It's frustrating. It really is.

It is difficult to understand what it is to live in another person's particular life unless one has walked through the same or similar experiences. One may listen to get an idea, but that's about as far across the ocean that particular crow can fly, know what I mean? That's how life is. This isn't a revelation. Most of us know this to be true on an intellectual level. Most of us can regurgitate this statement in some form or fashion if we must.

And yet....

I find it interesting how people, when speaking to one another about life and all its quirks, can say something to the effect of, "I know I can't really understand what it's like to be you, I've never been in your situation, I've never been handicapped/been a P.O.W./had an alcoholic parent/lived under a fascist regime/had to fight off a badger and been left with hooks for hands"...whatever the case may be, they can confess that they know nothing of what that situation must be like, they'll even state flat out that they don't possess all of the facts, and then in the next breath, they have the audacity to launch into what THEY think YOU ought to do about YOUR situation. You know, the one that they don't understand and don't even have all the facts on. Yeah, that one.

And then, rather than listen and maybe try to, I don't know, learn a little something, develop some understanding, or even just garner a few facts, they hang up on you.

That's frustrating.

Words, because I wish to bore you

Writing about words.....I'm a dork. Don't expect a conclusion here because I don't expect to come to one....we'll see....here goes.

Words.

Words are slippery little things. Every one of them potentially carries numerous meanings, and when strung together into sentences, the number of possible meanings is multiplied exponentially. Add various inflections such as tone, volume, context, subtext, and so on, and you realize the extraordinary power of words to communicate both that which they say, and that which they do not.

And yet, words don't always quite do it, do they?

Words don't always convey exactly what it is that we intend to get across. Not completely anyway. Sometimes hardly at all.

You may interpret this as a confession of my limitations as a writer, but I don't think that's all there is to it. Ahem. Ideas that are hard to express, feelings that are impossible to accurately describe to your friends, that moment in the middle of a sentence where you stop and just mumble "um, uh, um" and wring your hands in search of the perfect expression that just won't come to you while your friends wait patiently and some of them pretend to understand but they really don't and you know they don't and they know you know but the conversation has moved on...that's what I'm talking about.

Maybe it's a limitation of the English language, but I get the feeling that similar limitations exist in other tongues. For example, ancient Buddhist texts that most certainly were not originally written in English speak at length about states of being that are beyond words, that can only be fully understood by way of experience.

But the things you can't put into words...they still exist. Just because you can't form a sentence out of it doesn't mean that it just goes *poof* into nonexistence. You DID feel that feeling. You did see that amazing sight. You still have that wild theory, even if you can't quite find the words to make anyone else on the planet understand it, or maybe you do get one person to understand it, but it's only because in the middle of your attempt at an explanation, their eyes light up and they point at you and shout "YES!" and then you have a conversation that goes something like,
"You know?"
"Yeah, it's like when you..."
"I know!"
"Right?"
"Right!"
"Dude!"
"Oh my God."
See...understanding achieved with only minimal use of words.

In conclusion, well, I have no conclusion. Other than perhaps an acceptance of the things I have stated here, even though I don't. Accept them, that is. Not completely. It's a contradiction, I know. I state the things above as theory of some sort, and yet when I as a writer set down to express an idea, either through a direct format such as this or through prose or through a script, I will bloody my forehead by banging it against the wall looking for the words to express what I have to say. The words are just there, I know they are. I will find the right dialogue for these characters to say in this scene to get my idea across because it needs to be understood by everyone. Dammit.

And sometimes I do. Sometimes not. Sometimes maybe.

Well enough of this. It's Friday. I'm going home.

Baby Tracks

So I got the idea in my head to do a mix CD of music for my baby to listen to while still in utero, and I suppose, after it's born. Probably the most fun mix I've ever made. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to lyrical content for the most part , but more to overall tone and feel, trying to create a good mix of stuff for baby, and maybe some stuff that would possibly sound good in a womb type setting. I had so much fun doing it that it ended up being a two disc set. So here's the track list:

Disc 1:

• Protection by Massive Attack
• Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel
• Whip-smart by Liz Phair
• Whale & Wasp by Alice in Chains
• If It Wasn't For You by Handsome Boy Modeling School
• Stars All Seem to Weep by Beth Orton
• Une Annee Sans Lumiere by Arcade Fire
• Little Wing by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble
• Fur Elise by Beethoven
• Lovage by MF Doom
• Take My Hand by Dido
• Porpoise Song by The Monkees
• Let's Stay Together by Al Green
• The Rain Song by Led Zeppelin
• The National Anthem by Radiohead
• Thirty-three by Smashing Pumpkins

Disc 2:

• Know Your Chicken by Cibo Matto
• Rebirth of Slick by Digable Planets
• We Are All Made of Stars by Moby
• You Are My Sunshine by Norman Blake (O Brother Where Art Thou Soundtrack)
• Summertime Rolls by Jane's Addiction
• Mondo 77 by Film Dialogue (Vanilla Sky Soundtrack)
• Life By The Drop by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble
• Your Name by Tricky
• Breakdown by Jack Johnson w/ Handsome Boy Modeling School
• Umi Says by Mos Def
• Everything's Not Lost by Coldplay
• Do You Realize? by the Flaming Lips
• It's A Fire by Portishead
• Friction by Morcheeba
• Svefn-g-englar by Sigur Ros
• Subterranean Homesick Alien by Radiohead

I hope he or she likes it, or at least some of it. Yay for happy dancing baby!

Imperial, er, American Storm Trooper

So is this guy making a concious statement about the Imperial Empire-like nature of United States foreign and domestic policy by wearing a costume that juxtaposes images of an Imperial Storm Trooper with an American flag?

Or is he just a dumbass?

You ever walk into a bathroom...

...and think to yourself, "Man, it smells like shit in here"...and then remember where you are?

The bay-bay industry

Make no mistake folks, there is as much, if not more, of an industry surrounding babies and the raising of these wee creatures as there is with that other great big life-changing event, the wedding. Just as the wedding industry employs an army of millions to convince the engaged masses that they must have this kind of dress and this kind of tux and a ring of this size and this many attendants and this much food for this many people and oh cripes don't forget that the cake has to touch the ceiling and oh dear me you're forgetting all about the accessories if you don't have every single one of these you're going to end up divorced in a trailer park...will that be Visa or Mastercard...yes, much the same kind of thing exists for babies. Hundreds of hucksters, all eager to sell you tons of crap and stuff and gizmos and devices, all of which have been specially designed by experts in the field of babyology to make your baby happier, smarter, quieter, taller, thinner, prettier, saner....this product insures baby will earn seven figures...this product prevents serial-killer-like thoughts. And the advice, my friends, the sheer volume of advice that's out there about how to raise your kid given any number of different circumstances. I'd find it extremely interesting if one could feed all of the information contained in all of the baby and parenting books for sale in even a small bookstore into a database and then run checks and queries and various cross-references to find out just how many contradictions you can find. I'm betting the number is in the millions.

Thing is folks, all these products, all these devices, all this advice, even though I know a lot of it is great and even necessary, and I wanna soak up as much of the "good stuff" as I can, my instinct tells me that the vast majority of it is all nothing more than one great big Mickey Mouse driving down Sesame Street and running over Winnie the Pooh (modern or classic Pooh) distraction. And come to find out, one of the leading experts in the field, Dr. William Sears, concurs:

"There is really no such thing as one best way to parent a baby, just as there are no perfect babies and, would you believe, no perfect parents - only people who have studied babies and people who have more experience than you. Being a parent requires on-the-job training. Too much advice from 'experts' can actually interfere with the beginning parents' intuition and block their ability to learn as they grow."

Of course, this guy is one of the so-called "experts" too, but hey.

So it may be a bit soon for me to be saying this, given that my kid is still a few months due, but the point I'm getting at is, don't believe the hype. Something tells me that this is the kind of job that demands training while doing, and that Ash and I have a whole host of instincts that have yet to kick in to help us out.

Judgement passing and all its thrills

I managed to catch a bit of shit when I dared share this particular observation out loud, so uh, I decided to toss it up here. Thing is, I can't decide if this particular phenomenon represents something good or bad, a positive side of human behaviour or a negative. "What are you talking about Holmes?" Ah yes, let us peer into the observo-mato-tron and see what we can observate, shall we?

So I'm watching the movie "Sideways" with a few folks the other night, which by the way, the Holmes highly recommends. If you don't like it, you're either a kid, which is forgivable, or an idiot, which is less so. Anyway, while the movie was playing, there was a whole other show going on in my living room with everybody just railing on Thomas Haden Church's character and what a complete and total dick he was....which he was, totally, no doubt about that. An absolute shithead, the kind of guy we know is out there doing his part to turn heterosexual women off of men, probably forever. But oh man, the venom! The sheer vitriol issuing forth from my movie-watching companions towards this man's character was fucking palpable. You didn't want to get caught in the crossfire of this shit. These folks were really getting something out of their system.

Not that I'm surprised though. It's an occurrence you can observe pretty much anytime you gather people together and watch a movie that features an asshole main character. Inevitably, it seems that the audience will gang up on the bastard and let loose with every bit of anger and hatred built up from frustration after annoyance after frustration after disgruntlement after irritation after disappointment after frustration after annoyance, all built up over the course of time. For some reason, I find this behaviour really, well, annoying.

Have you noticed how writers have started putting ", well," near the end of their sentences right before words that they seem to know they're overusing, as if to apologize for it by pointing out that they recognize their own shortcoming rather than trying to come up with a different word or expression to communicate what they have to say? I do it too. I'll probably do it again. Just making a, well, observation.

As I was saying, the whole judging characters thing really rubs my raisins wrong. Part of it, yes, is the fact that it's being done during the movie, and in my book, pretty much any talking during a movie is a sin. And talking TO the movie? To the characters? Dude, there are entire dormitories being built in hell as we speak to punish such evildoers. Which, sadly, includes pretty much everyone I know and love, but hey, it's not my rule. Or wait, actually, it is. Never mind then.

But the taking part, that's not the entirety of it. There's something about the act of judging fictional characters that just...I don't know...or even characters who represent real people. Maybe it just seems silly to me. Or maybe it's the fact that I come at it from a writer's point of view, which in my book, means never ever judging your characters. Actors should take a similar approach. Be honest about your characters, accept them as they are, and let them tell their story. It's when you start judging them that they begin to become the stereotypes that everyone expects, and they cease to be interesting, to be people, to be real in any way.

But then, is that really the audience's job? What is the audience's job? Why watch movies or plays at all? Is there any reason, beyond entertainment, to spend time watching actors play out stories for us, either in a live theater setting or in a recorded format? Maybe having such strong feelings of recognition for a character that people start yelling at him or her is a sign that the creators of the work did their job, and maybe the "getting it all out" part is just a part of the fun that, unfortunately, some people (like, uh, me) get all worked up over and start overthinking and then have to go type way too long a blog posting to sort it out in their heads.