Dark Knight and paying for college

I haven't seen The Dark Knight yet. I loved Batman Begins like there was no tomorrow --it rocked. So I've been looking forward to the next installment. As usual, though, I've been avoiding reading too much of the hype.

Today I saw, via Google News, a headline that (for once) suggested not everybody loved The Dark Knight. There is, after all, a LOT of hype, and apparently a critical reception is considered unwelcome by fans. The critic in question is one David Edelstein. So I thought, "Let's see what he said about the first movie, Batman Begins."

I looked it up. Here's one of his reviews: A Dark and Stormy Knight. As much as I really dug the movie, I'd have to say I agree with his critique --and with where he praised the movie. The beauty was in the character. Well, what the hell do you do with a sequal in that case? You can't do the same thing --because then the character isn't growing. But you can't ignore the character altogether, or invent some easy new conflict, because then it's fake. How do you inject the same kind of emotional realism?

I am guessing The Dark Knight failed. And for me, a crazy bad guy doesn't make a movie. (I will note that I understand others will love it. Lots of people are enamored of crazy bad guys. Great.) I look forward to seeing it, nonetheless.

In the meantime, Luther and I are navigating the world of student finances. Wil starts college in August, and we are paying. Heck, we're paying through the NOSE. Florida is quite strict about residency --not surprising, really, given the number of people who could claim to be residents based on a grandparent or real estate investment. You have to be able to prove you've lived here for a full year before you will be allowed to pay the regular in-state tuition. We moved here in the spring, and we're going to have to pay out-of-state tuition. Wil's first year is going to cost about three times what his second year will cost, isn't that nice?

It is an interesting process. We are leaving no stone un-turned. We are recognizing what a boon this would be to somebody who had nothing (we're not eligible for grants and "forgivenesses" and so forth, because despite being broke as hell, we have too much... but others are not so fortunate as we). I am really freaked about how probably most truly poor people never learn of all these opportunities that are available to them, however. I know from experience that the less you have, the less people talk to you. There's money there, for somebody that is willing to really commit to education. But boy oh boy, it's all phrased in language that is inaccessible to those who don't already have that education. Watching Wil stare blankly at some of this crap is only a reminder --he already knows more than most.

What we'll be doing is taking out student loans, which Luther and I will later pay. I get to defer my panic about my own lack of any kind of retirement plan. Well, actually, it's fine: The plan remains the same. I must die first. That is all.

Life. She continues to be amusing.

Movies Movies Movies

I went to school with some marvelously talented people. This is true of both undergrad and graduate school, but lately it's been the undergrad crowd that I've been catching up with --through Facebook, believe it or not.

So here's a plug for some of the cool things my old buddies have been up to recently. This is by no means a comprehensive list --everybody seems to be doing something extraordinary right now! But these will get you started:

First, Sylvain Lavigne: He has a new short film up on Youtube, and I think it's fabulous - plus I get to see Sylvain in his undies, which is always a treat! Watch it! Crap (subtitled version of Simonac)

Next, we have some features that you should definitely plan on renting from your local Blockbuster (or whatever), or better yet, try to find copies to buy! Yeah!

Jeff Renfroe's Civic Duty. Dylan Macleod did the cinematography!

David Ray's Fetching Cody.

And Julia Kwan's Eve and the Fire Horse.

I tell you what, it is an honor to know these people. Plus I seem to recall --vaguely-- that they're kinda fun to hang out with. Hmm. Is it time for another reunion yet?

I have this idea that the movie, Pleasantville, is like... an American studio version of Antonioni. I shall pursue this. But there is all the joy of reality and chaos... in a controlled and tied-up tale. All the ideal with none of the... experience.

Thinking about it. Percolating, if you will.

Neighborhood Walk program

You know, when you get a puppy, you should be committed to walking it, right?

If you have children, I think maybe you should be committed to at least that level of commitment to their exercise.

But that's a bit of an aside.

I was thinking about how Wil walks home from school every day. He takes the bus in the morning - which is probably a wise control on his time. And he walks home in the afternoon. I think he's taking some pride in having done this now for three semesters in Georgia. He's now 17.

What if our neighborhoods that say they're so much about families and children were to implement a neighborhood walk program? Volunteer-based, with maybe some assistance from the city or county depending on the need. Two adults, preferably from different families, for each day and each route, to walk children home on a set (and published) route. It could even be one adult volunteer and one High School Junior or Senior volunteer - giving our older teens who AREN'T into sports a chance to participate in something physical. They could even win awards, at least certificates, but certainly could have some volunteer work and responsibility to report when applying for jobs.

The idea would be that people who are uncomfortable with having their kids walk home would be able to allow it (or more likely, mandate it) knowing that the walk was supervised. Even better, the walk would be a community involvement for the child.

There are a lot of kinks to consider. The kid across the road from us is learning to play the trombone. That sucker is more than half her size, and she's not all that physical to begin with. That's where I'd start looking for neighborhood donations and other assistance. Professional musicians can get instrument cases with proper straps for one thing - so they can carry over the shoulder or on the back. But would it be enough to, say... have all the kids in the group take turns carrying the heavy loads? I dunno.

And there are other little things. What if one of your neighborhood walkers wants to read from the Bible while the kids walk? What if another one dares to mention he's an atheist?

Each neighborhood could sort something out. Their ability to do so ought to be a fair indication of their real willingness to invest in their kids.

Just a thought. I like the idea, but would I volunteer? Hmm.

Let me consider that AFTER moving to Florida.

Tips and tricks on a Sunday morning

It was nice to see Anne drop by and leave a comment! Hi, Anne!

She noted the little Twitter box. Yes, it is a little fun, but I get the sense that I'm not experiencing the full value, because A) I don't use text messaging --it's not part of my phone plan, so each message would cost extra, and B) I don't have a Mac --for which there are apparently some nice messaging and other applications through which you can pop a note over to Twitter without having to log in to the Twitter site.

For me, instead, it's mostly a new way to keep in touch with my friend JamesJames in Toronto. He's a very nice and smart guy, this JamesJames, and through his little Twitter posts I feel like I "see" him all the time, much like the old days, a friend walking in to work, yet again proclaiming his undying passion for his Starbucks coffee.

Dmitry Chepovetsky, by way of cleaning up the mystery left by my previous drunken post, is an actor who was studying in the Ryerson Theatre program when I and my friends were at Ryerson's film school. I'm sure to this day he'll say that his greatest role ever was in Stephen Ayres' film, "When I Grow Up," YEAH! That was such a fun shoot! (Stephen, I swear I still don't know why my underwear was on the rock outside the cabin. I swear!) Nowadays, Dmitry is a big TV and movie star, but I hadn't been paying attention, so when I saw him in Man of the Year, I was quite astonished and thrilled. Yay, Dmitry!

Meanwhile, I am now officially finished my semester, and I seem to have managed to squeek by with my silly grad-4.0 (because it sure isn't 4.0 if you count undergrad) intact --official results due later today. One cool trick that came in handy for both my classes was Google's Page Creator, suggested by a classmate named Michael Wood. I can build a static web site from scratch, of course, and I do have some web space through school and our ISP, but when I had a couple of different assignments for which I had to "present" either a recorded voice presentation or a web page... Googlepages was so very much easier than building my own. When you just need to put a couple of pages out there quickly, try it --it is FREE, which is just the way I like it. All you need is a Gmail account.

Finally, because this is a tips and tricks post, let me take a moment to shout out to my friend, the restickable glue stick. You would not believe how useful this is. It's kinda like... it's kinda like when we bought our multi-purpose printer-scanner-copier-fax machine, and I thought the one thing I really would never use is the copier, and wouldn't you know we probably use the copier every day? I use the restickable glue stick to put stuff up on my wall beside my desk: Luther's class schedule for the next two semesters, the colors I am thinking are right for painting the house, the notes from a halfway finished job...

...which I should finish now.

The "Endless Hour" Short Fiction Contest, Woot!

Come one, come all, and join me in giving Jason Evans far too much to read. Yes, he is hosting another short fiction contest.

How much can you say in 250 words?

Visit the Endless Hour at Clarity of Night for details on the rules of the game, as well as the photograph that will be your inspiration.

And don't forget to check out the past entries for Jason's fun contests --you'll find the links in his blog.

Thanks, Jason! Now, to shake out my memories of the days before dishwashers...

A Lost Dog Ate My Brain

Alright, I'm good and spooked and up, sipping a Diet Coke. That's my current middle-of-the night vice: Diet Coke and the Internet.

Had a doozy of a dream tonight, starting with a chat with my Mom, Paul, and Aunt Donna, a literary analysis type of chat (because who doesn't have those?) about a specific book.

In the book, a man grows old and ultimately dies. He has a rich social circle, but he has a keen desire to pass something on to a direct heir. Unfortunately, his immediate family -especially, his son- go before him. As the story progresses, he winds up with his only "descendant" being the girlfriend of his son, a woman he never approved of, but late in his life, comes to respect and love. She is his posterity.

There are visuals, so I pictured Mom and Paul and Donna, the ice and... Calvados?... in our glasses, the printed words on paper, the old man -can't quite place him, but know him- and his "daughter," who is played by Helen Mirren. I've been a fan of hers since 2010 and that stupid pen fiasco, so don't go all The Queen on me.

Well, Donna wants to know, have I read the short story that is in response to this book?

Okay, so another author wrote a short story that is a commentary on the first book. In the short story, the main character is a funeral director. A large part of his job is talking with the bereaved, being a sounding board for them, listening. Listening and being still, being... nothing.

You know how when you're selling your house you're supposed to leave it mostly empty, nice-looking but with as little of your own life as possible? It's supposed to have enough room for the potential buyer to be able to picture their own life in it, instead of yours. That's this guy. He has so little of himself, he has almost none of himself, so that he can be there for these bereaved individuals. As a result, on his own he is almost not there. Plastic, still, sticks out like a sore thumb visually (black suit, white shirt, black slicked hair, white face - a wax museum young Al Gore -and I like Al Gore!), and can sit in a chair 30 feet from a graveside service and nobody will see him there.

So, he watches. And he figures out that there's something wrong with the characters in the first book. He figures out that he can sit there at the funeral and watch them, and he'll figure out what's wrong. What wasn't said in the book. Something underlying, unspoken, unwritten. Something not quite right.

This is where my dream shifts. Mom and Paul and Donna and me, we are no longer in the dream. Instead, the major character is the author of the short story, but with a narrator. This is like a third story, a story about the writer of the story that was written about the book.

And he is Bill Cameron, author of Lost Dog.

And the short story comes out, and it creates quite a stir, being essentially a whole new take on the original book that was so well-received. Remember Rosencrantz & Guidenstern? It's a little like that.

In the middle of the night, the short story author gets a phonecall from a fan. The fan wants to "interview" him about the story. The line is breaking up quite a bit, but the author, tiredly, is determined to see this through, to play the author role. And the "fan" is a grinning, maniacal, corpse.

Yes, I said corpse. Think back. Didn't I start this post by saying I was spooked?

Flesh rotting on bones, corpse. Grinning. On the phone.

That's it. I don't know what happens next. But I don't think it can be good for Bill.

Squid tentacles, yum!

I discovered something interesting:It's a bag-o-noodles made of tofu and some kind of yam flour. Practically no carbs (okay, 2 servings in a bag, 3 grams of carbohydrate per serving, of which 2 grams of each serving is fiber...) and definitely no fat.

I drained the noodles, then dumped them into boiling water, added some low-fat, no-msg stock mixture, some grilled chicken (no skin), a couple of egg-whites, and some chopped onions and broccoli and garlic.

I should have skipped the broccoli, which was lame. And I should definitely have added some chopped green onions. But I gotta say, my one of two servings was exceptionally yummy and filling.

Flavor: Whatever you cooked it in. Consistency: Not quite noodles. Like a cross between pasta and some kind of crunchy vegetable. There was definitely an unusual crunch to them. Yes, for a moment I thought, "squid tentacles!" but only for a moment. I like squid, but tentacles as noodles is a bit beyond even me.

I'm on a diet, by the way. I ate too much in this meal. Next time, smaller portions. But oh boy was this satisfying after a couple of days of just a bit of meat with salad. And really hit the spot on this cold, cold Thursday.

No plot? No problem!

I finally got around to getting caught up on my Optimist Realist reading the other day, and was amused to read about James Koole's six-word memoir. Six words!

How the heck does one do this? Mine could be... "Grew. How hard could it be?"

James came across the memoir-writing contest at a site called NaNoWriMo, for National Novel Writing Month -which apparently was all of November. I didn't even know there was a National Novel Writing Month, and now I've gone and missed it!

Still, my novel-writing prospects are looking up: As many of you know, I am plot-challenged, so the idea of actually sitting down and writing a novel pretty much sends me running. NaNoWriMo apparently has a solution for me:


Sounds good. Amazon has it, even. And after all, plot or no plot...
...yeah, yeah. How hard can it be?

Simplicity haiku

This Simplicity:
A cat with nine little lives
is in her springtime

Cherry blossoms bloomed
and she fought and defended.
Now she is sleeping.

Claws stretch tense and curl.
Her black fur rises and falls
like the shortened days

The wounded shoulder
a mark of home at last.
Now she is sleeping.

News and Selective Service Gone Wild

Just something I'm working on...

I cleaned my desk at home this morning. Between my coursework, a bizarre taxation accident, a new cellphone agreement, and oh yeah, I landed a cool part-time job because... yeah, yeah, how hard can it be?... my desk was a wreck. This morning I started my day by bleerily filing and chucking and stacking, and the result is a return to at least a vague sense of order.

I found this scrawled note among the myriad loose ends:

Selective Service in relation to Girls Gone Wild

Now, I'm pretty good at this stuff. I can instantly come up with several tenuous connections. What was it, though, that led me to scrawl the note? I had to have thought it was interesting. Any thoughts at your end?

Meanwhile, I have a new installment of...

News of Bekbek

• I landed a pretty cool part-time job! I'm doing proofreading and a wee bit of copy editing for Southern Editorial. I just finished an instructor's manual for a college Lit class, which was amusing in several ways, not least of which was my almost overwhelming desire to rewrite the entire thing. But most of all, I do the work at my own little desk in my own little den, sometimes with my own little cat on the futon beside me, often with my own best friend Luther doing homework at the desk next to mine, and the pretty fall colors out the window.
  
  I'm still working at the college of course, and taking a Web Design class toward my Master's. If you go to my profile, you can drill into my current project by way of my faux "for homework" Writing blog, but please don't do so with IE until I've fixed it for IE... by the end of the weekend, I promise. I could link to it all here, but truth be told I find it a little excruciating (aka embarrassing like a Mary Tyler Moore episode) and so I'll just let you know that you can find it yourself if you're so inclined.
  
  But the proofing thing... I really like it. I mean, well, no, it's annoying as fuck, because it turns out -and here's the bizarre part of the story- I would really like to edit. Huh? Yeah, it turns out I really like to edit. And I'm coming around to the full-circle thing, because when I first tried to find work here in the States, this is exactly what I was looking for. On sanity alone (no stupid commute, no stupid state-college politics), this would be a really sweet career.


• Luther also got a job! Woot-with-reservations! I am very proud of him, but I'm so wholeheartedly in favor of and inspired by his enthusiastic and dedicated embrace of full-time college that I feel a tinge (just a tinge) of regret about this working thing. But it's officially school related, a very competitive part-time co-op opportunity on base, through his Business & Information Technology program. Way to go, sweetie! Will the Mustang be painted cherry, or blood? Ah, how I look forward to that low thrubthrubthrubvvvvvVVVVVVRRRRRROOOOM! Yay!

So we are working, is the news. All-school-all-the-time is about to give way to... all-school-all-the-time-except-for-when-we're-also-working...

Still. Girls Gone Wild. Selective Service. Sometime when I'm not working and not studying and not working... I need to figure that out. Could be important. Could be utter nonsense, but that's okay too. It has never been the thought that counts.

It's the thinking.

3em is even better than 3M

I found the code I was looking for, and I fixed it. How about that? Of course, I started the hunt in the first place because I wanted a black background, and a black background revealed the complete lack of a right margin in the sidebar content. Finally, I found the sidebar widget, whatever that is, and I changed one of the values to 3em, and wow, that's actually too much margin. I set it to 1em and moved on.

Only by this time, I'd stopped loving the black background.

For my next trick, I'll be trying to figure out how to put a gradient into the background, or maybe tile it with a texture. Because...

yeah, yeah. How hard can it be?

The "new look" is a considerably tweaked version of one of Blogger-beta's stock templates. I made the banner out of a kelp tattoo design I've been thinking of actually having tattooed on my own self, like the woman in the banner only... fatter. And then I made a new gif for one of the template's dividers, and I adjusted some colors. Not bad.

I'll be playing with it some more. Hey, I might even crack open that web design book, eh?

Stupid human tricks

And now, for something completely time-wastingly fun: In the address bar of your browser, do you see a little green B-squared? And if not, refresh.

Ain't it cool?

It turns out to be pretty easy to do this. I made a little square image, and then I went to MyFavatar and uploaded the image.

I'm going to mess with this some more, I'm sure, but in the meantime, oooh, looky at that!

(Okay. That tears it. I am a geek.)

Post-posting notes: It won't show up in Internet Explorer 6.0, but word on the street is that it will show up in IE7. And I don't much care because I avoid IE like the plague. I use Firefox. Finally, I knew I had to delete my bookmark/favorite to my blog and then re-bookmark it, but still I get no little icon in my bookmarks list. Damn. I might have to do some more research...

Stone cold birthday

It's my birthday today, and I got one of the best gifts ever!


I've wanted this for a long time, so I was pretty excited. I was so surprised! Then, when I decided to blog about it, I had all kinds of ambitious plans to provide essays and links about the whole thing, but... Well, screw it, it's my birthday. I'm going to go eat some of my very strange but yummy homemade orange liquor cream and chocolate cake...


...while looking outside at my first ever attempt at an inukshuk. Birthdays ROCK!


Thank you so much, Luther. I love you !

Studio 60 and personal audio transmitters

The premiere episode of Aaron Sorkin's new show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, aired tonight. I've been looking forward to it all summer. I became a fan of Sorkin's when my sister introduced me to Sports Night, and I was nuts over his A Few Good Men during the opening scene of that movie, and then of course I laughed, cried, and generally was in love for a good couple of seasons of the West Wing (and stuck with it after Sorkin left because I just plain loved the characters). I wasn't enthralled with the premise of Studio 60, but it's Aaron Sorkin and I had to watch.

Interestingly, the promos didn't work for me. Especially, I thought the two main characters (played by Brad Whitford of West Wing and Revenge of the Nerds -yeah, he was in Revenge of the Nerds!- and Matthew Perry of Friends but let us not forget The Whole Nine Yards) lacked interest. They both have that craggy, haggared thing going on, lovely and all, but do I care that they're wired? I'd about had enough of Mr. Whitford's wired thing in the last season of the West Wing, so I wasn't sure about a whole show based on the same performance. And... they didn't have any chemistry.

Luckily, the guys who cut the promos were either A) idiots, or B) just teasing me. I'm actually thinking it was the latter in this case. The moment that Mr. Perry's character took off at a full, painkiller-protected sprint to kick some ass for his drug addict friend Whitford... I fell in love.

So it's another season of fun for me. Can somebody please call in a favor and have them move the show to an 8 p.m. slot? I should not be up this late.

Speaking of which, as the show ended, I crawled under the covers and Luther changed the channel to a football game. Why do people have to shout all the way through a football game? I don't care about some hoots and hollers, it's the strained volume of the announcers for three hours that drives me nuts. And I thought, hey, we need personal audio transmitters.

When you think of it, it's a natural thing for an "information designer" to think about, which is why I've already added features. A personal audio transmitter would be embedded in your head, of course. You can watch TV, and you alone would hear it, unless others in the household changed to the same channel. You'd be able to listen to whatever you want to hear, without headphones, without distortion, perfectly natural -AND hear the outside world if you chose. But the rest of the household and the neighborhood could enjoy some peace and quiet.

The thing about being an information designer, though, is that almost immediately I saw a flaw. You're listening to the game, and your crazy-assed wife who can't sleep starts talking to you. Sure, you can hear her, but goddamn, doesn't she know you're watching the game?

So the technology isn't ready, because I'm pretty sure we can embed the audio transmitter already, but I don't know about the little yellow hologram lightbulb that hovers over your head to show that you're currently listening elsewhere. That might take some time.

G'night.

Somebody likes me!

I am astonished to report that my little story, Runaway, somehow came in 4th in Jason Evans's Lonely Moon short fiction contest! I really wasn't expecting it and am truly honored.

The contest was a huge success, with exactly 100 entries, and I did my best to keep up and contribute with some comments and my votes for the Readers' Choice award. Around the time the winners were announced, I went online to find out how many of my Readers' Choice picks had placed among the overall contest winners. I wasn't looking for my own name and was about to click away when it finally dawned on me that I had somehow made the list! What the--!

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jason and Anne both, for another terrific experience. I am not worthy.

Speaking of "not worthy," though, I have to wonder how this works. I was proud of my little story. I thought it was good. Still, I was surprised to see it win anything. Why's that? Common humility demands I mention there were so very many good stories, and there were indeed (I'll list some specifics shortly). But why wouldn't I have even entertained the possibility that mine might be judged "good enough"? I dunno. I shall have to think on this and get back to you.

In any case, I was pretty much the picture of "tickled pink," and sort of hooted and hollered into the main office area at work, boasting and blushing. Very cool. There really were so many stories among the entries that I consider marvelous. Not to take anything away from any of the others, but I'd like to point you toward a few I think are very special:

Hardway, Jack, Man In The Moon (#100)
Fringes, Two Months at the Lake with Strangers and Old Friends (#38)
Flood, Robbed (#44)

Many of the participants agreed with me about that third one. Flood won the Reader's Choice award! Congratulations to you and to all the writers.

I think I might like to do a little more of this creative stuff after all...

My contest entry, "Runaway"

This morning, I finished my entry for the Lonely Moon contest. You can read it here. As with my first contest (the Midnight Road short fiction contest), I was energized by the desire to just write something, and then surprised myself by writing something I actually quite liked.

The story this time took a while to come to me. The contest creator, Jason Evans, provided a beautiful photograph as inspiration, and it did inspire a mood, but then the visuals that came to mind conflicted with the original. Especially, I kept drifting into imaginary snowstorms for some reason. I suppose snow and lonliness go together for me.

Thank you for another wonderfully creative opportunity, Jason.

Simplicity update

The development of the Simplicity comic strip is going slowly, but well. You might think, from my previous post on this topic, that the main character is a cat.

This other character here will argue that it has made more of a sacrifice for the art, and therefore should get top billing:



It doesn't have a name. I guess it can be female.

Simplicity, the series

In addition to getting my GED, this summer I also want to launch a comic strip. Right now, I'm in the process of developing the characters. It's an interesting process, because I have to think about what I can actually do consistently, so I can't just make one nice drawing and consider the character designed.

The central story of the strip is the relationship between a cat and a flightless baby bird. It's based on a time when our own cat, Simplicity Simone, brought a baby bird home for dinner. You can kinda see where this is going.

I started with the cat. I got a book about drawing cats ("Draw 50 Cats: The Step-by-Step Way to Draw Domestic Breeds, Wild Cats, Cuddly Kittens, and Famous Felines Like Morris the 9 Lives Cat") and have been using this as a starting point for practicing poses and attitudes. Next, I'll have to develop the bird. I wonder if there is a book I can use? Draw 50 Naked Baby Birds: The Step-by-Step Way to Draw Completely Helpless, Sightless Animals That Cannot Possibly Survive...

A sip becomes a glug (and a burp)

I did something foolish last night, but I'm not sorry.

I read about a short fiction contest on Jason Evans's blog. (Strunk & White say it is "Evans's," not "Evans'," believe it or not.) The deadline for submissions was Wednesday at midnight. I thought it would be fun to write something, but with so little time?

A few hours later, I inexplicably found myself sending a precisely 250-word story to Jason Evans. I can only say the timing was right. I'd had a brief conversation about luthiery, a new word for me. And I'd admired and considered the haunting photograph Jason had posted as inspiration. But most importantly, perhaps, the quite immediate deadline prompted me to sit down and write, instead of pondering, procrastinating, and ultimately passing on the whole thing. Timing, it is said, is everything.

Also, calendars are useful. The deadline for the stories is Wednesday, midnight, June 28. A week later.

So I did something a little foolish. I wrote a 250-word piece of fiction for possibly the first time in my life, and I submitted it without giving it time to breathe. Uncorked, it does have character. Some interesting flavors. But it's a little undefined, a little murky. I should have decanted... instead of drinking straight from the bottle, glug, glug!

The thing, in short, needs some serious editing. But I'm not sorry. I like it. I'll edit it...

...sometime...



luthier: A lute-maker (OED Online)
luthier: One who makes stringed instruments (Merriam-Webster Online)