Jim’s Brain Online

Posted by Jim at December 29th, 2006

Here’s a tale from the “Blogging about Totally Insignificant Things Department” of the internet…

As you know, it was Christmas on Monday which means that we end up having our garbage taken a day later than usual. This puts life out of the normal routine for a number of reasons. Normally, for example, I have to get up for a 7:00 am, business-related meeting, making it very easy to get out the garbage on time.

Making the meeting on time is a bit harder for me, but we won’t get into that.

So anyway, I was getting kids up when I heard the garbage truck stop across the street. At that moment, I realized a few things in quick succession. First that the garbage was not out. Second, that I only had about five minutes before it came back up our side of the street. Thirdly, that if I didn’t get it out, I would be stuck with the Stinking Trash of Death for another week.

I ran back to my own room, pulled clothes on and ran downstairs.

I’d overestimated the amount of time that I actually had, however, and found that the garbage truck had not only made it back to my side of the street, but had actually passed my house and stopped two houses down from me.

Yanking the bag of trash out of the can, I wrapped a twist-tie around the open end and ran down the stairs of our porch, managing to bash my leg and the bag against something in the process.

In the meantime, the garbage truck moved still further down the block.

Following it, I sprinted down the street, garbage bag in hand.

I caught up with it just two houses down from the church at the corner. The garbageman took the trash without remark. As he threw it into the truck, I noted a fairly significant rip at the bottom of the bag, but, miraculously it still seemed to be holding the contents inside. Turning around, I was relieved to find that I hadn’t left a trail of trash on the sidewalk.

When I got home though, I saw a wet pull-up (one of our kids is slightly inconsistent at night) and a broken eggshell next to the porch stairs.

I went in and got a broom and dust pan.

When I got back outside, I realized something that I’d altogether missed on the way in. A four inch wide trail of cat litter ran down the walk between the porch and the driveway.

I can think of better ways to begin a day.

Posted by Jim at December 28th, 2006

As you may have noticed, I’ve been averaging about a blog post a week over the last couple weeks. That shows what holidays can do. Seeing family and friends takes away time you might use to do really important things.

Just in case you’re not catching my tone over the internet, that last comment was a joke. Ha-ha.

OK. So anyway, I got an email from Ed a few days ago that pointed out that the Star Wars Holiday Special (a piece so awful that Lucas has done his best to destroy all copies) is now available online.

The same blog that broke that news also pointed to a music video that is far, far funnier (not to mention stranger) in my opinion. It’s apparently a video made by a Scandinavian disco musician who attempted to immortalize the Apache tribe in song.

Words cannot describe it.

Posted by Jim at December 21st, 2006

So I’m working on my novel and it’s been going more slowly than I’d like. Part of the reason for this is that I’ve been deliberately planning more than I generally do. Thus, when I don’t have the slightest idea what should be happening in the next scene I stop and think about it rather than write. Sometimes I even outline the next bit.

I’m not sure if this is better than just writing until you have an idea, but I know that the last draft of my novel included a lot of pointless digressions and scenes that started several paragraphs after the scene supposedly began. Hopefully the current draft avoids this problem.

The scene I’ve been working on lately involves the protagonist meeting the antagonist. An “antagonist” is colloquially better known as the “bad guy.”

A couple of drafts ago, a reader (by which I mean my sister, M.A. English, MFA Creative Writing…) complained that the initial scene in which my main character met the villain of the piece made it too obvious that the guy was dangerous.

This was a bad thing in that the main character ends up working for the guy for about two-thirds of the novel. Narbonic aside, you generally don’t take on a job with someone if you suspect he’s got a plan for world domination.

Not that the villain of my story has a plan for something that obvious, but still…

It’s funny that I screwed up in that particular way. My bias in terms of conflict is that you can have a lot more fun with it when the people in conflict have a history. This means that at some point in their lives they were probably friends and may have been relatives or coworkers.

More to the point, it makes it a little harder to write someone who is pure evil. I prefer an antagonist whose ideas have some appeal to the main character and thus to the reader. Basically I like a situation in which the main character has to make a real choice and maybe by the end of the novel still isn’t completely sure it was the right one.

Needless to say, I’m taking a different tack in this draft.

I’m ditching the bit where he explains his philosophy of life and how he’s going to make the world a better place (a typical speech for Someone Who’s Really Evil) and going with a slower process during which the main character comes to like and admire the guy.

Hopefully this will make for a better story. At the very least I think it will make for a richer and more complex story. Ideally, it might even have some sort of emotional punch to it, but that’s hard to guess at present.

Anyway, back to writing the novel.

P.S. This list of the Top 100 Things to Do If You Ever Become an Evil Overlord amuses me. It offers a multitude of stereotypes to avoid–some of which I’ve already had antagonists commit.

Posted by Jim at December 13th, 2006

My wife likes the Oak Ridge Boys a lot. She’s liked them since the age of eleven.

Can’t place the group? They’ve got two hits that you’ve likely heard: “Elvira” and “American Made.” They sing country and gospel.

My personal musical preferences include jazz, blues, rock (70’s progressive, 80’s-90’s alternative, indie rock), and classical. Sometimes I make brief forays into folk, bluegrass, celtic, ska, reggae, and klezmer. Country and gospel are not on that list. It’s not that I dislike them. I just prefer other things. Bearing that in mind, I went to an Oak Ridge Boys concert tonight. I didn’t go under duress, but let’s just say that it would have never occurred to me to go if I weren’t married.

The Place
To begin, I’d like to mention something about the Deltaplex in Grand Rapids. If you’ve got the money and you’re going to see a concert there, spring for the expensive seats on the floor in front of the band. We sat in the bleachers to the side of the band and there wasn’t much space between the rows. It was okay for my wife, but I’m almost a foot taller than she is and my knees were in the row ahead of me for most of the concert. Fortunately, the seats directly in front of me were empty or I’d have kneed the occupants in the back of the head again and again.

The Singers
Like any band with more than one vocalist, they’ve got the problem of making each person visually distinctive as well as musically distinctive. Thus, they have:

–One Workingman Rocker (with moustache) who pumps his fist on occasion
–One Guy Who Wears a Suit (who has a beard)
–One Guy With a Really Long White Beard and whose clothes often have sparkling pictures on them
–One Guy Who Has a Goatee and a More Elegant Look and also a really DEEP VOICE. As in, he makes all those ominous sounding people who do movie trailers sound like three year old girls by comparison. This guy, obviously, is the bass singer. He is also, according to my wife, “the cute one.”

The first three guys do more lead singing than the bass singer, but that’s not much of a surprise. I’ve sung a bit of bass myself and mostly you spend your time helping other people sound good. This is not a bad thing.

The Concert
When it comes right down to it, I had a good time. The first half of the concert included their hits as will as material from their new album (which includes the song “Hard to Look Cool in a Minivan“). I did not know much of this material. The second half of the concert consisted of Christmas music and was recorded for use on XM Radio.

Despite my lack of knowledge about the genre and lack of strong interest in the material itself, it was pretty obvious that they knew what they were doing and were good at it. I’d go see them again.

I’m more interested in seeing the Decemberists or Ron Carter if there were any chance he’d come to Grand Rapids, but there’s something to be said for a group that can entertain you even though you’re primarily going because your wife is.

Posted by Jim at December 10th, 2006

So last night Kristen and I went to the Christmas party for her new place of work. She now works at a for profit psychiatric hospital instead of a non-profit, church controlled, social work agency.

No surprise then that the annual Christmas party is held at the Amway Grand Plaza and the participants were expected to dress up. As in suits, ties and evening gowns (though not (obviously) all of those at once…).

I’m not really into dressing up, but I nonetheless decided to go to the bother of buying a belt, tie and pants that would match my suit coat.

I brought them home and showed them to Kristen. Afterwards we had the conversation that follows:

Kristen: What suit coat are you wearing with that?
Me: The blue one.
Kristen: You can’t wear black pants with a navy blue coat. You should have bought khaki. Black and blue don’t go together.
Me: They do with bruises.

She didn’t buy that one.

In the end though, there wasn’t any time left to buy new pants. I wore exactly that combination and I thought it looked okay.

I’ll find out exactly how okay in the near future. The event also included a photographer who took pictures of everyone before they went in.

Posted by Jim at December 5th, 2006

I’ve watched the classic Disney movie Winnie the Pooh again recently. It’s not by choice.

My mother-in-law has a lot of children’s videos and dvd’s and loans them out to my kids when they come over to her house. While this is very nice of her, there is a downside.

I work at home. The VCR, dvd player and tv are in the same room as all three of the working computers in our home. Though we limit the amount of time that Abby and Rebecca watch tv, kids often watch the same movie over and over again if they like it.

They like Winnie the Pooh.

As a result I’ve heard it many too many times in the 2 weeks that they’ve been borrowing it. I look forward to the next time they visit their grandma. It means that they will return the video and I won’t have to hear any of the songs in the movie again.

Not that that will make a difference. I can sing most of them from memory now. Occasionally they pop into my head and repeat themselves just for no good reason.

With any luck I’ll be able to avoid breaking into song when I’m with a client. I’m thinking that Tigger’s song would be a good one to avoid. An excerpt:

“Flouncy, bouncy
flouncy, bouncy
fun, fun, fun, fun, fun!”

“Another wonderful thing about tiggers is
I’m the only one!
IIIIIIII’m the only one!”

Here’s one thing I’d forgotten about Winnie the Pooh: It breaks the fourth wall. The narrator talks to the characters and actually helps Tigger out of a tree. It’s pretty odd. Also, some of the animations (I’m thinking in particular about the one for “Heffalumps and Woozils”) are psychedelic.

Interestingly, Christopher Robin, the son of the author of the Winnie the Pooh books, had very mixed feelings about being famous. Let me rephrase that for greater accuracy… He hated being famous, something that ultimately strained his relationship with this father.

There’s some sort of lesson there about being careful about what you write about family members. On the other hand, I recall that Kurt Vonnegut’s son ended up having mental heath issues that Vonnegut’s success played some role in–and so far as I know Vonnegut didn’t write about his son at all. So it may be that lessons aren’t especially easy to draw.

It may just be that fame is bad for kids.

Whatever the case, I know that I liked Winnie the Pooh books and movies as a child and I’m sure many other people did as well.

I’m just hoping my enjoyment survives the current bout of overexposure to Pooh.

Posted by Jim at December 1st, 2006

I don’t make a habit of reading classics. My tastes run toward science fiction and fantasy. That being said, I do read classics occasionally.

In this particular case it’s because I had a large pile of books sitting in my bedroom. When we finally got around to putting in a book case, my wife chose what books to place in it. Rather than put in the books that I would have preferred (mostly role-playing games), she put in the books that I had gotten out of my parents’ basement when they moved–that is to say the books I was reading around age 10 or so. We’re talking The Hardy Boys, a couple books related to Snoopy, a number of young adult novels (A Wrinkle in Time)and a few classics that I happened to own and like (Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Little Men, the sequel–sort of–to Little Women).

As such, I’ve been flipping through them every so often and re-reading bits. Here’s a funny thing I noticed recently though… In one of Mark Twain’s books (I forget which), he mentions a boy who is fantastically gifted, studies incredibly hard and ends up far in advance of his age. Then he has a breakdown and ends up unable to read. Similarly in Little Men, Louisa May Alcott includes a character who was pushed too hard as a child and also breaks down and similarly has trouble even learning the alphabet after that.

In fact there are a number of points in Little Men where there seems to be concern that too much studying can damage a child, specifically a boy. I could imagine that in a society that is slowly moving from being a mostly rural society to one that is mostly urban. Also, the timing is roughly right for the authors of both books to accept some of the ideas associated with muscular Christianity.

It struck me as funny that they seemed to have a similar anxiety about studying too much that some today have toward video games.

It makes me wonder what other anxieties people have today that will seem a little odd to people in the future.

Off the top of my head I can think of:

–weight gain
–excessive internet use
–excessive television use
–video games (I’m looking at you, Jack Thompson…)

I’m sure other people can name more.

That’s not to say that these things can’t be problems. Any one of them can be a problem. I’d argue though, that each of them get more press than heart disease. Heart disease is of course, one of the biggest killers in the US.

I’m not claiming exemption from worrying about any of them. I limit my kids time on the television and with video games. I’m just saying that I’d bet that there are bunch of things that we worry about far out of proportion to the actual risk.