My Trip to the Wisconsin Historical Society: Another Shout Out to Historians

I'm typing this one up on the Smartphone on the way home from Madison, WI. I came up last night straight out of work on a bus (with the L in Chicago su-cking!), stayed a night in a hotel that couldn't filter out the sounds of revellers at the bar across the street then got up this morning, had breakfast and got to the Wisconsin Historical Society at 10ish. An hour behind schedule, but it's the weekend.

I spent the day doing my first ever active historian work. A young guy and an older guy gave me an intro to the archives room then fetched me the commonplace book for George Ripley from the years 1822 to 1840.

George Ripley pretty much founded the Brook Farm Association of . . ., the socialist-Associationist community I'm currently trying to write about. I've written a little bit here and there about Ripley and Brook Farm. Most of what I've written lately has been to complain that Ripley should have kept more journals or, at the very least, provided much more articulate reasons as to his motivations for starting Brook Farm and why certain organizational processes were started there. That way, people like me could evaluate the results of Brook Farm better.

Ripley used his commonplace book to write down quotes, his thoughts on philosophers and critics and, near the end, he used it to work on projections for calculating, budgeting and figuring out the feasibility of crop growing on Brook Farm. I used to use my Palm Pilot for the same thing and have started to do so with my Smartphone.

I pored over the commonplace book for a half hour or so. Ripley organized it by subject pretty well. He probably did so for his own benefit, but it certainly helps the historian. He should have put more of his thinking and kept writing in it. I have the feeling that he just got too busy after 1840, trying to publish magazines, working on cyclopedic collections of philosophical and critical writing, trying to make Brook Farm work then working his ass off to pay debt leftover after Brook Farm dissolved.

The biggest faux pax on my part consisted of planning to use pens to take notes. The Society asks researcher not to. Doesn't take too much thought to understand their reasoning. Pens have a higher chance of leaking and exploding ink all over these mostly one-of-the-kind artifacts. Pencils and hands may smudge graphite on the documents, but I think there's a much smaller chance of the happening. I didn't to take any notes, though, so I didn't break any rules.

Even though if I destroyed that copy of the book, it wouldn't be as bad as other documents. Harvard University has the original copy, and this is just a copy. Yeah, getting another copy would probably be a huge pain the ass, but at least I wouldn't have been responsible for destroying a one-of-kind artifact that makes up our cultural heritage.

Doing that would just make me feel like a big jerk.

Done with the commonplace book for the moment, I went down to the microfilm room. No problem finding the microfilm I wanted since the older guy from the archives printed out a page that had the information for me. Just took me a minute or two to figure out the organizing system.

The first microfilm machine didn't help me, but the machine didn't do anything wrong. It was an old school machine that pretty acts as a projector on a screen with user interface device to navigate through the microfilm. The problem lay on the film: the text was published on the film so it was rotated 90 degrees to right-side up. I would have to twist my head 90 degrees on end then put some cognitive load on me to translate rotated print into correctly angled print. Gravity and our sense of balance really makes things difficult for us that.

Now that I think about it, my neck wouldn't have enjoyed twisting itself like that for hours on end.

I wandered aimlessly around the room until I discovered something amazing: computers set up to read microfilm. I've never seen that before! One of the staff helped set up one of the computers, showed me how to load the film then set up the computer so the text was rotated correctly. The coolest feature which I didn't have the opportunity to use: the microfilm computer will scan directly to a flash drive (hopefully in PDF form). Awesome!

The microfilm contained letters that Ripley and his second wife sent his sister, Marianne. First challenge from the outset: no table of contents, no index and no search feature. I have to find what I'm looking for by reading/scanning the whole text in some systematic fashion. I took probably the most obvious system: start at one page then read until there are no pages to read.

The second problem, and by far the worst of the two, all the letters were handwritten. Even worse, Ripley had horrible handwriting. His wife had more aesthetically pleasing handwriting, looking all neat and uniform, but she didn't allow for any white space in her letters. She made everything as tight as she could. Without the white space, it just looked like little pretty scribbles.

Ripley didn't even bother to stay neat with his handwriting. He wrote his letter like he signed it at the end. He had plenty of white space, but he just in a script and didn't think about making it easier to anyone else to read it. Sure, maybe he wasn't thinking of me or another historian when writing his sister, but how easily could his sister read his handwriting.

For both Ripley and his wife, reading the English was like reading another language that I'm trying to learn. There was stuff in there I could understand easily enough. As I learned different scrawlings I could read those particular scrawlings better.

When I came upon a scrawling I couldn't understand right away, though, I went into translation mode. Sometimes I just stared at the word until I could make it out. Other times I stared at the word, tried to pick certain parts, tried to pick out letters or just let the first word that it look like catch my attention. I would just keep whispering that word or let the parts that I picked out run around in my head. That sometimes worked.

A more holistic approach generally worked best, though. I would take chunks of words, legible and illegible, then through my understanding of the words I could, the logic of English syntax, sentence structure and probably other linguistic words I don't know or can't think of at the moment, and also visual pattern recognition of words, I could translate most of the gibberish.

Remember me saying that reading text at a 90 degree angle because the microfilm was published that way would cause a large cognitive load? I can't imagine how well my brain could on top of reading text at an angle, handle essentially having to interpret chicken scrawl. I think my brain might have exploded all over the microfilm monitor!

There's just one more element that made the microfilm research difficult. This one probably comes from reading any microfilm, however. The quality of the copied pages varies, from page to page. To adjust for easier reading, I had three settings: zoom, brightness and contrast. Zoom and brightness helped a lot, but I have no idea if the contrast setting even did anything. Having to change these settings for practically every page su-u-cked!

I sat at the microfilm reading computer for about four hours and didn't read the whole microfilm. I started reading it word-for-word. I didn't think I could just scan because the squiggles on the screen didn't even look like they spelled anything. Just squiggles!

I had set my phone to have alarm go off at 3, though. The last bus from Madison to Chicago left at 4:30, and I wanted to make sure to grab a bite to eat and some water before leaving on the 4 hour ride home.

When that alarm went off, I snoozed it for 5 minutes. I started scanning. Of course, I started finding references to my research topic at this point. None of them held relevance to the my writing, though. Argh!

I don't know if reading the microfilm word-for-word for about 3 hours primed my visual pattern recognition or not, but within that last half hour, I was able to get through quite a bit and get enough gist of it. Enough of a gist to know that what I'm reading didn't have anything.

Nonetheless, at 3:30, fighting against my nature, I accepted defeat and got out of there. I had just enough time to grab a burrito and some water then get on the bus home.

I will have to visit Madison at least once more to scan the rest of that microfilm. If what I believe is on there is on there (as another historian cites in a book on George Ripley), I must get that information!

After my experience today, I must give a shout out to historians out there and exhort my readers to do the same. Researching and writing history is a labor intensive vocation. The reward for it probably doesn't provide nearly the compensation that equals the labor power that goes into it.

So, historians, my hat goes off to you.

Movies Being Run by Venture Capitalist Attitude

My parents' generation complained about the music my generation listened to. I think as my generation grows older, we will complain about the movies made McG and the other moviemakers and today and onward. And apparently I come from the MTV generation.

A rant about the dearth of crappy movies in the theaters these days:

You know what probably makes for the crappy movies today? It has to do with a venture capitalist attitude rather than a quality craft attitude (I almost said quality art attitude, but these days, that means someone thinks the statement is more important than the entertainment factor).

The studios probably just throw money at these directors, producers, actors, etc. etc. thinking that something 1 out of 5 movies will make enough profit to make up for the crappy movies put out. Issue is that it probably costs more money to think critically about the talent to hire than to just throw money at a few of them.

Then they probably make the argument that they need to follow this model because the consumers have the demand for quantity rather than quality.

And the thing is, the mass consumer hasn't done what it needs to do to tell the studios to value quality over quantity.

I think some kind of organized movement needs to occur. A movement that will write letters to movie studios to value quality over quantity, and a movement that will work to enrich the population's ability to judge movies, literature and other artistic craftwork rather than just gobble up this crap that is even lower on the food chain than pop art.

Marxist criticizes art as a tool to manipulate the masses into accepting the status quo and power of the dominant class. Either the entertainment of today does a great job of getting the masses to accept the dominant class by making the masses dumber, or Marxist criticism could not have foreseen that capitalism did something worse than control the masses. . .it just made classes dumber and accepting of crap.

Well, I guess if being dumb and accepting of crap means inactivity, then I guess that's control in its own type of way.

Let's get smarter, people.

Malnutrition Posing as Burn Out

Around the time that I stopped writing, my consciousness felt like it was spinning out of control. I lost a lot of motivation. I felt down. I think I may have even felt a little paranoid or attributing unrealistic motivations to people, especially the wife. I intelligently didn't act overtly on my discontent except to voice my frustration about not understanding the things happening around me or engaging in healthy habits.

Feeling out of touch with my myself in all sorts of way, I started journaling privately again. I had a need to turn inward. If I couldn't pinpoint an issue with the world around me, maybe the issue lay within me. I also had plenty of things I wanted to write about that this blog would provide an appropriate venue, whether because of privacy issues or because my topics and meanderings wouldn't have appeal to a public audience. Frankly, I didn't feel as if my thoughts, reflections or activities really would fit here.

Actually, I didn't engage in many habits other than journaling until a few weeks ago. Going to Jamaica with the wife for a long weekend could possibly prove a healthy habit, but we've only done that once. If only. . ..

A few weeks ago, though, I really had hit a bottom. My wife had gone away for the weekend on a business trip. I pretty much just sat at home, watching tons and tons of TV. All the while, I wondered why I couldn't get my ass off the gear. I told myself to do it, and I just didn't do it. I wasn't physically sick, I just didn't do things that I told myself to do. I could move my arms, wiggle my fingers and toes and all that. I just didn't have the willpower to do the things I wanted to do.

A friend of a friend even was putting on a concert to fund raise for cancer or some other important cause. Many things I value there: a cause, socializing, bar and checking out new music. Did I want to go out? Nope, not one bit.

By the end of that weekend, I remember that I had taken some "whole" supplements to deal with coming off an ADHD medication. I had just come to Chicago, didn't have health insurance, didn't have a job and only had limited money to live on until I got a job. I didn't have to worry about losing the roof over my head or anything, but I still wanted to watch my money. . .and having an expensive medication to help me perform better didn't make it to the top of my list of priorities.

Funny thing: I performed better and accomplished more on the "whole" supplements rather than on the ADHD medication.

I had stopped taking those "whole" supplements, however, because I ended up dealing with another problem using something else. I thought that something else interacted with the "whole" supplement weird and that that something else would actually help fix what the "whole" supplement had supposedly fixed. So I went on my merry way for about a year.

Looking back, now, over the the last year or so, though, I can see that my performance and productivity had suffered. A couple weeks ago, though, I just needed something to kick me in the ass and get me going, doing the things that I needed and wanted to do, to bring that shininess back to the world, too.

I started taking the "whole" supplement again. It helped immediately. I started having the ability to focus a lot more.

When the wife and I went to Jamaica, I ended up taking the primary vitamin/mineral in the "whole" supplemented that I needed. I didn't want to face anything going through customs by bringing this "whole" supplement with me. It's a perfectly legal "whole" supplement, but I didn't want to have to deal with any trouble. I get anxious enough just flying in a plane or going through security. The pure vitamin/mineral had some interesting side effects that didn't make me too uncomfortable, and it still helped me to focus.

I started doing some more research after coming back from Jamaica. Since then, I've been making sure to eat foods with a lot more healthy stuff in them, from more protein to more minerals to more vitamins. It's some exciting stuff to read about and even more exciting to live through.

I feel great! I've got more energy, more focus, more happiness. I haven't been able to keep it up steadily, but I think that's just because I haven't been doing a great job getting enough protein for awhile now except at lunch. Tonight I made sure to have a protein shake, and I feel much better. My mood feels good and pleasant.

Too bad I've had a time crunch of spending some extra time after work, getting my grocery shopping done, cleaning the dishes and making lunch for tomorrow. At least I'm not getting down on myself for never having enough time. Tomorrow will be a better day, and I'll get home earlier since I don't have to grocery shop. Then I've got the weekend to work on my projects.

All is good, just as long as I keep making sure I put the good stuff in my body. Think of that next time you're feeling down, unfocused and unmotivated, find out what the good stuff is and put it in you.

Unfortunately, I can't provide advice on the good stuff because my professional capacity puts me into a strange capacity that might convince people to listen to me. I don't want someone to get all screwed up because I said try something, and they trusted me. I found out all this stuff by doing my own research and listening to my skeptical common sense about it all. I think you can do it, too. It just takes time and effort. It's not that hard.

So yeah, that's how I thought I was burnt out but was probably malnourished.

On Figs and Bunny Pre-Mating Rituals

An e-mail I wrote to the wife in reference to some glazed and roasted figs she bought me on Monday from Pastoral:

Now I know why figs have become so mythological and "evil." These figs you got from Pastoral is the vegan answer to caviar. It's as sensuous as eating at Boka.

I probably won't be getting them to eat everyday, but they certainly make a good treat worthy of their infamy.

In other random inconsequential news: On Sunday night, the wife and I saw two bunnies performing a pre-mating ritual in the courtyard of a Catholic Church. It struck us as somewhat ironic.

I never thought pre-mating rituals could look so cute. The boy bunny would try to sneak up behind the girl, she would do this jump roundhouse kick, jump on his head and scratch it then she would go off to graze somewhere else. It went on like this for a couple minutes until we got bored and went home.

Highly entertaining, this thing we call nature, especially when it happens in the city.

The Smartphone: A Great Writing Aid

I wrote the last entry mostly on my new Smartphone during my commutes to and from work. It works great since it has an application for creating and editing Microsoft Word documents. Using it I can do more productive things than reading.

I love reading, and reading can help me gather information to use later. I don't have any hard copy books or magazines that have relevance to my current projects to read. My Smartphone can't access Google Books in a useful way so can't read any relevant out of print books.

Reading the news would probably enrich and enlighten my life, but I need to move forward with my ambitions to actually use newsworthy information to make a difference in the world. I don't really have much power to make a difference beyond my immediate social and professional circles. No offense, family, friends, acquaintances, associates and customers, I want to change the world in a bigger way than we could do through in any association that you would also find fulfilling or useful.

I've done some work drafting up a new outline for the last paper of the bachelors project. I can't even remember the last time I had worked on an outline for one. Over the last I don't know how many months, I've been doing tons of research, trying to get a better idea of the intentions, goals and the rationale of the organization the founders of Brook Farm had for it.

I don't really have an articulate answer for these ruminations yet. Right now I have a jumble of information and references to get the information in my mind. All the information doesn't have an organizing principle yet, though.

The outlining I've done over the past couple days plus some mental ruminating has helped me a little to come closer to an articulate explanation. It has also helped come closer to figuring out yet another hypothesis to try exploring through the exploration of historical evidence through reason and rationality.

Using the Smartphone to work on the outline allows me to actually generate something during what would have been unproductive time or distracting productivity in the past. The ease of transferring work I do on the Smartphone to my phone helps to cut down on the unproductive work of transcribing something I wrote in one place onto a file in the computer. It also helps me avoid the hassle of copying and pasting, too. I just connect the Smartphone to my computer, open the file, edit it as usual then save it where I wish.

Yay for me finding another writing, organization and productivity aid. Now my brain and mind, the tools that generate and articulate the ideas can produce stuff so these aids can really help!

The Indeterminacy of Serial World Building

As I mentioned in the last entry, I weaseled my way into copyediting a friend's entries on his Wiki, The Lands of Shadow. I don't believe I'll get credited anywhere, but that's cool. I've already received some benefit from working on it: brushing up on my writing skills and getting exposed to a couple interesting themes.

Working with a "living document" certainly fascinates me while irritating me somewhat (this is not, in any way, a criticism or bitch session). The wiki acts as a source document for my friend's Dungerons & Dragons campaign world. As a living document, it could change depending on how he wants the direction of his campaign storyline to go, how different parties relate to each other (player characters, non-player characters, institutions, social groups, kingdoms, nations), the storyline, landscape of the world and whatever else may change.

Allowing the wiki to have this kind of indeterminacy complicates matters for me, as a writer and as something of a Type A personality. My friend has passed over to me for editing an entry about one of his kingdoms. A part of the entry pertained to the process in which the kingdom's government appoints people to a particular post.

I found the explanation of the process vague and asked him to provide more details about it. He reiterated that he intends the wiki to act as a living document and that he's not sure entirely where he wants to go with the appointment process and how it will relate to the campaign plot. My personality flaws don’t like this feature, but my rational side says it’s cool.

The fact that I get a little worked up about this matter amuses me. Allowing indeterminacy into something that has drama as a main characteristic has at least one positive aspect to it. It allows for freedom.

In a blog entry I read about TV writing one time, the author encouraged telling only as much as needed about a character for that part in the story. As an example, they used a situation where a show introduced two brothers for a character but never mentioned any other siblings nor did they mention that the two siblings were the only siblings the character had. Not limiting the number of siblings allowed the writers to throw in another sibling when it helped the story.

In the case of my friend's campaign setting, not limiting the political appointment process allows for numerous possibilities. Maybe if it gets limited early, a player couldn't get appointed to that position but getting appointed to it would lead to a more interesting story.

Tension regarding the process for appointment could make an interesting plot point, especially if it gets shrouded in mystery. Revealing the process could take away the mystery and, thus, take away the tension.

Simply put, the creation of a story in a role playing game doesn't lie solely with the person running the game, the dungeon master or game master, whichever you prefer. Everyone plays it for fun and everyone comes to the game with different expectations of fun.

Setting up the appointment process to this one position in one way could appeal to one type of player but turn off another player. Having the appointment some other way could appeal more to another player. Leaving this detail open allows for adaptability, to mold the game into a form that allows maximum enjoyment for all.

This kind of freedom works to the advantage of serial storytelling or role playing. Explain just enough to allow things to progress in a fun and satisfying way, but don't explain so much that the options for more fun and satisfaction close off in the future.

When writing, I generally stick to a closed form with a limited run. I have a novel in progress along with a short story that has will require a lot of revisions. I also five papers written and another one to write for my bachelors project, all of them rough draft.

The novel and short story plan on having a good, tight story but won't reveal absolutely everything. I leave out mostly what happens after the story ends. Even though I leave both of them open to possible sequels, I plan on writing pretty tight stories. I won't tell the smallest details or anything like that, but I plan on establishing most of the setting and the events in the stories timeline.

Then again, telling the whole story and providing full details of a timeline allows freedom for change in future writings. After all, if the author wants to have fun and "experiment" with a different system or setting, they just start a new piece or even set a new story in the same setting, just in a different time period than the original story.

The important aspect probably comes down to continuity. Science fiction and fantasy culture focuses a lot on continuity in the fiction they follow. Breaking continuity in these genres can often frustrate fan culture to no end, so much to the point that some writers need to create a disconnect with their fan base to continue writing without compromising the story. I can be guilty of the over analysis vice, at times, even when I try to use it to try defending loose interpretations created by a show or piece of writing.

Fans can sometimes forgive the break from continuity or they can tolerate enough breaks until too many of them occur. Often the show or piece of writing has enough other virtues to make a wait-and-see attitude easy to follow and possibly worthwhile to slog through the irritating parts.

A lone movie or a solitary story without any continuity outside of the celluloid or the two covers proves easier to have consistent continuity. With no set intention to continue within that continuity for longer than a certain period of story, the plot, character, setting, culture, norms, practices and so forth can all be balanced for the good of the story told. As long as the story doesn’t have a sequel or prequel, the single story doesn't set a precedent for a continuity canon that future stories risk breaking or expose itself to over interpretation by a fan community.

Stories told by serial, however, which obviously can include ongoing Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, expose themselves to breaking continuity the longer the story continues. I have major respect for storytellers and TV writers that stay within continuity or break continuity well. Writers of serials that break continuity in a non-major way don't lose my respect if the story continues well enough.

I willfully concede that staying within continuity provides a big challenge. It grows even more difficult when multiple story lines exist and as the story progresses. Add to that all the different characters, nations, personalities, locales and the multitude of factors that exist. Increase the details and increase the interrelations of those details, keeping the continuity increases in difficulty.

I can't blame someone who wants to create a source document (or bible, as they call it Canada TV circles) for not filling in all the details. It allows for more freedom and adaptability in case interesting and fun storylines would require different details than had been originally conceived.

It would especially suck if a minor detail like how many siblings a character has only just bit you in ass because of the over determinacy. That situation might just possibly motivate a writer to break continuity in a very frustrating way rather than just not provide one small detail in the beginning. Wouldn't that just suck, having the writer “cheat” after the fact rather than not create a fact until it was needed?

Trying to Make a Comeback

Been awhile since I've made a post. Lack of time has been a big contributor.

Over the last month, though, sending the laptop back to the manufacturer for repairs has been the biggest discouragement to do anything computer related. I had to depend on the old desktop for computer-related crap, and I probably ended up wasting a half hour to an hour a day just waiting for it to process tasks. Not worth it.

Unfortunately, I still have to deal with that crap at work. Hopefully some recent initiatives will get someone's ass into gear to replace my computer that still runs Windows 2000. Ugh.

Anyway, I got the laptop back just under a week ago. I spent the majority of the early week reinstalling most everything and organizing things. I still have to go through the stuff that Windows Easy Exchange transferred to delete things I don't need anymore. Nothing time sensitive there.

Dealing with computer crap contributed to bad time management this week. So did having to address bills. Add to that Chicago's Restaurant week where fancy restaurants set up inexpensive menus for commoners like me to sample, enjoy and possibly get addicted.

I had some good food but nothing convinced me to come back with my credit card on a regular basis and charge it to its limit. Nope. The wife and I still plan on just setting aside money at every paycheck then going out for a nice restaurant after saving up enough money.

Doing much else than working on a new long term project didn't really enter my mind. I got too distracted by random things. Plus, I had fallen very much behind on the new project, which has gotten me fairly disappointed.

I've wiggled my way into informally copyediting entries for the Lands of Shadow Wiki, the wiki for the D&D campaign world started by a friend and that I participate in.

Nothing recently edited by has been posted yet. I've been doing little by little over the last week or so. I asked for a deadline and got Thursday since we had plans on playing sometime this weekend. Because of my lack of discipline, I'm still working on it at 1:30 AM Saturday when we plan to play at 12 PM today.

I think I'll be going to bed now, though. I've edited a large majority of it. I've got something like a page or a page and a half to address it. Most of the time, people get to his place at staggered times. I'm hoping to get there before a lot of the other players then take the opportunity to finish as much of it as possible. Will have to see how that goes.

Copyediting a living document with the objective of world building interdependently between multiple parties certainly has brought some interesting topics to my mind. I hope to take more opportunities to post here and address some of those topics. Hopefully it leads to some good insights and discussion.

Through Hard Work, Historians Will Outwit You

This entry is a loose sequel to another entry, Please, Do It for the Historians.

Historians will easily outwit you if you use a credit card or debit card to buy stuff. According to an NPR story from the other day, people with access to your purchases can already paint a good picture of you from the buying habits they can track. But that's not what I'm writing about here.

I've decided to address you people who don't really write personal journals, articles for publication or letters to other people (I don't know if e-mails or blogs count -- possibly another topic to explore). Maybe people who won't do much or don't plan on doing much to impact history the future don't have to apply for this one. Who will remember you, anyway?

For this topic, I'm thinking about mostly about George Ripley, the guy who established the community I'm studying and will write a paper about soon. Mr. Ripley wrote plenty of letters to people and articles that got published in at least Boston and New York periodicals throughout the 19th century. He apparently wrote in a personal journal during the early part of his life, but he discontinued that practice in the 1830s or around the time he established Brook Farm.

Maybe Mr. Ripley just got too busy with life. After all, he had to start ministering to his church and after he resigned from there, he had to administrate Brook Farm.

I know how it is. I used to write a personal journal back in high school and during parts of college, but I have a hard time remembering the last time I actually wrote in a journal. Life can become a busy enterprise. I can't blame Mr. Ripley.

But for amateur and professional historians, this kind of situation gets difficult, even though I'm willing to bet that professional historians learn how to cut through the distractions and that stuff that isn't useful. Nonetheless, there's something to say about the serendipity in find a factoid you wouldn't have found without reading through a whole book or even by reading something again with more insight built up by the understanding found through other texts on the topic or person.

But lately, I'm finding myself having to study Mr. Ripley through indirect means. I have to try finding information and insights into him by reading about the people around him, his friends, relatives, colleagues and so forth. Mr. Ripley had the tendency to write in ways to try convincing people to do something or believe something. However, he didn't write in a way that revealed himself and touch upon his real motivations for doing something or believing in something. Like many people, even in the present, he just did and tried to bring people along with him on the ride.

To remedy this problem, I've tried reading about people in his life along with people and movements that may have inspired him. This list includes: William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley (whose history for some period also comes indirectly through what people around her wrote about her), Charles Fourier, Victor Cousin, Theodore Parker, the German Romantics, Albert Brisbane and Andrews Norton, just to name a few references.

And now I've moved onto Orestes August Brownson, a fiery hulk of friend who became very good friends with Mr. George Ripley. In Brook Farm: The Dark Side of Utopia, Sterling Delano quotes either a text written by Mr. Brownson or Mr. Ripley that if not for Mr. Brownson, Mr. Ripley would not have established Brook Farm.

Thus far, I've stayed away from Mr. Brownson. From what I read previously, he always seemed to exist on the periphery of the Transcendentalists, someone they gave a trial membership to their, but he was even too crazy and out there for them!

How was I wrong. Apparently, Mr. Brownson had more influence on Henry David Thoreau than Mr. Emerson, which came as a shock to me.

Mr. Brownson still ended up being a little too rowdy for most of the Transcendentalists and his later conversion to Catholicism and conservatism makes one wonder about his intellectual and idealistic consistency (but I guess that's also what makes him a little interesting). Despite his larger than life presence that made them uncomfortable around him and cut down on their exposure to him, he may become a major source of information about one of his best friends, Mr. Ripley.

At least, hope so. . .

And this story, my friends, shows the kind of difficulty you will put to historians when they try to understand you better and write you story when you don't write a personal journal or something else that will transmit your true motivations, ideas, beliefs and feelings. Don't do it. Don't make life difficult for historians in the future. After all, they're the ones who will tell your story to the future. Just hope their resentment won't affect the tone of that story. It's not something you want to regret.

Dream #13

The wife and I are traveling cross country on buses. Reaching some small town, we decide to strike out either for some adventure or see a friend before we have to make our next connection.

Flash forward to finishing what we would be doing and/or realizing that we need to rush or we'll miss the connection. We get lost or realize that we can't make it back in time going the route we know. The wife stops as many people as she can to try getting directions or a better route home. She gets some directions, then we head off following them.

It's snowing out. We emerge out of some woods where a bridge spans over a river or a lake with a big ravine between the bridge and the water. I remember that we were told not to fall into the water.

I start my way over the bridge and notice that the bridge isn't in the best condition, there's holes in it, etc. etc. On my way over, looking down, I notice two gorillas jump up from the water and land in it, standing up, then amble over to the side of the shore where the wife was. At a loss, I let myself fall through one of the holes then land down in the water near the other side of the shore.

I need to get back to the wife and help her against the gorillas. Running through the woods, a panther emerges some distance away from me and doesn't notice me. Right! The guy who gave us directions told us to watch out for the gorillas or panthers!

The Power of Music and Meditation #1

Lately I've been on something of a Robert Fripp and Peter Gabriel. I think it started when the TV show "http://abc.go.com/primetime/lifeonmars/index?pn=index" TARGET="meditation">Life on Mars, based on the British Life on Mars, of course, turned me onto the David Bowie song, "Life on Mars."

Going on over to Youtube, I would play "Life on Mars." From there, I moved onto playing a whole bunch of other stuff that I used to really like listening to, from Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon to Robert Fripp's frippertronic masterpieces, team ups like Robert Fripp's and David Sylvian to the combo of Robert Fripp's "Water Music I" and "Water Music II" with one of Peter Gabriel's minimalistic yet passionate renditions of "Here Comes the Flood." I remember listening to a lot of the above during the summer of 2000 when I live in Cambridge, MA.

I even went so far as to purchase Peter Gabriel's album, Passion, and Robert Fripp's album, Exposure, which had "Water Music"(s) and Gabriel's "Here Comes the Flood."

The other day after listening to all this stuff for weeks on end, fairly mellow, ambient, passionate stuff, someone at work asked if I had made some kind of turning point. She had been having some hard times at work, so I e-mailed her two prayers: The Serenity Prayer and The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. After receiving the latter prayer, she asked me what had changed about me. I basically told her that I had found myself missing a part of me that had been left at the wayside, and I was working to acquaint myself with that old self of mine again.

Along with listening to more ambient music and Fripp-centered music, I've been yearning to engage once again in yoga and meditation. I have yet to take a yoga class since making this commitment to follow this more soulful, spiritual search for contentment and one day engaging in service, but meditation hasn't proved so hard to try doing again. After all, it's something that you can do sitting in a chair or lying down in bed.

I meditated a lot back as an adolescent, in the hopes of gaining strange super powers like lucid dreaming or astral projection. After trying many techniques of meditation (from counting my breaths, counting from 1 to 10, clenching and relaxing my muscles, visual meditations, trying to feel every nerve in my body, trying to focus my attention on individual nerves in my body, guided meditations. . .you name it, I probably tried it), I had minimal accomplishment in getting super powers.

The most I can verify is gaining momentary lucidity in a dream. Apparently, a couple friends and I apparently shared a dream, but I also don't know if they were yanking my chain. I had some weird friends then and remain friends with some of them still.

During my college years, I did some independent research into Buddhism and the arts of meditation. One of the books I read went on about people meditating and following Buddhist practices because they wanted to get those super powers, but that was the wrong reason for meditating and following Buddhist practices. I forget the exact wording of the right goal, but I think it had to do with finding contentment, reducing suffering in the world and following the Right Path, the "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_path" TARGET="meditation">Middle Way. This idea really stuck with me.

So, anyway. . .

I decided to meditate a little last night. I focused on my breathing, not counting it or anything, just focused on the act of breathing and trying to deep breathing as a yoga teacher once taught me. Breath through the nose, with the air going down the back of my throat, deep down into my lungs, so that it fills up the bottom of my abdomen to the top of my chest, just under my rib cage.

In the meanwhile, I observed my thoughts and acknowledged them. The same yoga teacher who taught me the breathing technique also instructed a different class on on observing the thoughts and letting them go. Before that class, I thought the goal was to try focusing on nothing. That is unfortunately one of the most frustrating things in the world to do, because in focusing on nothing, you end up focusing on the idea of nothing and start trying to examining the idea of nothing. . .then the mind goes on some other tangent or another thought pops into the brain. The money mind doesn't shut up.

A good way around the frustrations of the mind, though, is to just go with the natural flow. Think of something, observe it, settle on it for a little bit, acknowledge it then somehow it just goes away. A new thought will replace it, either through a natural tangent or just something random. Just acknowledge these thoughts and let them naturally fall away. After following this practice, the thoughts will peel away like an onion.

Maybe you'll even find yourself having nothing going on in your mind after a bit of this acknowledging and letting go. Really, nothing, and that can be a good and contented thing. Sure, of course, you'll have to deal with the small sensations around the body, from itches on your nose or your cheek or the desire to move your arm or leg, whether to stretch a muscle or just because its an urge. You can also work at acknowledging and letting go of these sensations without following through on the urges.

This type of meditation can also do a great job of working on self control. You can acknowledge your desire but you don't necessarily have to cave into it. Didn't really think of that point until just now.

Last night, though, I made some good progress meditating this way. I stripped away a lot of layers of money mind and had reached a good level of contentment. I even turned off my need to associate with the outside world, even though I would acknowledge the things around me.

My limbs however felt the need to move, so just letting go of that urge proved difficult. I probably could have handled that well enough if I had continued at the meditating.

Something weird happened, though. The money mind had all become silent when I suddenly felt this great anxiety and fright. It didn't fixate on anything. I just triggered my sympathetic system, my breathing quickened, my heart probably could've started beating faster, the muscles in my head and on my face clenched, my fight or flight system had turned on. It just felt extremely uncomfortable.

I stopped meditating at that point, turned to my side and just let my mind fall into sleep.

I don't know what that anxiety and fright was about. It came from some irrational part of me. I could probably examine my life and find plenty of things to get frightened and anxious about, but nothing articulate came to mind at that point. It certainly made for an interesting experience, and I'm still unsure what to think about it.

Fragments of Pensees

Someone criticized some e-mails I sent them. They essentially said that I wrote to them with too many run on sentences. I have yet to tell them, but those run on sentences come from incomplete thoughts. Maybe not just plain incomplete ones, though. Incomplete with hanging chads that associate and glom onto other ideas that ooze out and come onto the page. I, unfortunately, am one of those people that sometimes needs to follow these incomplete thoughts around different blocks in the city of my mind to reach my goal.

In the summer of 2007, I went to the beach with a bunch of friends. We used to spend a lot of time with each other that summer, but I don't stay in good contact with them much these days.

I didn't wear sunscreen that day and ended up with a horrible sun burn. The aloe that someone put on my back later that night felt so cool and refreshing. Thank you to whoever put that on my back.

That very same person made a mountain out of sand at the beach. Maybe I made the mountain, or it could've been totally someone else in the group. The person who put aloe on my back later that night, though, wanted to illustrate my way of reaching the goal, the top of the mountain, compared to other peoples' tactics.

Other people would drive straight up the mountain to the tip top.

Me, I would wend and weave all around the mountain to reach the goal at the top.

Last night, I dreamt that I had Dr. House as my mentor, but he was nice and spoke in a British accent much like Hugh Laurie, who plays Dr. House. Does anyone know what conflating the actor and the character they play into one imaginary person signifies? Have a mentor like the nice Dr. House helped to generate in me a feeling of psychological integration, or a feeling of utopia.

Dreams can sometimes provide me with a feeling of ecstasy.

My days only allow so much to occur in them. I have my eyes on the castles in the sky and the flying chimera. Today, I read four pages of a workshopper's chapter for the first time that I need to say things about in a week, read a couple chapters in a book on Google Books about Romanticism and the German School and as much as I can of Daniel J. Siegel's The Developing Mind: Toward a Neurobiology of Interpersonal Experience. I wrote with my hand a page in my novel. On the side, at some point, I need to get back to reading Emile Durkheim's The Division of Labor in Society. It all helps to paint a coherent picture of my thoughts on utopia and dystopia.

I also spent nearly 8 hours in front of a computer at work, flipping between doing actual work and trying to find some sort of engaging socialization on the 'nets. Rarely do I have such an opportunity but unfortunately, I really didn't find much to occupy my mind.

When I've wrapped my fragments into some coherent and whole, I will hope to write a novel and/or a book. Until then, though, most of the people around me will see fragments and frustration with some joy mixed in.

A part of me fears to see the neural network formed in my brain. Dare to look?

Specializing

Specializing in a topic sucks. It gets in the way of having interesting conversations with people, since they yawn after the first couple minutes of me describing my topic. Coming up with varied topics to write about on the blog without giving away material that I hope to sell later becomes difficult. Overall, specialization gets in the way of enjoying socialization except for people in your field or in some adjacent field.

I miss having time to read newspapers for the news, entertainment and to learn what there is to do around town. To accomplish the things that I want to do in good time, I've had to give up reading the newspaper and knowing what's up. I get most of my news through friends, acquaintances, AOL and MSN while at work and from NPR. Yeah, I can pretty much stay up to date on the major political topics, the weather and sometimes even sports. I don't really have much to breach the topics of the day or my specialization, which really doesn't interest people for too long.

Balance is needed in my life but right now proves difficult to find that balance.

My Moral Upbringing

Along with my parents, friends, my church and my primary and secondary school systems, I'd like to thank the following for my moral development:

Sally Struthers

Early Transformers cartoons

Early GI Joe cartoons

M.A.S.K.

Early Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons

and other cartoons that had morals at the end and daytime infomercials that informed us children of the evils and misfortunes in the world. Does the TV of today provide the moral backbone to our children the way that '80s did?

I'd also like to thank the Boston (and worldwide) hardcore and straightedge scenes for some conservative yet libertarian and socialist tinges. Boston 'zines, like The Pit Report and Lollipop, also deserve some credit, too.

Thanks to the techno and rave scenes for PLUR, which includes hyperreal.org, Usenet newsgroups and the Northeast and Boston rave e-mailing lists.

I also have George Orwell, Henry David Thoreau, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Terence McKenna. Unfortunately, Robert Heinlein doesn't enter the picture until later in my high school years.

Douglas Adams probably helped a little, too, but I think he's more responsible for teaching me not to take things too seriously.

And how could I forget Doctor Who?

This post doesn't come out of nowhere. It just has an obscure connection to my bachelors project and a lot of discussions that I've had lately about "this generation. . .," people talking about their self-made immigrant ancestors, reading Emile Durkheim's The Division of Labor in Society and trying to get a better understanding of the between the Transcendentalists with their Unitarian predecessors, German Romanticism and pietism.

This is part of the reason that I've become something of a hermit. . ..

I am a Hermit

2:30 AM, Saturday morning. It still feels like Friday night for me. Haven't gone to sleep yet.

Just finished washing up, laptop, sitting atop the basket bench behind me, playing Hank Mobley and Sonny Rollins off of Live365.com.

The wife slumbers away in bed, waiting for me while unconscious. The cats nibble on their kibble and patrol the apartment.

I've been something of a hermit lately. I've gone to work and spent time with the wife (lots of time). I went to the library a couple times this week; went to Dave & Buster's after the library one night for the Chicago Speculative Fiction Group social.

My mind has been something of a hermit, though, trying to understand social understanding and solidarity. Something of a paradox, I think.

I need to riff on this whole hermit thing.

Dream #12

I'm sitting down in a comfy chair in front of my laptop. Someone I haven't had acquaintance with for years until they friended me on Facebook slumps down right next to me then slips a disc into the laptop. A video comes on, and a video shows her rapping on the laptop. I have no idea what to say, but she's super excited and ebullient about it.

Seriously, I have no idea what to say about it.

Dream #11

Another dream where I go back to my parent's office. Not sure if this one involves me starting to work for them again. I go into a cubicle, however, and start working with the computer and possibly answer a phone call looking for service. Unfortunately, I can't get into the database to provide a customer with service because my parents have either invalidated my sign in or I've forgotten the sign in.

I have no idea what this one is about, and I'm a little too busy to think much more about it.

Sigh. . ..

Dream #10

I don't remember details on this one, just the feeling.

I have the feeling that I'm hanging out with some "cool" kids in high school, at least by my impression. At some point, though, I learn that they're using me for some reason. Or maybe I finally realize that they don't treat me with respect, but rather look for any opportunity to not hang out with me and when they do, they look for any opportunity to trash me and put me down. I try to maintain and become better friends with these people, but by some point, I realize the hopelessness of the situation and that these people are just using me, so I break down in tears in my car outside of one of their houses.

There was a lot more to the dream than what I've mentioned. I just don't remember the details.

Dream #9

No play-by-play of a dream today. I don't remember most of it, and what I do remember, I don't recall in detail.

I remember talking to my mother, I don't know where, why or when. While chatting, though, she brings up something that happened in one of the other dreams that night. It might have been one of the other dreams, for all I know, but when she mentioned whatever she mentioned, something clicked in my consciousness that she was talking about a dream I had.

Reaching that realization shocked me but nothing extraordinary happened after that. I think I may have dwelled on that realization so deeply that I entered a dream state without visuals or any sensation other than all encompassing yet indescribable feeling. It was a rush yet a feeling of relaxation. It felt like a fuzzy embrace. It felt out of control yet comforting. Maybe it even felt sedating, taking away motivation and just making me wanting to stay there.

I may have had something of a clue into lucid dreaming when I realized that my dream mom mentioned information from a previous dream that night. As always, though, I either fall into that overwhelming, enveloping comfortable sedative or shrug it off.

Actually, I remember once a dream rewound itself and the cop in that dream tried to force me into doing something in the dream, which felt like a distraction from my realization that I was dreaming. In the end, though, I don't think I entered a lucid state in that dream. I got so involved in fighting the cop and running away from him that I think I forgot about the realization that I was dreaming. My subconscious mind may have successfully distracted me there. . ..

I should head to bed now, though. Not only is it late, but I'm tired, too. Dreaming makes for a great opportunity for fun.

Dream #8

I am on an el train heading west from Chicago. A friend is applying to some Ph.D. or graduate program out in the suburbs. I'm hoping to meet up with him and maybe he'll give me a ride home. Strange, some of the scenery looks like the Greater Boston area. The ride feels like it takes a long time and becomes tedious. I consider getting off and taking a train back to Chicago.

I decide to get off and head back to Chicago. Getting on a train heading back, finding a place to stand and grabbing a hold of one of those straps hanging from the ceiling, I see my friend through the crowd here in the train car. I squeeze my way through the crowd until I reach him, noticing that he doesn't look too happy.

He tells me that after the rigorous interview and application process, they didn't hire him. I tell him that they don't know what they're talking about, and they've made a huge mistake all the way back to Chicago.

Reading List for Amateur & Prospective Writers, Editors and Other Publishing Professionals

Kids, reading the appropriate manual listed below is essential and a pre-requisite for getting a job in writing or publishing. Fail to read the right one and lose. I know that I have missed out so far and hopefully reading the first entry on the list will help me get into my desired field.



The Chicago Manual of Style by Chicago Editorial, University of Chicago, University of Chicago Press. From Google Books: ". . .the essential reference for authors, editors, proofreaders, indexers, copywriters, designers, and publishers in any field. . .."




The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual by Norm Goldstein, Associated Press. "That bible of the newspaper industry" -- American Bookseller, June 1997."




MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Writing by Joseph Gibaldi, Modern Language Association of America. Also from Google Books: "Since its publication in 1985, the "MLA Style Manual" has been the standard guide for graduate students, teachers, and scholars in the humanities and for professional writers in many fields."



AMA Manual and Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors by Cheryl Iverson, Stacey Christiansen, American Medical Association, Annette Flanagin. From the indispensible Google Books: "For decades indispensable, the AMA Manual of Style continues to provide editorial support to the medical and scientific publishing community."



So, people in the know, did I miss any other essential guides?

Dream #7a

Driving into Chicago from a long trip with friend, Zach, in the back seat. We're driving into the city on a bridge over Lake Michigan [which doesn't exist in real life, as far I know], which takes us into a very industrial area of town. Zach expresses much excitement, and I feel very excited about getting home.

Dream #7

I'm staying at my parent's house when I decide to take a walk or a bike ride, not sure which, at something like 3 or 4 in the morning. I end up walking somewhere between 7 and 11 miles up to Nashua, NH, with a lot of emphasis on the nature, fields and trees, between Dunstable and Nashua.

Up in Nashua, I run into my friend, Jenn, who's heading back in my direction, so I catch a ride home with her, once again with emphasis on the nature, fields and trees. It's still pretty early, around 5 or 6. I have this feeling of oppression by the light and the sense of things.

And something about a oil change, either I need to drive my car up to Nashua to get an oil change or Jenn was picking up her car in Nashua because she had dropped it off for an oil change. Either way, there's sense of urgency that if I don't do something now, I'll forget to do it, so I had better do it now.

Dream #6

My friend, Tim. Road trip. Hotel. Tim's new car in the parking lot. Heading off to the event or to continue the trip.

COMMENTARY
The guides on dream journaling advise you to write whatever you remember from dreams, whether the memory has details or if it's just an impression. The last entry, I got to record just intimations and impressions but no details. This dream memory has no big details, just scattered images and impressions that either got spun into a narrative or, in my waking life, I have strung them together into a loose narrative because it's natural to do so.

Dream #5

I had this experience yesterday morning. I don't remember the dream very well, if at all. Mostly, I just remember the feeling of urgency and the need to get back to sleep, so I could finish what I had started. I felt a sense of duty to go back to sleep and address the needs of more people than I could possibly handle. Even if I couldn't provide for all of them, I had to help and do something.

Then I realized I had awoken from a dream. More accurately, I had drifted between dream and reality, the dream creating a stressful world with many obligations to people. I had to tell myself that I made up the people, I made up the situation, I made up the stress. I didn't have an obligation or duty to go back to sleep and address the responsibilities in my dreams.

The material world, after all, had real obligations, duties and responsibilities for me. I needed to address those for survival. The dream duties had no need for my attention because I had created them, or maybe I should say that I copied them from the real world, from work.

Ack. . .how lame is that? Not only do I unwillingly get to handle stuff from my job during the day, I have to face them at night, while I sleep and am supposed to be resting. Ugh.

Dream #4

The mayor of the city dies. Up in a mid-rise shaped like a round tower in the middle of the city is a bookstore that has something for me. I go up there and run into a slim, balding Irishman with curly hair. He says that my parents on the East coast know the mayor, and we need to bring the body to them.

I step out of big black sedan into the night in a parking lot outside of an office that my parents used to use. My parents await us in the parking lot. The Irishman walks up to them and shakes their hands. He walks back toward me, and I know it's time that we take out the coffin with the mayor of the city in it.

The Water Crisis vs. the Financial Bailout

My minister at church made an interesting quote that I will possibly mangle, but the spirit of it goes:

It will take $700 billion to bailout the financial industry, but it would cost $20 billion to provide water to everyone in the world.

I didn't find anywhere on the 'net to substantiate this claim, but I found a claim equally as shocking that we ignore compared to all the emphasis that we put on the $700 bailout to bailing out our country form the financial crisis. From American Public Media:

About a billion people worldwide lack access to clean drinking water, but solving the crisis could cost up to $4 billion a year. Sam Eaton reports on a competition that's using entrepreneurs to find innovative solutions.

So, according to my minister and this article, it's less expensive to deliver water to everyone in the world than to bail ourselves out of the hole we've dug from the complicity of greed for the people in power and the value we hold that we have the right to own a home.

Honestly, I'd personally vote for my minister to take the office of US President over any of the candidates out there now, just by the citation of that statistic and pulling the curtain away from our eyes that we put there ourselves. Many of the problems in this world, we created, not because we are inherently sinful or anything like that. We all hold some degree of collective blame, so we all also hold a collective responsibility to make the world a better place, whether through donations of money or our time.

And even if we didn't directly contribute to the bad things that happen in this world, we have a responsibility to make the world a better place. This responsibility holds true whether we just want to make it better for ourselves or whether we feel an obligation to other people. A world collectively better will help provide us individual with better senses of meaning: a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, a sense of power and a sense of self esteem.

Don't want to feel better about yourself, feel safer while in the world and feel that you contributed to making the world a better place? Even for the misanthrope or hermit, wouldn't you like a world that would do a lot better at just leaving you alone? A better, safer and world fuller of meaning can have benefit you, misanthrope and hermit.

Choking Relaxation

The wife and I have had an active yet relaxing weekend so far. Last night after work, we went to a bar to watch the debates, the event being an Obama fundraiser. I have yet to decide who to vote for on Election Day (I'm not keeping my options to the major two parties, either), and I don't intend on announcing it to the public.

Interesting, though, to watch a debate amongst a partisan crowd. Had a hard time hearing McCain near the end with the crowd hissing and sneering at McCain while talking.

This morning, we woke up early to jump on the bus to get downtown and meet an out-of-town friend at The Original Pancake House. I didn't go too adventurous with my food choices, but they didn't have too many choices for a vegetarian that doesn't do dairy. Nothing too exciting for me, but their featuring apples on pancakes in the menu looked interesting.

Parting ways with our friend, we decided to check out a matinee of Choke. We, rather, decided to check out a matinee and figured Choke made for an interesting option and gave us enough time to settle into the theater before the 20 minutes of previews started.

I have a limited exposure to Chuck Palahniuck, the writer of the novel. I've seen Fight Club but haven't read the novel. I went with the wife to a Palahniuck reading at The Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, MA from a compilation of non-fiction he had published.

Choke doesn't reach the level of grandness, political/financial commentary or even of plot as Fight Club. Neither does Choke have the gross out factor of Stranger than Fiction: True Stories. The movie sticks to a small, personal scale. It shows some boobs, characters make some off-color sexualized comments, they have some neutered sex scenes and the movie centers around a sex addict attending a support group for sex addicts.

Choke doesn't have a conventional and linear plot. It centers more around the theme of loneliness and the habits that people follow to protect their vulnerable inner selves. Victor, the sexually-addicted main character, pretty much attends the sex addicts support group, works at a colonial era living museum, visits his mother suffering from alzheimers in a rest home and hangs out with his fellow sex addict friend. Then, one day, he meets Paige, a friend of Victor's mom. Victor's journey of "redemption," growth and revealing flashbacks starts from there but doesn't end when the movie does, whence Victor possibly even regressed back to where he started.

I haven't read any reviews, but by the progress of the plot and the movie's ending, I can understand what I've heard about bad reviews. The movie provides more of a character study than a plot, per se. The movies follows Victor's discovery of his loneliness and his habits to protect his vulnerable self. His best friend also makes his own discoveries and follows his own path of growth. Memories that Victor has about his mom and comments made by his mom provide some interesting revelations about Victor and also some quirky situations.

In the long run, Choke doesn't deliver the expected, conventional payoff. I have no problem with the undesired end, unlike, I'm expecting most of the other people who see this movie. Solving this dissatisfaction requires the audience to adhere to the belief in value of the journey is in the journey, not in reaching the goal. I can't be 100% sure, but the movie has enough coherent facts to make the ending true on the level of probability to Victor's character.

Choke works for me because of the themes it explores and the sincerity in which it explores them. Some of the characters have outlandish qualities that make them interesting and sometimes amusing oddities rather than realistic, but Victor's vulnerabilities make him very human and relatable. Most of us don't reach the pathological levels of protecting ourselves from emotional pain and embarrassment, but we all feel vulnerable to other people hurting us.

A normal person in a normal situation wouldn't provide the insight into our vulnerable sides. We all have normal habits that we all accept as regular behavior. Indoctrination into our society through family, school and other institutions teach us the etiquette we need not only to protect ourselves, but sometimes also to protect the other people around us, for their benefit and our benefit. Of course, protecting ourselves and others in these ways can be maladaptive emotionally and psychologically. Following someone pathologically protecting themselves with these types of habits shows us that we all protect ourselves. . .especially when they're protecting the same thing that we are.

Most reviewers and movie goers won't like Choke. They ostensibly won't like it because of unlikeable characters or even an unconventional plot. Maybe, though, people could have a problem with the movie because it shows them just how vulnerable they are. I bet no one will admit it, though.

Dream #3

I step onto the road from my friend Chris's driveway. [He lives in a suburbian neighborhood (not a suburban one, mind you) in New England where the houses are big and they have good sized yards, the kind of yards you could have a picnic in and actually a good game of touch football or even tackle, if you had the inclination, with a good size field. It would probably take you between 3-5 minutes to walk from one house to another.]

People from the neighborhood are outside, enjoying the sunny day, wandering about and chatting with each other. I walk to the other side of the street, turn around and look all about. This scene brings me a certain amount of peace.

I step back into the street, but a car comes whipping out of nowhere, so I jump back. Inside the car, a blond 10-year old boy drives and another boy, just as young, with black hair sits in the passenger seat. They pass me by, drive down the street then turn the corner to the left. No one else seems to mind.

Running to the person closest to me, I ask them if they saw what happened.

I run down the street after the car and the two kids, turning the same corner.

The road looks different than Chris's neighborhood looked. The trees are closer to the street and loom over it, even though behind the trees are fields and at some point along the road, there are no trees.

Walking down that road, the need to find those children overtakes me. 10-year olds shouldn't be driving a car, I tell myself. It's dangerous. Where are the parents? They must have gone on vacation or something.

Reaching the bottom of a small decline in the road, I take out my cell phone and call the police. I tell them about the two 10-year olds in the car, driving all around. The person on the other side of the phone line says that they'll send someone out, and it will probably take them 24 hours arrive.

I want to yell "Don't you think two 10-year olds driving a car around the neighborhood requires a more immediate response?! They could kill someone!" but I don't think I have the opportunity to do so.

I had a lot of trouble waking up this morning. Part of it had to do with still having the compulsion of stopping those 10-year old kids from driving around before they hurt someone and getting the police and everyone else to care.

But while between sleep and awakeness, I don't think I remembered the dream. I think I only remembered that I had to get back there and had to do something, and it was extremely important that I do it.

In my desperation to address the compulsion that didn't let me know what I was supposed to do, I remembered that my free three-month cell phone Web access started today. Maybe if I checked my e-mail, I would get a clue what I wanted to do so much. After what seemed like forever of waking up, falling asleep, waking up, falling asleep and waiting for the phone/Internet cell connection to process information, I didn't find anything useful there.

The clock really didn't make much sense, even though it was buzzing. The same with my phone. . .but eventually I figured out that I should probably get up and get going to work. After all, it was the 22nd, a Monday. . .

What's even more interesting, I neglected to remember most of my bike ride to work. I can't even really remember much of the absent minded thinking that I did while riding. Kind of disconcerted me as I got closer to work.

Well, at least the dreams are getting a little bit more out there and interesting.

Dream Set #2

One:

I go to work. All my co-workers stand in a line, shoulders crossed, side to side. I know something's wrong. The big boss asks me, "How could you do it? You're fired." I feel an oppressive sense of guilt about something I don't know about.

The woman who has the cubicle next to me says, "You didn't finish a sentence in a letter to customer." [I think I stopped writing the letter where I would have written a dependent clause.] Not finishing that sentence meant that a consumer got the wrong impression about their insurance coverage, the product that I sold them. Something occurred that caused the customer to have a loss and their insurance policy didn't cover it.

The guilt is overpowering.

Two:

My current co-workers, my wife and I have arrived at my parent's insurance agency office in Massachusetts. Something has occurred at one agency or the other that has caused either a merger or a temporary lending of office resources from my parent's office. After some talking, we all sit down and went to work.

Three:

The wife and I have gone out to the parking lot of my parent's office. Our boy cat is out there with us. [From Chicago to Massachusetts.] The cat charges then pounces on the back of a opossum. He bites the neck of the opossum, crouches on its back then glances all around. The cat jumps off the opossum then runs away. The opossum flips on its back, twitches a few times, rolls around then skitters off

COMMENTARY

I like that I've been able to remember dreams a second night in a row. This time, I even remembered three and not just one. Interesting that they all revolve around career, at least in some loose theme.

They have also become more interesting. The plots have become less mundane, but moreso, the emotional depth and intensity has become stronger.

Thematically, however, I think these dreams definitely touch upon or dwell on the detritus of the tension between my day job and the ambitions that, to me, run contrary to my current present fate.

Dream #1

Group of friends and I will go to a movie, but they want to stop into the mall first. They want to grab a bite to eat and also some candy to sneak into the theater.

I decide that I don't need anything, so I wait at the appointed spot to meet up with everyone before we head to the theater.

At the last minute, when friends start showing up, I realize that I do need something. I tell whoever there that I need something, I'll be right back.

I run off to get whatever it is that I need to get. I take the back hallways, but the dream ends when I push through the doors.

COMMENTARY

If my imagination comes up with the above as a dream, I'm sad, both because my mind doesn't come up with something more exciting or something more interesting. Remembering the dream, in the first place, somewhat intentionally and after reading the introduction to a book about dreams, impresses me, however.

I've recently had a difficult time coming up with original things to write about that doesn't compromise my future income. If you want to make money as a writer in the future, you really just can't write about your ideas, knowledge or expertise online because it's out there, it's available, the supply becomes infinite while the demand will continue to be finite (thus keeping the market value nil).

And I don't really want to bore people with links to places they would probably find on their own.

Dreams make some good original material, even if it could come off as pretentious if someone came up with it consciously. The first story I published in my high school literary magazine actually came from a dream. I think I may even post here on The Lextopia because I don't expect to ever sell and publish it, even though I guess it could make money after I become famous and someone publishes and sells an anthology of my work or something.

So until I feel moved to write about a piece of news, something I find on the 'net or whatever comes to mind, get ready for something or the other.

But maybe I just used the facade of a dream to write something everyday and mundane in a pretentious way. . ..

A Turn of Phrase Inspired by the Harvard Unitarians

"I'm not depressed or sad. I just have a high tolerance to happiness."

Just something silly I came up with today while walking away from my desk at work. I guess it could even apply to my state of mind lately.

Some Beautiful Scenery up in Wisconsin

The wife and I got back from a long weekend trip up to Rhinelander, WI, where my parents grew up and my grandmothers live. We met up with my parents and celebrated one of my grandmother's birthdays.

On the lead up to the trip, people kept on telling me how pretty it is up there. I didn't believe them, though, because after all the years I've gone there, I didn't see much prettiness. Rather, I saw only tall tree trunks and branches, snow, ice, gray skies and swampy marshlands. No leaves or any color. Just dreariness.

I, after all, only really visited Rhinelander, WI during the late fall and winter. I can only remember visiting that very small city during the spring, summer or early fall once, maybe twice. Even worse, those memories are circumstantial and not for certain.

Summer and Rhinelander, WI actually stick in my mind with sentiments of disappointment. One summer, my family had plans to visit relatives in Rhinelander. I got pretty damn excited about going there to have a lot of fun. My brother, unfortunately, came down with appendecitis, sending the whole trip right down the tubes.

That was then, and this is now, though. Holding onto resentment from the past, especially arbitrary reasons for that resentment, doesn't accomplish anything. I realized that fact and the benefit of that realization while in the elevatr of Emerson Hospital in Concord, MA years and years ago, on the way home from visiting my brother there when he suffered from the infection of his appendix.

But screw all that. Rhinelander during the summer looks quite enchanting during the summertime.



The wife and I arrived in Rhinelander at about 5:30 Friday evening. Soon as we get there, my mom and dad mention some kind of surprise. They had been alluding to some kind of surprise in the e-mails leading up to the whole weekend event. My mom had been mentioning something about a river tour. And lo and behold, my dad drives me, the wife and my two grandmothers to a dock where we board something akin to a ferry boat. We then disembark to take a little river tour on the Wisconsin River.



They didn't so much take us on a tour. Other than the captain saying hello and letting us know about the drinks and pizza below decks, the crew didn't have so much to say about the scenery. I learned more about the river, the dams, the backwash and speculations about the trees hiding peoples' homes from my dad and grandmothers. It was more like a mini cruise on a river with pizza and drinks. . .just a good chance for people to sit, check out the nature and just chill with some friends and family.

I guess Rhinelander, WI
really is quite pretty.

For fans of Charlie Jade and Other Shows I Like

Check some good recaps, interviews and conversation from Charlie Jade, Burn Notice and other shows that I don't watch but hear good things about at R.A. Porter's Pop Critic's page.

Bot-dar

My bot-dar has gotten overly sensitive over the last couple years. About a year ago, I accused a nice young lady of being a bot writing a log. Yesterday, I accused Jose (who commented on the last entry) of being a bot.

I don't know what to make of becoming so sensitive to having bots invade my personal space. It certainly happens, but it unnerves me that I accuse live, flesh and blood people of being SPAM bots. Is it me?

New Computer!

Woohoo! I got a new laptop the other day. It has something like 10 times faster processor and/or something like 10 times more RAM. The new one rocks and is far bigger and stronger than the old desktop that I had used.

I can now communicate, do work on the computer and even procrastinate more efficiently. Now, instead of waiting for some free time to go through my e-mails and clicking on links that friends send me, I can now just take a breather from doing some studying/writing and have near instant access to anything I want on the laptop.

Before, I would have to wait around for at 5 minutes for any program to load then something like 5 more minutes to do the types of things I wanted to do. The old desktop would probably also take around 10 to 15 minutes to boot up. Now I can do practically anything I want in a couple minutes.

I can even have a load of applications open and not slow down the computer.

Only disadvantage came during transition time. Had to transfer files and applications with a CD-RW rather than just copying files over the apartment wireless network. It would have just taken too long since nothing's really wired, the old desktop is too slow and the old desktop could never stay on the network reliably. But now I've got most everything I use on a regular basis on the new laptop.

Unfortunately, I only have 25 uses of the resident Microsoft Office on the laptop, so I'll probably just have to load 2003 that we have on a CD. No worries. I just won't have to spend so much time having to learn a new version.

I love that I can now use my own computer anywhere in our apartment and on top of that, take it out to a cafe or something if I need a break from my surroundings.

The best part of this mobility: I can now compute in air conditioning. We have the old desktop setup in the part of the apartment that doesn't have air conditioning and sits next to the kitchen. Sure, great for when making food and such, but it got sooooo hot in there!

On an amusing note, this mobility around the apartment also means turf wars with the wife, even if it also includes more availability to the wife. She likes watching TV while working. I don't. Simple solution, though: I can wear headphones and listen to music.

Things look up from here. Better control over my surroundings while working on the computer and faster processing time. I look forward to getting a lot more done.

Sense and Memory

Back in the spring semester of 1999 at college, I remember experiencing my visual memories in a unique way. At the time, I liked to say that I saw my memory in technicolor, which I guess could still apply.

But now, after having my attention directed toward Super 8mm film from our wedding videographer, I think a better description would be that during that semester at college, I saw my visual memories in Super 8mm film with the color heavily saturated. I think the stronger the memory, the more saturated the color became.

And the strange thing: remembering that semester of college presently, I think the visuals have a lot of shadows and it's very dark. I haven't had visual memories in color saturated Super 8mm film in a long while, though. At least, not of anything else other than my wedding on my TV at home.

I wonder what influenced me to see my memories in that way back then. A lot of those Super 8mm film memories were some length of time previous of the time I re-experienced the memory. So long before, in fact, that the events in the memories felt like they came from a whole other life or the life of someone else.

And kind of sadly, I haven't really experienced such vivid memory recall for a long time now. Well, maybe I did today, but it involved smell, more specifically, the possible smell of cats and dogs. Since the wife and I adopted Max and Miriya, the brother and sister cat, I've been surprised that our apartments hasn't acquired an overwhelming stench of animal.

Today, I remembered an old friend who had cats and a dog, and his family had that animal stench smell in their house, all the time. That smell just wouldn't leave my olfactory sense. Plenty of memories about that friend flooded me after the sense of cat and dog, but those are kind of private.

Smell and memory reminds me of a time that a girl "broke up" with me (long story. . .that will not be broadcast on the Internet). After she broke up with me, I couldn't get the smell of her perfume out of my nose for weeks, and while I had that smell in my nose, I couldn't get rid of the desire to be around her. This whole thing would occur more when I was alone and trying to focus on something else. The strangest thing, though, the smell of her perfume annoyed me!

Funny enough, accidentally capturing this girl's perfume in my nose happened during the same semester that I saw my visual memories in Super 8mm film. Suffice to say, it was something of an intense semester.

My Many Tracked Brain

The other week, I got hyperfocused researching some aspects of the DC comics universe on Wikipedia. I need to research geeky things sometimes because I didn't really get into them back in the day like the wife and some of my friends have.

My automatic, subconscious mind, however, kept on flashing intimations of the area behind the register of Wendy's in Ayer, MA. That was where I had my first real, official job. I kept on picturing a young, zitty kid (not necessarily me, mind you. . .since this kid had red hair and freckles) with an apron and a paper hat on, holding a big wire thing used to drop the fries into the deep fryer. The things drip, drip, dripped grease. I could feel the massive heat and oil all over my face.

While hyperfocusing on researching the universes of some TV shows, flashes intimations of a late night at my college, right in front the library, at the top of a small hill. It's usually night.

Interesting how my brain makes these intimations while I'm getting all hyperfocused on the 'net. I have the feeling that the same thing happens to other people.

I have this theory that this kind of hyperfocused research and focusing on certain things triggers these kinds of intimations. It could happen because that kind of research activates a certain part of the brain or maybe it triggers some kind of process that brings up these intimations. The themes of these little "research projects" have somehow become associated with memories. I don't know if the connect is direct, indirect or even possibly practically random. These associations just kind of happen.

It kind of works like when I forget something or lose something. Trying to remember the something, I sometimes just have to blank my mind and let the memory bubble to the top. At other times, I have to backtrack through my brain, association by association, forwards, backwards, side by side, up, down. . .whatever way seems like a good way to go.

And back in my youth, I could sometimes just pour myself a cup of milk and drink it to remember something that I blanked on. I wonder if soy milk could do the same thing for me.