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Finish!

Wow, talk about a roller coaster. I started out NaNoWriMo doing so well I thought I was going to finish by the 15th. And then I got sick. Twice. That sick time added up to almost a week of no writing at all, and when I got back into it, I still didn't have the energy I started with. Then I had to work a lot of early shifts at work which made it hard to keep up with my word count since I'm better at writing in the morning. But still I pushed through it and I finished! And the best part is, I actually kept my novel pretty well on track through most of the month with no major surprises. I'm pretty ecstatic right now, since this bring my total of long form-fiction stories to two for this year, and six overall.
That's right. I've written six books in my life. I don't know if any of them will ever be published, but each is a step on the road to making me a better writer. And I'm not stopping there. I already have two projects planned for next year:
First, a story currently titled Babel and Icarus, which is a fictional non-fiction book chronicling a space race between the North and South during the American Civil War, and second, an expansion of my short story, A Prairie Home Apocalypse or: What the Dog Saw And that's all in addition to whatever I decide to write for NaNoWriMo next year.
Now whenever someone tells me about how fast this year went by, I'm going to say, "I don't know what you're talking about. I wrote two books this year. Maybe you should start doing something meaningful with your time." Okay I probably won't say that. But I'll be thinking it.

Thanks

It is not Thanksgiving anymore, but I still want to say how thankful I am for my family. If I didn't have my sister to talk to, you have no idea how bored I would be. I mean seriously, how many people do you know who would find the grammatical structure of the English of the King James Bible an interesting topic of conversation? Not very many people, that's how many. But she will talk my ear off about it, and I will talk her ear off as well, and then we have to sort out whose ear is whose, which is harder than you might think.
Also my dad, who dropped everything, and came over to help me when my toilet exploded yesterday. He's always a life saver when I've got any kind of mechanical problems, and he's fantastically interesting to talk to, even though most people don't realize it. He's basically an older version of me, which is pretty awesome. I almost never have the guts to tell him in person, but I love him more than I can ever say.
And my mom. She taught me everything I knew. I've since forgotten most of it, but I'll never forget her.

My Life as a Movie Trailer

[To be read in the style of Don LaFontaine]

It seemed like just another ordinary Thanksgiving. But when the food was eaten and the family was gone, no one could have predicted that disaster was about to strike.

When a routine job goes horribly wrong, one man will face a deluge of troubles he could never have imagined.

Now, in a world where everyday plumbing is out of commission, he is in a race against time to preserve his way of life. He'll go to any lengths...and any depths to put things right again. Experience the saga of a man at odds with the world, a man who has come to the very edge of his sanity for one cause. Witness the despair...and the triumph. On November 26, Albert Berg....will change out his toilet tank.

The Coincidence Conspiracy

Today I encountered the word pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis for the very first time. It was in a book I picked up at the thrift store entitled, By Hook or By Crook by David Crystal. A little later in the day, I happened to see that very same word on the Dictionary.com homepage. Now Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is an unusual word, supposedly the longest in the Oxford English Dictionary, so the fact that I would run across it twice in one day seems kind of odd to me. I've read all the figures that mathematicians and rationalists like to throw around, about how coincidences like this are inevitable given the large number of events we experience in our lives, but I wonder how much I can trust that kind of handwave explanation. The rational part of my brain understands that given my inherent interest in words and writing that something like this was bound to happen sooner or later, but the rest of my brain (lets call this the Fun Brain) begs to differ.
The Fun Brain thinks that there's got to be something deeper to it all. Like maybe I'm a cosmic fish swimming in a conceptual sea. I am a part of what might be called the "real" world, but I am incapable of perceiving it, so the beings in the real world are trying to communicate with me through these strange coincidences. Of course the rationalist thinkers that would dismiss these communiques out of hand, are actually agents of those beings who would keep me enslaved in my conceptual reality for their own nefarious purposes.
Okay, so yeah it's a little weird, but I think I'm entitled to a little weirdness every now and then.
If you want more weird, read on here The Matrix has nothing on Boltzmann brains.
And always remember: you are the only real person.

Best Eggcorn Ever?

Dinosaur Comics recently turned me on to the Language Log website and the concept of eggcorns, which are mistakes made in writing based on phonetics. For instance, "for all intents and purposes" becomes "for all intense and purposes." (That particular eggcorn really grinds my goat, but I digress.)
Anyway, I went a-browsing on the eggcorn database and the first specimen I saw made me laugh so hard that milk shot out of my nose (which was pretty impressive, because I was drinking orange juice at the time.)
The eggcorn in question is the substitution of "elk" for "ilk."
The excerpt reads: "Without addressing these issues, NOW and others have nothing to offer the average Jane and in consequence, have allowed Sarah Palin and her elk to define women’s issues."
Which is even funnier because the sentence does make sense that way.
Who knows? Maybe it's not a mistake at all. Maybe Sarah Palin really has a pet elk and they go around defining women's issues and stuff. I would not put it past her.

PS: Sarah Palin and her Elk sounds like a great title for a children's book don't you think? Dibs.

The Failure of Expectations

You know what's wrong with this picture? Absolutely nothing, that's what. Okay, maybe the guy hanging out the door of the plane is a bit much, but everything else is awesome. Of course the problem is, you know the movie isn't going to live up to the cover. Chances are, it's not even going to come close.

This is a shame, because when I see this graphic it evokes all kinds of cool stuff in my head. I see this and I think, "I could totally write a story about this picture." The black ethereal tentacles coming at the small plane from off screen evoke a massive flying beast, a supernatural force manifested in the storm darkened skies. The plane itself looks so small in comparison, like a child's toy being menaced by an intelligence and power of horrifying proportions. And...yeah, the guy hanging out of the door looks kinda silly.

But I've read the reviews of this stink-bomb, and the best of them were lukewarm while the worst were violently negative. The awesome movie evoked by the picture just doesn't exist in the real world.

I should be used to this by now. It's not like advertisements usually live up to anything approaching reality. For instance, I've used Axe Body Spray more than once or twice, but on each occasion beautiful women completely failed to throw themselves at me as the commercials suggested they would. I was not surprised in the slightest by this.

But there's something about narratives like books and movies that's different. You see an awesome poster or a stunning trailer and instantly you've got a tiny, ideal version of the movie stuck in your head. The problem is that its almost never as good as the movie they actually made. The same goes for books, though they don't usually have trailers.

We know this. We've experienced the disappointment over and over. And yet, somehow we still managed to be sucked in time after time. We think, "This time will be different. This time the movie I'm about to see will be every bit as awesome as my expectations." We do it over and over and time and time again we're disappointed. But if we're lucky every once in a blue moon a movie will come along that truly does live up to its advertising. Which is a whole lot more than I can say for Axe Body Spray.

Exception to the Rules

I've always hated English. Not the language mind you, the subject. The thing I always hated about it was the fact that there were so many "rules" that I was told I was supposed to follow. But the real problem was that is seemed like there were nearly as many exceptions to the rules as there were rules themselves. It didn't make sense to me. There were no exceptions to the rules I was taught in math. I never had to deal with "2+2=4 unless the preceding problem is 7-9."
Now that I'm older I realize why my younger self was so frustrated with the system. Because the truth is, there are no "rules" to the English language; there was never a time when a bunch of professors got together and said, "So we've got all these words floating around, and maybe it would be nice to develop a framework of grammar for them to fit into." Language became what it is through usage. That isn't to say that there's no right and wrong way of using language, but the heart of good usage is structure.
For instant, this sentence aren't going to works in your mind because it ignore basic subject/verb agreement structure.
But the thing is, you don't need to be taught that what you just read is wrong. You sense it intuitively, because that simply isn't how people use language. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that English as a subject shouldn't be taught at all. But I do think there should be far less emphasis on the so-called "rules." To quote Captain Barbossa "They're more like guidelines, really."

How Not To Suck At Retail

When faced with the question "Why does this product cost so much?" always keep in mind that the correct answer is never "Market forces."

Squash

I've been working my way through the Machine of Death book, inspired and partly written by internet sensation and all around genius Ryan North, and...well I couldn't resist. I had to write one of my own. I call it, Squash.

P.S. If you're unfamiliar with the Machine of Death concept, check it out and get the Machine of Death book (available for free in PDF format) at MachineofDeath.net

blip.tv Android App Email Fail

I woke up bright and early this morning to discover an long awaited email in my inbox. "It read, The blip.tv Android app is now available. Go get it at"

That's all.

Um...guys? Guys? Isn't there supposed to be like, an address there for me to click on, or baring that, some definable location like, oh I don't know, Kansas? I'd even settle for, "The Android app is now available. Go get at the place where deep calleth unto deep." At least that would be interesting.

The Profanity Problem

Based on what I've learned from reality television, I think it's safe to say that being a chef is the hardest job in the world. I mean really, the stress levels of the people who you see in Hell's Kitchen must be through the roof based on the amount of profanity they throw around. Compare that to The Deadliest Catch which is literally about the most dangerous job in the world, and yet the amount of profanity in one whole episode is around what you'd get in oneminute of Hell's Kitchen. It's not that it bothers me so much, its just that I can't understand where they're finding all these foul mouthed chefs. I've worked with people who swore before, but on the whole, most people I meet don't go spouting off curse words at the drop of a hat. Is this something the producers of Hell's Kitchen coach the contestants to do so that Gordan Ramsay won't look like such a jerk? Or is being a chef really that much worse than risking your life for some crabs?

Not Waving but Drowning

If you're like me you have an irrational fear of a small man coming in the night with a pair of garden shears and snipping off your little toe. Also if you're like me you know that there are three ingredients to a great short story.

1. Haunting Title

2. Gripping Story

3. Completely Unsatisfactory Ending that somehow Still Feels Right.

"Not Waving but Drowning" the short story from the recently released anthology, The Machine of Death fills all these requirements to perfection, and it's really worth your time to check it out. I won't give too much away, but if you're not familiar with the concept of the Machine of Death then this story makes an excellent introduction to the whole thing. Which is probably why the creators of the book released this story first in their new series of podcasts of the authors featured in The Machine of Death reading their stories. You can currently check it out for free here. It's a great twenty minute listen, and it has my highly coveted stamp of approval.

(The stamp actually says "All Sales Final," because I took it from my work but...you know what I mean.)

First Impressions

They say you can't judge a book by its cover. But they also say you shouldn't stand in the middle of a field with a lightning rod wearing metal soled shoes during a thunderstorm, so what do they know? The truth is I've picked up many a book based on cover art and title alone, and while I don't always pick a winner, there is obviously something to be said for the power of first impressions. If we're honest with ourselves book covers often color our judgement about a work before we've even touched it let alone cracked open the pages.

With that thought in mind, I've produced a cover for my currently in-progress NaNoWriMo novel, The Dark Mile. If I didn't know how awesome this story was going to be already, I would be itching to get my hands on it once I saw this:



Just looking at it makes me want to go and write some more of this story right now. I think I will.

Manliness Tip #1

If you are man, perhaps you have said yourself at one time or another, "I would like to appear to be more manly, but sadly my disposable income is limited such that I am unable to purchase a shotgun, or a pickup truck to keep it in. What should I do?"
If that is your dilemma, then you my friend are in luck. Today's tip will cost you nothing but will help you maintain that aura of manliness that you so desperately covet.

Here it is:
If you want to buy something at the store and your wife or girlfriend is with you DO NOT tell her what it is you want so that she can tell the salesperson while you stand meekly in the background. No one is fooled by this. We all know she's not the one who's going to be using the Gillette Fusion Power razor blades, which means you end up looking like a total douche who can't speak for himself.
The same goes for phone calls. Get your lazy butt up out of your easy chair and walk over to the phone, because when you have your wife call in to see if there are any .270 shells in stock the guy on the other end can hear her yelling across the house asking if you want Remington or Winchester.
So grow some balls and be a man. Despite the sensationalist news reporting done in the last few years, sales people very rarely bite their customers. Chances are you're going to be fine.

Day One

It's here! NaNoWriMo kicked off today, and I woke up feeling like a kid on Christmas morning. The story I'm working on this year has been percolating in my head for a couple of weeks and finally getting those first pieces of the plot puzzle on the page is a feeling like nothing else I know. The joy of NaNoWriMo is the push to let go of everything else and just write. You'd be amazed at some of the things that sprout out of your mind when the pressures on to get those words written no matter what.
At the end of day one, I'm proud to report a word count of 3,138.
If you're struggling you keep up your word count, you should go and check out a program called PunishPad which allows you to input a word count goal and and time limit and prompts you to keep writing if you start to fall behind. It's opened up whole new worlds of possibilities for me as a writer and I think it could do the same for you.
To all of you participating this month, good luck, and happy noveling. See you at 50,000 words.

The Mulch Pile Lives!

It's here! The first fragment of The Mulch Pile serial, is available for your perusal.

The Mulch Pile

Yesterday I finally finished editing the book I wrote last year for National Novel Writing Month, almost exactly a year after I started it. It's a little oddity called The Mulch Pile which started out as one thing and turned into something different entirely. It's difficult to summarize without giving too much away, but the conceit of the story is that a troubled family's mulch pile is struck by lightning and comes to life, but...well you'll just have to wait and see.I had a lot of fun putting out Shattered Destiny a little at a time, so I've been planning to release The Mulch Pile in serial form as well. I'll be posting new segments every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday throughout the month of November in honor of NaNoWriMo. I'll further information including a link to the site where I'll be posting the story within a few days. Here's hoping I'll see you there.

Ghosts in the Myst

A while back (a few months in the real world, eons in internet time) a certain famous movie critic made the claim that "video games can never be art." This resulted in the internet doing what the internet does (other than looking at porn), and getting all riled up about it and posting angry retorts on his blog.
I know I'm mostly preaching to the choir here, but I'm not just here to say that I disagree. I'm here to tell you that I got into video games because they were art.When I was younger my family did not have a computer. We had a stone age metal box that ran something called DOS, but that doesn't count. However my next-door neighbor and best friend at the time did have a computer. And on his computer he had the Greatest Game Ever Made. Myst.
I would go over to his house as often as I could and pester him to let me play this game on his computer. I think he started to get annoyed with the whole thing after a while, but...I couldn't help it. That game was freaking beautiful. I mean every single frame had something interesting to see, something that pulled you even further into the story of the game.
I begged my dad to get us a new computer so that I could experience the joy of playing this game for myself, but he said no. We just didn't have the money. But he saw how much I wanted this so he compromised.
He bought me a lawnmower.
He told me if I wanted a computer I would have to earn it for myself. Now at the time I hated cutting grass, but I knew this was my only chance to have a computer of my own, so I sucked it up and knocked doors around the neighborhood asking people if I could mow their lawns. It was terrifying for me to have to face the rejection of strangers, but I kept myself focussed on what was at stake and kept going.
Eventually I built up a pretty good clientèle, and all that spring and summer and pushed the lawnmower my dad had bought for me through sweltering heat and sickening humidity. By the time the fall came around I had about six hundred dollars to my name. I dragged my parents to the computer store and spent nearly all of it on the computer I had been so longing for. There wasn't even enough left to buy the game which had started this obsession in the first place, but my mom took pity on my and shelled out the fifteen bucks that I lacked.
And then, almost unbelievably, I had the thing in my hands, and I was walking out of the store, and it was mine. I got it home and put the disc in with my heart pounding in my throat, and then...I was in another world. I've never experienced anything like that since then. I became obsessed with that game. It wasn't so much about the puzzles to be solved so much as it was about the world that I was exploring. I believed in that world. I knew that somewhere, somehow, that place had to exist. In my young mind I was sure God could not be so cruel as to let a thing of such beauty be nothing more than fiction.
Of course I've mellowed on that position somewhat, but I'm still in awe of that game and how it made me feel. Myst was art in the purest form of the word, and no matter how far forward technology progresses, the things in that game will always be beautiful.
Maybe you're asking yourself "So why now? Nobody cares about Myst anymore." Which is sadly very likely to be true. But something I saw yesterday reminded me of the awe I felt when I first saw Myst. It was Forge World in Halo: Reach. I don't even own an Xbox, so the only bits and snippets I saw of it were in the Bungie video introducing the map and telling about its creation. But the snippets I saw were stunning. It almost made me want to go out and knock doors, so that I could mow some lawns, so that I could buy an Xbox and a copy of Reach, just so that I could walk around in that world for a while. Almost.
But that is art my friends. That is the ultimate definition of art. It's a world apart that speaks to the human soul, that exists purely for the sheer beauty of the thing. Sure, they may have stuck in the ability to slaughter your friends with a rocket launcher in that world, but that isn't the point. The point is beauty.
For me, it always has been.

Face. Palm.

So yesterday I finally broke down and pointed out to my wife that I had shaved off my beard (which, by the way, I've had for about a year). By then it had been an entire week since I did it and I was getting really weirded out that she hadn't said anything about it yet. Her response?

"You used to have a beard? I knew there was something different about you lately."

The Meaning in Life

Recently I read an interesting article about the fact that people tend to look for meaning where none actually exists. The things we often see as significant, such as strange coincidences or weird alignments of seemingly unrelated events are nothing more than the products of random chance. It's an observation I've read a few times before in a number of different places, but in this case I happened to scroll down into the comments section to see what other people thought of the argument.What I found was, in a way, profoundly discouraging. There were a number of people attacking the author of the article for somehow denying the existence of God, as if claiming that random chance has some part in life is the highest form of blasphemy. Now I seriously doubt that the author of the article does believe in God in any kind of meaningful way, but that doesn't mean that what he says is wrong. Despite the insistence of a great number of well meaning persons, everything does not happen for a reason. If it did I would be the first to say that this God person must be some kind of sadistic monster to cause such suffering in the world for the sake of some nebulous "greater good."But the truth is, sometimes things just happen. In fact the Bible clearly teaches this. Ecclesiastes 9:11 says, "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." Did you catch that? Sometimes it doesn't matter what you do, chance can still throw you a curve ball. Psalm 73 is an entire chapter about a man who wonders why the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer. In other words he's asking why bad things happen to good people. In the end he does find the meaning he is searching for, but his realization is that the reward of the righteous and the recompense of the wicked will only be fulfilled in the world to come.Most Christians I know quote the verse "All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose," as proof that everything has meaning, but that's not what the verse says. Notice that it doesn't say all things work for them, but all things work to them. It's not about God shaping the events of the universe in your favor, it's about an attitude that allows you to find meaning within yourself through God when everything goes wrong.A few years back a friend of mine, a good man, died in a car accident. At his funeral they said God "took him home" and that it was "his time to go" which I imagine was supposed to be comforting, but to me seemed almost twisted and wrong. After all, he wouldn't have been in the accident if he hadn't been driving too fast on slippery roads, and he very well may have lived if he had been wearing his seatbelt. God didn't cause his death. But God was there to comfort his grieving wife and son in a world that had suddenly become a very dark place.I hope I'm not boring you with this. Maybe you don't care about God or destiny or any of it, but it's something that's been on my heart for a long time now and I really wanted to share it. Life does have meaning, but that meaning isn't found in the things and events we see in this world. Rather, it is found within, through God. Only when looking through His eyes does life have real meaning.

Three for Free

A few months back I made a post about how, in my opinion, the price of ebooks was far too high given the low cost of distribution. So since I'm a cheapskate, I've been scouring the internet for ebooks I could read for free. I've sifted through quite a bit of junk, but there are definitely some rare and beautiful gems to be found in amongst all the garbage. So far this year I've found three of them that have rocked my world. In fact I'd say these three books are among the best I've read all year. So I present them here with a short summary of each and the strong recommendation that you get them and read them too.

The Beasts of New York
By Jon Evans
This is a book about squirrels. But don't let that put you off. The subtitle "a children's book for adults" should give you a general feel for the tone of the book. It's written in a purposefully simplistic way that at times greatly contrasts the darkness of the events which transpire. In broader terms the book is an epic of massive proportions which brings to mind the Odyssey. It is the story of one squirrel's journey home to Central Park through the deadly wasteland of New York City. There are colorful characters of all shapes and sizes (my favourite where the pigeons and the Queen of All Cats), and battles of epic proportions between the forces of good and evil. Don't miss this wonderful work of art.

Blindsight
By Peter Watts
Okay this one is a little more difficult to describe in a way that will do it justice. It's a high concept, hard SF novel which just so happens to feature...
Alright before I say this you have to promise to keep reading all right? It's really not as bad as it sounds ...vampires.
Supposedly they're some extinct branch of the human race that went extinct with the rise of civilization due to something called the crucifix glitch which which is a brain disorder that causes them to seize whenever they see any set of intersecting perpendicular lines. The main character is a human who has had half his brain removed and who has been chosen for a task force to meet an alien race. As the book progresses the theme of pretending to be human dominates as the main character struggles with his own detachment from emotion. It's good over all, but the ending... Wow. Just wow. I don't want to give anything away, but if you've ever enjoyed science fiction literature at all, this is the book for you. I swear it'll change the way you look at the world. And I'm not just being colorful when I say that.

When Graveyards Yawn
By G. Wells Taylor
I don't think I can do this book justice really, but I'm going to try. In this book the world really did come to an end for Y2K. I'm not just talking about computers. Everything changed. People stopped aging, stopped dying, and if they did die they would come back, sort of like zombies only just as smart as they were in life. Our protagonist is a detective named Wildclown who wears clown makeup and is being possessed by the spirit of-
Hey, okay seriously, come back. It's better than it sounds. Or maybe it's exactly as awesome as it sounds?
Anyway to boil down to a nutshell, a dead man comes to Wildclown and asks him to help find his murderer. What follows is a glorious tribute to the hardboiled detective novel set in a world that has literally gone to hell. Read it. You will not be disappointed.

Shirt Without the "R"

I'm starting to get ticked off at t-shirts. It's not the actual article of clothing that bugs me so much; it's the stuff people print on the article of clothing that gets on my nerves. Sometimes I get a chuckle from these witticisms when I first see them, but by the time I see the fourth or fifth guy wearing the same "joke" I'm rolling my eyes and thinking, "Seriously? That's what you find funny?" Maybe I'm not the typical case here. Maybe I'm overexposed because I work in retail and thus see hundreds of people a day. But I don't think I'm going too far to ask someone in the t-shirt business to please come up with something original and interesting to put on a t-shirt. Either that or just make one shirt that says, Either I have a horrible crippling mental disorder which makes me unable to discern the true nature of reality, or I am a cretinous pervert with no respect for the idea of sexual fidelity. Take your pick.
From what I've seen that shirt right there would cover approximately ninety percent of your customer base's needs.

Mutant Lesbian Babies from Mars

Today my wife told me a story about a baby at the nursery where she works that is the child of two lesbian women. The story goes that these two went through some kind of insane genetic procedure which basically amounted to some doctor removing the DNA from one of their eggs and implanting it into the other's egg. These two spent tens of thousands of dollars on this procedure, which, because both contributors possessed X chromosomes, resulted in the birth of a beautiful baby girl.
Nice enough story. But it isn't true. Not that my wife was lying to me, but according to the best estimates the technology to pull something like this off is still five or six years in the future, so someone was definitely lying.
And that is my favourite part of the story. Ever since I heard this I've been thinking up reasons why someone would concoct such an elaborate lie. After all, the details of the story involve these two women trying for years to pull this procedure off, so assuming one of them was lying to the other, the facade that she developed must have been legendary in its scope. If they're both lying to everyone else...well I can't fathom that either. I think there's a story here, but I don't have a clue what it is.
All I know is that when I was doing a quick web search to verify that my skepticism was justified I came across a website called lezmakeababy.com: and that's just awesome.

At the Top of Their Game

I do not look at magazines very often, but I see magazines almost every day, and recently I've noticed a trend that is both fascinating and disturbing: The Kardashian sisters are everywhere. It would be perfectly understandable if they were to pop up every now and then; they are after all beautiful celebutants with a bit of a slutty edge, so naturally they're going to get some face-time, but every single week? I'm not kidding either: I have started paying closer attention, since I first noticed this trend and in each and every new magazine cycle at least one of these women is on the cover of some magazine at my supermarket.
The length of time that this has gone on has slowly become a thing of strange wonder to me. After all, Heidi Klum and her horrifyingly awesome set of fake boobs was only able to stay in to loop for a couple of months. But these women, these women, with nothing more than their personal issues and their hot-if-you're-into-the-slutty-thing looks have been able to ride the wave of their celebrity so effectively that they have managed to overshadow every one of their fellow celebuskanks in terms of gossip column face-time.
This cannot be a mistake; it must be the result of some evil genius plan. And although I cannot begin to grasp at the particulars of this dark plan, I must nevertheless profess that I salute you, Kardashian sisters. I have no idea what you're supposed to be famous for, but I've never seen anyone who is better at it than you are.

Jasper Fforde is one cool dude. I mean really, he's got serious creative balls. If you haven't read any of his stuff he's got a series about a woman named Thursday Next, who travels into the Book World where characters compare their levels of development, under-described scenes actually look bland and boring, and plot devices are sold to the highest bidder. He's also the author of a couple of books about a fellow named Jack Spratt who's a detective that solves "nursery crimes" and still another book in which the world of the far future has been divided into a "colortocracy" where social standing depends of which shade of the spectrum you can see. If you haven't heard of him yet, you should definitely check him out. He'll blow your mind.But here's the thing. Before yesterday I had read almost every book he has ever written. Almost. The only one I had never finished was The Eyre Affair, the first book in his Thursday Next series and the first book Fforde ever wrote. If you're the kind of person that keeps up with such things then you might know that The Eyre Affair is legendary for having been rejected 72 times before finally being picked up for publication. And now that I have finally finished it, I know why. To put it bluntly, it's not that good. I won't enumerate its faults in too much detail here, but suffice it to say that it is nowhere close to the quality of Fforde's later work. And I'm fine with that. Because if some crazy agent hadn't gotten some crazy publisher to take a chance on this substandard work, I doubt Fforde would have gone on to write the rest of his amazing books. He's become a literary force to be reckoned with, and an inspiration to readers and writers alike, and along the way he's taught us a valuable lesson. Give mediocrity a try every once in a while; it might just grow up to surprise you.

The Dream

It seems to be a staple of staple of our culture that we value those people who pursue their dreams, who throw caution to the wind and risk everything to achieve something they've always yearned for. These kinds of people scoff at the question "How are you going to make a living at it?" and jeer at the pronouncement "There's no money in it for you." And we love them for it. We watch movies about them, we listen to them on television talk shows and secretly we wish that we had the courage to do what they have done.But is this the standard we should try to live up to? There's a problem with our vision of these people, a fundemental bias that is all too easy to overlook in the way we think about them. The dreamers we know about are always successful. Of course they are; how would we know their names otherwise? But how many more stories are there about people who followed their dreams and failed? I don't even know how you would objectively measure something like that, but tonight I heard at least one such story. A man came by the place I work and told the story of his daughter who went to college and studied art only to find that when she emerged with a degree in her hand and passion in her heart only to find that the warnings that "there's no money in it," were right on target. She couldn't make money as an artist. Today she supports herself by teaching art: certainly nothing to be ashamed of, but hardly the dream I imagine she had when she chose her career path.This issue is more than academic for me. I have a dream too, an improbable dream, but a dream that burns in my heart as fervently as any star burns in the heavens. I want to be a writer. A real writer, with an agent, and books with my name on them on the shelves at Barnes and Noble and Books-a-Million. A writer who can make enough money to comfortably live out the rest of his life doing even more writing. The problem is I know plenty of writers who haven't succeeded, poor souls reduced to peddling their self-published books at local art fairs, and on obscure websites that try to look professional, but instead end up looking pathetic. These are men and women with a dream that never came true. Every day they work at their mundane job, and every night they go home to their writing. Their Dream. And though they are consumed by the fire of their passion, the flame gives them no heat. They are painfully aware of the lie that they are telling themselves.And I am one of them.Am I wasting my time? I have promised myself that I will keep writing till I die even if none of my books sees the light of day, but the truth is that I desperately yearn to be read. Every time I step into the bookstore there is a part of me that aches to see my name on printed on the cover of one of those books. And I have to wonder...how long do I keep dreaming? How long do I close my eyes to the bitter reality of failure? How long until I give up?And yet, even as I write this, I remember the deeper more important truth. I cannot give up. I love writing. It is as much a part of who I am as the air I breathe, and without it, some part of me would surely perish.Even if I go to the grave a fool, I will have been a fool who spent his life living as few men can hope to live. I am a dreamer. And for the dreamer, the obstacles mean nothing; the dream is everything.So I will go on. For as long as I am unpublished, I will feel the pain of a weary heart, but I will go on. Because dreams, even when they don't come true are still worth something. They are the heart of the soul, the distilled essence of humanity itself. And without them, we are nothing.

The Divide

Smart people succeed. It's a mantra that's been drilled into us from the very earliest moments of our lives by a society that has absorbed it's doctrine so completely that it has become difficult to believe that there is an alternative, let alone one that could ever hope to be right. And yet...if we were to take a closer look we would find scores of reasons to doubt this hypothesis. Of course, some smart people succeed; certainly intelligence is no hindrance on the road to wealth and happiness. But of course, so too do stupid people succeed. And most importantly of all, often, smart people fail. It would be simple enough to list individual examples of this truth such as the story of the man who at one point tested as having the highest IQ in the world but later dropped out of college to work as a bouncer in the bar. If you're interested in such things, Malcolm Gladwell has written an entire book on the subject which is both lucid and enjoyable.

But recently it occurred to me that at least one such "intelligent failure" has occurred not at the individual level but at the cultural level. It would be difficult to calculate exactly how much impact this society has had on our world today, but I think it is safe to say that it would be difficult to overestimate it's importance. We interact with their symbols every day, most of our science is necessarily rooted in their discoveries, and in general their contributions have become such an integral part of our society that we are hardly able to consciously acknowledge them. Yet in spite of their undeniable genius, today they've barely made it out of the dark ages technologically speaking, and their culture is mired in the swamp of centuries old customs and clutched in the grip of rigid religiosity.

In case you didn't know, the symbols for numbers that we use every day (1,2,3...) are referred to as Arabic numerals, and the reason for that, (this one's going to bowl you out of your chair) is that they were invented by Arabs.

No big deal, you say. I could make up all kinds of symbols and say they were supposed to represent numbers. What's so great about these guys?

And the answer is this: the Arabs didn't only invent the symbols we use for our numbers, they also invented nearly everything else in the foundation of modern mathematics. They invented the number zero, they invented algebra (yes, now you know who to thank), and there was a time when anyone who was anyone in the world of mathematics had to know how to read the original Arabic texts laying out these and other concepts.

Let me reiterate: the Arabs invented algebra. As far a book smarts goes they were the smartest guys around. And yet...well do I even need to point it out? Almost the only reason the Arabs have any power in the world stage today is because of their natural resources and even then many of their countries are impoverished and underdeveloped. Why? Why when the intellectual world once lay at their feet nibbling at the crumbs of knowledge they dropped from their table were they not able to rise up and create the new technology that would have enabled them to carve out a place of prominence among the nations? Because, quite simply, smart people don't always succeed.

The Arabs were knew more about math than any other culture of the day, and yet they failed to apply what they knew, instead leaving their knowledge to be interpreted and applied by other cultures and other generations.

I recently read an account of two men developing similar mathematical theories at the same time. One of the men was a mathematician working the realm of pure number theory. The other was a watchmaker trying to determine how best to split a gear with a number of teeth that was a large prime number into a smaller gear train without losing too much precision. Both men came to very similar methods of solving the problem, but only one of them truly profited by it: the watchmaker.

The moral of the story is this: It is not enough for us to be intelligent, because intelligence by itself is unavoidably vain. Both as individuals and as a society we must learn to apply our knowledge, to make it work for us. Otherwise we run the risk of becoming it's slaves.

Revenge is Unsweetened

I wasn't very popular in high-school. Given that my schooling beforehand had been done at home I lacked many of the social graces required to fit in or, at the very least, to remain invisible in the high-school culture. I'm pretty sure, I got off on the wrong foot the very first week, and I hopped on that very same foot for the next four years. I wasn't accepted by the society I had been plunged into, and I began to develop a hatred for all those who participated in my rejection. I had dreams that one day I would eventually be wildly successful, that I would stumble upon them some time later and find that their lives had fallen into ruin and disrepair, and I would have the last laugh. I'm pretty sure it's a dream every socially awkward kid has had at one point or another, and for years after high-school was over I held on to that dream of ultimate revenge.
As time passed, it turned out that I did not become wildly successful. That isn't to say that my life is a failure by any means, but I'm certainly in no position to gloat over others. And last week I finally realized that I don't need to.
Last week I met one of those people I knew in high-school, one of the ones who I had resented for not accepting me as I was, and I was shocked to find that I simply didn't care any more. It wasn't that I had built myself up so high in life that I could look down with a proud and haughty face and say "You ridiculed me all those years, but look at me now! Now I don't need your friendship!" I was simply that I had learned to be content with my life as it was. I no longer have to measure myself against my former peers, or, for that matter my current peers. I am happy as I am. I can rejoice with those who have managed to find the same happiness and contentment, and I can try to help those who have not, no matter who they may be.
It is a strange thing to realize, that the ultimate revenge a man can have isn't truly revenge at all, but rather to be happy within himself regardless of those who have wronged him. I thank my God I have found that sweet contentment.

Serious Shakers

I was at the flea market last weekend and I saw this beautiful piece of work. It came with a card that read, "Add charm and delight to your home with this timeless keepsake. This collectible reminds us that imagination is limitless and dreams are forever."

I'm not really sure I want these kinds of dreams to be forever. I am pretty sure these are the kinds of dreams that I would hope would end eventually.

The card further went on to assure me that my skull shaped salt and pepper shaker holder "was individually hand crafted by professional artists to present life like character."

I wonder what it must be like to be one of those artists. Imagine this: You're at a party. Someone comes up and asks, "So what do you do in life?"

You puff your chest out and proclaim, "I'm a professional artist!"

"Really? What kind of art do you do?"

How do you answer that question? Is the timeless "I hand paint life-like skull shaped salt and pepper shaker holders," line really going to get you very far in the dating scene, or for that matter any scene? I think not.

The same card further assured me that this skull was one of a limited edition of 5000 pieces, which makes me sad for the "professional artists" who are out of a job now that this limited edition run is over with. With this shaky economy, we cannot stand for such things. Which is why I bought one. Because I refuse to stand by and let "professional artists" starve in the midst of this recession.

(Also because it's freakin' awesome.)