I'm like "What, kid, what"

An assortment of reasons why I don't think Slug of Atmosphere is ugly:

1) "Let the man's worth stand behind his words." ~Travel (Remix)

2) "Don't know what I'm trying to write/ But there's a part of me that keeps dying that night" ~That Night

3) "It hurts to watch Lucy lose a dream/ I've had the pleasure of seeing our hero kick and scream/ And when she calms down I'll turn the sound down/ And put my arms around the little lost and found..." ~Modern Man's Hustle

4) "No, onion bun, onion bun" ~Free or Dead

5) "I've had a little bit too much to think tonight" ~In My Continental

6) "Do I sound mad? Well I guess I'm a little pissed/ Every action has a point, five points make a fist/ You close em', you swing em', it's hurts when it hits/ And the truth can be a bitch, but if the boot fits" ~Fuck You Lucy

7) "The clouds ran away, opened up the sky/ And one by one I watched every constellation die" ~Always Coming Back Home To You

8) "This world is a vampire, she eats her kids/ Let's hide the bodies under the bridge/ This country's a vampire, she eats her kids/ Let's hide the bodies under the bridge/ This city's a vampire, she eats her kids/ Let's hide the bodies under the bridge" ~Vampires

9) "Writers never die." ~WND

(picture courtesy of ...)

got your carpet square?

When I was 14 I almost killed a best friend.

I met Amy* while buckling my tap shoes before dance class. She wasn't in my class, she was just a friend of the girl I stood next to in kickline, Carrie. They carpooled home, which meant Amy had to wait and watch our class so that she could hitch a ride home.

Amy and I didn't actually hit it off at first. Maybe it was the one-year age difference - I was in seventh grade, she was in sixth - or the fact that we attended rival middle schools. Either way, there was obvious awkward space when she, Carrie and I hung out. Carrie was our friend, though, so we sucked it up and stuck it out.

One day, as our teacher called out our names for attendance, Carrie scooted next to me, leaned low and whispered, "Can you keep a secret?"

"Sure," I mumbled, paying more attention to my stretches than our conversation.

"I mean, you can't ever tell anybody."

"Okay, I promise."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"Amy's a lesbian, and she has a crush on you."

Stretching was now secondary to the conversation. I wasn't sure how to react, though. My hometown isn't void of diversity, but this was definitely unfamiliar ground. So I responded with what any middle schooler in the late 90s would say:

"What-ever, Carrie." And I went and linked arms with the rest of the kickline.

My dad always taught me that "a promise is a promise." In other words, when you make a promise, you damn well better keep it. I guess I thought these were extenuating circumstances. Confused about what I was told, I called my best friend and, ironically, made her promise not to repeat the story.

Naturally, everyone at my school and Amy's had heard about "the lesbian" by 2:52 p.m. the next day.

The next week at kickline practice, that awkward tension between us was palpable. And it remained that way for a long time. But somewhere along the way - via phone calls and notes - Amy and I became friends. Good friends, actually. We signed up for the same summer basketball program at our future high school, and often hung out before or after practice. We both signed on to the newest technology craze - AOL Instant Messenger - and had great conversations over the Internet. Despite the past, she'd become one of my closest friends.

One evening, after getting home from a night out with my friends, I signed on AOL to check my email and read others' away messages. It was midnight (which is fairly late in pre-teen terms), so I was pleasantly surprised when a message window popped up from Amy.

The chat started out standard and lighthearted, but it soon morphed into a serious and scary conversation. Amy started telling that she was unhappy and depressed, that she had been thinking about killing herself. Again, I found myself on unfamiliar ground. So I asked a dumb, inappropriate, irrelevant question.

"How long have you been feeling like this?" I typed.

Months, she told me. Since I had told my best friend about what Carrie told me in dance class. Since I'd basically outted her.

"I almost did it today," she wrote.

Time for another dumb, inappropriate, irrelevant question. "What stopped you?" I wanted her to say that she changed her mind or something. Instead:

"My mom and dad came home."

The conversation kept going like this for a while. I don't remember all that was said, but I know I wanted to keep her talking, as if that was the only thing keeping her from swallowing a bunch of pills right then and there. And then this popped up:

"I WANT TO DIE."

I woke up my mom, and while she called a suicide hotline, I called Amy. I have no idea what we talked about or for how long. I do know that my heart was in my throat, my body was trembling and I'd broken out into a cold sweat. I'm pretty sure my mom found me sobbing on our basement couch after we got both got off the phone. The next day, my mom and I told her dad about the conversation.

About a week later, I got a call from Amy. She was in the hospital getting help and treatment for depression. My contact with her since then has been minimal (I think she was mad that I told her parents), but as far as I know, she's alive and well. Any friendship lost is rough - but as far as I'm concerned, a dead friendship is better than a dead friend.




Why did share this story? For a lot of reasons, really. Because I haven't told it since my senior year of high school. Because no one at Mizzou has heard it, including my roommates and our dog. Because I know six people that killed themselves during my freshman and sophomore years of high school, and I take depression and suicide seriously. And because - I'm not sure why - lately I've simply felt like telling it.

Besides, I think the act of telling that tale applies to what we're talking about in class today: voice. I've only written it twice before: once for a journalism class assignment sophomore year of high school and once for a senior English paper. Each time I tell this story, my voice comes through, well, loudly. And consistently.

I think a writer's voice is most apparent in stories that touch the author - not the reader - emotionally. Voice is best when you are writing for you.

Cheers.



*all names have been changed

fair dinkum

A gondola's eye view of the Australian sky, January 2006

Wabi-sabi. Kinda sounds like something Aussies would say, doesn't it?

In reality, it's a form of art that is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. It's organic art; it's found in nature.

I took this picture while riding a gondola up into some Australian mountains this winter. It was so cool - the sky was so blue that it matched the color of the ocean. They practically blended into each other. It was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

What makes it wabi-sabi, I think, is the fact that the sky and water will probably never really look like that again. The wind will move the clouds, which will either cover or brighten the sun, which will change the color of both the ocean and the sky. Really, the moment captured in that photo will never happen again, being that you can't pose clouds or water.

Totally organic and unique. That's why wabi-sabi is cool.

Cheers.

(fair dinkum: Austrailian for true, genuine)

karma karma karma karma chameleon

I'm not entirely sure I believe in a karmic universe. The idea of someone or something playing puppeteer and determining my destiny just doesn't sit well with me. But then, every so often, I'll come across something that makes me believe, just a little bit.

Take that little gem of a sentence below. It's an excerpt from a post I skimmed while casually checking my Bloglines.

"Stop thinking so much and start having fun again."

I'm pretty sure I know who said that, but since he's (or she's) blogging anonymously and probably doesn't know I'm reading, I'll leave it unattributed. The whole post was money, but that specific sentence really spoke to me.

I haven't really been what you'd call "happy" as of late. I'm not sure if happy is the right adjective, actually. Perhaps "blah" is a better descriptor. Either way, I've misplaced the person I was last semester, the last time I truly enjoyed myself and my life. Now I feel bogged down with ills about my future, my appearance and my social confidence, just to name a few. Plus there's the frustration of losing that genuinely happy, last-semester me.

But that short sentence up there gives me hope. It's a lot of work to be sad; it's mentally taxing. There's value in telling your mind to shut-up and going with the flow - there's happiness in that. And, if I remember correctly, I did a lot of that last fall and winter. I enjoyed each day at face-value, nothing more, nothing less.

Guess I have to let go to get back to my roots, paradoxically speaking.

So thanks, Mr. (or Mrs.) Run For Your Lives! They Are Monsters!. Cheers.

on blog-like blogs

At the request of my Blogging in Theory and Practice teacher, Donna, here's some posts of my classmates and my own that I consider particularly "blog-ish":

Blog-like posts of my classmates:
1) My Mixtape Experiment - I love this post of Tanner's. First of all, I think he nailed our "do something different" assignment. Secondly, he really took in all the elements of a blog that we've been talking about: pictures, sound, links. I also felt his commentary about each song was particularly blogish. One's taste in music can be an incredibly personal thing, thus music discussions can be heated and/or defensive. Tanner did an excellent job of giving his recommendations maturely and in a way that didn't turn readers off. And, lastly, I like his post because he lists some great songs and artists.

2) And a Liberal was born - I realize that this post of KR's isn't laden with links or pictures or sound bytes like Tanner's, but I think it embodies a different element of blogging. KR was able to tell us a personal story to communicate world news. Just like music, political opinions are incredibly personal. KR's organization of thought perfect: we got hooked on the childhood tale, so we were more likely to click the informational link at the bottom. Plus, KR gave the attentive reader insight about the author.

Blog-like posts of my own:
1) stick a pitchfork in mom-and-pop, they may be done - In terms of true blogging as discussed in class, this is the closest post to that I have. This was the result of my "do something different" assignment - I was inspired by the New York TimesSelect blog The Opinionator, which describes itself as a guide to newspaper, magazine and Internet opinion articles. I wanted to take an issue in the news and then list blogs that discuss it without giving my own take on the issue. That way, I figured, people who read can come up with their own ideas without being constrained by my own. Whether I was successful or not, well, I don't know... but I did think it was kind of cool to get a comment from one of the bloggers to whom I linked.

2) all around the limbo world - This post doesn't necessarily coincide with all aspects of the definition of a blog, but I think this is a good example of what I set out to do with my blog. In my initial post, I said I wanted to synthesize quotations and daily occurrences, which this post does. My voice is very clear in this post as well, which I think is essential to good blogging. I was inspired to write at that moment, and I clearly wrote what I felt. And, on a trivial note, I liked the title I came up with, too.

3) it's golden - Again, I suppose this post isn't considered real blogging. But I think that's kind of the reason I like it. We are assigned to blog at least three times a week, and its kind of assumed or implied that we'll write about something semi-substantial. When I sat down to write that day, though, I simply wasn't feeling it. I had a lot on my mind but didn't want to talk or write it out. I think the way in which I flipped the assignment around - that I wrote about not having anything to say - echoes an aspect of blogging. Bloggers often write from unconventional and unique angles; they take vantage points that wouldn't necessarily be accepted in standard publications. I think this post kind of exemplifies that.

So there you have it. Please check out my classmates' and friends' blogs on the Blogroll - there are some great entries among them. And I'm open to comments or criticism of this blog, too. Cheers all.

stranger than fiction

I think I'm going to add Nathan Helm to my list of heroes.

A "schmuck with a laptop," or a Hollywood screenwriter, Helm is featured in the March issue of Vanity Fair. (Yep, that's the one with the pseudo-scandalous nude cover.) One day, instead of pumping out dialouge and stage directions, Helm wrote a manifesto by which to live. And then he actually held himself to it. Now the principle photography for his screenplay Stranger Than Fiction, which stars Will Ferrell and Dustin Hoffman, has been completed.

Here's a sample of rules from The Manifesto:

Rule No. 1, Section One: "I will no longer allow financial need or career ambition to determine the direction of my work. I will not put myself in any position in which my work is owed to another party."

Rule No. 5, Section One: "Any deal struck in regards to my work will forgo any immediate financial gain if it may mean the surrender of creative control or participation in the work's development."

Rule No. 3: "I will not sell my work simply to the highest bidder, but instead to those parties that I feel will best represent and develop my work."

Helm's synopsis of Rule No. 2: "I won't take rewrite jobs. I won't script-doctor. There's a lot of money to be had, lots of money for spending two weeks of work on a script, but I can't do it. ... It would be very hypocritical of me to try to reserve all this creative power and try to hold on to my scripts as much as I can and then go take some first-time writer's script and bang it up."

Rule No. 6, Section One: "I will not write for writing's sake. I will write only when inspired to write." (all from "Leaving Schmuckville" by Jim Windolf, Vanity Fair No. 547, March 2006)

Helm's adherence to The Manifesto amazes me. It's one thing to outline how you'd like to live your life, to identify convictions you'd like to apply to your professional or personal encounters. But to actually hold yourself to those, to have a strong enough character to reject quick money and the easy way out - wow. Talk about a strong, beautiful character.

You don't find people like Helm too often. In fact, it's probably rarer and stranger than fiction.

blogging/bleeding

Let's take a moment to throw scholarly reason and approved logic out the window. And while your at it, invite the self-centered, naive and socially awkward teenager inside you to come out and play.

Done?

Now, let's talk - as Facebook, AIM, Blogger, MySpace, Xanga users - a little about the Internet and personal expression.

I'm aware that there are safety and professional image issues when addressing this topic, but those aren't on my docket. We've all heard about MU's Facebook task force and of stalkers that track children down through instant messenges or MySpace. But I'm going to pooh-pooh all that for now.

Because I think young America's obsession with online expression is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Instead of condemning the sometimes socially blasphemous, often rebellious content of Internet communication and communities, people should be celebrating that there is content at all. Think about this: young people are sitting down and writing. They've found - I've found - an outlet that suits their contemporary, technology-savvy generation. Blogging in any form and on any topic exercises teens' and young adults' minds educationally and emotionally. I wish people in power would give kids a break, get over themselves and stop being threatened by the things that go against the status quo.

On a side note, I think blogging as an emotional outlet is particularly important for teens. I once read that writing is like sitting down at a typewriter, opening up a vein and letting yourself bleed onto the paper. Don't know about you, but I'd rather have teens bleed out through blogging than their wrists.

And that's where I stand. You can let reason and evidence back in now, if you want. Cheers.

triple fault

I am not at all happy with my last post. Know how you can explain something so it makes perfect sense to you but sounds nonsensical to anyone else? Yeah, that's how I feel about those thoughts below. Sorry, all.

So let's take another crack at this.

About a week or so ago, my Tuesdays friend and I were talking via AOL instant messenger. We're both juniors in college - he's at the University of Minnesota - who are sunk into our majors but are unsure about our future worth to society as professionals. The questionable worth of our chosen trades (graphic design and journalism) and education was the topic of conversation that night. "Tuesday" was telling me that his non-graphic design electives were preparing him better for grown-up life than courses meant to train him for the real world.

Specifically, Tues. referred to his Poetry in Rap classes. According to the university course description, the class series studies the poetry used in rap, African American literature and American culture. (He took the course described in the link last year; now he's the advanced class.) Obviously, it is well outside the required training to be a graphic designer.

He was telling me that the things he's learned in these classes would actually help him be a mildly influential member of society, not one that "just makes logos." That's when this gem of a concept came up:

Everyone is racist and/or prejudice. And the world would be a better place if everyone - the powerful elite and poor underbelly - would openly admit it.

That's the idea that started my faulty post. (Maybe I should start listing Tuesday as contributor to this blog, magazine-style.)

Americans would become better people if they recognized and admitted their racism. Sounds radical, really, since judging people on the basis of race or ethnicity usually is considered a bad trait. But here's my interpretation:

Everyone - whites and people of color - is different, thus, by default, everyone holds prejudices. Like it or not, factors such as race, ethnicity, sexuality and age act as divisions for social self-identification. Rather than pretending such identifying characteristics don't exist, people should recognize and embrace them. Lumping everyone into one group can perpetuate inequalities and stereotypes as much as explicit discrimination.

Which is what I thought while reading that handout in my newspaper editing lecture. Robert Maynard likened the identifying factors of race/ethnicity, gender, age, class and geography to the geological faults that cause earthquakes. Here's his quote again:

"The society is split along five faults, and we try in vain to paper them over, fill them in or pretend they aren't there. ... (These) underlying forces, like those in the center of the earth, will thwart us until we come to see out differences as deep, but completely natural things, as natural as geologic fault lines. We don't have to resolve our differences. We can agree to disagree."

As previously posted, I'm on board with Maynard. But I don't think his agree to disagree philosophy is correctly applied. Or maybe its not applied at all for that matter. Efforts to be politically correct or tasteful are often so over done that the faults are glossed over, painting the picture that everyone is homogeneous and equal. Taking out the identifying characteristics results in bland and inaccurate writing.

Just by chance, I saw this cartoon in the Feb. 27 issue of The New Yorker. I realize that it's actually a commentary on the cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad, but it kind of conveys my point.



With all that said, I'd be neglectfully ignorant if I didn't recognize the value of journalists and bloggers to be unobtrusive, sensitive and tasteful. The freedom to be offended is implied in freedom of speech, and free speech applies to the offenders and the offended. In the short term, all those efforts to safeguard save writers, publishers and readers lots of headaches.

So here comes the dilemma again. Which is better: editing for across the board "equality" or including the "unequal" differences by which define ourselves? Which causes more offense, and which causes more social ills?

I'm still not sure.