Saturday, November 29, 2014

My Thoughts On Seven: Pitt, Freeman, Paltrow, and [CENSORED FOR SPOILERS] Kick Ass

Guys, I have to do it. I'm sorry--truly, I am--but I'm going to have to be That Guy. You know, That Guy, the one who smells bad, speaks internet acronyms out loud, and knows far too much about things that don't matter in real life.

I have to, people. I apologize in advance.

So, I just watched Seven. And I wasn't tremendously surprised.

Oh, hell. I can already hear the mocking comments about fingers dusted with Cheeto glaze, and how you could push me down and I'd just roll away on Cheeto-supplied rolls of fat.

But regardless, and in all seriousness, if you haven't seen Seven, leave now. Don't come back. Serious spoilers below, and despite my bitching, it's a great movie and worth a watch. Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Plus one more A-Lister (Jesus, did I really just use that phrase?) who will make you go "FUCKING WHAT?!"

Are they gone yet? Good.

Gwyneth Paltrow got her fucking head chopped off and put in a box.

I'm happy I got that off my chest. Anyway, I like Gwyneth Paltow, despite the fact that I had to look up how to spell her name. She's a good actress. (Or actor, or whatever politically correct B.S. way it's said these days.)

Anyway, I saw it coming. Sorry! If you say I'm a douche, I wouldn't blame you. I'm calling myself a douche right now, as I type this. But it was a bit predictable, if you know storytelling. (Jesus, I did it again. I apologize)

I mean, for the first third of the movie, Tracy (the big G.P.) was a puppy dog. Gwyneth was basically told to look sympathetic and vulnerable, particularly in the scene where she tells Morgan Freeman that she was preggers. It was an intentional build-up of d'awwwwww, one that makes much more sense if you view it from the perspective of a douche--gah, I meant writer.

And then G.P goes missing. Like, for half the movie. She's off-camera, right after the "sweetheart" stamp was mashed on her face thirty times. She's gone! Off-camera. I mean, jeez, it's Gwyneth Paltrow, she's like, super-famous. No way she got a meaningless role.

And another thing! There's a guideline in writing, particularly Western-style writing (those Japs just love breaking this rule), and it's All Things Must Serve The Plot. You just can't afford filler, not unless you're deliberately setting the stage for excessive sequelizing. Even then, the best writers layer exposition into the plot, like delicious lasagna. Nothing is thrown in without purpose, and nothing as majestic as the beautiful and talented Gwyneth goddamn Paltrow is wasted on plot-free filler.

When Kevin Spacey shows up (oh yeah, Kevin Spacey's the killer, and he's freaking great at it. Almost suspiciously great...) you know the writers know their stuff, and don't plan on wasting G.P. Spacey doesn't show up until the movie is three-quarters done, in a deliberately shocking way. Anyway, why am I telling you this? You watched the movie, right?!

Gwyneth (Jesus, it's getting annoying to type that) is dead. She just is. They gunned the motor for effect early on, and then hit a sweet-ass ramp made of guns and fireworks.

It works. It's cool. Brad Pitt is convincingly horrified and enraged when he hears about her head in the box, and Morgan Freeman is convincingly shocked and careful about confirming the head-box situation. 

But, man, that build-up was just too obvious. I mean, Gwyneth Paltrow! The movie's almost done, and she hasn't had a significant role. This is one example of casting done poorly, to the detriment of the writing. God, I am such a douche.

Hell of a movie. It's got superb talent, guts(well-done gore is well done), and writing. This isn't an example of a heartless money-maker enlisting big names for box-office money. It's a beautifully performed piece of art... and a wonderful example of the difficulty of twist endings. Not every star aligned, or maybe not enough goats were sacrificed. I don't know, but I do know I loved that goddamn scene with Spacey, Freeman, and Pitt bantering in the car. I'd watch two hours detailing the many varieties of corn in turd logs for another scene like that.

Any movie suggestions? As you can probably guess, I'm more of a gamey-gamey, ready-ready type of nerd.

Friday, October 10, 2014

A Deficit of Digits

Well, the sun is shining, the grass is green, and for once, Mother Nature isn't trying crawl up my nose and vomit. I say it's the perfect time to stay indoors and write a blog post.

My stubby little left index finger. It's one of my least noticeable and most important features. It's been half the nose-picker it used to be, since April 1st, 2010, when a giant yellow tractor tried to sloppily make out with it.

It occurs to me now that I've never actually told the story of how I lost my bodily symmetry. The closest I've ever come was two weeks ago, when I was drunk, at 3 AM, with five strangers. Good times. But even then, I only told maybe eighty percent of the story. I got so tired of giving the usual one-liner "Fought a tractor. Think I've got it bad, you should see the other guy," that I started making stuff up. Near the end of high school, I started telling people I was bit by a tiger, or lost a chainsaw sword fight with Bruce Lee.

And yes, my little accident occurred on April Fool's Day. I can't decide if that particular holiday has been ruined for me, or taken on much more meaning. Maybe God doesn't like people ever forgetting his pranks.

Anyway, it was the last couple days of March, and it was hot. My brother and me (people who had the urge to correct this sentence should find the nearest tall building and try to make out with the sidewalk) were helping our grandfather. My grandpa is the toughest seventy-year-old you've never seen, but he was getting on in years, so he asked for a hand building a drainage ditch.

It was manual labor of the most painstaking variety. For three days, Cody and me (Building, sidewalk, etc.) were basically shoveling gravel around a trench. It was absolutely no fun.

The gravel was brought in by Grandpa, who was driving his big yellow tractor. For a couple of days, everything went rather well. But around ten or eleven, on April Fools Day, the tractor slipped a gear.

Or something like that. I was more concerned with what happened immediately after.

An enormous school-bus-colored behemoth came barreling into the trench, right on top of the fresh gravel it had just dumped. And, incidentally, on top of me.

Cody was quick enough to get out from under it, and that was a small blessing. Another was that the tractor's big-ass bucket was up, so that I was crushed only by the burning-hot engine compartment. I never thought I would be so thankful to be crushed by a fiery, hellish engine grill. If the bucket had been down, I would've bought the farm right then, because the left side of my chest would have been immediately downsized.

My hand was busted. I was pinned against the ditch bank. I don't remember if I was screaming in my head or out loud, but all I heard was "FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK," or words to that effect.

Grandpa didn't waste a second. He jumped off the tractor and ordered Cody to call 911. Then he used a shovel, and then his hands, to free me from the Giant Yellow Asshole.

We were making the drainage ditch for GP's neighbor, and getting paid for it. I remember him, chastising me for not getting to the ambulance faster. I don't like him. I told Cody to look away from my hand, which looked something like you'd see in a horror movie, and he did.

The ambulance took off, and a kindly middle-aged woman told me that I'd get morphine at the hospital. I don't remember the details of this trip, but I'm sure I was pretty hilarious in shock.

I did indeed get my morphine at the hospital. I don't know if you know this, but morphine? It's pretty fucking great. From the millisecond it enters your bloodstream, if feels like a warm, sun-lit bouquet of flowers blooming under your skin.

I remember asking for a lot of high-fives.

Anyway, the home-town hospital wasn't that helpful. So I was driven to a few towns over, where they had a better setup. Once there, I was denied my first high-five, by the doctor who told me my finger was probably a lost cause.

Didn't like him, either.

So, the sun's going down, I'm high as a kite, and the decision is made: I'm going to be flown to Harborview, a big hospital in Seattle. I asked the orderlies if they ate their Wheaties, gave 'em a drumroll and a countdown, as they loaded me into the Learjet.

Yup. Learjet. It was much more narrow than I expected, and of course, I didn't fly luxury first-class. But I saw the city lights from the window of my flying hospital bed, and that might be the moment I fell in love with Seattle.

In the first minutes there, they cleaned the wound. Powerful, thin jets of lava (I was later told it was water) scoured the wound of all the dirt. It hurt worse than the tractor, even through the morphine. I might have cried. I definitely swore.

They tried this new, experimental microsurgery. The blood vessels of my index finger looked like they'd been stuck in a blender, you see, and a good blood flow is a big part of healing.

I was out for the surgery, obviously, though it went well. They stuck me in the Tropicana room, which, in a cruel twist of fate, was something like ninety degrees. Apparently that helped the healing process.

The only thing to watch was CNN. I burned through a lot of books. The nurses were nice. I met a girl from Somalia. 

Now, when they did the  micro-surgery, they stabbed my finger. Really, they did. Lengthwise, with a bit of steel poking out of the tip.  Presumably, it ran the length, down into the hand. I couldn't move it a millimeter, even if I tried. At this point, the finger was a cool violet color.

I got a lot of visitors in this time. Family is a big help in the worst of times, and I was damn grateful they were there. My grandma bought me a book in the gift shop, which I still have.

A problem came up: even with the surgery, the finger was dying. Blood could get in, but not out. So they did was any modern medical practitioner would do.

They broke out the leeches. Little green bastards, with black/brown stripes. More than once, they fell off into my cast, and they needed to be fished out before they started nomming on my palm.

It started to hurt again, even with the painkiller drip. So they gave me a button! A cool little button, which let me take my drug abuse in my own hands. Every minute or so, I could press it and get my fix. I got bored enough of CNN that I eventually just tapped the button the whole time, smiling whenever I got a little rush of joy.

But, alas. Even with the finest medical technology--and leeches!--they weren't able to save the finger. It went from red, to purple, to black. Near the end, it started to smell a little.

I went in for surgery to have the thing cut off. I cracked a few jokes, counted backwards from ten, and then I held up my hand.

A nurse took it. I gripped pretty tight. And when I woke up, it would take slightly less time to trim my fingernails.

They cut the finger off at an angle, and then wrapped the flap of skin underneath before sewing it all up. So I've got a little scarred smiley face where my index finger used to be.

On the plus side? I was double insured, and had Aflac. So not only did my family not pay a dime for my expensive stay, but there was also a little surplus left over on the side, which I used to get Lasik surgery.

I traded a bit of meat for new eyes. I'm not complaining.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Fact vs. Fiction

I write both science fiction and fantasy, but I've always preferred the former, because while we know a space elevator might work, with the right materials and bankrolling, we know, for a fact, that there's no such thing as elves.

As our understanding of ourselves and the world around us increases, we're finding less and less reason to think that there might be elves in the woods. And that's okay. It's great, in fact, because the woods aren't unexplored anymore. Now we get to write stories about aliens and their probing of various orifices.

I think that early fantasy stories were once science fiction. We dreamed in the spaces that we didn't understand, the unexplored places. We filled those holes with imagination. Unfortunately, then we slapped a "totaly legit no rly guys" sticker on those neat little ideas.

It's the circle of life, really. We never know what's just beyond the horizon. And we like to imagine we do. So we think of something, disprove it, and move the horizon a bit farther away.

If only we knew to clean up our old superstitions before thinking up new ones. I swear, if I hear about the UFOs cooperating with the dragons, I'm going to hit my head on something until I'm dumb enough to believe it.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

It Doesn't Have to be Perfect to be Fantastic

I love rambling stream-of-conscious bullshit as much as the next guy, but I can feel something like a cohesive thought forming. So I'm going to try to express it as clearly as I can.

If you've seen the title of this gem, you know what I'm thinking: that something doesn't have to be perfect, or flawless, or technically gorgeous, to be orgasmically, amazingly, and mind-blowingly fantastic. Let me explain.

The show Supernatural. It's not exactly an ideal model of narrative structure. Season one ends with the beginning of Supernatural's finest tradition: killing the main characters, only to bring them back next season. They jump the shark so many times that they've actually gotten pretty good at it. They break the fourth wall with visceral pleasure, throw in hefty amounts of faux drama, go-nowhere romance, and no small amount of inconsistency. Long after every original plot line is put to rest, heaps more are shamelessly thrown in to feed the fire.

And it fucking rocks. Let me give you another example. 

The Hobbit is a classic tale by J.R.R. Tolkien. And if it were reviewed by a modern critic, that critic would say it sucks ass.

Tolkien... well, he meanders his way through the Hobbit. He spends enormous amounts of time on things that don't feed the almighty Plot. He raises far more plot lines (don't get me started on goddamn Tom Bombadil) than he puts to bed. Overall, the Hobbit is messy, poorly planned, and slow-paced. Modern-day New York publishing houses would probably slush-pile good ol' J.R.R.'s manuscript in a heartbeat.

And that would be the dumbest mistake they could make. I'd bet publishers have waking nightmares where they imagine doing that.

Mistakes were made. No shit! Mistakes are always made. There is no such thing as a perfect novel, or screenplay, or game. And if there were, god forbid, it would be the most hollow, pointless, formulaic abomination anyone with a soul ever laid eyes on.

We don't remember the flaws--we remember the greatness.

Supernatural is a fun, funny story about little humans kicking ass, ass which is orders of magnitude greater than their own. If you watch long enough, you'll want to meet an angel, just so you can punch him in the mouth.

The Hobbit is a rich, boundless story, the kind of ripping adventure tale that makes you want to ride some rails and wear out your boots. If you invest in it, cover to cover, you'll feel the warmth of Bilbo's fire. You'll smell the troll on that one small chest.

I've cussed four times in this post, but I kind of want to leave with some semblance of credibility. So I leave you with one of my favorite quotes.

"You don't love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults." -William Faulkner

You all have a nice day.

-Dusty

Monday, February 24, 2014

Sorry, Bro. No Funny Here

Please permit me to rant. Just a little.

Writing is the most beautiful form of art, of humanity's expression of humanity, and I'm going to prove it to you, right now.

A word is a pretty nonchalant string of symbols. Every word I type, right now, is just a collection of pixels, temporarily decorating a screen. If that were all a word was, a word wouldn't amount to much.

It's easy to forget the function of a word. It's easy to forget the purpose of language. When you get right down to it, our lives--the lives of every organism with a complex enough nervous system--amounts to a collection of abstractions. Of little, shapeless notions. These things are impossible to describe with precise language, because they are not freaking precise. They're messy. They're crazy. They're contradictory as all hell.

So we don't describe them. We link them, in our heads, to symbols. To letters and words. And when one person links enough concepts to enough words, and decides to mash them together, something magical happen: the essence of conscience, abstraction, is transmitted.

The ridiculous and outlandish notions of a little human can be felt by another. From mind to mind.

Across oceans, deserts, and even time, indescribable little nodules of linked perceptions and feelings can reach... you. You, right now, in your swivel chair, can know what Aristotle thought and felt, thousands of years ago. You can kick back and hang out with Carl Sagan, Alfred Hitchcock, and Teddy Roosevelt.

You think one man made your computer? One generation? Storing ideas, utilizing them, building off of them even as you write down your own accomplishments, is the greatest, most beautiful thing about our species.

It's what let us win the evolutionary arms race. It's what got us to the Moon. And it is definitively impossible to say when we're going to stop, when the great collective historical subconscious will stop. It's not clear if it ever will stop.

The transmission of ideas through language. It kicks all kinds of ass. It's our answer to oblivion.

I think it's goddamn beautiful.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Date and Time

You know, it's funny. When I was in High School, one of my favorite teachers threw out a funny little anecdote. He said that when the Indians met with the first European colonists, they were amazed. Not just at the sickly white people who desperately needed food and exercise after months on a boat, but also at the colonists' fascination with time.

They marveled at the white folks' obsession with the Almighty Pocketwatch. The weird-ass pasty people were downright obsessive, centering everything they did every day around a weird mechanical paperweight.

Now, I'm pretty skeptical of this. For one thing, it sounds just like the kind of story hippies would pass around their drum circle, justifying why they slept through their morning classes. "Pfft, clock-worship is so insipid and arbitrary and *insert pseudointellectual big word here*. I bet the Prof doesn't even make time to smoke weed and look at the stars! Lame, bro. Lame."

But if it's true--and really, even if it isn't--it's kind of an interesting point. Why do dates, times, and calendars mean so much to us?

I could point out the obvious--that strict scheduling improves productivity--but that totally nullifies the whole point of this blog post, doesn't it?

What is the point of this blog post, I hear you ask? This whole thing is just a long-winded excuse why Emergence, my first novel, doesn't have a planned release date yet.

Pfft. Clock-worship is insipid and arbitrary anyways.

Friday, January 3, 2014

Well, Hot Damn

Introductions seem like a good place to begin.

Well, I'm Dusty. It's nice to meet you.

I'm going to be complaining about a lot in this blog. Let me give you a neat little bulletin list:
  • The insanity of the political Right.
  • Reasons #1-10,000 why I haven't written anything today.
  • The stupidity of the political Left.
  • America's celebration of all that asinine.
  • How much I truly enjoy bulletin lists.
All that and more! Absolutely. It is entirely impossible that I will fail to be interesting.*

I'm a writer! I write things. And I've got to say, writing a book is a lot like how I imagine raising a child would be. Near the end, you're nearly as eye-droppingly, face-palmingly embarrassed as you are inanely, overbearingly proud.

Sending your novel to the publisher, to carry on with the metaphor, is a bit like helping your child apply to various colleges. Pride, hope, fear, and not a little bit of dread. Because while you desperately hope your baby succeeds in the real world, a small, selfish part of you wants to keep it all to yourself, to keep in your basement playing video games and eating your food.

But I digress.

Welcome to my blog! I can't guarantee much, but I will promise you this: metaphors that go on long after they cease to be useful, gratuitous language, and, of course, increasingly creative reasons why I haven't updated my blog.

Welcome to the party.

*It is very possible that I might fail to be interesting. But I snuck in an asterisk and fine print, so I can say I didn't lie with a straight face! Dusty, you are a genius.