grabbed your shears, and screamed so loudly that everyone had to listen.

The shrinks say that drastic hair change is a sign of deep depression, a signal of self-mutilation and suicidal tendencies. Don't believe them--nothing is more maddening than being asked to prove that you're not crazy. Don't let your tears con you into thinking that you're broken. Don't let a billion fools taint your accomplishment. Don't lose. Don't surrender! Be as strong tomorrow as you were yesterday, be invincible and whole; prove to the them that they don't have a clue about true Hollywood stories; inspire us with every imperious turn of your liberated head; let the rest of us figure out that yes, yes, you are a human being; outshine us all by surviving and winning where I know we'd all fail.

Genuinely,
Mario Podeschi

2007-02-15T17:44:00.000-08:00

I need to stop reading this book. It's got me conspicuously giggling in the middle of writing center appointments. Non Campus Mentis, a compilation of hilarious mistakes on college history tests, cannot be read in silence. With excerpts like these, can you blame me?

At war people get killed, and then they aren't people anymore, but friends. After fighting in the trenches, the soldiers became close, no matter what their social standards. Men on both sides would have gotten to know each other much better if they didn't have to wear uniforms. When peace broke out the men excitedly relieved themselves wherever they were.

It is hard to believe that all who took part in the war were first cousins, but stranger things have happened, I guess.

Children born to Europeans and Asians were known as Euthanasians--a situation which troubled them for life.

Power belonged to a patriarchy empowering all genders except the female. Nuns, for example, were generally women.

Marie Curie won the Noel prize for inventing the radiator.

Zorroastrologism was founded by Zorro. This was a duelist religion.

The Germans took the by-pass around France's Marginal Line. This was known as the "Blintz Krieg." The French huddled up and threw sneers at the Germans. Japan boomed Pearl Harbor, the main U.S. base in southern California. American sailors watched in shock as the sky filled with Japanese zebras.

Hitler, who had become depressed for some reason, crawled under Berlin. Here he had his wife Evita put to sleep, and then shot himself in the bonker.

There was at least one World War, but absolutely not more than three.

2007-02-14T16:53:00.000-08:00

Been snowed in for the past two days. It had been five or six years since my last snow day. According to one professor, he's only seen one other snow day in his entire twenty years at EIU. The trees, as Barry pointed out, look like they're made of glass, and giant piles of snow have been tossed aside in unwieldy piles of ice and snow. The only time I have left this apartment in the past forty-eight hours was in an unsuccessfuly attempt to dig Barry's car out of a parking lot drift. My own car is literally cacooned in ice and has snow crawling about halfway up its doors. Yes, it's that bad.

My books that I might be studying are about a mile away through treacherous terrain, so I've held off on getting my homework done with the free time. Instead, I'm enjoying an unexpected vacation, watching DVDs, reading, sketching, writing. The opportunity would have left a bad taste in my mouth if I didn't get a good blog out.

The DVDs have been exceptional. I share Ryan's love of Avatar: The Last Airbender" and have been greatly enjoying its first season. The Nickelodeon animated series is incredibly clever, capturing a unique world with powerful characters. Unlike many cartoons, it resists using archetypical main characters, saving flat characters for the sidelines alone. These rounded characters reinvent anime and adventure cliches to create a story that is both heroically familiar yet refreshingly new. Sokka, an Eskimo-ish warrior in a world of magic-wielding martial artists, really holds his own in a setting that might diminish him to a joke. Most of the animes on adult swim tend to have a very rigid power structure where only one or two characters are capable of winning fights and the other ones tend to just exist to remind us how powerful Naruto or Goku is. Then there's Prince Zuko, my new favorite villain. The best part about Zuko is that he follows the hero's path more clearly than the actual protagonists. By the end of the first season, he has defeated his threshold guardian Admiral Zhou along with his spoiled prince attitude, enduring a painful trial and setting himself up as a complicated antagonist to Aang. I dare call him a hero.

Then there was Dead Leaves. Everyone must see this anime. It gave me a joy seizure. The movie's only about an hour long, but that entire hour is made up of jaw-dropping, constantly moving animation flooded with social commentary and gratuitous violence. It tells the story of Pandy, the hottest punk rawker animated since Noodle, and the television-headed Retro in a tale of dick drills, mutant babies, and robot chase scenes.

So yeah, the snow days have been great. Now it's back to my fun and hoping that it thaws enough for me to get to Carbondale for Valentine's Day.

2007-01-30T16:16:00.000-08:00

If Presidents don't really have political power, and if they really are just figureheads for an administration consisting of party thinkers, then why not choose my candidate based on social progress? The first black or the first female President. Either is a huge step forward, and neither would be a small step back. That in mind, I'm eager to vote Obama or Clinton next year. Not because their stances on various issues is in tune with mine (though I'll grant that they're better than the republican stance), but because I want America to lay claim to something progressive. We've lost so much clout with the rest of the world with our war politics and blurring of church and state that this could be just the thing we need to regain some respect.

2007-01-25T08:16:00.000-08:00

Jamaica left me with mixed feelings. The wedding was beautiful: twenty-two guests barefoot in the sand, with a toast of rum punch and much well-wishing. The ocean welcomed me warmly, and I spent hours splashing in the waves and wandering the beach.

However.

I felt so imperialist. The resort in Ocho Rios catered to a population more white than Taylorville and was staffed exclusively by Jamaicans. As a resort, their goal is service, and the service was perfect. So perfect, in fact, that it seemed like it was selling me a romanticized view of slavery. "Yah mon," the catch phrase of the country, seems to me a feel-good translation of "yes sir" or even "yes master."

No one knew me as Mario Podeschi in Jamaica. I was just a tourist, a privileged white American. The staff was well-paid to be friendly, and every shopkeeper and drug peddler approached me with the same guilting poverty in search of my precious "dollars American." The resort provided bizarre entertainment--Jamaicans doing Grease and Music Man and balancing chairs on their heads. The symbolism was unnerving. And tackiest of all, a resort restaurant: "Plantation." Plantation? I wasn't sure if I'd read the sign right. But sure enough, there it was, in the same tropical font that advertised rum and sports bars. Plantation. Blech.

Jamaican tourists are driven from the airport to one of several resorts in a two hour bus ride. To the sides can be seen dilapidated buildings shared by goat and native alike, interrupted by the occasional mansion with razor wire fencing. The road was under construction every couple miles by massive, sweaty road crews working to expand the road and wall off the impoverished areas for the sake of American money like myself. Within a few years, visitors won't even have to shut their eyes to block out the blatant contradiction.

I visited the free market on the second day. Forty dollars American can get you a cab into the city proper, dropping you off at an Americanized open-air mall selling tropical shirts, rum, and Cuban cigars. Policemen patrol regularly and drive off shopless peddlers. Across a busy road, however, is a crumbling bazaar of loose walls and garbage bags. The entire compound is contained in an ominous, dirty chain link fence. Inside, high-pressure salesmen and saleswomen plead with you to look at your shop. I agreed to look at one man's shop in exchange for his taking me to someone to braid my hair, which turned out to be a wise move on my part. As she was braiding me, he shooed away several of the merchants, insisting that I was his customer and not theirs. A few slipped through his defenses, however, like one rasta-man with wild eyes who held out a fistful of bud to me with a crooked smile on his face. My stylist, Marva, haggled furiously with my sister, eventually agreeing to thirty dollars for a full head of braids. I liked her; she was tough, and was ready to kick me off her plastic chair if I didn't offer more than the twenty dollars my sister was trying to spend. With the braiding done, my guide led me to his shop, an ugly shack with only a few plain wood carvings of Bob Marley's face. It's not what I was interested in, and as soon as I voiced that, my family started pulling me away. They'd been pushing away merchants for almost an hour by then, and they were ready to leave. My guide, though, followed us through the maze of shops, lowering his price relative to the distance I had from his shop, until finally, about ten feet from the exit, he begged me for a mere handout of two dollars. I wanted to be sick--all I had was a twenty. When I let my family lead me away, the man's eyes bored into me. He must have been choking back a scream, knowing full well that we had the power there, that we were walking away and there was nothing he could do about it or show for his wasted time.

The next day, I dodged my family and another night of entertainment to wander down the beach in search of something, anything, that didn't make me feel like scum. Not a single Jamaican at the resort had ever been anything but helpful to me, but I knew from my encounter in the free market that there was some justifiable resentment to me and my people. No sooner had I left resort property than I was approached by Richard.

Richard looked like a Jamaican Snoop Dogg, with corn rows, a narrow face, and blood red eyes. He asked if I was looking for anything: bud, coke, shrooms, or whatever. When I told him no, he told me to come party with him and his friends. So I followed him to a shack by the ocean, equipped with plastic chairs and tables, a modest bar, and no tourists. I bought us beers as he talked around me to his pals, probably evaluating my economic possibilities. After our drink, he led me around back. More chairs, more Jamaicans, and now two Portuguese women giggling uncontrollably. There were some cars parked there, two clunkers and one conspicously nice one--the car that the kind of prosperous drug dealer who can set up shop by the resort must own.

The women ignored me--they saw themselves as world travelers in the company of an unenlightened American tourist. I couldn't blame them--in Jamaica, I found it easy to hate my country. But Richard rolled me a joint and kept with his pitch. He was charismatic, a true con artist who the others seemed to defer to. When I asked him to tell me what the locals really thought of us fuck-up tourists, I knew that he would use it as part of his con. I knew he was wealthy by Jamaican standards, that he was feeding me the same calculated manipulations that they fed all the disgruntled tourists here. But I didn't care. I was willing to pay for his product. I bought a round of drinks for him and his friends and greedily choked down the smoke.

"It's too bad it's your last night in Jamaica, mon. We could have good time here; I could show you the real Jamaica. We'd smoke some bud, do some coke, maybe even find you a real Jamaican girl." When I turned that down, he asked me to bring them some of the free booze from the resort, that I could stick rum in a Pepsi bottle and trade it for a last joint or a little line before I left. He told me it could really help them out over here, that they needed "to buy cheese for our families." I felt very tourist, very American, bumbling blindly through this other world taking mental pictures and being laughed at in Portuguese. I wanted to strip off my clothes, tear out my braids, peel off my nationality. I wanted terribly to be anyone but me, drunk and stoned on the last night of my vacation, bloated on college pizza, paying for beers next to an open bar not knowing how to tell these people that I really was poor back home. This was just my sister's wedding. It's a package deal. My mom paid for it. Every justification rang hollow in my internal monologue.

Drunk, stoned, and lonely, I fled and was in my room before midnight. I turned on the TV for the first time in my trip, watching some weird Jamarican cartoon and flipping through my magazines. My high magnified in my solitude, and I thought about praying. Instead, I slept, and all I remember of my dreams is that I didn't want to remember them. My sister stopped in briefly asking to smoke, but I turned her down, burned out for the night and eschewing company.

So Jamaica did not exactly cure my mood, but in definitely rebooted my brain. Now, at least, I am thinking, and have something other than ennui to offer.

2007-01-16T15:43:00.000-08:00

Staying up all night last night was made pretty easy by sleeping until six p.m. the day before. I made up for lost time on my homework, reading just under two hundred pages for my Introduction to Literary Studies course. Half of this was formalist theory; that being the most likely subject of my thesis, I paid it particular interest. Bleak House, on the other hand, is looking rather bleak.

I had been holding out hope that it's main protagonist, Esther Summerson, was a cleverly ironic flawed narrator who, though powerfully observant, was crippled by a naive sense of goodness. Seven chapters in, I've divined that, no, she's just a generic, pure-good feminine figure with no hope of development, inner turmoil, or humanizing flaw. I checked, with some desperation, a few critical essays about Charles Dickens heroine, but they only compounded my viewpoint. In fact, they warned that most of the characters suffer from the same two-dimensionality, and that enjoying the novel required an interest in scenes and spectacles rather than characterization.

Tomorrow is Jamaica. I'm hoping the trip will reset me. My spirits haven't lifted since last night's rant, though they've changed from detached ennui to academic coldness. You'll note the added tightness of my paragraphs, the lack of parenthetical asides, and the careful placement of subordinate clauses throughout this post. Before this post, I was scanning the room for some minor detail to draft into a post, some action or look to incorporate into an implied emotion. No such luck. But the notebook is coming with me overseas, and the swarm of new experiences should be sufficient to get me out of this funk.

May I get home next Sunday and write a novel.

2007-01-15T21:56:00.000-08:00

I'm crawling up inside myself again. Maybe it's to keep warm from the winter, but there's no mistaking it--I am disappearing. Everyone's world is spinning in circles around me, whether from court cases or college stress or depression, and I feel ill-equipped to help any of them. The helplessness is accompanied by a soft-spoken guilt that I can't be the hero in anyone's story, and so, I disappear.

There was a party Saturday. My house hosted it. I went to Carbondale early with Kelsey instead. They're playing DnD tonight. I got into town late and came to the Writing Center instead. I don't feel sad or angry or happy about any of these missed moments.

Just shy?

I feel good here at the Writing Center. Kelsey's Ani DiFranco CD is playing on the computer speakers, and the keyboard strokes add enough ambience that I feel very un-alone. My shoes are off, and my toes wiggle on the X-shaped legs of the office chair below me. I wish I had Bleak House with me so I could do homework here, but it's unfortunately sitting on my bed at the apartment. I am not thirsty or hungry or tired.

I worry that Kelsey may have put me in this mood. I don't doubt my love for her, but I do doubt my ability to spend this much time with one person. We fought more frequently as the weeks of Christmas break went on, and I have not until now blamed myself enough for all her tears. I've been irritable, shut down, emotionally exhausted. I feel like I'd be okay with a few hours to myself here and there, and I've told her as much, but that's not how her emotions work, and it's difficult to find a comfortable middle ground where neither of us lose our minds.

This transcends my relationship, though, or I wouldn't be here now. Part of this ennui comes from a lack of connection to the rest of the world. I don't seem to be able to understand everyone else's problems lately. I never know what to say or how to act. Better to hide away for awhile until my empathy comes back. Better for all involved, even.

I sneer at my month of non-blogging. I offer no apologies--I simply did not write. I didn't even scribble a few words in my notebook. It's all been DnD and girlfriend and books this Christmas break. It was weak of me to let it go this long, to not bother ranting or analyzing or thinking like I should have been. Even now I feel rusty as I shit randomly into this text box whatever angst or poorly-defined insight comes to mind.

2007-01-12T10:58:00.000-08:00

No art class this semester. I just dropped it on account of needing a hundred dollars worth of art supplies and the surprising time commitment that Drawing I would have required. I should be working on my thesis.

I've been stymied all morning trying to remember an obscure short story that featured my favorite use of an exclamation point. It's buried deep, a three-word sentence about a catapillar rearing up on its hind legs in a moment of transcendental glory. I've dug through about a dozen tables of contents in various anthologies, trying to jog my brain or find the piece it was paired with years ago when I first read it. Google has proved useless--if only it let me search for punctuation as well as words!

Today feels like flat soda. The lukecold rainwater sees that its still wet, but the bubbles are all gone. Effervescentless. Stale. Barely drinkable.

Lack of sleep further weights my mood.

Hungry.

A long nap should perk me up again. Kelsey promised that she'd let me sleep today after keeping me up late last night. I just have to make it through an hour of time-killing and an hour of assistant teaching. Then, rest.

2006-12-10T00:15:00.000-08:00

Smoked a cigarette, punched a wall, muttered to myself for a bit, tried to write, couldn't, came back here. I'm exhausted. Again. This night of writing isn't turning out so well anymore.

2006-11-29T02:34:00.000-08:00

This is a new attempt at an earlier work, completely overhauled for creative nonfiction.

The Machine

We watched game shows together—Supermarket Sweep, the Price is Right, Press Your Luck. Grandma sat at the head of the table, facing the television. I sat opposite her, twisting around in my chair to watch the programs. She coughed much more than we spoke. It was a pestilent, painful thing, that cough of hers, much less pleasant than her rhythmic wheezes.

Her house had two family rooms. The cleaner, nicer room was called “the living room” and had a newer TV and a second couch. Hers, adjacent to the kitchen, was called “the den.” Grandma was always in her den, sitting at a cluttered kitchen table. Everything she needed was in arm’s reach from her seat at the back of the room: newspapers, romance novels, three boxes of tissues, two pads of stationary, ashtrays, reading glasses, lighters, remote control. We kept one little spot clean for me at the far end, which contained my own doodling notebook and whatever books I was currently reading. The tablecloth was littered with tiny round burns that revealed the pale wood underneath. I would wiggle my pinky in them when bored.

In the commercials between every show, Grandma would ask me to turn off the Machine. The Machine was a medical device that forced air into her remaining lung. It filtered regular air through distilled water, sending it down a hose into her nostrils. Naturally, she could not have a burning cinder next to pure oxygen, so she could never be using the Machine and smoking at the same time.

I never thought that I was helping Grandma die; this was my ritual, my game. I would leap from my chair and sprint down the long hallway to her bedroom, hurdling over her hose on the way. Pausing at her door, I would take a deep breath to see if I could make it in and out with one go. If my lungs did not hold out, I knew I would breathe the poisoned gas, as deadly as wood chip lava. Though unpleasant, the odor was familiar. It still is. Loving Grandma acclimated me to the stale scent of cheap perfume, nicotine sweat, and white zinfandel urine.

Grandma’s room turned every white into a yellow. The walls were stained yellow from her cigarettes. Her dried tissues were yellow with phlegm. Yellow discarded cotton underwear sat on yellowing berber carpet while yellow butts overflowed from her ashtray. Next to them, a yellow set of false teeth floated in yellowed water. Yellow curtains filtered yellow sunlight onto black-and-yellow war photos of my late Grandpa Ted.

Darting inside, I would turn left toward the oxygen machine in the corner. It was my own personal science fiction prop, complete with hoses and jars and a small, no-nonsense black switch labeled “on.” It sat next to the wall sharing my own bedroom, and her fragile house did little to mask its beautifully technological sound effects. Its three cycles came at varying pitches: one the medium, electric hum of a plastic fan; then the low gurgling of water being sucked through a plastic pipe; and the last high yet shrill, the sound of purified air being pushed up her nose. Each lasted two seconds, and the endlessly precise rhythm sang me to sleep like a mechanical lullaby.

Twice a day, Grandma would send me to get another pack from her drawer in the kitchen. This trip was most fun with socks on, as she had the slipperiest linoleum floor. Like a race car I would take the corner around the countertop with a daring slide. If I was lucky, the drawer would be empty, and I would get the task of opening another carton for her. This was also a fun game, made more precious by its rarity. I would sit cross-legged on the floor, delicately peeling away the corners of the box, trying not to create any trash. If done properly, the carton opened like an oversized pack of cigarettes, fitting snugly into its place. I hated the way Mom did it, and would sometimes correct her technique. She ripped the cardboard from the first corner she could grab, dumping the shiny packs unceremoniously into the drawer. I was used to this, of course. Mom rarely understood my favorite games.

The smell of the cigarette smoke was a pleasantly familiar one. I enjoyed looking at it too, in Dad’s bars as well as Grandma’s den. When the weather was cool, it would drift slowly over my head, sauntering over to her heavy oak desk with its envelopes, stationary, and dried tissues. In summer, the fan would be on, and the smoke would leap from her mouth and skip like rocks off her table.

When she had finished a cigarette or two, she would send me to turn the machine back on. She’d usually cough for a few minutes, but I never worried. Time was still new to me then. I knew Grandma would always cough.

2006-11-14T12:17:00.000-08:00

I found my girlfriend's secret.

2006-11-09T15:56:00.000-08:00

I am still writing. Not here, obviously, yet my fingers have been dancing. Kelsey has been my muse for most of this, providing me with three non-blogging writing outlets: e-mails, a fiction assignment, and a new notebook. The e-mail has been the rarest, just an occasional new media when something occurs to me at four in the morning. The fiction assignment was delivered Wednesday of last week and left me writing furiously through Friday. And the notebook, wow.

Years have past since I last carried a notebook with me. One shows up as a gift every year or two, but I've lacked the inspiration to fill them. Yet, this notebook--humbly elegant, black, elastic strapped, with built-in cloth bookmark--is molding itself perfectly to my hands. I'm thrilled to be writing on actual paper for a change. Some of the entries may even make their way to the blog.

I apologize to those friends that I keep in touch with via the blogging community that entries have been lax lately. Even the "a go n y" poem was a direct excerpt.

There is homework, of course, as well, furthermore and however. Classes keep me reading roughly one novel a week, but never an entire book in one sitting, but the first half of one and the second half of another, so that the struggles of post-apartheid South Africa bleed into a bit of the old ultraviolent. The process leaves me feeling brilliantly discombobulated--unable to commit to any one thought yet in a state of constant thinking.

In short, busy with other things, but not ignoring the urge. Maybe I'll leak a paper or a few more excerpts onto DIJ, just to keep things moving until I my schedule slackens. Or not. Hiatus? Perhaps.

2006-10-29T05:52:00.000-08:00

Accident Question
(it hurt)
4
months
ago n y?

2006-10-26T01:41:00.000-07:00

I want to take art classes.

2006-10-19T17:18:00.000-07:00

We call it growing up. We get wrapped up in bills and homework, required efforts undercut by scheduled relaxations. Drinking on occasion. Smoking every couple months. We choose our partners not because they excited us, but because we fear being alone. We ignor invitations to weddings of friends we never liked. We nap. We stop writing. We do our dishes and our laundry and our chores and stop fighting with our siblings. We call it growing up.

But it's not growing up.

It's growing complacent.

Last night, I told Kelsey about my little black notebook for the first time. I'd assumed she was familiar with it--several pages had already been transferred to my blog to spin my tires during writers block. I thought I had exhausted the topic of urban camping and hobo graffiti, that I had enjoyed my desperate artfulness and moved on. And I realized, too, that I had nearly lost magic these past couple years. Why did I fill those notebooks and forget about them for so long?

And I start forming this egomaniacal-to-the-point-of-being-masturbatory daydream where some cute artsy almost punk but with a bit more sophistication Brazilian chick finds my notebook and reads it through three times before looking up my number in the campus directory. Seeing my address right below the sought-for digits, she impulsively decides to surprise me at home.

And she calls up and I go downstairs and she hands me my lost notebook and I give her a great big hug and it's weird cause I've never even seen this girl, and I stop, and we back away, and she breaks the silence at last:

"I read it," she says.

And I blush.

"It was good," she says.

And I laugh.

"Can I come up?" she says.

And I make her coffee and show off my computer and we hang out until I have to go rehearsal, and she sees my show twice, and I take her on a date, and six years later we're in love and married with a kid on the way and a small but comfortable apartment downtown.

How long have I dreamt about this? Do we all do this? Am I lucky to have recorded it?

So I try not to keep a perfect woman in mind, but rather measure her by a loose set of values and tastes. A love of music, a connection with me, a touch of the feminine.

A long time. Maybe. Yes.

2006-10-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

"There will be green beans, of course."

Kelsey was right--they have green beans at every fish fry, and bread rolls and some kind of potato and a dessert table and raffle tickets. They don't just blur together. They overlap.

I had scheduled an hour for dinner with Mom between a doctor's appointment and a trip to Carbondale. We parked on the grass outside Davis Memorial, ramping Mom's gas-guzzling pick-up right next to an old wooden playground. The playground looked like it had been constructed from old railroad planks and discarded tires. On our way to the door, we passed a coterie of old women who were hobbling along even slower than I was.

I saw a figure once that stated Taylorville is over 50% senior citizen. Most of my peerage don't believe this statistic on empirical grounds--walking through Taylorville, only one in perhaps six locals are elderly. This form of census is naturally misleading: every person over 60 is 90% likely to be at a fish fry on any given afternoon.

Inside the church, some pastor smiled and welcomed us by name. He had a businessman's smile and handshake. They always do, these fish-fry hosting preachers--religion is big business in a small town.

Just past him, a church mom tried to sell us raffle tickets. The prizes, a poorly painted garden bench and a musty quilt, were not particularly appealing. Of course, raffle prizes seldom are, which led to a battle of guilt and will between my mom and the church mom. They seemed to be old foes, squared off as they were, with the saleswoman stressing that it was only a dollar to help the church and Mom lifting an open palm to her saying "no, no, I'm just not interested, I already bought my ticket, Leave me alone you fucking bitch."

My mom has perfected the art of tactfully refusing to be charitable. Not that she's a miser: she supports choir fundraisers and Little League as often as possible. For the rest of them, though--the rafflers, the dirty-cheeked candy bar kids with their moms waiting in the van outsider, the telemarketing fundraisers, the support-our-troops-by-buying-this-collector's-edition-coin-for-only-19.95--she stands invincible. As her only son and youngest child, I have done my best to learn from her experience and have managed a passable imitation. The trick is to turn the manipulator's tactics against them. On some level, everyone feels a little gross asking for handouts. Sure, they may zealously believe their cause to be necessary to the world's survival, but it's still hard to bother everyone that goes past or knocking door to door. The only effective tool they have for this task is the very emotion that haunts them between houses: guilt. The best and perhaps only way to sell a $24 collector's edition Santa Claus cookie tin is to convince the other person that you're not selling a product so much as self-esteem. Buy this cookie tin, they tell you, and you won't have to feel guilty about starving African children. Now Mom, on the other hand, can turn that guilt around at them. Through a deceptively complex series of half smiles, slight nods, and tiny steps, she instead convinces the salesperson that by not pressuring her with their cookie tin, they won't have to feel guilty about annoying 250 people in one day.

We followed the smell of bubbling grease into the church dining room. Inside, five twenty-foot rows of plastic banquet tables and folding metal chairs held probably a hundred of Taylorville's finest. Probably 85% were elderly, and 5% were church personel spreading their sunshine. The other ten percent were single mothers averaging two kids apiece. The mothers' children and empty ring fingers glow like scarlet letter As as they prostrate their saved souls before the community. These mothers learned long ago to accept their guilt. Unemployed or close to it, they live on government aid trying to raise their children as well as the normal families. Convinced of their guilt, they became martyrs for their families, letting the joy of their daughters' stand in for their own happiness. These are women know that abortion is wrong but divorce isn't, that Eve ate the apple at the garden of Eden, that only by confessing their sins can they be absolved of them in the next life. I doubt any of them really believe that. The process of guilt is too thorough. These women expect to burn. And the bitterest, filthiest, nastiest irony of all: they still keep the names of their missing husbands. There is too much shame in being a mother without the Mrs.

Among the single mothers I see old friends from school. I see a girl who played cello with me in junior high. She had been one of the humble ones. Her only ambition was to be an art teacher, to inspire children like us to draw and sculpt and mold and create. Now she's holding her firstborn while her mother holds the second, three generations of small town girls who will always have different last names. I see a friend behind the counter too, stirring a cauldron of green beans. This one had a speech impediment and was never too smart. He found God somewhere in high school, and today he works at a factory and as many fish fries as possible. He shines under the acceptance of the church, blossoming as one of God's chosen, hoping to one day marry a good Christian woman and start a family of his own. I wish him the best.

The meal is served in an assembly line. The only choice on the main course is in what you don't want--there are no other options. Barring a "no thanks" at any entry, every diner is served breaded catfish, river fries (thick potato chunks fried in grease), green beans with onion, and flavorless cole slaw. With your primary plate filled, you then grab a plastic knife, fork, and napkin.

From the cooking line we are led to the drink table. Two enthusiastic church girls fill plastic cups here with tea, coffee, and cherry drink. Sweet n Low packets litter the floor beneath us, and a foot-tall tube of non-dairy creamer towers over the pre-filled cups. The cold drinks are held in large red water coolers, while the coffee is poured from a ubiquitous black coffee dispenser, the kind that looks just at home at a fish fry as it does at a cheap gas station.

Mom and I sit at the only open spot we can see. Across from us, a woman in her sixties immediately strikes up a conversation in a squeaky yet hoarse voice--

--You're Podeschi, right? I'm sisters with Janet Coady, who married your Uncle Jean back in '63. Or was it '64? Anyway, you're in college right? I saw a really nice article in the paper about you, something about a scholarship or something. How many years you got left? Oh, is that right? My daughter went to Eastern and got her degree in communications. Now she's working up at the old driver's license center. She was always so smart. Got married last July, you know. She'll be having her first kid any day now. You're smart too. But then again, you Podeschis always were. How's that cousin of yours, Kenny? Terrible thing what happened to his girl. How were you related to them again?

I offered back the usual responses, always looking for those connections that remind us how close-knit the community is. Marriages, colleges, basketball teams--anything that can connect someone you know to someone someone else knows somehow makes you better friends. It's a bizarre and constant ritual that will be repeated in my next three conversations.

I spot Mr. Hicksonbaugh, formerly principal at my grade school, now assistant superintendent. He is dressed smartly. I cannot remember ever having seen him without a tie and blazer. Like the pastor, he has a strong smile, but I trust his more. I believe, with the utmost conviction, the Mr. H. has done more good for the world.

We select our deserts. They sit strangely in a filing shelf, tucked away like German chocolate file folders, vanillas in place of manillas. These, I know, are donations. At church a few Sundays ago, the man with the business-smile told his flock that the church board was throwing its annual fish fry, and that donations were encouraged. Half a dozen women then spent Friday afternoon baking a cake using their mothers' favorite recipes. I choose a chocolate cake with yellow icing and extra large sprinkles.

The cake, though, is dry, and I am too full to want to force it. These fish fries always offer generous portions anyway. By now, our patiences almost spent, and we politely excuse ourself from my cousin's sister-in-law's aunt. I smile at the raffeler, but she does not notice. The pastor is still at the front door shaking hands.

"Satisfied?" he asks.

2006-10-12T18:20:00.000-07:00

Slow night at the writing center, so I played with magnetic poetry:

the naked lust travels
feverfully fresh
warm with wanting
flickers in your breast

you have asked the moon
for only perfumed promises
but the lying night soon
did celebrate my goddesses.

2006-10-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

Some people look surprised when I tell them that, no, I did not have any religious experiences from my brush with death. Their assumptions are understandable; after all, this recent event could very well be taken as God striking me down for my arrogance.

I have long failed to completely dismiss people's opinions, even those that I find immediately faulty. That in mind, I have kicked around the ideas of divine intervention and humility for the past several months.

First, the hilarious contradiction: believing in divine intervention is an awfully arrogant way to be taught humility. To think that I was specifically selected to receive the miracle of a bizarre disaster requires a rather extravagant assessment of my self-worth. Hell, with all the hurricanes and war and other problems going around not being stopped, I'd have to be destined for some real greatness to deserve such a priority.

But let us suppose that God has a good reason for not stopping disasters. Let's call it his "master plan." There was a reason, brothers and sisters, for the roof to come a-tumbling down. The Almighty sought to strike down on me for mocking his name in deed and in thought and in word. Surely I, once laid low, would realize that I need God's love and protection.

Heh. Likely story eh? Strangely enough, I think I'm more proud now that I've been through this. On one level, there's a survivor's pride, a testosterone-heavy "ha, it takes more than that to stop me!" Yet, this is more of a consolation, an amusing but only half-serious boast. The heart of my pride is found elsewhere.

Having lost my physical strength, I feel myself clinging to what traits I still have. Granted, I was never an athlete by any means, but I was a laborer and a good one at that. Less well-rounded, I take my remaining strengths far more seriously. This was admittedly the perfect time to have a swelling of cerebral pride; grad school takes a lot of dedication. My feeling of self-worth depends on my excelling in school. Pride. Weird thing, that. It's made me more aggressive even in my frailty, and I catch myself being a jerk so much more often than I used to. Just as the blind enhance their other senses through the loss of one, so too am I striving to develop my brain now that my body is unreliable.

The roof didn't knock any sense into me as far as God is concerned. My world view was strong enough to last through a concussion. This, like any more global disaster, is just that--a disaster. The only higher meaning in this accident or any other is that which we assign to it. To me, the accident fuels my drive to develop and value my mind. I'd be cheapening the experience if I let it pull me back to my junior high doubts about Jesus and angels. Rather than weakening me, I'm forcing this situation to strengthen me, and to hell with anyone who would see me kneel having been struck.

2006-10-03T15:42:00.000-07:00

Odd. I think I'm ready. With an hour to spare. Sure, I could have read more out of our book, but I've already settled on missing a little bit on classroom participation in favor of a good grade on my midterm exam. I imagine the rest of the class will be doing the same thing, at that Dr. Bredesen will end class on a sour note. But hey, what can you expect when you assign the usual half a book on the same day as the second biggest test of the semester?

Back hurts. Must be all the activity. I got so wrapped up in my muscles getting better that I forgot about my bones. Shit. I want to lie down. Can't medicate--gotta have every neuron blazing for test day.

When this class period is over, I'll get to rest. I'll lie down, masturbate, nap, call Kelsey, and save worrying for tomorrow. No immediately pressing homework assignments. Reading's caught up on.

Is it really just Tuesday? This week is crawling. Time does not fly when you're alternating between pining for a girl and fumbling with study.

Ungh. I'm lying down. Can't let myself get distracted.

2006-10-02T17:49:00.000-07:00

What an odd respite.

After being booked solid for almost three weeks, the Writing Center is suddenly empty. It's an anomaly, the eye of the proverbial storm. All the papers have been turned in and are not yet back. Or maybe the students have gotten them back and decided that we didn't help them enough. Or maybe there are some that we have truly let down. Or maybe we have even gotten a few writers to stand on their own.

The timing is perfect, though--even if the Freshmen aren't busy, I am frantic. Finished my shortstory for creative nonfiction, studied for a midterm, read some stuff. This blogging break is my treat for getting so much done these past two hours. It'll still be a long night though; the midterm is for Third World Lit. The class is dense normally, but with the three sessions that I've missed it's looking to me the most difficult moment of the semester.

Next on the agenda: cigarette.

2006-10-01T15:05:00.000-07:00

Birthdays remain my favorite holiday. I was a little worried there Friday night that it was going to be my first shitty one since junior high, but last night proved fantastic.

I am loving this hangover. Not only is it a great reminder of last night, it's also just strong enough to drown out the muscle aches from my late night drinking. Any pain that's not back pain is good pain.

Also, my mood has improved drastically--Kelsey's birthday gift was a return to our old relationship. I tried to be strong, but I was really brooding this week. I was very afraid and very saddened that this might be the beginning of the end for us. But it's doing better now, much better. She couldn't be at the party due to a tech rehearsal, but with enough drunk dials she seemed very close despite the distance.

Last night also marked the introduction of my English grad student friends and my usual crew. The blend was a good one--they made for excellent guests. Hell, Palmer even got some action last night (Palmer being a close friend who, regrettably, does not usually go home with party guests). It will be nice to have an inside joke with those who came, a private memory to make us more than peers and co-workers.

Quinton and Dave came, as is Mario's Birthday tradition. I can't remember the last time they weren't around on September 30th. Guess that's why they're lifelong friends instead of friends in passing. It always means so much to me when they come, too. I light up as though I'm surprised, even though by now I really shouldn't be. It's just such a treat to count on Quinton and Dave showing up at my party as much as I count on my grandma making me a birthday cake.

The new place is good for parties. Our big front room and circular kitchen gave us plenty of space for the 30ish guests. It was nothing near the ridiculousness of Phil's and my keggers, but we still enjoyed the tell-tale sticky floors and vomit-filled trash can. We'll be having another one soon; I promised too many people as they were leaving last night.

The back held up better than I thought it would. Oh, it's sore today, no doubt about it, but I didn't have to stop and lie down like I did the last time we had people over. I went pill free for the whole thing and was able to drink myself stupid by the end of the night. Another reason the hangover feels so great: it is a sign of victory.

Feeling good. Feeling great. World's my oyster and that sort of thing. Twenty-three years and counting. Hung over and loving it. This party was the best gift I could have asked for.

2006-09-26T23:38:00.000-07:00

Half the population still isn't happy about me and Kelsey. It's not that they fight me on it--there's just a general agreement that they don't want to hear about it. Tonight, I happily trample on the censorship.

I need to write about it. This is no mere whim--the urge is pathological and therapeutically necessary. I cannot not write about it. It has to get out.

I love her.

We had one of those life-quaking talks tonight. We needed it, too--the last three days have been full of terse conversations and unspoken fears and a half-minute track on repeat saying over and over in my mind "notthisnotthisanythingbutthis." Problem is, she went to a party last weekend, her first party of the year with the Carbondale theatre department. Every day people flirt with her and hit on her and tell her to dump her boyfriend and live college like it's supposed to be lived. It's only natural--she's a brilliant beautiful college bombshell fresh out of small town Illinois. It doesn't help that she shaved her head and bought a hot pair of green boots to wear around campus. Who would have thought she could get more captivating?

When we first hooked up in the summer, we set a breakup date for ourselves--August 18th, a day before she left for college. Greg (our one supporter at the time) found this absolutely ridiculous. By the time the 18th rolled around, we couldn't help but agree. No way we were going to let this end for something as silly as two hundred miles. Nevermind that I had a history of completely fucking up long-distance relationships, and nevermind that the circumstances of our union were scandalous at best--we weren't done, not by a long shot.

We saw each other almost every weekend that first month. It just always seemed to work out--some friends would be coming to Taylorville, I would have a commitment-free weekend--and there was no way we were turning down a chance to see each other. They were some great weekends, too. Yeah, we worked through the sudden adjustment from spending every other minute together to one weekend at a time, but we dealt and we kissed and we called and we talked and we cried and we drove and we kissed.

A few weeks ago, we started writing letters. I have never so much as kept a pen-pal, much less traded a letter a week with a long-distance girlfriend. And sweet zombie Jesus, they were works of art. Nothing seduces me like intentional fragments and the sexualization of ancient philosophers. The writing back has been similarly rewarding; the first letter, for example, went through five revisions before I could send it, and even then I was afraid that it might be too sappy or not sappy enough or just plain bad writing. May she never kiss me again, may I marry next year, may have nine kids: these letters will always be sacred to me.

Thing is, I've never had a girlfriend this perfect. We fit, and not in that overly-romanticized, "you make up what I lack" kind of fitting that you see on television. Our fitting was a perfect intersection of passions and desires. There is never a moment where one of us says something and the other smiles and shuts off. We have no boundaries, no hidden parts of our souls that we have agreed to never understand. In a way, we are constantly educating each other. You should hear our pillow talk; it is an amalgam of literary theory, role-playing, philosophy, and sexuality.

Except last Saturday. Last Saturday was different. Our chemistry had changed. She was frustrated. I was panicking. We knew it wasn't going to be easy; that's why we agreed to break up in the first place. But after that theatre party, she felt the pressure in a way she'd never thought imaginable. We talked it over and mentioned some possible solutions, but we didn't settle on anything. The situation worsened steadily for three days.

Something had to be done.

We did it tonight.

We're on a break.

...sort of. We don't know exactly what to call it. All we knew was that if things kept going on like this that we were both going to be miserable and end up resenting each other for the rest of our lives. I've given just cause for enough girls to hate me--the idea of this girl, this all-important, light of my life girl hating me was not permissable. Even if it were to end, I figured, at least let it end with dignity. At least let me keep these letters as my secret charms to ward away my loneliest thoughts.

Her main difficulty is her feeling of being leashed--she is so worried about not letting people get close to her that she has been actively shutting out the people that could very well be her new best friends. She wants to have fun, flirt, dance. But when her every other thought was an accusatory voice policing her against betraying my trust, she was making herself very unhappy. In turn, this aggravation bubbled up in our moments together, making us fight over nothings and go to bed wondering if we really should have bothered.

So as of tonight, we are in an "open relationship." Still in love, still kissing hello two weeks from now when I drive down to see The Crucible, we are nonetheless free to explore other possibilities and see how they measure up. Strangely enough, after deciding on this, I think all we wanted to do was meet halfway between here and Carbondale for a wild bout of make-up sex. Even now, three hours later with a pile of unfinished homework, I want nothing more than to sail southward into her arms.

Maybe it's a band-aid on a punctured artery. Maybe it's the euphoria of denial and false hopes. Yet... I don't think that's the case. I get the strangest feeling that any lips other than Kelsey's will turn to ash in my mouth, and that every other body will turn to cardboard in my hands. This is for her, really. If I don't let her experience for herself whether or not she wants to be with me, then I'll have doomed us to breaking each others' hearts. Even if she ultimately decides to be single, at least like this we'll have ended it happily.

I've fucked up a lot of relationships. The Amanda thing was ridiculous; the Cari thing a disaster. Pride barely tempers my regrets in either case. But this one, this one is good. I hope she calls me tomorrow and tells me this blog made her cry. I hope she kisses three people on my birthday and is bored by each and every one of them.

Most of all, I hope she still loves me this time next year.

2006-09-20T23:47:00.000-07:00

Ever notice how most geniuses are jack-asses? When was the last time you heard about a pleasant, well-adjusted genius? How many pleasant and well-adjusted people are even worth listening to, for that matter?

An amusing truth I've heard from more than a few Englishy types is that all great American authors are self-destructive. Hawthorne and Fitzgerald were drinkers, Bukowski had his heroin, and Sarah Kane only made it through five plays before finding her 4:48. The observation is remarkable enough to deserve an elaboration: it's not just American authors that are tormented by their genius. Nietzche went mad, Hitler shot himself, and Van Gogh cut off his own ear. The brilliant have a frightening tendency to destroy themselves.

The most insightful acting lesson I was ever given came from a horrible Japanese horror movie called Audition. The premise of this movie was that a lonely Chinese man convinced his movie producer best friend to help him find a mate by creating a faux audition. The actresses, rather than trying out for a leading role as they thought were auditioning for the position of the lonely Chinese man's wife. The woman eventually chosen turned out to be a psycho killer who cut off the protagonist's foot with a razor wire, but I digress. The epiphany came about a half hour into the show when the movie producer asked the leading guy why he was filtering out all of the good actresses and only looking at the horrible ones. His subtitled response:

"I want a happy wife, and happy people do not act well."

I've adapted that unlikely insight to the arts in general. In order to create something beautiful, one must first possess something dark. That is not to say that all great works are miserable, of course--Kerouac's On the Road (with acknowledgments to some insightful conversations with Abe) celebrates a dream so profoundly that it helped father an entire counterculture, yet even Kerouac spoke of broken hearted women near the Mexican border and eventually died of his chronic alcoholism.

There is a reason that villains get the best lines--we readily accept that evil requires a certain intelligence. Evil and stupidity almost seem to contradict each other--when one is mean and stupid, he is called a "jack-ass" rather than "evil." The villain represents a spark of brilliance that we desire even as we loathe it. Take the series Smallville: between its two leading males, who is the more engaging? Is it the invincible Superman, who, though not as skilled at solving problems yet, is in no physical danger whatsoever? Or is it the diabolically fascinating Lex Luthor, doomed to become Superman's antithesis, completely mortal, and ultimately more responsible for plot development than the boy of steel?

Entertainment today is renewing its fascination with the dark hero. In graphic novels and comic books, we see dark images that make Spawn look like a child with a bb gun. The Ultimates, Marvel's new comic series, features an abusive, alcoholic Captain America burned out on his time spent in the Vietnam War. Similarly, the other characters--Hawkeye, Iron Man, etc.--have been given a sinister twist as well. Needless to say, the comic is immensely popular. Meanwhile, the comic series Lucifer, one of ex-roomie Phil's favorites, stars the devil himself in all his fallen glory. And let us not forget The Watchmen, which is quickly becoming the first graphic novel to step into English canon. Rorshach--dark, unyielding, evil yet good at the same time--is an antihero among antiheroes.

On television, The Shield's detective Vic Mackey takes "greater good" very seriously. His interrogation techniques are on par with those used by Jack Bauer on 24. Gregory House of House, M.D. is addicted to painkillers, miserable, cruel, and dazzlingly brilliant. In all of these characters, genius and charisma are inextricably linked to depression and anger.

This is not a new development, of course--the noir genre has been infatuated with the dark side of humanity long before now. A friend once asked me, half-jokingly, if anyone ever really hated the world as much as noir detectives do. My first reaction was no, of course not, no one can be that depressed. After careful deliberation, I have decided that, if anyone is as depressed as film noir detective, it is a brilliant artist.

The trend goes further back. Our classics are full of fascinating villains tormented by their brilliance. The criminal mastermind Moriarty and his drug-using rival Sherlock Holmes both enjoy a touch of the dark. Wilde's Dorian Grey enjoyed an entire novel built around his narcissism, beauty, and intelligence. And of course, the ultimate example of evil genius, the devil himself, has been presented and re-presented as heroic villain and fallen hero. He steals the spotlight in Milton's legendary epic, so reasoning and intelligent that debate still continues on who the protagonist of Paradise really was.

What is good, then? Good is dull. Good is stale. Good is sameness. And most of all, good is unbelievable. There is a touch of wickedness in all of us, and we respect it even as we fear it. My theory: geniuses self-destruct because they channel so much negative energy through their mediums. Whether art, literature, film or music, as an artist opens his eyes he becomes drawn to the darkness he sees around him.

This leaves me wondering--as a potential author and student in a creative writing class, should I hope to succeed?

[yes.]

2006-09-20T17:17:00.000-07:00

Today, I did my first sit-up in three months. Legs straight, my face contorted and sweating and red, I grunted and pulled and strained and huffed until I thought I was going to explode, but I fucking did it. I finally left this progress plateau and am on my way somewhere.

This achievement coincides with the beginning of a new phase of therapy. Up until now, I've been doing stretches and isometric exercises along with pain management. Now I'm working on exercise machines, trying to get the strength back into my atrophied and inflamed muscles.

I'm paying for it too. Tried to get someone to fill in for me at the writing center, but everyone had papers or class or voicemails. I skipped class yesterday and today, but I can't abandon work. This is paying my tuition. I cannot lose this. So I'm gritting my teeth, popping my pills, and pushing through like it's my second sit-up of the day.

I enjoy this pain, though. It's new, different. This pain is intensely familiar. It is muscle pain, like the kind you get from a long day's work. It's like an exaggerated version of the day after a big moving job in a three-story house. I can feel the lactic acid tugging at my tendons. It's not in my spine. It's a welcome change.

I want to get better. I want to get through this so I can enjoy the handful of healthy years I'll have before my vertebrae start grinding together. I am passionate about this, and the passion makes the pain taste much sweeter. This is the pain of progress, of effort, of exercise. This pain has meaning. This pain is going places.

Ninety minutes to go.

2006-09-18T12:18:00.000-07:00

Jad's Smith's "Sociology of Culture" is a quality course. My peers are smart, the professor knows his shit, and the material is worthwhile. We have focused on culture and ideology--the study of society's impact on literature and other arts. Most of it has been dated information, so our own viewpoints were buffered by the fact that we were discussing 19th century England. Today, though, we covered something far more relevant: a 1973 scalding critique of Western society.

A student gave a thorough presentation on the essay, "The Culture Industry." Included in it were various comparisons to our modern state and the way that capitalism is hostile to "true artistry". The presenter felt that this article ominously foreshadowed the terrible state that our country was now in. Nodding heads and similar comparisons followed, with a general consensus that corporations suck.

The mood changed when I presented my dissent: "actually, I found the essay exaggerated and poorly argued."

It might be fun and easy to critique capitalism, but the subject gets more complicated when you're asked to propose a solution. As Churchill put it, ours is a terrible form of government but also the best one ever invented. I acknowledge the difficulties that capitalism presents. When fools represent the majority, then our culture pressures us to do some pretty stupid things. However, I respect the framework the system provides. Without it, our situation would be far, far worse.

Case in point: The Beach Boys. Our class critiqued the trend of the "beach" genre. The Boys were original, new, and artful when they first appeared, but their popularity travelled eastward and disseminated into something generic and lame. Beach movies, rip-off bands, surf punks in the Midwest--the copies diminished in quality with every reprinting.

But what if the framework did not exist? Marketing brought The Beach Boys to the entire world, and marketing kept them on tour with their bills paid. If the vile corporations had not dispersed their product, then they would never have left California. Could the music industry exist by only endorsing "true" genius?

This viewpoint commonly complains that we are manipulated into wanting trash instead of art under the illusion of the "invisible hand" bringing us objects based on our intrinsic and sacred desire for them. Expert economists and advertisers brainwash us from a young age so that we will grow up to be alcoholic TV-watching hard-working Americans, or so they say. Yet, if the worst really is true, and if we really are living in a capitalist abyss, then how do we account for all these anomalies?

For one, advertising is not perfect. It's useful sometimes, but all these evil marketing geniuses we're worried about are only correct half of the time. These fallible human beings fail as often as they succeed. Also, we can't deny that these fads and trends keep happening. If we really were being brainwashed by the corporate masterminds, then why do we keep changing? Fads happen based on new ideas, music movements ignite, and quality artwork appears on the evening news.

When critiquing reality TV a few blogs ago, I mentioned my examples of what we should be watching instead of the latest fad. Allow me to ellaborate. Even though I may not choose to watch Flava of Love because I find it trite, I am thrilled by shows like House and Rescue Me and have heard some very good things about Grey's Anatomy, Lost, and others. If the finale of House season 2 is not art, then someone really needs to tell me what is.

And for as much as I don't want to watch Tyra Banks make shallow fledgling supermodels cry, I can still change the channel. Hell, my opposition perpetuates the system. I am advertising my opinions on these shows right now, on this very blog, to an audience of consumers who will measure how much my opinion means to them and how much sense my argument makes to their own personal beliefs and tastes. I even gain a "profit" from being able to complain--it may be shallow, but I think most of us enjoy complaining about the shows we don't like. If it caused me pain to even think about Survivor,, then I wouldn't even mention the show. But I, like most people, am proud of my opinions and feel that they are well defended. Dr. Smith, when telling us about how Snakes on a Plane represented the ugliest side of capitalism, was smiling.

Anthropologists will tell you that society develops according to its food supply. Hunter/gatherer civilizations cannot produce scholars, priests, and architects because all of their members must constantly work toward providing food. As food production becomes more efficient through agricultural advances, then civilizations develop by providing for more experts, thinkers, and artisans. In a similar vein, "bad art" becomes the food that feeds greater art.

2006-09-14T15:42:00.000-07:00

Slept for fourteen hours last night--more than the rest of the week combined. I'm trying to reset myself like I did the weekend before last. It hasn't worked yet, and maybe I'll skip another class tomorrow. The sleep was great though. I woke up several times--rotating ice packs, gorging on ibuprofen, writing down a dream. Today was mostly limited to video games and a call from Kelsey. I've accomplished nothing tangible , but at least the pain's dulled.

At the Writing Center now. We've been full all week, mostly with Gateway students. "Gateway" is a school program that allows students to attend Eastern on a probationary basis despite underqualified ACT scores and/or GPA. In addition to attending a strictly controlled class schedule, these students must also complete 4 hours of "supervised study" a week. This leads to roughly half of our students being from the Gateway program.

It's hit or miss with these kids. Some are decent learners--their low test scores result from second-rate schooling rather than any personal limitation. Others are poor learners, but hard workers--they shoulder through the academic world on willpower rather than intelligence. The rest, though, are rather depressing. One in four Gateway students aren't willing to learn and don't have enough knowledge to get through on what they already know. This is my job, so I try to help them all, but there are times when I fill out an evaluation form and want to write in the comment section that this student does not belong in college. Without a willingness to learn, how do these people hope to get through college on a 15 ACT score and a 2.1 high school GPA?

My latest student was Lela, a Gateway student working on a paper for remedial English. The assignment: tell a personal narrative. Her instincts were sharp, and her introduction elegant. It began with a broad look at the importance of firsts, from the first day of school to the first ride on the bike. She segueyed from the danger of falling off and scraping your knee to the inevitable disappointment of the first boyfriend. Granted, the sentences all blurred together and the verb tense completely random, but the structure was there. She wrote like the mind thinks, and that's more valuable than grammatical perfection.

Lela and I worked on her run-on sentences and addressed a few notes made by her teacher. She looked exhausted after half an hour, so we took a break to joke about high school relationships. When we picked up our pencils again, she was a lot more relaxed, and we went through and fixed most of her run-on sentences. I gave her some notes and shook her hand at the end of our session, encouraging her to come back. As sessions go, this was ideal; the student learned something and enjoyed herself enough to want to come back.

I like my job. I have good co-workers, rewarding experiences, and free coffee. And, it's not telemarketing. *sic*

2006-09-12T12:25:00.000-07:00

Overdid the pills again today. Two Darvocet, a fistful of ibuprofen, the muscle relaxers, and a cup of strong coffee left my vision swimming through a cold sweat. I maintained today though; whether it's from practice or improvement, I'm not sure. I even made some contributions, and if my memory's working right, they were pretty coherent.

I'll balance out eventually. I actually do feel better--a lot of minor muscles had locked up from the sudden shift in activity, and now those hamstrings and deltoids are starting to move freely again. If I could only outrun my spine, I'd be golden.

Looks like Dr. Kilgore wants me to write about the accident. He picked that essay on the slow-motion fall of a furnace as the one he'd like to see expanded. The journal was well-received, with heavier critiques falling on the rush jobs. A-. Good enough. His favorite line: "it was like hearing my cells splitting, my sperm dying, the world coughing." I was proud. I liked that line too.

Also, his comment on the Quinton/Lolita write-up was terrific. "Well imitated. And I gather this is a gay affair--that kind of forbiddenness replacing the kind Nabokov writes about? I THINK I'm getting that vibe from the prose itself, not just from knowing you are male. Anyway it's neat and could be worth developing I think." Wow. I mean, it works great, but I hadn't made any conscious connection between the forbiddenness of pedophilia as compared to homosexuality. Now that he's pointed it out, I'm intrigued.

These Writing Center chairs are comfortable. The idea of blogging sounded like a good treat before the walk home. I'm going to biff physical therapy today--my fingers are crossed that Shane doesn't blame it on my cancelling Friday's appointment, even if it's true. There's plenty of other truths I'm being forced to ackowledge. I choose to ignore this one to spite the others. Call it an indulgence, a bad idea, a metaphorical cigarette inhaled into a cancer-ridden spine. I had a good weekend.

My mind's clearing some, at least enough to notice that I need to leave now to make it to therapy. Time to face the truth of how walking home sucks.

2006-09-09T18:00:00.000-07:00

In Carbondale for my second weekend in a row. It's been fun, with less of me pretending like I want to drink and more of simple little things like a late night trip to Applebeas and a bit of DnD. The back's a bit more sore this time around, but I'm dealing.

Last night was difficult. Kelsey was seducing me, but too much walking and lifting and moving had tied my spine in a knot. I had to tell her to stop, and it hurt her. I'd dropped a lot of pills just beforehand, and nodded off, but when I woke she was still on the verge of tears. I hated myself for it.

We made up, cheered up, whatever you want to call it, and things have been great since then. She's at a meeting right now, beginning work on tomorrow's "One Day Play." The others are in the living room watching Snatch while I type.

It won't be feasible to make weekly trips to Carbondale, but for now it's a nice indulgence. I feel so taken care of, with my girlfriend and my best friend and Dave and Kenny close at hand. There's a lot of love here. The bed's are comfortable and so are the chairs. And with this whole second weekend in a row thing, I feel much less rushed to fit it all in. This is relaxed and comfortable. Hell, this is sacred.

We'll play a little more DnD before I take Kelsey home so she can rest up for the All-Day Play tomorrow. I'll have that time to myself for homework and sleep, catching her show in the afternoon before leaving. Then it's a quick stop by Taylorville to pick up legal records and credit card bills and back in Charleston by 10. Which reminds me, I need to call Chain and tell him I'll be late. The original plan had been to leave tomorrow afternoon, but I've not surprisingly gotten excited about seeing Kelsey on stage. Gaming will go on without me. I rather think I need this.

She'll be getting back soon, and I need to do my exercise. Next post will probably be Monday from the Writing Center.

2006-09-07T01:39:00.000-07:00

And just because I'm not happy with the sentence rewrite on third glance, we'll try a seventh. It's good. And fun.

Journal Entry 7: A Modest Proposal
Ladies and gentleman, we stand on the brink of a new golden age of technology. Every day we grow closer and closer to the cure to the problem that has eluded mankind throughout all of creation. No, I am not speaking of war or death or taxes--these so-called problems are only symptoms of a greater problem that it is quickly becoming without our power to eliminate. Some day, some day soon, we will reach our promised land. We will find our heaven on Earth.

We will all be happy.

Imagine, a world where we can let any unpleasantness slide off our backs with a noble enlightenment that would shame Martin Luther King Junior and make Buddha blush. Pick any problem our people have suffered, and happiness is the cure. Hungry? Be happy. When happy, you will possess the peace of mind necessary to find good work and pay your bills. Unemployment, you say? Not a problem--when all the overachieving workaholics of the world are happy, they'll start taking shorter hours and sharing them with the underprivileged. Happiness can balance the world, if only we can distribute it.

I say "distribute" and not "discover" because we have been blessed with minds brilliant enough to harvest it. Ritalin, Zoloft, and several other varieties of happiness is available in pill form today. The government, though they mean the very best for us, is the only thing standing in our way, and that is only because they do not understand the possibilities that global use of mood enhancers present. If we can convince the FDA to lift all bans on life-improving medicines such as these, then captalism and human ingenuity will take care of the rest.

As companies compete to make cheaper and more efficient mood enhancers, we will soon be scoffing at Ritalin as a barbaric relic of a lost age, the medical equivalent of whiskey as an anesthetic. Even pills may someday be left behind--a blanket lift of bans on mood enhancers would make it possible to include it as an ingredient in all of our favorite foods. Imagine, a world where you really could feel happy about every purchase you made, where joy and fulfillment are measured by the gram on the sides of your cereal boxes.

Naturally, there are some who would oppose this action. Yet, this is only due to bad publicity and a very understandable hesitance to evolve with the technology our race invents. Just as the Amish eschew the amazing gifts our modern researchers have developed, so too will there be quaint, stubborn zealots who will always resist the logical changes being made to our society. Aside from those embarrassing minorities, the rest of our society will come around as more information is made known. After all, who, given the choice between happiness and the depression of ordinary life, would not choose to be happy? It is such a basic thing, happiness, and we are all so close to it without even realizing it. The only tragedy that could come from a world where everyone has access to as much pleasure as they desire is those who are immune to or build up a resistance to this sacred gift. For them, we will hold nothing but sympathy, and programs will gladly be set up by the fortunate for these lost souls. There will be hope as well, as the world will continue to develop happiness into better and more effective forms, so that even the unfortunate can have their chance at completely enjoying life.

The world is a beautiful place, so why shouldn't we live beautiful lives. We must all work harder to create the greatest paradise even imagined by man. We must lift all laws restricting the development of happiness or its distribution. We must talk to our children and encourage them to take advantage of the happiness offered by their doctors so that they can enjoy more of life than we have been able to. We must raise our voices as one and say to one another "be happy, brother!" and "be happy, sister!" until those in power at last listen and understand that such a miracle is a real possibility and worthwhile goal for humanity.

2006-09-07T01:05:00.000-07:00

Three a.m. in the graduate assistant office cubicles--I could get used to this. No one around but a janitor who looked at me funny until I opened a door with my own keys. I feel like I own this place. I'm secluded. Hell, maybe I'm hiding. It works.

That's three journals down, three to go. I lost my syllabus somewhere between here and Carbondale, which means I'll be half-remembering the assignments during this blogger binge. Grab the popcorn if you plan to read--we're gonna be here for awhile...

Journal Entry X: Mimicking a Style from a Favorite Short Story

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.
Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps
down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in
one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was
Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
-- Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita"

Quinton Haines, tenor to my bass, man I would die for. My devil, my angel. Quin-ton Haines: rolled from the back of the throat to the lips and tossed back for some more, ending in a final sigh and sizzle. Quin. Ton. Haines.

He was Q, just Q, on the telephone, standing no doubt naked in his bedroom. He was Q-dawg at bad parties. He was Quintonio in jest. He was Quinton Matthew on the dotted line. But in my heart he was always Quinnie.

Journal Exercise Y: A Brief Two Paragraph Portrait of a Person
Look at him. I hate him. Everything about him. His olive skin screams of the artificial--it is as plastic as his smile. He wears it as though he's waiting for me to fall in love with it. I won't. I want to break it. And while I'm at it, I want to break his taut stomach. No, "break" isn't right. I will rip it asunder. I will pull them out sinew by sinew, with my teeth, and I will spit them back into his insincere brown eyes.

Or perhaps I should poison him, so I can at last hear something in his voice other than arrogance. The only difference I've ever noticed is the addition of a slur after a dozen cans of cheap beer or expensive wine. When he realizes what has happened, as his lungs and kidneys and heart and mind start to fail him, then he'll know repentance, then he'll know shame. I will take vengeance for all the people he has injured with his unempathic ignorance, but do not let that fool you into sympathizing with my cause--my interest is selfish. I want to watch him suffer. I want to smite him with such thoroughness and such unexpectedness that I will know for a moment what it is like to be God.

Afterthought: I think such an exaggeration still qualifies as creative nonfiction. It's a trope to describe a person, at least!

Journal Exercise Z: Epistolary Beginning

Dear Left Arm,
How did we grow so far apart? We still spend every waking moment together--in fact, you are even helping me write you. And yet, you are only doing this out of dutiful reflex. Had we not done this so many times before, could I teach you, with how we are now?

You feel like you have been wearing a wet suit for months now. We have lost touch, you and I, and there is so much you keep from me. At first, I thought you deserved to keep the world to your self for awhile. After all you had went through, I was glad to give you something for your trouble and your pain. But please, come back. I want to hear all the wonderful things you've been doing without me. Did you enjoy the hot tub? How does Kelsey's skin feel? Do you still enjoy writing?

Have I hurt you without realizing it?

Come back, and I promise to treat you better. We will go for a night on the town, you and me, and we'll come back with a bag full of the best pens and paintbrushes money can buy. I'll dress you gold or leather or velvet or furs as you desire. Just please, talk to me. Let me know you're happy. Or let me know you are in pain. At least then I can try to do something about it. I do not mean to ignore you.

Love,
Mario

2006-09-06T16:38:00.000-07:00

Journal Exercise: Describing a Scene with Senses

Impossible loudness. Wood snaps, metal squeels, and concrete crumbles. Concrete cinderblocks, inches away--they fall like stacked cards.

There was a beginning, somewhere. A prime mover. A first sound. It was the sound of a two-by-four breaking like a toothpick between my fingers. That sound bred ten more in the first half second, and a hundred more in the next. It was like hearing my cells splitting, my sperm dying, the world coughing.

The sound grows. The metal makes more noise as it gets closer; there is a groan under the shrill scraping, the groan of lead pipes underneath the scratching of tin siding folding in on itself. My sprinting eyes finally make it to the ceiling. It is almost on me. I am awed by its power. A flower. My disaster looks like a flower. In the center, an ancient metal furnace dips downward on its lead stem. Surrounding it are wooden planks, snapping so rapidly that they look like petals flowing in a strong wind.

I lift a hand to the heavenly sight, and I see my wrist. It is muddy with sweat and dirt, stained brown by the earth and tinted red by the sun. I had noticed it earlier that day, as I was taking a sledgehammer to some stubborn wood. This is good work, I had thought. My body ached and my skin burned, but I was happy, and my muscles were growing strong under the labor. I had been proud of my wrist then. The flower, though is going to change that. I understand. And yet, my priorities are clear. My hand sacrifices itself for my eyes and face.

The impact is sudden and anticlimactic. I expect the world to get even louder, but instead it runs away. My body crumbles beneath the force, and the world blinks out like an old television. I feel, with great suddenness and clarity, the impact of my skull against the cement. Then, the noise ends, my ears pop, and my brain bounces against the back of my head.

2006-08-31T17:01:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's still early. Two hours til the writing center closes. This one should be easy: I do this all the time already. A final note on our journal exercises is that we are welcome to invent alternate exercises of our own if we like, so I cheated on the "sentence of 20-40 words" part to create something more basic. Maybe I could make this into a three-part study: the basic idea, a longer version of the same idea, and finally an epic sentence tossed and turned into a myriad of colons and dashes. Maybe not. Either way, this one was fun.

Journal Exercise 14: Sentence Rewrite
From something you have written, choose a sentence of 20-40 words; then rewrite it 6-10 times keeping the diction largely the same, but exploring all the different possibilities of varying structure and syntax. Notice how each version of the sentence has a slightly different impact and emphasis from all the others.

Tomorrow night, I will sleep in another person's bed.
Primary focus is on "bed", showing that I am thinking of the physical nature of sleeping in another bed. Taken in certain contexts, this could fit into a discussion on the particular comforts or discomforts of my bed. This could provide an effective transition connecting a discussion of last night's sleep to my evening plans. This could be sexual or platonic in nature--the sentence does not specify. Secondary focus falls on "tomorrow night", meaning that it is essential, probably for clarity's sake, to mention that the sleeping takes place tomorrow.

I will sleep in another person's bed tomorrow night.
Focus falls completely on "tomorrow night" here. This sentence would probably follow a discussion of where I'm sleeping tonight. The other details rely completely on context; it is hard to tell whether it's more important that I'm sleeping or more important that it's not another person's bed. That makes it a weaker sentence for me. It says too little.

Tomorrow night, in another person's bed, I will sleep.
This approach evens out the focus with a slight lean towards sleeping. It's important that it's tomorrow night, and it's important that it's another bed, but, primarily, this sentence is about my sleeping. It might be too much for some sentences, but has the potential to be a powerful thesis for a short essay. The next sentences could focus on last night and the night before last, sleeping restlessly for want of a warm body. The sentences after that could focus on that "another person". Those being said, we fall naturally into the paragraph closer about how much I need a good night's rest. This sentence does a lot, and might overwhelm less aggressive sections of text.

In another person's bed, I will tomorrow night sleep.
Similar to our first example, this swaps the stress on "tomorrow night" and replaces it with "bed." Sleep is still paramound, but the detail of "another person's bed" is necessary for clarification. Compared to our previous powerhouse, this sentence belongs in the thick of things, bringing us from a thought about my bed to a thought about sleep and oh-how-good that would be.

In the bed of another person I will sleep tomorrow night.
This sentence almost warrants a comma after "person", but I kept it this way since it can sorta get along without it. This sentence puts faint stress on "person" and primary stress on "tomorrow night." I feel kinda slutty writing this one, as I note for clarity but do not seem overly concerned that this is yet another person with whom I am sleeping tomorrow. This sentence implies that I've been sleeping in several persons' beds and am noting a change in location.

Tomorrow night, I will sleep in the bed of another person.
This sentence has direct and powerful observations, second only to the double-comma'd monarch above. Tomorrow night (again, a clarification and secondary focus), I am with another person. This marks a big life change for me, as though I've been sleeping in one other person's bed for a long time and will, starting tomorrow night, be sleeping in this bed. Or, if this were a piece reflecting on a more subtle personal change, that other person could be myself. That I am sleeping is irrelevent. The key is that, tomorrow night, things are changing.

Afterthoughts
Connotation leans towards sexual in most, but not all of the incarnations of the starting sentence. Focus falls towards the end of the sentence, with subjunctive clauses at the beginning showing clarifying details not essential to the main ideas of the sentence. As a general rule, more commas means more ideas revolving around a central idea usually outlined in the end. I could have been bolder with punctuation, but too many semicolons and the like would have detracted from the subtle differences of mere word placement and a few commas. I think the point is made with the above examples--rhetorical grammar matters.

2006-08-31T16:06:00.000-07:00

This could be as good a forum as any for my creative writing journals. I haven't been keeping up on them--six are due next Friday. They're short writing exercises taken from a list or developed on our own. As these could eventually evolve into essays, any constructive criticism in the comment box would be appreciated. Also, these could be a refreshing change of pace from my daily spine-whine. So here goes:

Journal Exercise 5: Opening With A Paradox
Begin an essay by stating the contrary of something all people, or some people, or at any rate an identifiable consensus, knows to be true. Then scramble to set up an argument which will explain and justify the opening without turning it into a mere trick.

We want to be happy. Anne Frank told me in her diary that we all live with the objective of being happy, and my mom told me that I should do what makes me happy. So I've done what I can in the name of happiness; chased it, worked for it, built it and wallowed in it.

Christianity worked in sixth grade. I was happy. Secure in Christ's love and the fellowship of the rest of the flock, I didn't have a care in the world. What did anything matter, knowing that God's love would see me into paradise? I was Marx's opiated mass, and I was happy. Through the enlightenment of my faith, I didn't need to indulge in plebian pleasures like drinking, thinking, or masturbation. Life was good. I was happy.

But when Jesus vanished in a puff of logic, I became unhappy. So I kept looking, and found a girl. She didn't last quite as long, but she worked just as well. I was happy. Then it was over. I dove into anything, everything in search of that elusive goal: cross-country running, literature, weed, blow jobs, another girl, music. But each happiness was more fleeting than the last.

Older now, I'm better at making my happinesses last. You could say I've beaten the system. Anything can make me happy, so long as I don't think about it as much. It's no longer something elusive--it's there for the taking, if only I can work for it.

Still, it can be exhausting to not think about something.

2006-08-30T06:40:00.000-07:00

I'm stoned. They gave me the good shit in the ER yesterday--shot me with an intravenous anti-dizziness/nausea drug. I'm still stoned. When they put it in me, it felt cold, and for some reason I thought I smelled mint. I passed out for an hour right afterwards, and I'm still in a stupor.

We'd just added some neck exercises in physical therapy when the world started spinning and my left side went numb. They started taking my blood pressure, and it was all over the place: 104/60 one minute; 160/90 the next. When I didn't stabilize after half an hour, they called for an ambulance and sent me to the hospital down the road.

The ER doctor called it dehydration and sent me home with a note for fluids and bedrest (haven't been given doctor's note since high school). Not sure how he combined the history of severe trauma with sudden onset of numbness and nausea to produce dehydration, but whatever. Kinda worried, especially with the appointment this Friday. That, and I haven't been completely coherent since it happened. I need this medicine to wear off so I can figure out how my brain's working.

Still, made it into the writing center this morning to give an orientation. Stumbled over the words some, but made it through. Now I'm going home and going to bed. Haven't called mom yet. She'll be worried sick. Shit, I'm worried sick.

Hurry up, Friday.

2006-08-28T17:51:00.000-07:00

It's been a good day. Kept focus in both classes and assimilated a lot of information and critical thoughts. Got a little bit of Marxism, a great discussion on East Asian language barriers, and a touch of poetry. I've balanced the pain-killers pretty well today, and taking the elevator instead of the stairs has made things a little easier. Taking it easy over the weekend surely helped too--I'm just hoping this is a plateau rather than a pinnacle.

Everyone be sure to congratulate Kelsey on her getting a speaking, secondary role in Arthur Miller's The Crucible. She put everything she had into it, and for her first audition outside of THS, it's quite an achievement. *clap clap clap*

[miss you too]

Applied for a freelance writing job. It's pretty stale--revising an 8 chapter professional manual for some small company--but it's work. The potential employer wants someone to go through, proofread the typos, and mold the text to have a "common voice." I can work on it on my own time, with a deadline probably a month from now. Despite the hundredfold joys of proofreading a dozen economists (no offense Chain), I'm excited about the opportunity. For one, it's a stay-at-home job that won't strain the spine; moreover, it's a resume-padder and chance to see how I measure up to the professionals.

In other news, I've begun tutoring. The first was terrific: Miss Coles County 2004 herself, looking for help with grammar, punctuation, and brainstorming to add length to a minor paper. Let me tell you, Miss C.C. had the most amazing semicolons I've ever seen. She was worried about her punctuation, and granted, she missed a few commas here and there, but her use of the semicolon was exquisite. She had it all: seperating complex items in a list, dividing related independent clauses, and (my personal favorite) dividing conflicting independent clauses through the use of a linking transition such as "however" or "furthermore." I used one in the last sentence of the previous paragraph if you need an example. Most of the faculty around here prefer the dash. They see it as less rigidly formal and old-fashioned. The semicolon, they seem to think, is a decadent form of punctuation doomed to join Latin in the graveyards of language. But I still have a fondness for the regal semicolon, confounding typists across the world with its prominent position on the home row. And Miss Coles County 2004 shared my love, gently tucking it in with an obviously A-quality paper between with maternal grace. After fawning over her beautiful semicolons for a few minutes, we expanded some minor points in her paper and tweaked her verbs. All in all, my first session spoiled me.

My second student was not as easy and avoided semicolons at all costs. Mitsumi, an ESL (English Second Language) student from Korea, could not afford to tread near such complex punctuation. She, as well as many other ESL students, has a terrible time bridging the gap between her native tongue and English. I failed her. I could not teach her. Oh sure, she was the perfect East Asian student, nodding her head and agreeing with everything I said. She thanked me graciously when our session was over and eagerly scheduled her next appointment. But I know--I know the knowledge didn't stick. It had to be overwhelming. If only I spoke Korean! Or at least dabbled in it, picking up some of the grammar and conjugation. Then I'd be able to find the narrowest parts of the language gap and start building our bridge from there. I want to be able to understand why articles (a, an, the) are so difficult for native East Asian speakers so that I can approach them from a productive level. It might end up being my research project for the semester. We have to do a study that involves the writing center in some way, and this seems like something that I've already invested a lot of thought and energy into.

To wrap up this rambling series of anecdotes, yeah--a good day. I'll try desperately to maintain this momentum. After all, big weekend coming up. This Friday is neurosurgeon day. Gotta have all my faculties for that one. Then there's a three-day weekend in Carbondale to grapple with whatever life-changing decision me and Dr. Van Feeld make on September 1st, 12:30 p.m.

2006-08-24T16:13:00.000-07:00

Started round 2 of physical therapy today. The doc gave me this weird form of pain medication--four electrodes and a battery unit that I use to put tiny shocks into my muscles. Not painful, just bizarre. Corey's gonna love it. I'll tell him that it's part of my secret English major super hero equipment, that it was issued to me to fight econ majors in the name of justice, democracy, and subject-verb agreement.

Cool as it is, I don't think it's worth the $200 rental fee that the insurance company paid for it. It didn't really do anything but give me something to play with. Hell, maybe it made things worse. Today sucked. I blame the lack of sleep--not the usual, drinking-all-night fun lack of sleep, but rather a malignant insomnia, brought about by the see-saw of drugs and pain. Too many Darvocet puts my mind in a weird place where it can't stop focusing on a broad subject, like a book or a person, but is unable to narrow that focus on anything specific such as a page or a memory. Just this strange state of turning pages and noting the space between the parts I remember. Surreal. And not conducive to sleep.

Hopefully a weekend off will settle me down and put me in a better learning mode. My neurosurgeon appointment is on the first, and that's when I get the final call for long term treatment. If it's going to be surgery, I'll know next Friday. The St. Louis specialist has all my records, all my charts, all the cross-sections of my insides, and we'll be making some big decisions. I'm ready for it. Anxious, even. I've got a long list of questions and doubts I'd like to run by this guy. Besides, if I'm going to have major back surgery in the next month or two, I'll have to start talking to my professors and see if I should extend my semester or drop out or hurry up or, well shit, I don't know what a student is supposed to do if he gets his spine fused together over fall break.

Okay, that out of the way, it's time for self-induced therapy. I'm dwelling on this. There's other shit I can be thinking about, like how House Season 3 starting next month, or how all my friends are reading Sarah Kane today. There's Dr. Tellis having moved to New York after his two years of hating Charleston, that's big news. Pretty major influence on my life there, after all, now gone until I go on a pilgrimage to visit my old guru. I should call him, see if he can talk me into writing some poetry for open mic Thursdays at the JAC (local coffee joint).

I have my first tutoree scheduled in an hour. Pretty excited about that. Ingrid from Europe. Probably wants to double-check her American English. Apparently that's the only people we hear from for the first few weeks of school--immigrant students wanting to brush up on their grammar. As time goes on, we'll start getting a batch of meticulous students wanting to make sure they get straight As in their English 1001 course. Then we get the real fun stuff, all the ones who failed and got sent here by their professors. Then it's a whirlwind of activity until the climax of finals week, and rinse and repeat in the spring.

The money starts coming in next week. Shoestring budget until then, but by the time I leave town I'll have gotten my thousand dollar scholarship as well as my first paycheck from my assistantship. I'm excited--that's actually enough to have some flexibility with. After paying some loose bills and filling my gas tank, EIU is buying me a big medium rare New York Strip with french fries and free refills of Dr. Pepper. A thousand dollars doesn't quite qualify as financial security, but it can manage that much at least. Besides, a good steak is critical to my education.

I suspect my blogger frequency is going to continue to skyrocket. Even with my computer temporarily internetless, I'm in the writing center almost every day. And hell, why not write in the writing center? It's, um, research.

2006-08-23T16:27:00.000-07:00

Another thing about Kilgore's creative non-fiction class: Cari's in it. Talk about awkward. She reached for her cell phone as soon as I walked in the room, stabbing out a text message to one of her friends. As my last post would hint, it was a bad day pain-wise, and I was high on pills for our first class. Still, it made me remember how I used to beg to read her stories, and how she'd shy away and tell me that I couldn't see it until it was in its final, final draft (and even then, maybe). She did let me take a peek at it toward the end of the semester, and what a great feeling that was. She's good. Real good.

So, mixed feelings about sharing the class with her. My arrival smacked her in the face--creative nonfiction, one of her hidden joys, her sanctuary away from the drama of the theatre department, now polluted by the addition of last year's complication. I know we're both crossing our fingers that we don't get put together by the random group projects. I know we'll take everything personally, that critiquing each other's work is going to be like tiptoeing on shrapnel.

And I wonder if we'll end up writing about each other. It's an odd quandary--had either of us been in the class alone, our relationship would have been a subject for several journals. Yet, the idea that we'd be speaking to each other through short story leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Doubly yet, the idea that my presence is going to create a mutual censorship leaves an even worse taste. Or, could this even be therapeutic? I'll have to mull over this one for awhile. A long while.

In spite of the drama, and in spite of having broken up with her two months ago, I still admire Cari's writing. The gap between her writing style and her personality is so tiny that it's almost unnoticable, and that's a rare and valuable thing. Her best work, as I remember, was about an art museum in Europe, where she saw herself in a propaganda artist's painting of his wife. I know she hates me, and with good reason, but I hope that hate doesn't limit what we can get out of the class. Writing means a lot to both of us. We are like divorced parents, forced together at our child's baseball game. Will this be a competition? An absolution?

An explosion?

2006-08-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

I think college might be killing me. Never thought I'd fess up to something like this, but I am in constant pain. There's on days and off days, but for the most part, I think every day is getting worse. The numbness is spreading--behind the legs, small of the back, genitals. It's like my skin is a wet suit, a mechanical insulation that keeps me alive but remains detached from the rest of my body. My left hand has been twitching today, which might be related to the way my neck is locked up.

Stairs. Fucking stairs. Who knew there'd be so many? I exhaust myself going up them, clinging to the rail like I'm crippled. My friends tiptoe around the subject, trying to let me keep my pride while doing small favors for what are now big things. Like when I forgot to take my cigarettes up the three flights of stairs to Matt's place and Chain went and got them for me. I wanted to kiss him, I was so glad not to have to fumble down those again.

But I can't just lay back and rest. This is too important, too sacred to be put on the back burner. This is grad school, the big deal, the shit I'm finally taking seriously. The classes all seem wonderful, from literary theory to creative nonfiction to third world literature. I need this. My mind is so actualized in this environment, in these classes, finally rid of the rabble.

The argument between my body and my mind is intense. Like in creative nonfiction today. Brilliant people, beautiful people with wonderful stories and agile minds. My eyes kept drifting to my backpack and the painkillers inside it. Numb the pain, numb the mind... why the fuck do I have to decide between the two?

I'm trying to be tough about this, but I'm kinda freaking out here. I'm afraid, really-fucking-afraid. I don't want to leave, but I don't want to break myself either. Is this twisting my body beyond repair? Should I be in bed this month, this semester, this year? I keep telling myself that it's just school, this shit should be easy. It's just walking and sitting! Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! I fear stairs?! Fuck!!

fuck.

fuck.

fuck.

fuck.

breathe.

one last fuck.

Ok, I'm calm. Calmer. Still twitching. Keep accidentally tapping the "D" button when I'm on the home row. Pardon the nervous breakdown. I'm cool. Really. Just gotta slow it down a little more. Dr. Kilgore told me to deal with my body first and his class second, that he understood and to just keep him posted. I almost cried for that tiny grace.

2006-08-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

Just flipped through the channels and found six reality shows. Modeling reality. Music reality. Talent reality twice. Ultimate fighting reality. Cooking reality. Cooking reality: who will the next great television chef be?

When I was in grade school, I used to love watching the W.W.F. Jake "The Snake" Roberts, the Ultimate Warrior, Hulk Hogan, the Undertaker, even the Bushwhackers. I'd watch it with my dad, watch it with my friends--it was fun and put you in the mood to be rowdy. But then, somewhere around third grade I think, I finally concluded that TV wrestling was completely staged. Haven't liked watching it since then. Seems contradictory, don't it? I have always known that television shows and cartoons aren't real, either. Yet, I think it was the illusion that bothered me. When I realized that I'd been duped, and that there were plenty of other people out there being duped, the magic disappeared. The acting, when measured up to other shows, is horrible, and the stage fights are like watching bad action movies. When the illusion was gone, so too was my interest.

I've never been into reality TV, but it had died a similar death to me. I know it's an illusion, with interviewed actors chosen for exaggerated qualities and paid to fit into their archetype. Worse than watching the show, though, is watching other people who are caught up in the phenomenon, who actually believe that what they're watching is the way that "real people" would act in such a situation. Caught up in the illusion. I want to shatter it.

And it's fucking everywhere! The next big TV fad, represented by every genre from cooking to science fiction, copies of copies of an original document that wasn't a great read to begin with. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't capitalist evidence that America loves this shit, that millions of viewers are crying for amateur actors following soap opera scripts. Meanwhile, brilliant dramas like House are being re-run at 10:30 p.m. on U.S.A.

Producers have hard evidence sitting on their desks that they'll make more money with another reality show than by taking the risk of creating something truly artful. Follow the formula and you can make a million dollars easy. Let someone else try to make the next Seinfeld--this is a business.

I hope the fad passes soon. I hope we evolve into a different spectacle, like made-for-TV hacker movies or another wave of cop dramas. At least with those, if I call them "bad fiction" I won't have people disagreeing with my adjective and my noun. Until then, I have my House, and other wonderful shows like Rescue Me and The Venture Brothers and Cheers. There's still hope, still art hiding somewhere if you know where to look.

But reality TV can blow me.

2006-08-11T06:30:00.000-07:00

The wrist is healed! An easy-to-injure bone, I was warned, and I'd better take it easy, I was warned, but lo--the cast is off and the only pain is the stiffness.

As I'd been told, the smell of a cast coming off was a cross between the high school locker room and five hundred asses shitting Taco Bell in tandem. Underneath, my skin had wilted. As if the sweat weren't enough, water had gotten in during a few showers, and my unfeeling hands had failed to warn me until it'd leaked down to my forearms. Concentric rings lent a touch of the mechanical to my pestilent appendage, rings formed by too much fiddling with the cloth underneath.

Checking my hand, the doctor told me I'd made a solid recovery and asked if I wanted to schedule a follow-up appointment. With school around the corner, I was happy to decline, and I raced for the nearest bathroom to scrub my forearm for the first time in over a month. Somewhere along the way, I also started laughing. It was a desperate sort of laughter, the kind you share with a friend while telling him a difficult good-bye, the kind that makes you feel better and worse at the same time. At last, something was healing. Seemed like every time I'd been to the doctor lately, it was only to find out about something else that was broken. I'd forgotten the last time that I'd left a doctor while feeling good about my diagnosis.

I washed the hand a second time five minutes later at a gas station in Springfield. I was brimming with excitement, but at 10:15 a.m. everyone I knew was either at work or still in bed. I had to tell someone though. Ended up calling my lawyer. Told his secretary to let him know that the doctor had released me as recovered. "That's it?" she asked me. Yeah, that was it.

Five minutes at home and I was already in the shower. I'd only taken a short break to call China and make sure she would still be in town to receive my fifty bucks for Gen-Con. "Make it the longest shower of your life," she ordered. I realized in hindsight that I should have told her that there was no way, that at the old dungeon apartment I would shower for two hours on free water to save on my electric bill. Still, I made a good showing of it, about forty minutes of bag-free bliss. Probably scrubbed my wrist five times before turning off the water. Sang 80s songs. Laughed some more.

2006-08-09T18:42:00.000-07:00

My room looks strange. No bed, no desk, no dresser--just a pile of junk that I'm sorting through in little bursts of activity followed by fifteen minutes on an icepack. As the pile diminishes, the room looks more and more foreign. Eventually, even the walls will be bare: stripped of my junior high doodles and high school posters. Mom's looking for an inexpensive guest bed so that my nephews and I have somewhere to sleep, but looking at it now, I know this will never be my room again.

As surreal as the realization is, I'm surprisingly comfortable with it. Taylorville's sanctity will survive my no longer being a resident of it. And looking forward, I'm starting to get really, really excited. Partly it's the move, but moreover, it's the job waiting for me. I keep pondering this grad assistant thing, and it feels wonderful to know that I finally have a job that relates to my career. Granted, it's bottom rung, but shit--I'm finally on the actual ladder. Good thing, too; heavy lifting (of kegs et cetera) is strictly off-limits to my accordian spine.

Oh yeah, the medical update. Turns out I'm extra fucked. An MRI of my lower back revealed that three out of every four discs are smooshed, a few smooshed in a severe, foot-numbing manner. I wasn't exactly happy when the MRI of my neck revealed permanent spinal damage, but this is as daunting as it is ridiculous. I have the back of a seventy year-old retired laborer. I don't even want to list the next set of dcotors and tests and potential surgeries that await me this year.

That's more of an update than a thought, though. Or maybe it's just that I try not to think about it. On the upside, this stinky cast comes off tomorrow morning, and then it's one more dog-sitting for the summer. Quinton's in town, another plus, and he's offering coffee.

Coffee sounds good. Next post from Karen's.

2006-08-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

August 8th? Snuck up fast. Two weeks just flashed by like lightning. Stormy lightning. Electricity and thunder.

Last post: July 22nd. Three times now I've stared at the blinking cursor and wondered what I should write--what should be appropriate to write. Whether it's my strained friendship with China or the immensely unpopular Cari decision or even the by-now cliche` accident angle, seems like everything on my mind just hasn't felt like it belongs on my public forum. But then I imagine reading an apology like that on someone else's blog and am disappointed. Appropriate? Unpopular? Stick to your guns, man!

And I think... think...

August 8th blog post, take two:

Quinton's pad, Carbondale. Yeah, I'm friends with the other two guys living here--Kenny and Dave--but calling it Quinton's makes me feel like I've travelled longer for a better cause. Going to Quinton's is ritual, pilgrimage, quest. It began my freshman year of high school, when the beginnings of best friendship saw me at some of the best parties of Taylorville. The setting sun of my idealistic restraint saw me smoke-free in those days, armed with a gallon of orange juice, pouring people screwdrivers and "taking my O.J. straight." Three years of high school molded an awkward nerd into something that could pass in normal society. Then Quinton went to college, beginning my college times a year eary as I embarked on my very first pilgrimages, drinking and pranking and philosophizing with Mike Dineen and the rest of his college cast. Now, just about to begin my fifth year of college, the spirit of the pilgrimage rises again.

And it has been heaven. A smoke-and-DnD-filled heaven. I've lost track of how much gaming we've done in the past four days, interrupted only by movies, food, cigarettes, and sleep. This is a nerd bender of Tolkienesque proportions, as vast as the orc armies of Sauron walking on Minas Tirith. Reality looms on tomorrow morning, but for now, I'm loving the vacation.

Greg and Kelsey are here with me. Along with the local residents, it's no surprise that I've been enjoying myself. Running from your problems has never been so much fun. At Quinton's house, there are no strained friendships or physical therapy or increasingly worse doctors' visits. Here, I get to feel strong being weak.

Greg is something like my number one fan. The faith he has in me is staggering. Every couple of days he pressures me to go out and write for Wizards of the Coast, to combine my two greatest joys (DnD and literature) and become the next big name in gaming. "Monte who?" he asks me. It's refreshing, too, that Greg is that enthusiastic about almost everything. There's a beautiful straightforwardness to his way of laughing, of enjoying a moment, of drinking and of playing. Even his anger is inspirational, as it is so complete and functional. When Greg is angry, there is no room for ambiguities--he is neither wrathful nor apprehensive nor capricious--no, he is angry. I fiercely envy his lack of adjectives.

And Kelsey, well, we've been dating for awhile now. Our original intent was that it be a summer fling, a fun rebound from our respective others. Hell, we even set a break-up date: August 18th, just in time for college. Like usual, the whole casual dating thing has gotten more romantic than originally planned, but it's brought a lot of joy to the past month. She's been driving me to specialists and keeping me from going insane with all this free time. It's been good: a fond memory in a maelstrom of bad ones. More on us later.

The escape can't last. Tomorrow morning I finish my move to Charleston. Mom and Danny (brother-in-law) are driving out with me and some furniture pieces. With physical therapy done, there's not much keeping me in Taylorville. As nice as another summer at home has been, it's about time to begin the next semester. My last task here is a dogsitting job from Thursday through Sunday. After that, my only bed will be at Eastern.

Better go pick up my toys.

2006-07-22T11:27:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a running dream. It's like flying, only without completely trumping gravity. Each step takes me several feet though, and I never get tired, and I can go, go, go as much or as long or as fast as I want. I love running dreams.

Kenny's coming into town tonight for his birthday, and I hope I can take care of the guy. I haven't put any planning into his arrival--sorta figured we'd just drink at Quinton's--but it should work out. Birthdays in Taylorville usually do.

No more pills. I'm done with them for the time being. The pain is managable and the muscles just need time, so they're getting shoved in a drawer and forgotten unless there's a drastic change. There's a true pleasure to not keeping track of pills every day. And let's not forget the pleasure that a few drinks can provide.

Barstools tear up my back, but the beer at least is tasting good again. I can usually convince my friends to join me at a table anyway, and the normalcy makes the booze that much more delicious. Went out and played yuker at the Tap last night with Heath and Jen (my 11th grade English teacher)--it was my first time, but I caught on quickly and made a good night out of it.

My new cast is filling up quickly. China gave me a laser and a self-destruct button. Emma wrote a line from a favorite poem. My former boss at China Pavilion wrote her name in kanji. I have smiley faces and hearts and Courage the Cowardly Dog and Xs and Os. Nephew Corey even signed his name in a style remarkably like my own handwriting (I was proud). Frankly, I'm already running out of room on the damn thing, which is a roundabout way of saying that Taylorville still takes care of me.

I'm gearing up for school, scrounging money for apartment and double-checking my classes. For once, my finances are looking terrific, with the stipend from the grad assistantship more than covering my needs, and a handy scholarship giving me the flexibility to enjoy my off-hours. The grad assistantship, for those unfamiliar, is a job working for the university as a bottom-rung academic. I'll start out by tutoring in Eastern's Writing Center, helping people with their essays. After taking my "Introduction to Teaching Composition", I might be lucky enough to be an assistant to a professor, or maybe even teach my own English class. Regardless of what they have me doing, the pay is the same: a $700/mo. stipend and a complete tuition waiver. Feels like a step in the right direction, eh?

(Bang.)

2006-07-21T17:31:00.000-07:00

Kelsey said it best: Uncle John is a character. I'd been hoping to meet my eccentric uncle one of these days, and all things considered, today was the perfect day to meet him. He called out to me as we were about to enter Taylorville's tiny book store just off the square.

"You a Podeschi?"

The man looks like a mad scientist. Bald on top, his wiry side hairs are pulled in a bad combover across his shiny pate. Long eyebrow hairs curl around his old man-looking spectacles and tap on the glass as he wrinkles his forehead. But more than that, it was his attitude that made him memorable. As soon as he learned that he was talking to an English grad student and a theater major/English minor, he unleashed a flood of brilliance with the relief of a man used to the typical Taylorville resident. We spoke of writing and literature, and though I didn't agree with everything he said, there was no denying his education or his insights. Kelsey and I both stood in reverent awe of him.

And in reverent awe to his paradise. I'd known for awhile that he owned the old building by the square, but I had no idea that he had formed it into his own version of heaven. Books! Books everywhere! Boxes and boxes, piles and rows, hundreds, thousands of books. "Enough to start ten more bookstores like the one upstairs, if I wanted to," he told us. He showed us around like a redneck might show off his gun collection, handling even the most mundane texts like they were baby angels just learning to fly.

It was inspirational, to say the least. We both looked at him and silently wished to some day be as confident in our brilliance.

2006-07-18T20:24:00.000-07:00

5 a.m., route 16. A blanket sky that hides the sun but still glows. Music! A mix cassette. A head in my lap. A perfect fatigue. Four tears: one for apology, one for gratitude, one for grief, one for joy. Painless. Lustful. Introspective. A rear-view mirror catching one slightly bloodshot eye. A new cast and a bottle of aspirin. Confident. Numb. Moist. Fearless. Inspired and smiling.

My hands and feet fell asleep about ten days ago, and the neurologist says they probabloy won't wake up for another several months. At first, it was terrifying--like my body was crawling up inside itself, and who could know what was the next to go? Would my torso disappear? Would my muscles start giving way?

But, they say to be patient, and that it shouldn't get worse. The delayed-blast bruise is likely to take months to heal, and until then, I am just learning to feel in a different way. I have a cast now, too: attached one month later to protect my fractured wrist and torn ligament. With this too, I am told to be patient--hopefully, the ligament is not destroyed and I'll just have a clicking wrist for the rest of my life. Be patient, they tell me--there's nothing to be done for now.

There's an excuse then, to live, and live well. Pains occur at random, ranging from the jolts of my spine trying to restart itself to the muscle spasms of my mangled back and neck, but I'm relying less on my pills than before. Instead, I chew aspirin, lie down, and wait. Sometimes it takes hours, but I have learned how to spend them. And in the meantime, I'm getting more adventurous, driving to Barnes and Noble, EIU, even a bar here and there.

I'm past worrying about those friends offended by my recent relationship decisions. I admit to my mistake--cheating on my girlfriend was wrong--but I'm through questioning my later choices. I owe no apologies to the third parties.

On the other hand, I owe Cari a few dozen. I hurt her, and for that I am truly sorry. I should have voiced my concerns and doubts, not stayed in the comfort zone of the distantly romantic. I'm great with beginnings, but in the endings I always falter. My haste was selfish and cruel. I should not have broken up with her my way--swift and vorpal, so concerned with being honest that I failed to measure how my poorly articulated thoughts would settle on her. I should have gone slowly. I should have brought it up the last time we saw each other. I did not. I am sorry.

But for those friends who barely know her, let them be mad if it suits them. As fun as it is to be on an ethical high horse, in every glare there is a maelstrom of other issues. Whether it's my personal hypocrisy for cheating when I've long been against it (and still am), or imagined slights and social power plays, or old unresolved conflicts and moments where I've been a lackluster or uninterested friend, I have made my apologies and confessed my sin. Anything else is just politics.

I have an apartment picked out for next year. I'll have to scrape for the $900 security deposit, but it'll get done. We've got four bedrooms on Edgar Street, to be occupied by Chain, his friend Nick, Barry, and myself. At only $300 a month, it's not a huge step from the efficiency and damn, what a perfect place.

I've been seeing more of Phil Klinefelter lately, which has been pretty terrific. He, Aaron, and I spent a great night together last week, complete with our ritualistic dip in the hot tub. Mom cooked us eggs the next morning, and it was something sacred. Phil's even joining our Wednesday night DnD game, the first in a long time. We haven't gamed regularly since...shit...junior high?

I'm in a good, exhausted mood right now. For the past five days I've been deleting blog entries, never satisfied with the words I'd forced from these numb fingertips. I think I'll post this one. It feels alive.

2006-07-13T15:08:00.000-07:00

My pride, yeah... that has a lot to do with it.

Before the accident, I was fine--I was working hard, sweating, drilling, happy to be busy and paying my bills. My evenings were spent gaming or drinking, but always in bed by a decent hour. I was industrious enough that I never needed to think.

But now, my body is crawling inside itself. I've lost my other hand and my feet now too, and every day the numbness creeps a little further toward my torso and I wonder when it will start healing. Or stop getting worse. Or even slow the fuck down. I am useless around the house, cleaning my room in five minute bursts and trying not to be a burden. Tasks I would normally jump at, like helping move a new washing machine to the basement, are absolutely impossible. I try to keep busy, to act normal, and most of the time that works. Every now and then, though, things go wrong, like at the Muni where the simple task of sitting upright was torture.

So yeah, there's pride involved, and I welcome the sin as the liferaft of my sanity. When my body fails me, I am left with my mind; usually I'm not even sure if that is working correctly. And against that cold threat, my self-awareness screams in defiance, I am not ill! so loudly that my ears pop and my sleeping feet stir. The doctor told me that one possible long-term problem from the concussion is pituitary damage, and that if my friends and family started noticing drastic mood swings, then I should go in for hormone testing. Right now I can't thoroughly convince myself whether I'm being a frightened version of a rarely exposed self or a mutated version of a formerly normal self.

Regardless, there is a grim satisfaction to every decision, no matter how small, no matter how explosive. The choice between a gray shirt or a red one, or Kill Bill or The Producers, or seeking Cari's forgiveness or pushing her away: each one is a tiny affirmation that I am still here. So I'm keeping this pride, what little I have left, and I'm locking it away where no falling debris or burning bridges can get to it.

2006-07-12T10:17:00.000-07:00

I broke up with Cari. My decision was sudden, sloppy, even childish, but I stand by it. It did not come easily--I spoke with many friends and burned through dozens of cigarettes. In the end, it was Quinton who explained it best to me. He instantly recognized that I felt miserable about hurting someone who had been so good to me, and pointed out that such idealism had crippled me on more than one occasion. So it came down to the option of being an honest bastard or a lying saint, and two days ago, I was the biggest honest bastard I've ever seen.

I told her about how I'd cheated on her Saturday night. I described in as best detail as I could manage the thoughts going through my head then and at the time. The argument mercifully dissolved into text messaging, where I edited and deleted more words than I sent, realizing over and over that, no, you're typing this to elicit a response, not to explain a situation.

The scandal has rocked the foundations of my world. Half of my friends are furious; they could have dealt with my falling off my pedastal, but they'd never expected me to leap from it. I can already feel them reading this with clenched fists and gritted teeth, echoing my ex-girlfriend's second-to-last text of don't make an English paper out of this.

Typical Mario, trying to profit from pain.

2006-07-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

"Josh, I am in an enlightening amount of pain right now."
--Me, 12:15 this morning

I now know that I cannot sit cross-legged with nothing to support my back. We saw Chicago at the Springfield Muni last night, but it didn't go quite as well as planned. We didn't have enough lawn chairs to go around, so we brought blankets instead. They would have served us fine if an old couple hadn't sat right in front of us ten minutes before showtime. The place was packed, so we couldn't exactly tell them to leave. We were going to leisurely watch the show while prone, but now it had to be seen sitting upright and twisting our heads around the people in front of us.

Me, I spent most of the show on my back, struggling up every now and then to watch a dance but mostly just listening and stargazing. I popped a Darvocet with each act, but they didn't stop the wrenching murderous ache along my spine. Rather, they got me tripping high enough that my mind was able to look at the pain with a half-amused detachment, like it was watching it on a movie or hearing it in a song.

There was a masochist joy to the pain as well, a sense of penance and punishment, the cutter mindset that wants to experience physical pain to block out the abstract anguish of reality. And somewhere between the pain and the drugs I noticed the stars had stopped standing still. They weren't dancing or swimming like Van Gogh would have you believe--no, they were just shivering quietly, cold in their millions of miles of nothing, maybe swaying a little to keep the blood flowing to their fingers.

2006-07-06T14:58:00.000-07:00

I'm thankful for this week. My friends have been stopping in frequently here at Karen's: from Aaron and Heath's taking me fireworksing to my gamer's coming over twice for Dungeons and Dragons. There's something satisfying about this normalcy. Kelsey told me she'd forgotten about my accident until she saw me struggling with an eraser around the game table. I do a pretty good job of concealing the injuries as I surreptitiously pop pills and gesture wildly with my off hand.

Started physical therapy yesterday. Talk about exhausting. Therapist Debbie found quite a few tears and kinks in my neck and back, and now I'm on a fifteen minute exercise regime twice daily, followed by twenty minutes on ice. It's amazing how difficult the exercises can be, focused precisely on my damaged tissue. I lay on the bed and struggle to flatten my back and lift my arms over my head, or I sit straight up and try to push my chin down while keeping my spine straight. I end the session fatigued, but the feeling of control I get from it is well worth it. There's a rush from knowing that I myself am working toward fixing something, and not just waiting on doctors and phosphates.

We're watching Dead Man's Chest in a little while. It was Kelsey's idea, and a fine one at that. May it shiver our timbers and avast our hearties.

Until then, eschew Springer.

2006-07-05T12:40:00.000-07:00

China pointed out that last year, at this exact same time, I was also dogsitting for Karen. The revelation put a lot of things into perspective and forced some pretty intense introspection. In short: wow, times have changed.

This house is a metaphor. Karen doesn't live in her tiny, fur-covered apartment on market street any longer. Yet, looking around her room I see many of the same decorations: dozens of Penny Lane-style dragon sculptures, prints of witches and sorceresses, swords, and various other trinkets typical to a mid-forties single Wiccan dog owner who works at Wal-Mart and plays Star Wars Galaxies. Same objects, different house. I tiptoe through the house of my mind and, yeah, same situation. I've moved, but I brought all my old shit with me. I'd like to say my new arrangement of nik-naks is more visually appealing, but I have a nagging suspicion that it's just the newness and not the style that I'm noticing.

And like with Karen, there's some new additions. Last summer it was just Seth and Willow, her energetic dobermans. Now there's Kaia the Annoying Chihuahua Who Fucking Pooped On Me and Mojo the Black Lab with Leg Trouble. And me, I've got a girlfriend. And maybe that metaphor didn't work out that well, because in a roundabout way I just called Cari the bitch I didn't have last summer. Heh, keep digging the hole Mario. Just give it up.

Dad's restaurant was about to fail last this time last year. It had about two weeks left in it, and working there was a practice in careful non-consideration. A head server could lose his mind looking back and forth from the empty dining room to the clock showing 6 p.m. Pay was lousy, but it was enough to get by, and expenses were limited almost exclusively to alcohol and cigarettes. Those fees were drastically reduced back then too--when did I start smoking so much?

Oh yeah, when the restaurant failed and I started bartending. When Dad wasn't around Tanner's anymore, and with the laid-back atmosphere of the Pub, I quickly went from one pack a week to two. Then there was school and the ashtray in my bedroom. Then there was Cari Maher, and Roc's, and I seriously wonder if these two backs of Marlboro Blend no. 27s are going to last me to my paycheck at the end of the week.

A week ago last year I'd gotten some close friends drunk for the first time. Those were wild times, with Amaretto Sours and bizarre 3rds of July and Che Guevarra. Thus began the month of July, when I accrued more sins and swam in such chaos that on the day of my reckoning it'll surely be the last straw in sending me to burn. July--the month that became it's own adjective. Seems so far away now.

Gotta admit, I kinda miss it.

I missed it most last night, watching fireworks outside a gay bar in Springfield. I wanted to be drunker, and funner, and have something to talk about in my blogs aside from my damned arm. Better yet, I wanted to have something I could not in a million years talk about in my blogs in anything but the most deep insides of jokes. I thought about texting this secret desire to a patron saint, but called Cari instead.

She's getting a job in Italy next year. After she graduates, she's looking at flying overseas for six months, maybe more, returning to her favorite country on Earth. It's been her dream for awhile, one I didn't even know about until a few weeks ago. She's excited but scared, not sure if she really wants to put life in the states on hold for that long but thrilled at the prospect of escaping it with a computer on her desk and a castle out the window. I envy her the adventure--it sounds like a pipe dream when I put myself in her shoes. But from the plans she's forming and the applications she's filling out, she's building a half year that goes beyond all but the top three of my wildest fantasies.

Maybe I'll be dogsitting next summer, wondering aloud how Cari's doing in the old country. Maybe I'll reminisce about my three days as a roofer and how that little summer job came crashing down around me. Maybe I'll be making even dumber metaphors, finding some way to link Mojo, Seth, and Willow to a canine holy trinity as a back-asswards way of explaining why they all pooped in the living room while I was gone.

We'll see. We'll see.

2006-07-03T10:31:00.000-07:00

Even with recent events, I still live a semi-charmed life. Take my new car: a 91 white Plymouth Neon for $400 dollars. The guy that sold it to me was a touch OCD, which meant that he had a neatly organized folder of all the work that had been done on the car in the past five years. Apart from some peeling paint, rust, and dents, the car is a beauty, averaging 28 miles to the gallon and not giving me any complaints on my recent drive to Charleston.

We've got big plans for the little white Neon, too. For one, Aaron and Heath have been scheming to come by dark of night with speckled gold spray paint and give me some kick-ass ghetto rims. For two, I want to put a giant Transformers logo on the hood. Maybe call it Megatron for being so white and ugly. The main thing holding me back from that name is the inevitable arguments I'll have with my nerds back in Charleston. After all, Megatron turns into a gun, not a car. In fact, no Decepticons EVER turn into cars, so putting anything but an Autobot logo would be a serious faux pax to the geek community.

2006-06-30T23:09:00.000-07:00

Looks like I get to be a stain on society for awhile. Workman's comp, paying 2/3 of my would-be salary, a "summer job" in exchange for the injuries. I feel like I should be writing a novel or something, taking advantage of this opportunity-in-disguise. As it is, I feel more like a useless stain, my mind numbed by all these pills and my arm too sore to put together any major chunks of text. I'm striving to reach a philosophic calm that belittles my injuries next to how bad it could be, especially next to the creeping, damning anxiety of those first few days when I wasn't sure if my head was going to clear.

My left forearm is like another person now. My wrist is bound in a splint, giving me the ability to perform minor tasks like folding quilts and opening car doors. The flesh is swollen, stiff muscle, only now turning black and blue as the first part of its lengthy healing process. But most frustrating, most daunting, is the numbness. Past the elbow, my sense of touch is missing. I hold my arm out the window as I drive, and I wouldn't be aware of the wind if not for the weight it put on my muscles. Textures, temperatures--nothing is showing up over there. Even the familiar bump on the F key that's supposed to ground me in the home row is strangely elusive. I'm trying to be patient, to be stoic, to ignore it, to not write about it. I look at my words, at the last paragraph, at the last three blogs and wonder who's looking at this and snickering at the pity party I've been holding for myself. And I try to say, no, this is just me trying to come to terms with my fears, and maybe to not have to repeat the story a few times by letting my more distant friends read it here, but it rings hollow.

Sympathy is a funny thing. I desire it, yet shy from it. I've noticed my most insightful friends striking a bizarre balance of uninvolvement mixed with concern. Too much sympathy, and I well with indignant rage--I'm not helpless, my mind screams. Too little, and I feel this base and childish sense of aloneness. Then there's my introverted thoughts, apart from outside influence. I wonder if I'll heal, and how, and when. I question my every ache or anomaly, testing my feet for sensitivity, moving my arm just to remind me that it's there and test to make sure it's still working in spite of our communication troubles.

I want to be stronger. I want pain to slide off of me like water, and to only speak of my injuries in terms of symptoms to doctors. I want to flex my hand without fear and only acknowledge it when required. I want to know my exact limits so that I don't behave with paranoia yet responsibly do not worsen my injuries. I want the impossible. I want anyway.

Next week they inject me with radioactive isotopes to search my arm for microfractures. That failing, it could be nerve damage or a torn ligament. I start physical therapy too, seeing if that work the kinks out of my neck and back and maybe get the feeling back in my arm. It's a guessing game--an art, not a science, as they say. In the meantime, I'll continue to force as much normalcy as I can.

2006-06-27T22:33:00.000-07:00

It took me awhile, but I found your house again. Remembering 2300 helped a lot. You'll find 2.5 cheese stix and a greasy note on your doorknob.

In other news, I'm positively fiending for a Cari fix.

2006-06-21T08:58:00.000-07:00

Painstaking progress. My concussion's pretty much cleared up--haven't taken my pain pills in a couple days and no trouble standing and sitting. My left shoulder and tailbone are down to easily ignored minor bruises as well. The back of my head is shedding its scab, and it doesn't hurt except when I tap it on the back of a chair. That leaves the still swollen hematoma and deep gash on my left forearm, my slightly improved wrist, my black and blue right shoulder, and my sorta fucked neck and upper back. Halfway there, I suppose, and in only a week. Record time for this sorta thing, I imagine.

Just wish it were going faster, especially now that my head's clear. I can't take another minute of watching TV alone in my living room. I don't mind the tube as much when I'm laughing over it with friends or with Cari curled in my arm, but alone--ACK!--it's torture. I've tried everything this week, from ER to The Young and the Restless to Jerry Springer to Walker, Texas Ranger. I think I even caught an episode of the old Press Your Luck on the Gameshow Network.

The last two days have been spent mostly at Aaron's. His company and his broadband have both been much more rewarding. We watched a few movies together, ate some pizza, smoked some Kamels, and tinkered with computers. At Aaron's, I feel less like I'm in recovery and more like I'm having a lazy summer.

I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow. Hopefully, Gerry K. will clear me for driving and light work so I can at least scrub some floors, pour some drinks, or put up drywall. She mentioned physical therapy as a possible treatment for my neck if the relaxers didn't clear everything up (which, unfortunately, they haven't, as I'm finding out from skipping my drugs this morning).

These muscle relaxers are a trip, by the way. I pop them three times a day, and whew--what a ride. I generally spend two hours high as a kite, giggling at remembered jokes or completely losing myself in the computer. Also during this time, my heart randomly kicks into overdrive, and you can see it beating through my shirt. I'm pretty sure this is all because my over-relaxed body isn't getting enough oxygen to my brain, leading to the gigglies and occasional bursts of energy when my physiology starts getting worried. Somewhere in there I start to get drowsy, and I tend to lay down for a good 1-3 hours to sleep off the rest of the drugs. Naturally, my sleep schedule is shot to shit, but at least I get to have some wacky dreams.

Anyway, that's the medical update, and with no life experiences more entertaining than a summary of this morning's re-run of ER, I'll wrap this up and read my webcomics.

2006-06-18T14:44:00.000-07:00

I'm on a break from work from awhile. I was doing good at this summer roofing thing, too, but now I've got to take some time off. Y'see, a roof fell on my head.

I heard wood snapping and looked up, barely tossing up an arm in a feeble reflexive attempt to block the ceiling. Didn't even see the three hundred pound hanging metal furnace that smacked me in the back of my head. Knocked me out on the spot, and I don't know how many minutes it was until I came to. A guy had already rolled the furnace off of me and was dragging me out of the rubble.

A bruise the size of half a grapefruit had formed on my left forearm, and I was surprised when it turned out to not be broken. My head was bleeding, my arms and back sore as hell. Knocked senseless, I wandered around in circles until the ambulance arrived, the only coherent thought being "I think I need a doctor."

It was the first time I'd been to a doctor in about five years. I got x-rays, pain medicine, and an MRI at the hospital, and saw Jerry Klinefelter a couple days ago. My wrist is kinda fucked up, my left arm bruised, my shoulders both lacerated, my back battered, my neck and shoulders whip-lashed, my head scarred, and my brain concussioned. All things considered, I'm feeling surprisingly well given the scope of the accident, and I'm lucky that I wasn't a few feet to the left, where I would've been crushed under cinderblocks instead of a furnace.

So I'm laid up for awhile, taking four kinds of medicine and trying not to stand up too fast. My whip-lash is starting to heal, leaving the concussion as the worst of it. Waiting to be better is frustrating, and I keep sorta overdoing it in my stubborn desire to be back to normal. I'm at Aaron's right now, sitting around at his place instead of mine. Not doing anything different, but it's nice to be around friends and not having people get all worried every time I wince.

I haven't had any major epiphanies from the disaster, but I do have an eerie memory. It was in the ambulance shortly after it happened, and they were asking me where I hurt. On top of my arm and head, I also told them--several times--how I was having trouble focusing and couldn't think straight. Somewhere in my muddled head I found this quietly terrifying threat of losing myself. What if I didn't get better? What if I'd left a part of myself on the concrete? Take my arm, I thought, cut off my legs or gouge out my eyes, just don't take my mind. I kept checking to make sure no thoughts were missing, making a mental list of important things I didn't want to forget, like Cari and Quinton and DiFranco and Mom.

The fear came back after I started on my muscle relaxers for the whip-lash. That was two nights ago when I first took them, and those things made me high as hell. Mom woke me up on her bed at 11 Thursday night, and she was frantic. Richie had pounded on the door earlier, and she'd called several times trying to wake me. That I'd slept through it was normal enough, but the problem was that I didn't remember laying down on Mom's bed. I tried and tried to retrace my steps, but there was this black hole of memory that brought me from my bed to hers. Yeah, it was probably just the medicine, but it scared the shit out of me.

It still nags at me. When I find myself stopping mid-sentence to find a misplaced word, those fears still creep up. Even so, I'm recovering, little by little. Maybe another week, maybe two, I'll be back on my feet. Until then, I just have to not push myself too hard. Weird week. Definitely a weird week.