Category Archives: Writing

Chicago, Moving, and the Process of Reinventing Writing

Books, Memoirs, Relationships, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , , , ,

Not much going on, so I thought I would do another recap of what might actually be going on. So, here goes:

1. Took a trip to Chicago this weekend.

I have to admit that I’ve never really given Chicago a fair shake. One of my friends, Kevin, is from Chicago and always talked up the place in a positive way. Having been there a few times, I never really found myself enamored with the place. So, I went there specifically to meet up with someone, and while I had a good time meeting her, the place itself met the expectations I had going into it. I found the place to be mostly dirty, kind of like you’d expect from any large downtown city. I was in the Chinatown area of the city (or at least one of them), so the people were generally friendly, but there wasn’t really that much more to say about it.

Getting to Chicago kind of sucked, and it wasn’t really the fault of Chicago itself. It was the fault of Indiana. And then Chicago. At one point, I went through what seemed like an endless series of toll booths. I’m not kidding. I drove less than a half a mile after a toll booth, and I was driving up to another one. It’s like the government workers had their hands out nonstop while traveling through their mecca. And the first toll booth person I dealt with was one of the more rude ones you come across. She was hostile, scowling, and she held her hand so far back in her booth (to provide change for the bills I gave her) that I had to open my car door and practically walk over to her to get her to give me my money back. I noticed that she didn’t have a problem taking my money; she just wasn’t all that excited about having to stretch her hand out to give any back. That’s HORRIBLE customer service, and obviously she doesn’t care, which means her bosses don’t care, and thus, neither does its government. I started to immediately hate Chicago, and I wasn’t even ten feet into the city.

Leaving Chicago was a lot easier. And a relief. Did I mention I don’t really like Chicago? I guess you have to have been born there, or really like big cities with rude people in them. I guess a New Yorker would love Chicago. A San Franciscan? Not so much.

2. School is back in swing.

I’m starting the third week of school, and everything seems to be going well. I’m kind of apprehensive about continuing this job in the future (after this semester) as I really feel like I’m being taken advantage of. The place they have me teaching is in Lowell, which is pretty far away (another city), and the main point they made is they don’t pick up mileage for having to drive my car twice a week twenty minutes to half an hour. You’d think if they really wanted someone to fill this type of position, they’d be somewhat responsive to the fact that it’s costing me money to actually make it to this place twice a week. This school has a tendency to be pretty cheap when it comes to covering certain things, and sometimes I wonder if it’s really worth it. I mean, the pay isn’t stellar, and it does take a great deal of chunk of time out of my normal schedule. Again, this is one of those cases where a teacher is kind of left with a thought of how much do I really want to teach versus how much I’m willing to sacrifice with getting very little in return. I’m already at a loss from a simple economic perspective as my text book for one of my classes went missing after the very first day (when I know I had it in class with me); that never makes one feel really good about things.

3. Moving.

I’ve been trying to find a larger place for myself within my own housing complex, and I’ve been disappointed at the experience. On Friday, I spoke with the woman at Wyndham Hill, and she told me that a two bedroom apartment (pretty close to where I wanted to move to) would be available at the end of October, but that the people were still in the apartment, so I couldn’t lay any claim to it until they vacated. Today, I called to verify the time frame, and she told me that the apartment was already given to someone else over the weekend. Which, if you think about it, means that someone else came along and picked up the apartment, EVEN THOUGH she told me that there was no way to ask for it until the other family vacated, which they have not. In other words, I got screwed, and there was no way I could have done anything about it. One of the problems with the place where I live is that no matter what I try to ask for, something always seems to prevent me from getting it. A garage opened up closer to my apartment (I’ve seen it open and empty) but when I asked if I could switch to it, I was told no garage was available. It’s still empty. I kept asking for a den apartment, but was told it was a hard commodity to get, so I asked to be put on the waiting list for when it became available. Each time it became available, it turned into a first come, first serve situation where no one let me know it was available, and obviously there was no list or line. I just got ignored yet again.

So I may just move out completely. I hate moving over stupid shit, but what can you do? I’m currently looking at a series of apartments near 28th Street, which would put me in walking distance to shops and a potential social night life. Where I live now is conducive to feeding ducks, and that’s about it.

4. Writing

I haven’t been doing much writing lately, mainly because I’ve been completely discouraged by the whole writing industry. I had an agent at one point who just kind of disappeared, had another agent after her who sort of just, well, disappeared, and getting a new one after him has been a continuous series of failures. And no, they didn’t disappear because of anything I did. Honestly. I have an alibi. Really.

Part of the problem for me is that I have such grandiose projects I’m working on with my writing that no longer consist of “Get an idea, tell a story and then revamp it.” Instead, I’m focused on analyzing a genre, trying to turn it on its head completely and do something that seems almost impossible for me to do, and every writing project has felt that way, until I finish it, and then I feel as if I’ve learned a whole new chapter in my writing, so I have to go out and break new ground for the next one. I’m not sure anyone understands what I’m saying here because most people when I tell them I’m a writer, still think that I’m referring to sitting down and writing a cute story. I’ve even stopped telling people what I’m writing because they tend to stare at me blank-faced and, if I’m lucky, they’ll ask, “Okay, but what’s the story about?” In other words, there’s a miscommunication thing going on, and a lot of it is due to my impatience with explaining the process of writing something from a completely different perspective of normal literature. I’d say that someday people will understand what I’ve been trying to do (as they analyze it in post-modern literature analysis courses), but part of me (a large part of me) suspects that most people will never hear of me because I’m doomed to writing for myself, having given up on the publishing world already as too sporadic and celebrity centered for someone like me to ever make it. Yeah, I know there’s the cynic out there thinking, “Or maybe you just suck, Duane.” And the part of me that’s most concerned is the part that thinks that cynic may be right, and I’ve been wasting my time and energy when I could have been a lot more productive if I would have focused all of my energy on getting my mage to level 85 in World of Warcraft.

5. Dating.

What’s that?

That’s all for today. I keep plugging forward, thinking that Einstein’s theoretic is wrong, and that perhaps if you do continue to do the same stupid thing over and over again, you WILL get different, better results.

Fired Yahoo Boss Needs to Put Firing into Perspective

Books, Business, Economics, News, Politics, Relationships, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , , , ,
"I love you Duane, but I've decided to date the football team instead of you"

I’m always amazed at the outrage people can purport to feel over very minor things. Years ago, I was working for a major hotel chain, owned by a name that just so happens to be similar to a bar hopping floozy who is famous for being famous (and a conveniently released porno tape of her having sex with a former boyfriend). The company decided that it wanted to get rid of its union employees because it couldn’t come to an agreement with the union over how to screw over the people in the union and take money from them that the union employees were getting for doing work that the hotel couldn’t figure out how to profit off of. So, it fired the employees. And it did it by setting up these employees in a “sting” operation that consisted of the employees doing what they did every day and then telling them they were “stealing” from the company for doing what was already established procedure. So, when it came to applying for unemployment, the hotel chain decided to be even more greedy and try to challenge the ex-employees (not wanting to pay a red nickle to them whatsoever). The employees threatened lawsuits against the hotel for wrongful termination, so the hotel backed down. The employees left, forever pissed at the shitty company they used to work for, and the company walked away, thinking that somehow it managed to accomplish something by losing long-term employees who had made the error of letting their union stand up for their rights.

So, when I hear this Yahoo boss complaining that she got fired from her job over the phone, I want to kindly tell her, “go fuck yourself”. Things could be a lot worse, and they’re not. You got fired because you did a crappy job, knew it was coming long before it happened, and got a SERIOUS severance package as a consolation prize. Yahoo won’t show up to the unemployment hearing and try to pretend that you are pond scum and so beneath them that you don’t deserve your $200 in UI compensation while you try to find another job, scrounging up on pork n beans because you can’t afford anything on the dismal wages you were getting previously (and now are barely receiving). No, you’ll be eating in fancy restaurants, probably courted by major corporations that will ofer you golden parachutes to grace them with your presence. You’ll probably be offered a huge publication deal with some book company to write a book about how to run a billion dollar company into the ground, and you won’t even have to write it. No, they’ll hire some minimum wage wannabe writer who is looking to get his foot in the door (or her foot in the door) at some publishing empire. And you’ll collect money just for putting your name on the cover.

So, stop complaining. So they fired you over the phone.  A girl I was dating once broke up with me over the phone, said we weren’t really compatible any longer, which was a translation of what she was really trying to say (“I found someone else while I was dating you, and it was easier to lie to you than tell you that I was fucking him behind your back, and I definitely couldn’t have told you this with a straight face if you were standing in front of me, you great stud of a man you.”) Okay, the last part she didn’t say, but I’ll remember the break-up my way, thank you very much.

For those of us without superpower jobs like Carol Bartz, we’re kind of stuck with the realization that respect doesn’t come to us in our world. Therefore, you should try living in our world for a bit before you try to gain our sympathy for the insults you perceive that you received. You had a pretty good thing going, and you didn’t live up to the expectations that were placed on your plate. But you got out with a pretty nice bonus. Be thankful for that. Not all of us have always been so lucky.

The Problems with Facebook & Google No One Talks About: Censorship

Business, Social Networking, Technology, Writing, , , , , , , ,

Some years ago, when the Internet was very young, I was one of the early adopters of the new technology and started building web sites for companies, organizations and individuals who wanted them. In the beginning, it was interesting in that the people who needed web sites tended to be in three categories: adult businesses, churches and social celebrities. To be honest, the social celebrity market wasn’t really launched yet, so you really relied specifically on adult businesses and churches, a somewhat unique duo of activity.

My first web site I built was for a church. So was my second one. And then members of those two churches contacted me, asking me if I could build a site for them as well, as there were no web designers around yet. It turns out that the people who contacted me were professional dominatrices, looking for new ways of attracting clientele. Not really one to care where business came from, I built their sites, and almost out of nowhere, dozens of brand new clients showed up, all wanting my business. What I discovered then, and later, was that I was one of the few web designers around they came across who just wanted payment (not the rest of what their activity had to offer). What had happened to them in the beginning of the Internet was potential clients saw a way to get free sessions from them, and then basically held them hostage (they would have control over their web sites) until they got all of their “needs” met. With me, they paid me money, and they got everything they wanted without any hassle.

This was great for me, and them, and lasted for years until I went back to school and had less time. Then I slowly pushed my clients off onto other designers I came in contact with, and slowly ended doing that sort of business. It was good to do so, too, because that’s when everyone started to learn how to do web sites, and a specialty designer like me was easily outnumbered by paint by number designers who really dirtied the whole industry. I kept a few clients over the years who knew I was a designer first, and not just a spaghetti code generator (the kind of people who used pre-packaged software that was impossible to maintain and change without continuing to use the same pre-packaged software, and it was also impossible to personally configure if you wanted to do something different than the software did out of the box).

Anyway, the reason for mentioning this is that one of my clients was an adult bookstore, and at one point, we were using a shopping cart service (before I learned to design them in php from scratch). In the middle of the night one evening, they shut down her site, deciding that they didn’t like her “pervert crap” and no longer wanted to do business with her. To them, it didn’t matter that her business had been around longer than theirs had, and that we had put a LOT of work into designing the site. They shut her down in the middle of the night because their owner suddenly “found God” and no longer wanted “smut” on his sites. The thought that he didn’t “own” her site meant nothing to him; however, his control of the shopping cart software, which configured the site’s business end, practically ended her business overnight. So I had to learn php, build a brand new shopping cart (when people weren’t doing that sort of thing yet) and then relaunch her site over a weekend during a week of tests at school. It was a nightmare, but I got her going again.

What I most remember about that incident is that the shopping cart manager wouldn’t return a phone call, and when I finally got a hold of him, he was the rudest person I ever spoke to. He really felt that he was talking to scum, so he didn’t have to address that person as a human. It was an eye-opening experience.

Years ago, I was asked to fix a woman’s business site because Google had shut her down completely. She was a pro dominant, and she knew about me through mutual acquaintances who had known someone who had done a site through me years ago, so she contacted me in the middle of the night, crying, saying that Google had just shut down her online business and she couldn’t even get anyone to answer why. She had followed all of their rules to the T, and she was in compliance with everything she could imagine would need compliance. Yet, out of the blue, they shut her down. Which meant everything that was tied to Google for her was also shut down. I tried to contact Google, and kept getting the run-around from them. Finally, I told her she could rebuild her site from scratch with a new Google account, or she could be smarter and just build her site from scratch using a non-Google tied server. So I ended up building her a clean site that had no connection to Google whatsoever. She’s still going strong today, although she’s probably not an early adopter of Google Plus for the crap they put her through.

Last night, I received a frantic phone call from a woman who said that she was shut down on Facebook a few days ago. The person she spoke to wouldn’t even give her a reason, quoting some obscure rule about “compliance with rules” and wouldn’t elaborate. Her gazillion friends are all gone, and much of the networking she designed through Facebook is now gone. She asked me if she should jump to Google instead now that she realized that Facebook is adult-unfriendly. I couldn’t give her a happy answer that she was expecting because I knew what her future would probably be with Google.

And that’s what I wanted to talk about. Two of the biggest kids on the block are fighting for supremacy in social networking sites, and they’re probably the two biggest unfriendly social networking sites around. If you’re doing anything with which they disagree, they don’t just turn their head and disagree, they shut you down completely, forcing their morals upon you because they have the power to do it. Like that shopping cart company from years before, they don’t care that there are thousands who feel as you do. Their personal desires are more important than yours, and if you don’t comply, you lose. And of course, you have nowhere else to turn, so screw you.

That’s what we have to look forward to with Facebook and Google. Now, I know the majority of people won’t ever do anything to worry about being forced out, but honestly, you don’t know that. What it means is that an organization that is trying to gain your business by promising to let you network with people like you is quite willing to shut you down if those people like you are not in agreement with what they personally think is cool, or okay. It’s like the old line of “when they came for the Polish, I did nothing because I wasn’t Polish, when they came for the French I did nothing, because I wasn’t French, and then when they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me.” Now that’s not an exact quote, but you get the idea. Years ago, when there was a huge backlash against the gay community, I was an avid spokesperson against the backlash because even though I’m not gay, I felt that if thugs were able to hurt people who were gay, there’s only a matter of time before someone starts coming after me for whatever weird things I might be into (yes, I know, being gay isn’t a choice or weird, but I’m stretching for an analogy here). For the longest time, I had colleagues thinking I was gay because I was an out spokesperson for gays, and they couldn’t understand why someone would advocate for something they weren’t personally. That’s why that misquoted quote is so poignant. People won’t speak out for others without a personal stake, and that’s why so many atrocities continue to happen in this world.

I’m just saying.

Classic Literature is not a Punchline of Knowledge

Books, Education, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , , , , , ,

I was having a conversation with someone about a mundane topic, specifically about butterflies, when it reminded me of Kobo Abe’s Woman in the Dunes, a story of butterfly hunter who gets trapped by a society that mates him with a woman in an inescapable sand house. When first discussing it, there was no expression of interest about my story until I mentioned that the man’s story served as somewhat of an allegory to the fact that he used to trap butterflies (and thus, he became the trapped butterfly as a result). Then there was the recognition of the point of the story, and that’s the end of that.

But it got me thinking because I realized that after telling this little literary selection that there are a lot of people who seem more focused on the punchline of a story than in the story itself, and that’s the purpose behind this post. You see, what I’m starting to suspect is that people are so focused on the outcome and the “rest of the story” that they miss the purpose of the original story in the first place. In other words, people will read about Machiavelli, figure the Prince was about gaming the system and then feel they know what they are talking about when they refer to someone as being Machiavellian. I use this example because it is probably one of the more misused literary references in current usage. I observe the media constantly trying to act academic when they call some world leader, or some local leader, as Machiavellian, and what they’re really saying is that someone is manipulative. It immediately gives me the impression that they’ve never actually read Machiavelli to understand that to understand Machiavelli is to understand the Discourses, not the Prince. The Prince is only a small part of a much larger canvas, and quite often people read the Cliff Notes of even the Cliff Notes version of Machiavelli, meaning they’re getting about 1/10th of 1/10th of an understanding of the government scribe, not even realizing his whole purpose was to explain Aristotle in his modern day terms, not to create an understanding of how people can be snide to get over on others.

I find this in a lot of media (and common) references to literature. I hear a lot of referral of Moby Dick from all sorts of sources, and almost always they focus on a tiny segment of the story. Sure, they usually get the overall message, but almost every time I get the impression that that’s all they got out of the story, meaning they probably never read it all of the way through. A couple of years ago, while sick in Prague, I sat in my room and read through Melville once again, and I came away with a completely new understanding of his novel. Most people, if lucky, might read it once, and that’s it. And usually it’s because it was required reading.

I see this same thing with Don Quixote, which is such a brilliant story, in both English and Spanish, yet I would bet that one percent of the people who talk about it have actually read either version all of the way through. I was reading it a year or so ago again, in English this time, and I was just floored at how great a story the author constructs. It’s not just a literary story, but it’s hilariously written by a man who truly understood the human condition enough to hold it responsible for all of its absurdity. A media critic bringing up his loyal assistant doesn’t come close to relaying the significance of that poor follower who leads us through so many of the protagonist’s great, yet ridiculous, adventures.

A year or so ago, I sat down and re-read Dostoyevskiy (one of many spellings of his name) again. I had read Crime and Punishment when I was a young child. As a matter of fact, it is the very first book I ever read, and I only read it because my grade school teacher at the time said I was too young to ever read such a book. The first time I read it, I struggled through it and barely eeked out an understanding that this was the story of a man who did something horribly wrong and was fearing the ramifications of his actions, kind of a reading I would have years later of the Tell Tale Heart from a much different nuanced author. Yet, I have re-read that book many times over my life, each time getting a better understanding of what the author was trying to reveal to me, only understanding it differently because I had years of living that backed up my new understandings. This time around, as I read through the Idiot, I think I came one step closer to understanding why the author told the story he did. Years from now, I hope to revisit it again and see if I came closer that time.

The problem I perceive right now is that way too many people are hearing stories, or watching them on TV or in movies, and they’re convinced they’ve “read” the novel and understand all of the choices the author took to relay his story. That is such a weak interpretation of literature and so sad of a compromise that it bothers me to even think about it. I fear for America because almost all of our bestseller charts are filled with young adult books rather than powerful novels that challenge us to think, rather than fill our heads with mild entertainment. From vampires and zombies to Harry Potter, we keep filling our libraries with crap that does so little to stimulate people intellectually, and while I sometimes think “well, at least the masses are reading”, I’m left wondering if we’re a society doomed to complacency and easy manipulation by people who are smart enough to realize that an intellectually void mass is much easier to control than one that thinks for itself. All it takes is someone with the wrong intentions, perhaps someone very, shall I say Machiavellian, and the future might not look so bright.

I is a teacher

Education, Social Networking, Technology, Writing, , , , , , , ,

A new semester is finally about to begin. Again, I will be teaching college political science and interpersonal communication, two separate disciplines, but two fields I am qualified to teach). Strangely enough, the two disciplines really aren’t that different from each other.

While I’m looking forward to a new semester of new young (and some older) minds to educate, I’m also feeling a bit apprehensive, and it’s mainly because our country is so negative towards teachers that I’m tempted to tell America to go screw itself and stop educating anyone on anything. The money isn’t all that great, so that’s not the only reason anyone would ever teach. But whenever I read about some critic of education going all half cocked about how teachers are lazy, how they only work a short period of time and get great pay (which they rarely do), and all sorts of other insults, I want to just say screw it. It’s not worth it. If America sees education as less important than business than let’s let the market figure it all out (which to make a long story short, the market is completely incapable of handling altruistic disciplines, like education, because there is no profit in doing the right thing to make your country benefit in the long run). Altruism, which is quite often the only reason to teach, is very difficult to maintain, especially when society goes out of its way to ridicule your field and everyone who has ever gone to school is convinced he or she is an expert on teaching, even though they have absolutely no experience at teaching, or so little that they have nothing solid to contribute.

When I first started teaching years ago, I remember being bogged down by the fact that I was overly concerned that a few of my students were struggling and no one else seemed to care. Other colleagues would tell me they were lazy, so forget about them, but I didn’t feel that way, and by getting closer to them, I discovered that there was more going on with their personal lives that was actually interfering with their learning. I realized then and there that they were going to fail because everyone else gave up on them because it was too much work to care, not because it was the right or wrong thing to do. What I discovered then and there is that educators who care are quickly discouraged from caring and working harder, quite often by the system, and sometimes by the same people they educate. Yet, I was convinced that this was important to overcome, or our very reason for teaching was gone.

Years later, I found myself in the same situation with a few students just last semester. It was so difficult to try to be more available than the system allowed, yet I tried, and in the end all you get is sometimes a belated thank you from someone who may or may not have saw you as their ally rather than the person who was making their education “more difficult” by forcing them to jump through hoops no one forced them to do so in the past. A couple of students out of the blue contacted me and thanked me, which may not have been the reward that completely paid back the efforts, but it helped, and that sort of thing is the item that keeps a teacher going. However, when attacked by so many other who really don’t care and see you as the enemy (for bizarre reasons that make no logical sense), it becomes less and less likely that you’ll continue trying.

So, I go into a new semester, thinking that maybe this will be the time when I find that one struggling student who needs that certain nudge forward, and hopefully I won’t be discouraged, rejected and forsaken at the time that one person needs a little more from an educator who is doing everything possible just to make sure the trains run on time (for the sake of an Italian historical reference of competent leadership).

When you’re standing up in front of a class of students and explaining the virtues of the governmental system, as proposed by Adams and Madison, you have to bite your lip after that young student in the back row raises her hand and asks: “Do we have to know that for the test?” I remember once responding to that exact question with a ten minute lecture on the importance of knowing information, history and relevance to all sorts of connective synapses of knowledge. How Caesar understood that Alexander’s charge into India incorporated phalanx technology with the scattering of forces or how Patton understood that Caesar’s understanding of Alexander showed him how a faster tank can be stopped by a barrage of spread ammunition. To them, nuance was more important than specific knowledge, but they came to specific knowledge through understanding of nuance. Even when explaining such things, you’ll still have one student sitting there wondering, “is this going to be on the test?”

Unfortunately, teaching can be a lot like that.

Creating Apps, Programming and Just Plain Ole’ Creativity

Business, Computer Games, Social Networking, Technology, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Recently, I mentioned that I had decided to start making apps. Originally, my thought was to program in Android, mainly because I wasn’t a fan of Apple’s nefarious walled garden. But then I started to realize that all of my Internet stuff was involved with Mac/Apple, including my iPhone and my iPad, so I ended up buying a MacBook Pro and downloading Xcode to start using Objective C to write iPhone and iPad apps. So here I am.

What I discovered is that getting started is never easy. I think this is why most app designers never end up actually designing any apps. The learning curve is freaking huge. But once you get past it, you actually start to get somewhere. But man, what a journey that learning curve has been. I could give you an Odyssey-like journey of a story, but I’ll save that for another time. I’d rather just talk about creativity and design today.

You see, I used to be a computer programmer back in the day when there weren’t a whole lot of different languages for programming. I learned BASIC and then went to school and learned FORTRAN. Right after that, I taught myself COBOL. Shortly after that, I designed my own word processor and then one of the very first databases (in the days before Filemaker and Access were even considerations). That first database housed the Asian threat assessment for the US Forces in Southeast Asia in the 1980s. People from all over the Asian allied forces visited my office during that time just amazed that I was able to take a paper filing system of known threats and turn it into something that people could use to compare cases they were working on. At the time, there was no such thing as an Internet linkage system, so if you wanted to access the database, you had to come to my office and enter the names yourself. Or they’d phone me and ask me over the phone; there was no thought of phone surveillance back then. We were really naive back then.

Anyway, I had designed this back when few people had personal computers. At the time, I used a Wang computer system. Personally, I coded on a supped up Radio Shack TRS-80 Model IV. Man, that thing was the shit back then. Now, it has less processing power than my $1.99 calculator I bought at Wal Mart.

But because I was in the military, the computer revolution quickly came and passed me by. I pretty much missed the whole thing. When I got out of the service, I had a few stints working for computer gaming companies like Maxis (working on Sim City and The Sims) and Electronic Arts, but it was pretty obvious that the programming world was changing quickly, and I was not keeping up with it.

For years, I kept telling myself I would get back into it. I created a bunch of games when I first started out, and I keep thinking that my way of coding is so much different than everyone else’s. I keep thinking I need to get back into it and develop something the way that only Duane might ever do. But I kept avoiding it and doing other things.

Then I decided to do the whole apps thing. And I’m learning. And right off the start, I’ve started to see a few things I would like to create that no one seems to be doing. And as I used to do back when I first started, I find myself wondering, why isn’t someone else coming up with these ideas, too? The self-indulgent part of me wants to say that I’m exceptional, but the cynic in me says that I’m not smarter or more innovative than anyone else. So why do I keep coming up with really bizarre ways to do things that other people aren’t? Some people look at Facebook and say, “wow, what a great idea. Wish I would have thought of that.” I looked at Facebook when I first saw it (and just a few minutes ago) and think: Why would they have stopped with that? There were so many other things they could have done with it, things that could have enhanced these social communities, but instead they created an interactive business card model that keeps you informed what other people might be doing, kind of like a boring stalker who has nothing better to do. Anyway.

So, I’m starting to think this is the direction I should have been going a long time ago. Currently, as I learn to code through Xcode, Alice and Objective-C, I keep coming up with grandiose ideas of things I would like to do. And I keep finding myself wondering, why isn’t someone else already doing this? I sometimes feel like Socrates responding to the Oracle of Delphi who claimed he was the smartest man alive, and Socrates spent the rest of his life trying to disprove the Oracle. Well, the difference is: The Oracle never said I was the smartest guy alive. As a matter of fact, the Oracle would have had no idea who I was and would have shrugged his shoulders if asked about me in the first place. At least I have an easy task ahead of me because I don’t have to disprove anyone of anything, and no government will force me to drink hemlock because I taught society’s kids to question authority. Nowadays, Socrates would have been unknown as well, competing against people like Kim Kardasian and Paris Hilton and the whole concept of being famous for being famous. But I’m kind of rambling now as this wasn’t really the topic I wanted to discuss.

So I’m making apps now. And I’m writing my first post on my iPad’s Word Press app. It might not even make it to the server. Hell, if I designed it, it would do all sorts of fun things, but knowing my attention to detail, “publish” would be the one thing I’d have forgotten, never thinking that was all that interesting to begin with. I guess there’s something to be said for practicalities. I hear they can be useful.

Ponderings on the Ponders of my Ponderings

Memoirs, Social Networking, Writing

I guess I’ve been spending most of my blog time talking about politics, my iPad and other non-Duane stuff. So, I thought I would take a moment and talk about Duane. I don’t get to do that very often, other than an occasional mention here and there. So, let’s see where this goes.

1. My Writing. At the moment, I’m involved in what appears to be an endless writing project that will probably never see the light of day. It’s an epic romance, which is completely out of my normal genres of writing. It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve written because it involves very intricate connections to pull off, and rather than just write my way through it, I thought I would attempt to re-create the genre through some experimental storytelling. I’ve never written this way before, and it tells a story that I probably could not have told a decade ago. You see, my previous novel was a humorous Greek epic, which on the surface sounds like a continuous one-joke romp through epic literature, but I wanted to do something with it I’d never done before. Rather than just tell a fun story, I decided to write a novel that would be written for two separate, distinct audiences. One would be the mainstream crowd that would appreciate the humor, and the other would be the academic scholars who study classical literature. By writing this way, I created a novel that is read in two completely different ways, based on which member of its audience you happen to be. It’s why it took me 5 years to write, instead of two months. On the surface, no one will probably ever realize this. It’s the same thing with my current novel. There is something deeper going on with this novel that might never be discovered, and knowing my luck, it probably won’t ever be published, so the point is probably moot anyway (or mute for that matter).

2. The Job Front. At the moment, it’s steady, but I had my annual performance review today, and let’s just say that sometimes I think I’m being held to higher standards than I should be. Needless to say, the review wasn’t all that exemplary, but not because I do a bad job, but because it’s obvious that I’m not comfortable where I’m at. You see, I do a job that not a lot of people could do, but I’m also way over qualified for the job that I do…if that makes any sense. So, I spend a lot of time doing busy work, because there are times when I’m really not tasked to do anything significant. And that’s a major part of my problem. I don’t do anything on a daily basis that makes a difference. All of my life I always felt that I was here to do something significant, something big, something that matters. And instead, I’m editing copy for a health care organization, whereas it’s seen that I should be doing more than editing copy for a health care organization, yet “we’re just not sure what else you could be doing”. So I find myself inventing things to do that I figure might be useful, such as digging for analytical processes that I can assess and help staff improve. When I do it, it usually looks great, and it’s appreciated. But again, it’s me searching for something to do, and in the end, it was never what was wanted in the first place. That gets old really fast.

We talked about that today in our performance review meeting, and I said I was interested in perhaps exploring developing apps for some of the learning modules we create. That’s seen as a great idea, but again I get the impression that it’s seen as a bit of a gray area until I actually produce something and it’s realized how much these sorts of things were always needed. I’m a creative designer who works for an industry that is not very excited about changing things; that gets really hard to deal with sometimes.

3. Relationships. Not much going on there. Hasn’t been much going on in the last decade. Before that, I had a very active life. Now, nothing. The closest relationships I’ve had have been women with whom I hoped to create relationships, but they were always only interested in being friends. The first time, you get over it. When it happens all of the time, you start to feel somewhat unwanted. It’s honestly been a decade since I’ve seriously dated. And I’m starting to get on in age right now so that it may never happen. My last serious girlfriend was a crazy woman from Hong Kong who should have been institutionalized except I think she scared the institutions too much to ever think of committing her. And that was one of the more stable relationships I had back then….

4. Health. Surprisingly, this is the one good area. I went through a lot of work to change my entire lifestyle to fix some of the health problems I was having. My last doctor’s visit indicated that all of that work paid off. So, something good at least.

5. The Future. I don’t really know. I have a feeling that I’m not going to remain in Grand Rapids much longer. I just don’t like it here. I have no friends, and I have no social life whatsoever. I basically sleep, go to work and come home and play World of Warcraft and then repeat. On the weekends, I don’t go to work, which is the only variation. I’d go out, but there’s nothing to do here in Grand Rapids that interests me. Nothing. I started looking at Chicago and Florida, but unless I can find a job, I’m really stuck here.

That’s really it for now.

The Death of Amy Winehouse & the Problem with Santimonious People

Business, Music, News, Writing, , , , , , , , , , , ,

The singer Amy Winehouse died a few days ago in London. From my understanding, she suffered from alcohol abuse and had a difficult time breaking away from the addiction. In the end, she lost her battle, and the world lost a talented young musician. She, like a number of others before her, died at the early age of 27.

I’ll go out on a limb here. I’ve never heard any of her music before. I was not a fan. To be honest, I rarely even followed her antics, other than peripherally hearing about them much like I heard about Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and various other celebrity names that had very little relevance on my normal, daily life. But I did hear about her, and secretly, it always bothered me that everything I heard about her indicated that this was a young woman constantly on a projectory towards where it eventually led her. Many others would point out that they saw it coming, but no one ever really “sees” it coming, and unfortunately, she’s lost, and her talent will never have a chance to create again.

So why am I writing about this? Well, the amount of chatter about her death has started to really bother me. The blogosphere, and the conversations that come from the usual suspects has really gotten on my nerves. People can’t be satisfied with pointing out that her life developed towards a tragic end and then move on from there. Instead, whenever I read about her and saw “common people” comment, I couldn’t help but read how some people can be so really mean towards another human being, even if they may have disapproved of her antics, her lifestyle and/or her way of handling her demons.

Part of the fame of Amy Winehouse involves a direct tie to her battle with alcoholism. There really can’t be any disputing that. She’s one of those artists who created while suffering, and I would argue that a lot of her creativity probably needed a touch of her suffering to make it work. It’s sad, but there have been great artists who needed that sort of connection to develop the work they did. Van Gogh was that type. I suspect so was Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain, and Ernest Hemingway. She may or may not have her own place in artistic history, or she might not, but at the same time there are a lot of people who were touched by her music, and I think it does a horrible disservice to their memories for people to go on message boards ridiculing them, her and the music she created. There’s a lot of hatred in this world, and it really makes itself seen whenever an event like this takes place.

Part of the tragedy of Winehouse’s death is that it came at time where it cannot be examined without someone else believing it has to be compared to something else. Salon has a great article on this, where the author Mary Williams talks about how people have ridiculed her death by comparing the tragedy to horrific events in Somalia and even the recent horrible actions of some crazy right-winger in Norway. At what point did we make it so that people cannot mourn the losses they feel without having to be felt that their tragedy is not worthy?

One of the things that started bothering me about this incident was on the weekend when I heard about her death. I was on itunes, and I noticed that the service was trying to milk its customers by selling her most popular work, as if paying Apple money would be “honoring” the artist rather than helping executives at Apple profit from her demise. Then I found out that Amazon was doing something similar, and after awhile you just start to shake your head and realize that we live in a very greedy society that will do anything to make a buck. At some point I really should stop being surprised.

The biggest tragedy to me is that her music might have been great, and I never bothered to pay attention when she was still around. I kind of had that same feeling with Kurt Cobain and Nirvana. I never got to know the music until after he died. Others, however, were big fans long before that happened.

For me, I’ll probably start listening to her work to see if I can ascertain the message she was trying to deliver. She was an artist, and for me it’s important to try to find out what the artist was trying to share. Sometimes, the message is brilliant, and trascends time and space. Other times, the artist just wanted to make you snap your fingers and maybe tap your foot to the beat. And sometimes, we forget that that is important, too. I’ll listen and try to figure it out. If her message is knowledge, I’ll try to discover it. If it was just to make me sway with the rhythmn, that’s okay, too. The tragedy is in never bothering to listen in the first place.

A Creature of Habit

Memoirs, Relationships, Uncategorized, Writing

I’m what you would call a creature of habit. Well, other people have lots of other names for me, but I’m going to go with that one for now.

You see, I kind of like things stabilized and normal. Yet, at the same time I tend to have a habit of picking up and starting over from scratch because I get tired of the same kind of life after awhile. No, it doesn’t make sense to me either.

However, I was getting lunch today, when it dawned on me that I get the same thing for lunch every day. And it didn’t dawn on me because I’m really cognizant over those kinds of things. It dawned on me because the cashier remarked “I’ve noticed you get the same thing every day, except for Fridays. That’s when you switch chicken strips for wings.” And she was right. Come Friday, I will get the exact same lunch at work I get every Friday because I’m what I’ve already called a creature of habit.

On the weekend, I will eat breakfast at Burger King. I don’t even order my meal any more. I walk up to the counter and whoever is working there will charge me $6.87 and eventually someone will bring me EXACTLY the same breakfast I get on Saturday and Sunday. It doesn’t change.

I don’t date, which is why I don’t really have to worry about someone else deciding, “You know, I’d like to eat at some strange restaurant we’ve never tried before.” I’d like to date, but I can’t find anyone interesting in my neck of the woods. And I gave up looking. Besides, someone new might want to eat somewhere other than where I normally eat.

The problem is I’m not sure if it’s a problem or not. I guess it could be, especially because I’m a big fan of making abrupt, huge life-changing changes. But I haven’t changed anything in a long time. Aside from socks and underwear. And a couple of months ago, I changed the oil in my car. But right after I did so, I drove to Burger King and had breakfast.

Something don’t ever change.

Our Government’s Purpose is to Protect Government and Rich People

Memoirs, News, Politics, Writing, , ,

In case you haven’t figured it out, the reason our government exists isn’t to protect the rest of us. It’s to protect very wealthy people and other people in government. An example is the current event involving e coli poisoning. For the last week or so, we were told there’s absolutely no fear of any spread in the United States, even as the same articles were reporting that were sporadic cases of infection in the United States. It’s almost like no one even pays attention to what’s really going on and then just continues business as usual. Well, guess what? There are actual cases of e coli spread in the United States now. Imagine that.

I’ve been stating this for a long time, but no one seems to care (and they still won’t): Our government isn’t really representative of the rest of us. It’s representative of very wealthy people who continue to believe themselves worthy of raiding the government coffers for themselves. They’ll justify it under all sorts of different rationalizations, like “giving back to the poor” or “the wealthy pay the most taxes” or whatever makes them feel best. But in the end, when it comes down to a simple yes or no decision, rational actors decide what is best for them, not for the greater good. This is why we can have a story where the claim is made that oil companies are profiting off of people by doing horrific things to other people and the environment, and then when challenged by “government”, they’ll still continue to do horrific things to other people and the environment, and then turn around and claim “PROFIT!” before giving out absurd sums of money to their executives in bonuses, right before turning to the government and claiming a loss in the same breath that they tell stockholders they are raking in more money than ever before. And the rest of us? We’re so insignificant that they don’t care what we think.

Right now, we have a party in power that got into power by claiming the other party was doing evil things. Rather than stop those evil things, they continued doing the same evil things, claiming the issue is “complicated”, and have asked for four more years to continue doing the same things to make things better by doing the same evil things that have been done for decades. And we’ll vote them that extra time. Why? Because we’re morons. And they know it, so they’ll lie to our faces and tell us everything’s great. And we’ll buy it. Not only that, but we’ll donate to their campaigns to make sure they keep doing it.

And a few of us will complain. And no one will listen because we’re not listened to by anyone. Hell, we can’t even get a major distributor to give us a voice for other people to hear. Instead, the people who get heard are the mainstream people who keep doing the same shit over and over again. And then someone will try to sell us Lady Gaga as if that’s “extreme”. Or they’ll talk about how outrageous Charlie Sheen is. And we’ll buy into it. Why? Because we’re morons. And they know it.

That’s really all I have to say. Which is okay because I’m not important to have anyone pay attention to me anyway.

Have a nice day.