by James Brush
Coyote Mercury Posts
I remember nonsense like this from the GRE many years ago:
Cat and Dog 2 are both black and white. Dog 1 and Dog 2 like to play and roughhouse. Cat has diabetes and so must have access to food 24/7. Human 1 and Human 2 are gone for large portions of each day. Dog 1 and Dog 2 love to eat Cat’s food. Cat also has arthritis so his food must be on the floor so he doesn’t have to jump if he doesn’t want to. Dog 2 can jump over gates that Cat 1 can walk through. Dog 1 gets free run of the house, but would eat Cat’s food if given half a chance. Dog 2 likes to chew on things she shouldn’t. Human 1 and Human 2 should…
a) become veterinarians and work out of the house.
b) keep Cat confined in a single room while gone knowing that he probably doesn’t care since he sleeps all day anyway.
c) confine all three separately in different parts of the house.
d) write silly logic problems about it.
e) both a and b
f) both b and d
g) b, c and d
h) a, b and c
We’re going with ‘g’ for now.
I’ve been blogging a little over two months now, and it seems a good time to stop and take stock of this new world that I’ve joined. One thing I love about the blogosphere is that it’s such a dynamic world. This is a world that is changing constantly, moving alongside the static internet and the offline world with its own rules, ideas, insights, opinion-makers and landscape. I feel like I’m part of a vast library that is being written as I type this. It’s a library in which the texts are all connected and alive like neurons in a brain. It’s also a library in which the small stories of people’s lives unfold alongside the big ones that make history, connecting and interacting in fascinating ways, either through posts or blogrolls. When I think about this, I feel lucky to be a part of it, though still a newcomer.
I also enjoy reading the daily posts on my favorite blogs. I love discovering the treasures and unknown musings of some fantastic writers and unknown thinkers, publishing their insights in this most perfect DIY medium. That do-it-yourself aspect is my favorite part. Anyone can publish and find an audience, albeit in most cases a small one. Filmmakers and musicians have been putting their work out independently for years, now writers can as well.
I love knowing that sometimes something I’ve written has moved a fellow blogger to comment or respond through email. That’s a great feeling. As is looking at the site stats and seeing regular readers, known only as familiar strings of IP address numbers, emerge in places where I don’t know anyone. For a writer, finding readers is a profound and moving experience. So to you who tune in regularly, thank you. You make my day.
I learn quite a bit by reading things that I wouldn’t have found on the static web. I’m learning about life, about writing, about the internet, about HTML and CSS, about politics, about everything.
And writing everyday, I learn about myself too.
That’s the best part: Writing on a daily basis again, even when it’s just quick posts has been great for me. I generally haven’t done it for years. I tended to set aside large blocks of time – a few hours a week, a summer vacation, a weekend day. But I never maintained that all important constant practice that is so essential. It feels like part of me is waking up again and that’s a nice feeling. I find myself more motivated than ever to either submit or self-publish that second novel that’s sitting on the hard drive, to get past page one of the third one that’s half-written in my head and in notes and outlines in my drawer.
And so, running the risk of laying it on a bit thick, I throw some Thoreau that comes to mind whenever I think about embarking on new adventures such as the beginnings of this blog and the start of new projects: “Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”
So there it is. This experiment that I started in part as a way to give myself something to think about other than my dog who passed away a few months ago has gone from being just an experiment to being a regular part of my life, somewhere between a hobby and a way to work on my work.
And now, I promise no more blogging about blogging for awhile.
When I used to teach Fahrenheit 451, the classes always got into interesting discussions about the effects of mass culture on local variety. My students found nothing odd about the fact that one can drive from Miami to Seattle and eat in the same highway restaurants and stay in the same motels, all the while listening to the same music that everyone else is enjoying, and if you look at the other travelers in the other cars, most of them, regardless of where their plates say they’re from, will be wearing the same clothes from the same stores. One can get this impression from traveling through airports as well. I’ve often wondered what, if anything, is lost when our whole country develops this kind of paste-pudding sameness (to paraphrase Bradbury).
Many kids found it comforting. I find it disturbing. I like eating different foods, hearing new music and strange accents, but it seems to be quite difficult to find anything uniquely local anymore except in a few places (such as Austin – “Keep Austin Weird”) where concerted efforts are made to hold on to what originally made that place unique. If you want to see what some little one-horse town has that makes it special, you have to look pretty hard. Often you’ll find relics of what once made it special, but the place will be closed, the event cancelled, the people dead, senile, or moved away.
But then I start thinking about how many of us find our little niches online. How many CDs by obscure low-fi indie rock bands from random cities do I own? I know people from Chicago who’ve never heard of The Sea and Cake or Tortoise or Sam Prekop. So I start thinking that perhaps regionalism isn’t so much dead as perhaps it’s moved. Perhaps we still have our regional variety and local culture, but without material landscape. Instead we have sites that we inhabit and with whose denizens we share common interests and concerns be they movies, books, music, politics, religion, philosophy, whatever. It seems oddly comforting to think that we still have our hometowns despite the fact that they’ve gone digital.
Last weekend, we went to see the latest big fantasy-based-on-literature blockbuster (a genre for which I’m a sucker): The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It’s been a few years since I read the book, but I felt the filmmakers did a nice job bringing this story to the screen, which must have been a tricky task. CS Lewis provided great lengths of potential rope for filmmakers to hang themselves: talking animals, Santa Claus, child actors, unicorns. It’s all there, potential landmines to raise the audience cringe factor, and yet they pulled it off. Even Santa. It’s sometimes cute, but never cutesy.
There has been much made about the politics and religious subtext of this film, but my advice is put that aside and go for the ride because it’s quite a ride. If you want a Gospel allegory or a call to destroy evil, it’s there for the taking, but it’s not so overt that one feels beaten into submission to a message afterwards. First and foremost, this is well-crafted and lovingly-designed entertainment. The battle scenes are exciting and choreographed in the Peter Jackson/Lord of the Rings style that has become the new standard. The sound production at the very start of the big battle is amazing and must be experienced in a theater.
More importantly, though, Director Andrew Adamson does a nice job bringing out the underlying emotions and conflicts within the hearts of his young characters: Peter’s desire to fight for a cause; Susan’s logical skepticism; Edmund’s need for independence from his siblings; Lucy’s adventurousness. There are also moments of humor, fear, sadness and horror such as when Aslan upholds his end of the bargain with the White Witch. You know what happens if you’ve read the book, but it’s still terrifying and heartbreaking.
It’s a fun movie that gets the story right. If you have read the book, you won’t find anything especially new or insightful here, but it’s well-worth a trip to the theater and probably a second viewing when it comes out on DVD. I’ll be looking forward to the impending string of sequels.
I’ve been playing. Wanting to take my template tinkering to a new level, and because I enjoy fiddling with things, I decided to change the template for my blog, as I’m sure you’ve by now noticed. The three column template came from Thur’s Templates, and was very easy to set up. It took a few hours to insert all the add-ons and hacks I had in my previous template, but now that it’s done, I’m happy.
One cool thing about this is that it’s very easy to change the colors since Thur’s Templates has this in blue, white, and tan in addition to the grey. You just paste in a new CSS section and – Shazam! – a different color.
If things look out of whack with your browser/monitor combination, please leave a comment and let me know. Thanks.
Sweaters arrived just a day late for The Blizzard of 2005… er… The Ice Storm of 05…no wait…The Day It Got Below 20 and Some Bridges and Overpasses Froze of 2005:
For you non-greyhound people out there, we’re not trying to humiliate our pups by dressing them up. They have no body fat to insulate themselves and so really do need sweaters when it gets cold, but even without sweaters, nobody froze. Phoebe (in red) revealed herself to be something of a scientist, carefully scratching, licking, sniffing and nosing every patch of ice on the back porch in an effort to determine the meaning of it all.
Daphne (in blue), who is a little less intellectual, displayed her alter-ego “dangerous greyhound” and kept trying to run full-speed across the icy patio and up the frozen stairs to the glass backdoor. Happily no bones were broken, and some cat litter on the steps helped her keep traction.
When the sweaters arrived, they tried them on and even though the weather had warmed considerably, the dogs seemed to enjoy wearing them. I suppose they know when they look good.
By the way, the sweaters came from Classy Canine, and they’re great.
[saveagrey]