RafeWorld

So where were we… oh yes, the writing contest.

Today seems like an especially apropos day to pick this story back up, as a merciless and ridiculous editor managed to trash my interest in writing more. Fortunately, this was after I had done the bulk of the day’s writing, so the bills got paid anyway, as the saying goes… assuming that’s actually a saying.

So, I first heard about this contest towards the end of the school year. I enjoyed Wil Wheaton as an actor in my youth, when the two of us looked very much alike. John Scalzi, the other brain behind the contest, is a writer I’ve only recently discovered, but I really enjoy (I highly recommend his book Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: Ten Years of Whatever, a collection of highlights from ten years of his blog, which is titled “Whatever”). Put the two brains together, and apparently you get John Scalzi as an orc, against Wil Wheaton, who is mounted upon a unicorn pegasus kitten. Silly, eh? And, to top things off, they wanted fanfic about the picture.

Now, understand, fanfic is one of those venues I have chosen not to go down. I consider myself a proficient writer. I have my weaknesses, mostly from not doing enough of a variety of writing, but I’ve read some fanfic and I know I’m more capable than a lot of the stuff I read. There’s some weird stuff that goes on in fanfic. Weird, unspeakable stuff. There’s a reason why one of the rules of the contest required entries not included explicit sex. Think about that for a second. Now think about all of the different fandoms out there – Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, etc. Imagine what kind of explicit sex could be portrayed in those fandoms. Now, understand, whatever you just came up with is tame by comparison to some of the things some people have created. I’m not saying all fanfic is erotic or explicit, but a lot of it is – enough to give fanfic a bad name.

I also choose not to write fanfic because I enjoy watching or reading about those characters in the creator’s original manner. I couldn’t dream of what Tolkien really wanted to happen to Samwise Gamgee next; all I could come up with is what I would do with the character next. Well, who is that of interest to? Just me. So why write it? If I’m going to put that kind of time and energy into something, let it be my own original creations, who I have full control over without feeling like I’m deviating from a set path or destroying someone else’s intentions.

Back to the contest. Despite the silly premise, and despite the label of fanfic, I chose to enter the contest for a couple of reasons. The first, and least, was what I talked about before – feeling like I’m slogging through an existence, grinding out a living, but not really using my talent as a writer. The second, and more important reason, is that this contest is for a cause. The winning entry from the contest will go into a chapbook, alongside stories by Wheaton, Scalzi, and several other professional authors. While that’s all well and good, and it would be awesome to see something I created alongside that, that’s not why I entered. The proceeds from the chapbook, which I’m sure I will buy, regardless of what entry wins, go to the Lupus Alliance of America. Lupus isn’t just a good punchline on House M.D. It’s a serious illness and one that has tragically touched my life (that’s an entry for another time). So, anything I can do to benefit the cause… especially if it’s writing a silly story, well…

Like many things I write, ideas for the story percolated in my mind for a while. The original post announcing the contest came during the end of the school year, a time when I had no freedom to write, and many other things occupying my brain. It’s no surprise to me that one of these other things wound up taking the focus of the silly story: the novel Lord of the Flies. The concept for the story that finally came to me offered up a way to structure the story so that it wasn’t quite fanfic, and yet, it is fanfic. The story of Wheaton and Scalzi and the unicorn pegasus kitten is fanfic within the story, but it’s not my fanfic. It serves another purpose, and ultimately, that became a facet of the story I was really happy about.

My next entry: the story itself. Which is still one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever written.

So I’m writing this summer. I’m quickly learning there are two kinds of writing for someone like me.

The parallel I draw comes from the movie Rounders. In the movie, Matt Damon plays a poker player who puts it all on the line in the movie’s opening movie, and loses. The story then shifts to years later, where Damon’s character is in law school, working grungy jobs to get by. His former partner (played by Edward Norton) tries to push him back into big games. Meanwhile, there’s another character lurking around played by John Turturro. Turturro plays small games and keeps his winnings small, but can live just off his skills at the poker table. He grinds out a living with his skills, while Damon’s character winds up only utilizing his skills to win bigger games. But with the bigger games, comes bigger risk.

This summer, I’m much like Turturro’s character, grinding out a living from my writing skills. It isn’t pleasant, and it isn’t a flamboyant life, but it’s kept me from having to get a retail job (or worse). Each day I spend a couple of hours writing a few articles, usually on subject matter I know nothing about (which means I spend more time researching than writing). The desire behind my employers is for brevity, which has always been an issue for me. As a result, I’m flexing writing muscles I don’t usually hit upon. At the same time, I don’t feel very satisfied about it.

So, to help feel more satisfied, I try to do some writing that is more for me. It doesn’t make me money, but it does make me happy. It’s unfortunately taken a back seat, and so writing in that area hasn’t been as prolific as I’d like, but it does give me some “me time” at the keyboard. Projects in this area include stuff for my other site, a novel idea, and other little projects that strike my fancy.

One of these projects came from some blogs I follow, writer John Scalzi and writer/actor Wil Wheaton, who ran a contest via their blogs. Details on the contest are here, although I’ll write a little more about it as a whole in my next entry (for the lazy and to keep some sort of narrative history here). The end result (which I’ll also post later) is undoubtedly one of the silliest things I’ve ever written, but for some reason I’m very proud of it. I think it’s mostly just because I completed it. The satisfaction of submitting something that wasn’t for the grind, but more for my own pleasure (and if other people get any enjoyment out of it, bonus).

Tomorrow I’ll talk a little bit about the contest: what drew me to it, and what turned me away from it.

So this is a bit of a strange story, and one without much time for reflection/perspective, but it’s almost too important to put out there, if only to answer some people’s questions.

Midway through last week we had a solicitor ring the doorbell, interested in making some money by mowing our lawn. These sort of requests have grown more and more frequent where we live, whether it’s mowing the lawn or shoveling the driveway in the winter. I guess with so many people affected by hardship, it’s no longer the kids of the neighborhood looking to make a few bucks through this sort of manual labor. Our yard was barely in need of mowing, and I was literally on my way home to take care of the task when he rang the doorbell, so my wife kindly told him no and moved on with things. I came home, was a little annoyed at the inference of someone asking if they could mow (our yard didn’t look <i>that</i> bad), and told my wife I was happy she passed the opportunity by. We aren’t poor, but expendable cash just isn’t there for something like this that we are fully physically capable of taking care of ourselves.

Fast forward to Friday. It was the end of an exhausting week. I’m super-stressed over an additional project I’m working on for the school (thanks Jeff!) and I just want to kick back and relax. I’ve fed the boy dinner, am just sitting down for my own dinner (had my salad in hand), when the doorbell rings. Kristi answers and it’s the guy again. We’ll call him “E”.

This time “E” wasn’t here to mow our yard. Instead he was working on the neighbors yard when something went wrong with his mower. He wanted to borrow a couple of screws and see if I had some tools he could use. At first he tried to explain it to Kristi, but then assured her I would know what he was talking about. Meanwhile, I’m in the living room overhearing all of this, quite sure that I have no idea what he’s talking about. I decide to do the right thing – to be a good person – and see if I can’t help “E” out.

I trudge over to the neighbor’s back yard where “E”‘s mower sits. Some sort of plate with electrical wiring attached has come loose, and “E” is worried that the whole mower will catch fire if he doesn’t secure it. I have no idea – I’m about the farthest you can get from being mechanically minded. Give me a computer, I can figure things out, audio/visual components and I’m in heaven, but things like engines, cars, mowers, and the like confound me. I’m just not that guy.

As “E” starts telling me his problems – and they are many – I notice a loose bolt on the mower, which we can use to attach the plate. I don’t have a bolt-driver, so it’s a temporary solution, and it actually doesn’t fit in the hole properly. I think it would have held it there, but “E” wasn’t happy with the solution.

At this point, I’m beyond the limits of my knowledge. I found a part for him to use and it doesn’t work. I suggest he maybe ring doorbells of other people in the neighborhood, or at worst case there’s a True-Value Hardware down the street. “E” looks at me like I’ve insulted him, asking how he’s supposed to get there, because he’s on foot. His response is more then a bit bothersome, however, because he’s gotten aggressive in tone. I suddenly have an image of him grabbing my screwdriver and stabbing me in the next-door neighbor’s yard. Imagine Kristi looking out the window and seeing <I>that</i>. So I offer to drive him to the store, in hopes we can find a part that will fit (but in reality pretty certain it’s not something we can just walk in and get).

We drive to True-Value. It’s closed. Apparently the family-friendly hardware store closes at 6pm. “E” is starting to get more upset. He knows he interrupted my dinner, for which he is apologetic, but he assures me he hasn’t eaten all day. Besides, “we” have to get this mower working so he can finish several jobs before daylight fades. Suddenly, I realize in his mind this has become a problem “we” need to solve – you know, “our” problem. This is especially worrisome, because in my mind there is no “we”. I’m just helping out a fellow a little down on his luck. In his mind, I now share the problem.

I offer to drive him to Lowe’s at this point – we’re already in the car. The problem hasn’t been solved. The least I can do is take him to another store. As we make the several mile drive, “E” continues to make small talk. Truthfully, he doesn’t stop talking. He shares all of his problems – his cell phone is about to be shut off if he doesn’t pay his bill, his friend lost his apartment key so he can’t get in without the landlord, and the broken mower isn’t even his – he borrowed it from someone he works for and has to return it, and this is the second time this week it’s broken. Okay, I figure maybe it wasn’t fixed properly the first time, and maybe the plate wasn’t secured when whoever fixed it fixed it. When I suggest this, however, “E” looks at me like I don’t understand anything he just said, because it was a blade problem beforehand. I decide to just leave things be.

Even worse is when “E” talks about the mowing he’s doing in order to make ends meet. He has to get this one house finished (my neighbor) in order to get paid so he can keep his phone active (which is why “we” have to fix “our” mower). This makes no sense to me. My neighbor isn’t home. If he was home, he’d be helping “E” out instead of me. So even if “E” gets the yard done, he’s not likely to be paid tonight, because the purse-bearer isn’t around to pay him. Meanwhile, when he talks about my house, his tone shifts, as if I personally offended him by choosing to mow my own yard instead of paying him to do it. Clearly, the man is unstable.

The gem of the conversation comes when he starts explaining he’s just a worker trying to make a living, and the President hasn’t done much to help things out. I’m informed that there’s a DVD you can buy that catches the President in several lies (how many yards do you think “E” would have to mow in order to buy that DVD?) and… yes, he actually said this.. how they say the President is… Muslim. Yes, we’ve come back to that now-massively debunked myth. And I’m driving the carrier around my part of the city trying to help him find a lawn mower part that he’s just expecting any employee at a hardware store to be able to identify and replace. And I’m the crazy one when I say he’s not Muslim.

At this point in the conversation, I had a very strong moment of clarity, thankful that I’m an educated person.

As I expected, Lowe’s wasn’t able to help. Without seeing the hole, they couldn’t just give “E” the proper sized bolt/screw, exactly as I expected. They suggested some metal duct tape that could handle the heat and hold the plate in place, but at a cost of $7-$8 a roll, it wasn’t a feasible solution. As bad as I felt for “E”, it’s not like I was in a good position to pay that either, and at this point in the evening I was certain “E” was pretty unstable and I just wanted to get rid of him. My attempt at helping out someone had gone far beyond logical boundaries, I was hungry, and honestly I was a little fearful of how “E” might react as things proceeded.

Thankfully, the ending of the story as I know it is simple. I drove home, dropped “E” off at the neighbors, and went inside to eat my dinner surrounded by my family. “E” started mowing again and from what I can see he finished the job, at least at one of the homes he was working on, so the mower held on long enough for that.

There’s a part of me that really hopes I don’t see him again, and I’ve warned my wife about answering the door. In retrospect, she says he did seem quite agitated when she told him I was on my way home to mow the yard, so I truly think “E” is a little unbalanced – to the point that I may consider calling the authorities if he remains a constant presence in our neighborhood.

So there you go. I tried to help a guy out, went way beyond normal measures to do so, and instead of helping now I’m nervous about my neighborhood to the point of considering involving authorities. How’s that for doing a good deed?

This weekend was Palm Sunday weekend, a time that tends to bring on an air of reminiscence for me. Add in watching Hot Tub Time Machine, a movie about three guys who time travel back to the past with the opportunity to relive one fantastic day of their youth (and the soul-searching of where life and relationships have gone wrong), and I’ve been in a relatively pensive mood for the past three days.

You see, for years, Palm Sunday Weekend was the weekend my family would head to Georgia for a spiritual retreat. The explanation of the retreat is complex, especially since religion is one of those topics I don’t feel comfortable discussing at length here. Truth be told, spirituality was the reason for the journey, but for me, a teenage boy, that reason quickly changed. The first year we went on the retreat I met her, the first love I would have, and after that, every year my motivation for making the trip would be to see her, not necessarily for the spiritual side of things.

Lilly was a girl unlike many I had met at that point in my life. There wasn’t a strong female presence in gaming like there is today, and most of my youth was devoted in some shape or form to gaming, so she instantly caught my attention. Add on top of that her keen intellect, individuality, and looks, and I was smitten instantly. I can still remember the first time I saw her vividly. While nowhere close to the romantic moments that make it into books or film, it’s a moment that is uniquely mine.

As the years progressed, Lilly and I became closer. We wrote letters constantly and called each other once a month or so. Long distance calls were a luxury for me, so we had to keep them short and we’d alternate who called who, so as to share the cost. As with most teenage loves, these things were never enough for me. Letters and infrequent phone calls were enough for Lilly to be my girlfriend, and the relationship lacked the complexity of having her nearby in person, but it was a long-distance relationship, and those are hard, particularly on teenagers. I wonder how different our relationship would be today with the Internet, text messaging, Skype, and the other wonders of the modern technological age. At the same time, there was a romance to our letters that would be unmatched by e-mail and texts. For years, however, Palm Sunday weekend was the one time my heart could soar, because I would get to see her in person – an experience that was unmatched in any of our correspondence.

Eventually we got to a point where we were able to see each other outside of that one weekend. Again, spiritual retreat was the excuse that provided the experience, but love was the true motivation. Much like the first time I saw her, I can vividly remember other important moments – the first admission of love, the first kiss, quiet nights sitting at a lake house, looking out at the stars with a beautiful girl by my side. This is the stuff poetry is written about; the place dreams come from.

Like all good things, the relationship came to an end, and like most foolish moments, it was the guy’s fault. While I can remember the good stuff vividly, I have no idea what foolishness entered my brain to make me end the relationship. I just remember that it caused her a great amount of hurt and, once the moment had cleared from my mind, I hurt as well. I spent almost a year mentally and emotionally aching from my own foolishness, and right before the next Palm Sunday Weekend, when I knew I would see her again, I made my mind up to seek forgiveness and win her back again. I didn’t get her back again, and in the ultimate romantic irony, she met her future husband that same weekend. That was the last time I saw her… the last Palm Sunday weekend I made the trip to Georgia.

I have very few regrets in my life. I don’t believe much in regrets. We can’t fix the past. We can’t take back the mistakes we made. My relationship with Lilly taught me that – a lesson learned painfully. I know we’re both in good places in our lives now, both married, both with children of our own. I wouldn’t trade my current place in life for anything. But there’s a part of me that can’t help but feel a bit wistful every year on Palm Sunday weekend over the first relationship that taught me what both the glory and the pain of love could be. There will always be a part of my teenage heart that loves her, remembers the time we had together, and regrets the sorrow I caused both her and myself.

(NOTE: Yes, the image is that of her, circa 1990ish. Interesting how a blurry picture from the time turns into an interesting metaphor decades later, eh?)

Lately I’ve been carrying weight on my shoulders. This is obvious to those who are around me, as I repeatedly face the question, “Are you okay?” The truth is, no, I’m not okay. But then, neither are the people asking the question, so how can they possibly help? Unfortunately, this is a burden that cannot be alleviated or transferred. It simply is to be carried.

I have no intentions of turning this blog into a study of teaching, but since that’s what’s bothering me lately, I’m going to vent about it just a little bit. That’ll make two entries about teaching in a row, so expect the next entry to be about something else. Unfortunately, this is about the ugly side of teaching – the political side – the side I had hoped to avoid for as long as possible. Unfortunately, as long as possible wasn’t even long enough to make it through to tenure.

This week sees students in Virginia taking the first of their End-of-Course English SoLs. While this is a test that assesses 11 years of educational training, it falls to 11th Grade English teachers to review and reteach to ensure students pass the test. With the weather in Virginia this year, we have had less classroom time, which means my time covering this has been a little more concentrated than usual, but I stand behind my methodology and my students. I have no doubt my students will do well on the test, but the stress is there, nonetheless.

Meanwhile, our economy is in a state of disarray (at best). Millions of dollars are being cut in education alone. In my school district, schools are being closed and the plan is (currently) to eliminate almost 40 teaching positions. This doesn’t include non-faculty staff who will also find themselves trimmed. Some of these will be taken care of through retirees who are opting to bow out early thanks to a few incentives, but some people will lose their jobs. I don’t anticipate being one of those, but Fate always has a tricky way of tapping you on the shoulder and then ducking behind your back when you turn to look. Therefore, the stress of the current educational world is heightened.

Oh, and lets not forget those ever-popular words these days: “Next year is supposed to be worse.” That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. The budget is not only bad this year, with schools closing and teacher positions being eliminated, but it’s anticipated to be worse next year. What happens when districts run out of schools to close, and we hit the age cap where all of the older teachers have retired and the younger teachers still have years to go until they can bow out? So, if the current stress isn’t bad enough, there’s more on the horizon.

Last week, my area Congressman held an open Town Hall meeting via conference call. I knew nothing about it until I received a phone call asking if I wanted to opt into the conference. For the first time, I did. I sat and listened for 45 minutes as the Congressman took questions ranging on immigration (a question which bordered on offensive) to social security (a popular topic) before an question about the current state of the educational budget came up. As a Congressman, he pointed out that questions and concerns on that subject needed to be pointed toward local government, as that was determined at the state and local level. Great sidestep Congressman.

To tie the topics together – SoL testing in the state of Virginia is part of the state’s conformity to the No Child Left Behind Act – a Federal piece of legislation. I take a big issue with my field being ordered around by Federal legislation, but Federal legislators sidestepping the issue when education is brought up. If we are truly expected to concede to this piece of legislation and ensure “no child is left behind,” then someone had better figure out where the funding for such a noble effort can come from, because with schools closing and educators being left behind, you can guarantee students will be lost in the mix as well.

Meanwhile, one of the hardest areas hit in the world of education is technology. My students currently have access to laptop computers, although the district has already started phasing that out. As my school’s technology resource instructor put it, it’s hard to justify buying laptops and carts for the machines when people are losing their jobs. I agree wholeheartedly with this statement, but it means we are moving away from preparing our students for the world beyond high school. Look at the register the next time you step into a Wal-Mart or Taco Bell. They are more and more computers and less and less simple machines. Students have to have a grip on technology to make it in the outside world, yet education is regressing away from technology and focusing more and more on preparing them for one test.

All of this leads to a frustrating environment, because I didn’t get into teaching to see students fail in the outside world, nor did I change to this career to help students prepare for one single test that doesn’t mean anything outside the walls of public education. When the focus of the educational environment shifts so hard in that direction this time of year (and it has every year I’ve been a teacher, with both SoL testing and budgetary crises formulating at the same time), I often need a reminder of why I did get into teaching. Someone asked me this last year: why did you get into teaching? My answer borrowed heavily from Thoreau (see Dead Poets Society), but since I haven’t gotten to that point in my year yet, and am currently focused on poetry, I thought I’d include this gem from Taylor Mali that goes right to the core of my being.

I got into teaching because I wanted to make a difference. And I have. In only a few years, I know I have affected and influenced students, not only in my heart, but in comments and feedback I have gotten from those in my classroom. It is something I plan on continuing to do for some time. So I’ll take the burdens and ridiculousness of the current political landscape and educational atmosphere and carry it as long as I have to. And if you see me lost in thought while all of this is going on? I’m just remembering the last line: I make a god-damned difference. What about you?

…death will come to you off the sea,
a death so gentle, and carry you off
when you are worn out in sleek old age
Your people prosperous all around you
All this will come true for you as I have told.

When I was younger, I read a translation of The Odyssey that finished the story with the death of Ulysses, featuring the hero as an old man, waking up one morning, climbing up a hill, sitting down, and proclaiming that he was ready to die. Although non-canonical, I always liked this image of one of my favorite heroes – someone who had been so many trials and tribulations, but when death came, it came on his terms. It’s an image that I felt was solidly reflected in the end of Babylon 5, which may be a big part of the reason the end of that series resounded so well with me.

In the past year, I've watched two of my own personal heroes fall. One was claimed by death, the other by politics. To some degree, both of them fell as Ulysses did in my young adult translation - on their own terms. Yet, in their falling, I can't help but think how deeply these people have affected and influenced me.

The first of the two, D.J. Keith, was a math teacher... no, was the math teacher at my high school. That’s not to say other teachers weren’t as good or knowledgable, but there was just something to Mr. Keith that set him apart. He was a teacher you didn’t mess with. He had a reputation far and wide for being no-nonsense. A student who was reading a novel instead of paying attention to the lesson found his book being tossed out the second-story window to get the student’s attention back, and another student who was misbehaving found himself being dragged out into the hallway – desk and all.

The more I learn about teaching, the more I know I could never get away with the things Mr. Keith did. They just wouldn’t be tolerated in today’s educational world. I think is somewhat a shame, because Mr. Keith had an attitude and a manner that demanded respect. Even students who didn’t have him as a teacher, or didn’t do well in his class, couldn’t defy him. I was a weak math student… no, I was a lazy math student, and he called me on it perpetually. I think it’s one of the few things that led to my wake-up call my senior year, when I finally proved all the teachers were right – I had the potential and just wasn’t living up to it.

I had the utmost respect for Mr. Keith, and even though I can’t apply his philosophies to my classroom, I know there is his influence there. I hear his words echo in my voice at times, when I talk about being “fair” or I help stall to not give an assignment over the weekend. He was larger than life, an image I often find myself trying to present. I think of all the students who were touched by having him as a teacher, and I mourn those who will never have that chance. If I can carry on only a tenth of his legacy, I will count my career as an educator as a success.

On the other hand, we have someone who wasn’t a teacher, but affected my decision to become a teacher greatly. Danny was the biggest pain in the butt to my co-workers when I worked as an Audio-Visual manager, but once you got to know him… once you paid him respect and earned his respect in return, he was an amazing person. Unlike Mr. Keith, Danny is still around, just having stepped down from the role in which I worked with him. His influence is just as unmistakable, however – possibly more so, since he’s one of the people I turned to when I was thinking about changing careers. Danny supported the idea, both challenging and cultivating it. That was what I needed, because it quickly showed me that teaching isn’t a walk in the park, but that I had shoulders to lean on if I needed them.

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to tell Danny how influential to me he was before he stepped down from his position. I didn’t have that same opportunity with Mr. Keith, although I had run into his wife (also a teacher, and also a large influence on me) right before I got my teacher’s license and told her of my career change. I hope he heard through word of mouth, and I hope he didn’t cringe if he did.

I got into teaching because I wanted to have an effect on the world, to know that I had made a difference. These are two men who have accomplished this, even if they only made a difference to me. I walk in their footsteps, but even my sizable feet don’t come close to filling those steps.

I’m not sure what changed, but I was finally able to import my old blog into this one. I’m betting none of the old images work, so they may be ugly old entries, but at least the history is preserved in one place instead of pointing people to separate areas.

Yay!

I admit, it’s been a while since I’ve written in here. Unused stories for Cinema Blend aside (who I don’t even write for anymore), I really haven’t written much of anything in over a year. In that time so much has happened, and I’ve done a poor job of documenting it. I could use the excuse that I’m so busy, but at the end of the day it’s just another excuse. Meanwhile, I have every excuse in the world to actually be posting.

For one, recently several of my colleagues have started their own blogs. My first response to this was “welcome to ten years ago, when blogs were actually popular.” Frankly, that’s a bit rude. Blogs are still popular, although starting them is no longer cutting edge. Initially, I felt like looking down upon them, because they are starting to do something I’ve been doing for years. But I haven’t been doing it for years, as the dates between posts shows. I’ve had a blog for years, but updates have been sporadic at best. I should be proud of my friends, not condescending, and I am. Working around so many people who are afraid of technology, or hate it, so the notion that my peers are starting their own blogs is exciting. I look forward to reading what thoughts they choose to share, and hopefully sharing some of my own with them.

The bigger incentive to blog is that for three years now I’ve asked my students to keep their own blogs. It’s an assignment in my class, so a lot of them do it because they want a grade, but some of them actually get into the assignment and I get to know them. Meanwhile, my blog sits collecting dust. I was taught to model what I teach, but I haven’t been doing that at all. That needs to change.

So, it is my goal to be much better about updating. I still don’t want this to become mindless drivel about what’s going on in my life (and, frankly, so many people that I know are aware of this blog’s existence, so posting thoughts about them here would be a bad idea), but a place I can share thoughts, stories, and reflections.

One last thought – in the past few months someone who “is hairy” has discovered this blog and left meaningless comments that have been marked as spam. I suspect this is a student, either current or former, who has nothing better to do with their time than troll a dusty blog. Congratulations. Now go read a book, find a girlfriend, or do one of the vast list of things that would make better use of your time than trolling here. After all, remember how William Cullen Bryant suggested we live our life:

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

Will your empty comments and wasted time satisfy you when your time has come to a close?

Occasionally something I write for Cinema Blend will be a duplicate of something someone else covered. Rather than have those words wasted, I’ll post them here.

 I’m trying to be excited about this year’s G.I. Joe movie. After all, I was a kid raised on the franchise – or at least a lot more devoted to the Joes than Transformers. It’s hard to get excited when we haven’t exactly been given a lot to be excited about. We’ve gotten a few static images of the characters in “action” poses and the promise of a trailer appearing during this year’s Super Bowl. Suddenly Yahoo! Movies has their hands on a barrage of movie posters, but what exactly is being promoted here?

I totally get that the brightly colored costumes some of the G.I. Joe characters wore wouldn’t be appropriate for a realistic movie, so the choice to change the uniforms of the elite military squad into something that resembles a combination of body armor and X-Men uniforms makes sense. But remember, when X-Men came out, everyone thought the costumes were a little too similar to The Matrix. Now G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra adds to the Matrix similarity by putting out a series of posters that feature the key characters, only cutting off their lower legs and tops of their heads – you know, like the posters for The Matrix Reloaded.

Maybe my logic in the previous paragraph is a bit tricky to follow, or a stretch, but once you see the posters, the parallel is hard to avoid. These look like a new line of Matrix posters, and I can’t come close to figuring out why Paramount would want to follow that style for a completely unrelated franchise.

Check out the full range of G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra posters over at Yahoo! Movies.

Occasionally something I write for Cinema Blend will be a duplicate of something someone else covered. Rather than have those words wasted, I’ll post them here.

Steven Soderbergh may be trying to cram the works into his picture about Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile. After all, he’s making the movie as a rock and roll musical to be released in 3-D. But there’s one thing he won’t be cramming into his movie: one of his desired cast members.

According to Variety, Hugh Jackman has removed himself from consideration to star in Soderbergh’s movie, Cleo. The Wolverine star was on Soderbergh’s wish list to play Cleopatra’s lover, Marc Antony, but Jackman has said he’s too busy for the part. Nobody’s sure what exactly is causing the scheduling conflict, but considering Jackman’s popularity just keeps getting stronger and stronger, there’s no doubt he’s got something up his sleeve.

At least Soderbergh still has his star, actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, and the director is reportedly in talks with Ray Winstone to play Julius Caesar. Personally, I’m hoping that falls through. William Shatner has already done a musical rendition of Caesar’s story in Free Enterprise, and he’d be perfect to play the leader of Rome.