Yeah...

Now at 20,000 words. Slicing through this one quickly, which was what I intended to do.

It's sunny today, but cold. We had freezing rain last night, which we rarely get here.

This and Hathaway

I actually watched the Oscars somewhat last night. I thought James Franco and Anne Hathaway had zero chemistry onstage, so it made for a pretty contrived and dull ceremony. The effort to try to draw in a younger demographic with the younger actors didn't seem to quite gel, in my view.

18,000 words on the book so far. It's getting fun -- I feel like if Graham Greene had written a science fiction novel, it would be kind of like this effort. Bahah! Yeah, right, but it does have a kind of vibe like that to me.

"Stellllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

Ch-Ching

Not that I'm one to ever think NEWSWEEK's assessment of anything means a whole lot, but...

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/02/27/chicago-steps-out.html

...as one of Chicago's most prolific literary treasures-in-residence, I can only read the above and take great satisfaction in it.

Fatigue

I'm worn out today. Just tired. I cranked out 3000 more words on the book today, but I'm just tired this morning, for some reason. Probably because I'm thinking about my taxes, and that always wears me out. Hah.

10K

I cranked out 10,000 words today on the SF novel, averaging around 1282 words an hour. I was pleased by that rate, which is pretty typical for me, in terms of output. I'm a little brain-fried at the moment, but got a nice start on the piece. I'd like to make it ~100,000 words, so it's a good-sized book, which feels about right with a SF novel.

It starts

I'm starting that SF book this morning, in a few minutes, in fact. I'm not done finalizing the other book, but I figure I can work on both -- bang out several thousand words on the newbie, and then finish finalizing the other. The more, the merrier.

I also have to do my taxes. I meant to do them last weekend, but got sidetracked by that utilities SNAFU, got that sorted out, so now I can focus on the other.

We got a little snow last night; nothing major, just maybe an inch or two, which at least makes the city a little prettier for the moment (I love the city, but, as I said before, late winter/early spring is an ugly time for it, just because of the detritus about).

I think I'm going to dig out an old HP printer I have in storage and get it up and running again. Exene's negligence led to that printer being destroyed (thanks to B2 exuberantly getting his hands on it and disabling it). It was a discontinued printer, and I managed to find another one at a resale place and use parts from that one to restore the original, although because that was tied to the old computer, and it was before Exene and I split, that got kind of lost in the shuffle. Anyway, I'm going to bring that sucker up and try to get it up and running again, this time on the new computer. Reason being, I have a couple of multipacks of inkjet cartridges for the old one that I'd gotten right before Printergate happened, and also because that printer could print for a very long time with those cartridges. Since ink for printers is like gold (sure seems that way), I have a vested interest in getting that sucker back online.

"Oooh! Ooh! Pick ME!"

I have a book idea, a SF story, that's rattling around in my head, busy trying to get written. I'm being disciplined and while I wrote down notes for it and characters, the sketch of the plot, I haven't indulged myself and started work on it, since I have to eat my broccoli (wait, I actually like broccoli) -- but I'm working through the finalization of the book I mentioned the other day before I launch into something new. Maybe (maybe) when I get that one finalized, I'll dive in and work on that new one -- I imagine it trying like hell to get my attention from the back of the line: "Me! Me! Oh, pick me!!" So, I just might do that, because I think the story has a good concept, and a lot of potential, and because, so far, I haven't actually written a SF novel (I have a SF novella I've been slowly expanding to novel length, but that's it). Thus, it'll be new ground for me, which'll make it more fun.

Violinish

B2 loves the violin. He's apparently fascinated by it, says it's his favorite instrument. I played it in middle school, but I don't have my violin, anymore. Anyway, I'll be curious if B2's interest in it continues. If it does, I'll find him one to play when he's a little older. I'm curious how that became his favorite instrument, but the image of him playing a three-quarter-sized violin is terribly cute.

I'm amused when B1 watches "Curious George." B1 says "George likes to spread chaos. He destroys everything." That cracks me up. Both boys will say "Oh, George, NOOOO--!" when he does something like turning off the safety systems at a nuclear power plant, or the equivalent.

Predator, the Musical

Bahaha...

Dis and Dat

Well, I resolved the bureaucratic stuff with the utility yesterday, thankfully. I talked up the gruff customer service rep and actually won her over about halfway through our interaction, which made the whole deal easier. I'm polite to nearly everybody, but am always extra-polite to customer service, retail, and wait staff, just because their jobs have to suck and why throw sand in the gears by being an asshole? Almost any human interaction can be a dance or a death march, and the former is much preferable to the latter, so I hew toward the former, and everybody wins.

I'm continuing to work on Book 5. I'm about halfway through this rewrite/revision. I don't know if anybody'll be able to pick up this one. It's a good book, but it's also an odd one, and for a new novelist (I chafe at that term, since I've been novel-writing seriously since 1999; but since nothing counts until a novel's published, I'll still be a "new" novelist at some point), it might be a hard sell. I guess I'll see if anybody picks it up. The important thing is just finalizing it, so I can move onto the next one, and so on. It's an uphill climb, by the way -- as I'd mentioned at the outset, my triage had the quickest finalizations coming up first, the ones that required the least amount of tweaking and rewriting to go out the door first. As I move through the catalog, the pieces require more from me. The sanguine outcome of this is that once they're finalized, I can set them aside (and send them out) and focus on new works. I won't let a backlog like that pile up again.

It's easy to do, because the writing of books is more fun for me than the marketing of books. But, as I see it, the writing of them is the hard part for most. Plenty of people think they can write books, but the vast majority don't ever try, or give up along the way, or find better things to do. I've got the book-writing part down; it's the book-selling part I need to master next.

Deadly Dancing

I'm rather fond of recut trailers, and this one amused me...

If David Lynch had filmed "Dirty Dancing."

"Lynchian" is almost a cliché these days, but it still amuses me, especially when fused to something like "Dirty Dancing."

Flurry

We got some snow yesterday; just a dusting, really, nothing terribly exciting. Today's primary election day, so I'll do my civic duty, as ever. Not terribly sanguine about the mayoral prospects; I know who is most likely to win, but I don't want that candidate to win. We'll see how it goes. There are some real snakes in this election.

Speaking of snakes: the search for giant anacondas! Woo hoo!

Toof

Aww, B2's first loose tooth. My younger boy's finally losing his baby teeth! *bittersweet*

Trouble with Quibbles

Watched some of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" -- the boys love the starship fights in that one...

Enterprise v. Reliant

Anyway, watching Khan deploy the Genesis Device, it occurred to me that Kirk need only to have beamed a few people aboard the crippled Reliant (since he had declared to Khan to "prepare to be boarded.") and then just fire a phaser or two at the Genesis Device, disintegrating it -- since it's already been well-established that phasers can disintegrate any number of things, it seems logical that a phaser could simply eradicate the Genesis Device in a nimbus of plasma or whatever it is that phasers turn matter into.

And if even that's not good enough for you, how about another old standby: the Genesis Device is sitting in the transporter bay of the Reliant, and Khan is busy dying on the bridge, all of his crew slain. So, Kirk et al. need only beam the Genesis Device up and keep it in suspension -- as Chekhov puts it in "Day of the Dove" -- "Nonexistence; that's exactly what they deserve."

No Genesis Device detonation, no death of Spock, no problem. Of course, since the plot points in "...Khan" were milked for two other Trek movies, that might pose problems for them, too, and lacks the dramatic, Ahabesque finale for Khan, and the drama of Spock's (temporary) death in the service of the Enterprise.

Just the same, though, it bugs me that two simple methods of dealing with the Genesis Device weren't considered, and, instead, Kirk just defaulted to getting the hell out of there.

It's like one of my frustrations in "The Empire Strikes Back" (certainly the best of the actually good "Star Wars" movies) where the snowspeeders repeatedly try frontal assaults on the AT-ATs (the Imperial Walkers), even though it's clear that their primary weapons are on the front. Luke et al. continue to charge the AT-ATs head-on, and (big shock) take heavy casualties because of it. Why not lateral attacks, back and forth, from side-to-side, avoiding those big guns? Next you're going to tell me the Rebels are going to use trench warfare against the AT-ATs. Oh, wait....

Marginally related to the above...

Star Trek: The Sexed Generation

This is a masterpiece of editing! Given that the piece is nearly 10 minutes long, they had to have worked for a very long time to compile this.

Today

Happy President's Day! Woo hoo! Yeah!

Today I have to wrangle with one of the utilities, get a SNAFU all sorted out. Good times. It should be the kind of thing that could be fixed in about 30 seconds, if I end up with somebody paying attention and being meticulous. If I end up with an F Trooper, though, it may be more of an ordeal. We'll see.

(later)

Well, that was quick. They're closed for President's Day. Alright, then.

Bleah

Kind of in the doldrums today. Just battling a cold, winter appears to have remembered that it's not over yet, and I've been cleaning the apartment. Nothing terribly exciting, but it's left me a feeling of being both down and restive.

Two Words

"Thin Mints."

That is all.

I bought a cache of five boxes of Thin Mints yesterday. Mmm!

Wonder Woman

Saw this display while out and about today. Yeah, Wonder Woman, beat that fashion-challenged Medusa! Defeat Medusa's "Drab Ray..."

Gruh.

Guh. Yesterday was annoying. Just some logistical stuff I have to deal with. One of the utilities is being obstinate and unhelpful, so I have to try to sort that out Monday (since their offices are closed on the weekend, naturally).

Had a sweet moment last night, when doing the kid transfer -- B2 said "Wait a second." and ran back to me and gave me a huge hug. I loved that. B1 followed suit. It touched me, because when I'd heard him say "Wait a second...." I had thought there was some toy or something that he'd forgotten, but he'd just wanted a goodbye hug. So sweet.

One of the bad effects of this momentary warming trend in the weather is the building's ample heat is momentarily off, so the place is chilly. I've been living in flannel the past couple of days. This usually happens in March -- what I call March Madness -- like as it gets less cold outside, landlords tend to dial back on the heat, even though it's still frickin' freezing. Anyway, I'm almost grateful for a return to normal cold, as it'll mean the heat comes back on properly.

I've been working on lots of queries. Trying to craft queries around three novels at the moment. I really loathe query-writing. I don't like it anymore than I like writing cover letters. It's a vital, necessary adjunct to professional writing, but it's still irksome. So, today I'll sling a bunch of those out. I'm opting for snail mail, just because I think it might have more resonance, oddly enough, to get a physical object, versus an e-submission. Even if it means including the dreaded SASE, my least-favorite thing.

Warm and Cold

Definitely have a cold, right on the tail of getting over the flu. That's irritating. I just feel blechy in general. Wish I didn't have to go anywhere, but I have to get the boys where they need to be. So far they seem healthy (hell, one of them probably gave the cold to me to begin with, the lil' stinkers!) I'm just swilling lots of orange juice and trying to stay warm. I'll try to get some writing done while I'm reasonably fresh.

Quirky

Ooh, the science of heartlessness! Sounds like a worthwhile read. I'd warn people about it not being a how-to book, but odds are the truly heartless already know, and don't need a book to learn any new tricks! Funny how oxytocin is tied to the fear response -- that the less oxytocin someone has, the more fearful they tend to be, less trusting, empathic, and giving...

We've all encountered people with such divergent attitudes toward suffering -- and it often brings up a rather prickly question: Why are some of us bleeding hearts while others have hearts of stone? Science actually provides us with a number of clues.

A Dutch team, for example, has looked at how oxytocin, a hormone frequently associated with female reproduction, influences parenting styles. Dutch scientists watched as a bunch of mothers interacted with their two-year-old children, who were trying to solve a difficult puzzle. Some mothers were patient and helpful; others were not. And the not-so-helpful mothers were more likely to carry a particular version of the oxytocin receptor gene: Their "mommy chemical" system may have been set just a tad to the selfish side, slightly blinding them to the emotions of their children.


Now further studies are finding that oxytocin can increase the amount of money people will donate to a charity. One study in particular lent credence to the time honored method charities use to pull money from magazine readers: Feature a woebegone child in your advertisement. In the study, researchers had subjects watch a tearjerker film of a father talking about his son's brain tumor. They sampled subjects' blood before and after the film. Following the film the blood was awash in oxytocin, and their donations to charity rose 47 percent, compared to those of subjects who saw a film of the same father talking about a trip to the zoo. The tearjerker technique was more effective on women than men. Experiments wherein people sniff oxytocin to bolster the chemical in their brain show that the chemical may work in two ways. It may operate first by dampening our natural fear of one another. Oxytocin is very active in the amygdala, which monitors the world for danger. Extra oxytocin fights fear. Then, with that terror out of the way, perhaps it's easier to read another person's emotions and relate to them. People dosed with oxytocin make more direct eye contact, and they are better at describing the emotions portrayed on another's face. So extra oxytocin also helps us to empathize.

But humans have access to another brain system that raises sympathy, too. When you stick out your tongue at a baby, the baby will often stick its tongue out automatically. The motor region of the baby's brain is mirroring your own motor region. Our emotional regions also have a system that helps us to mirror another's feelings. Although many scientists refer to this system as "mirror neurons," referring to brain cells that reproduce other people's emotions in our own brain, that's speculation.

Mirror neurons do exist in monkeys, that's established. When scientists monitored one nerve cell at a time to see how one monkey responded to a second monkey's actions, they found that some neurons fire just as if the watching monkey were performing the action himself. Whether a monkey reaches for food or merely watches another monkey reach for food, his neurons fire identically. Scientists can confirm mirror neurons in monkeys because they're allowed to slip superfine wires into a monkey's brain and tap into one cell at a time. They can't get a permit to do that to humans.

Patsy, the giver of furniture, and I sometimes joke that we have too many mirror neurons. For bleeding hearts like us it's a struggle to keep other people's emotions out of our heads. Your pain is my pain. Everyone's pain is my pain. I've learned to watch only happy movies, and to avert my eyes from advertisements for animal charities. If I didn't throw a blanket over the mirror neurons I'd spend the whole day in tears. When researchers use MRI to hunt for a mirror neuron system in humans, they argue over what they see. Compared to monitoring a single cell with a wire, MRI yields a grainy picture. There is plenty of room for interpretation. Some think a couple of structures in the middle layers of the brain behave in a mirrorlike way. But others see two distinct types of neurons -- one for watching, another for acting.

That we have some kind of mirroring system is common sense. A means of automatically mimicking another animal's behavior would speed the learning process. And certainly it would help to explain how one animal can feel empathy for another. It would also explain how effortlessly, subconsciously, we empathize with a sad face or a happy face. Your mirror system would reproduce inside you the emotions you saw in someone else. Right now we can say that oxytocin seems to make a human more sensitive to others' emotions, but we can't say how.

That Dutch study of how mothers helped their children, however, is central to the evolution of sympathy. On its face, it seems so cold and sad that some mothers can't take their child's point of view. It seems so unmaternal that they scold instead of praising, that they dominate instead of guiding. Human mothers, we're often told, are selfless creatures dedicated entirely to the health and welfare of their offspring. They're not snakes who give birth and glide away. These selfish women must have no empathy, sympathy, or decency!

But that ignores the fact that a mother -- every mother, whether snake, skunk, or sheep -- has biological aspirations above and beyond an infant. In her DNA she dreams of launching not one, but a dozen offspring down the river of time. And to do that she has to watch out for her own health and welfare.

All mothers and their infants engage in a battle over this issue, from the moment of conception. It is in the offspring's best interest to drag every nutrient and calorie it can absorb out of its mother's body. It is in the mother's best interest to hold something back so that she can raise future offspring. This battle continues after birth. An infant denied the opportunity to nurse does not quit without a fight. She'll let loose wails that in earlier times could attract deadly predators.

But no matter how sympathetic a mother might be, the infant won't gain the upper hand in this contest. Starvation remains a real threat to humans today, and the photographs that come out of refugee camps testify to the importance of motherly selfishness. Still strong enough to walk, mothers embrace their dying children. I'm sure they wish they could nurse their children, but evolution has outfitted them with bodies that will not permit it. When a female's body fat drops below a certain point, she can continue to empathize with her child's pain, but her body refuses to sympathize: Her body stops producing milk. And how could it be otherwise? Why would evolution reward a body that would give its last calorie to an offspring, then die and leave the offspring to starve alone? The offspring of such sympathetic mothers don't survive, and neither do the genes that would make a person so disastrously generous.

But neither could evolution produce mothers who would abandon an infant at the first sign of hardship. Evolution rewards those mothers who invest in their existing offspring but guard their ability to have more children in the future.

And the dynamic would not be much different for men. Human infants are so useless that they require twenty-four-hour protection for a number of years after birth. Many hands make light work, and they also make for more surviving babies. Males who are inspired to pitch in with child care increase the odds that their own genetic legacy will grow healthy and strong.

The contrast between Patsy and Robin highlights the fact that humans come in many shades of cooperativeness. Why would that be? Why does evolution perpetuate both the pushovers and the pushers? Well, a personality that's low in sympathy or empathy is not a heartless block of stone. She just isn't so quick to assume the feelings of others. She does a better job of maintaining her boundaries and keeping a steady eye on her own future. Undistracted by life's melodramas, she's more likely to focus on facts and figures.

Nor is the bleeding heart (ahem) a boundaryless ball of mush. Well, maybe she is. Maybe it's a real challenge for her to say no, because she can feel the impact of that hard word on another's psyche. Maybe she's sucked into drama after drama because she cannot walk away from a soul in distress. But because she is what we think of as "a good friend" she also has a large circle of humans that ensure she has a healthy balance of laughter and martinis in her life.

Melted

The city's insane amount of snow is nearly all gone, now, thanks to the unseasonably, surely global-warmingly-induced warmth. Of course, this is the grossest time to be in the city, just because of all the detritus that's locked into those dirty snowbanks, the endless grunge in the melt-off. Blech. Fortunately, the city's streetsweepers are gradually getting on the case, but right now, it's very gross.

I said to B2, "We need a good storm to come in and wash the streets." and he said "I would rather have a BILLION fans blow it all away." That was cute, the enthusiasm with which he said that, evocative turns of his arms.

Muse

So, I decided which book to finalize next. It's one I've wrestled with off and on since 2006 or 2007. It's at over 73,000 words right now, and'll probably be closer to 80-90,000 words before I've finalized it. I've done about four revisions on it. It's a weird case for me, because the book's been written, but I never quite felt the notes were pitch-perfect in it, which is why I've worked on it sporadically all of these years. It's my "problem child" of books -- whereas others I've written I just know when they're done, when I did this one, it was more "THE END?" instead of "THE END." Heh. Back when I still let Exene read my work, this was one of two books where she just hated the protagonist (and wouldn't finish the book, despite asking to read it in the first place -- which is like a cardinal sin to a writer, which, back then, gave me pause (back when I actually listened to her opinions, god help me). But, on revising and rereading it, I realized that the protagonist was just fine, and Exene just didn't like the character because they were strongly-defined, had a strong sense of who they were (funny, that).

At any rate, I'm finally going to "solve" the "problem" of this book, which really focuses on the pacing of it and the ending, having it build properly to the endpoint. I'm still unsure whether it qualifies as a Young Adult story (it certainly could), or whether it's simply a magic realist kind of contemporary story -- the reason that's blurred to me is that, in our society, adults aren't nearly so adult, anymore. I've seen 20- and 30-somethings who are still effectively children in adult bodies. I know "New Adult" gets bandied about in publishing as a category -- maybe this is a "New Adult" novel. Not sure. It's got a bit of an Oprah Book vibe to it, so if I can get representation for it, maybe there'll be hope for it.

The title was something I deliberately conceived as a kind of wry nod to the Oprah Book reader, so if it ever got picked up by that set, I would be laughing all the way to the bank, having proved another literary theory of mine.

Aww...

I had something sweet happen while picking up B1 from school -- one of the older moms came over and said "I wanted to say that I see you walking your boy to school every day, and he just looks so happy to be with you. Just thought I'd tellya." I thanked her. It was a nice thing to say, quite out of the blue, left me a little bashful. Made my day.

My Darling Clementine

Happy to report that my clementine sapling is doing fine, and even has some new sprigs. I need to dust off its leaves, clearly, but it's doing well. I'll get it a new pot in the summer. I'm still so pleased that it's doing as well as it has, but I usually have good luck with plants...

Now What?

Alright, so I have finalized three novels this winter (to me, "finalizing" is different from "finished" -- I finished those books before this winter, but they weren't "finalized" -- that is, buffed and polished and publisher-ready to my satisfaction -- make sense?), and, for the moment, I'm unsure which piece to work on, next. I have three strong contenders in mind at the moment, but can't really decide which to finalize, next. Eeenie, meenie....

I'm still amazed how quickly the snow has melted; we got so much snow in the Blizzard of '11 (and snow on top of THAT snow), but a warm spell kicks in and it's gone. Amazing. But it's still way too early to put on the shorts -- I really don't rule out snow in Chicago until June.

My Turbotax program arrived yesterday. Good times, that. I'll probably work on that tonight, since Exene'll have the boys, and I'll be able to work on that undisturbed. This year's will be complicated, given that 2010 was THE year Exene and I split (that is, when she finally got a job). 2010 would be the Year of Gnashing Teeth for me. Lordy. So, one last gnash of the teeth as I hash out the tax stuff, then wash my hands of it.

B1 had to do a "blue paper" -- basically, a paper about something that made him sad. He wrote about the loss of Newt, which was really his first experience with death (since Jinx died when he was maybe four, I don't think that quite stuck with him -- plus, Jinx was a mean cat, versus Newt, who was always sweet-natured). Anyway, he wrote about it in his fashion, and drew a sketch of Newt from an old photograph of him (a friend shot a great portrait of Newt back in '92, which I still have). It was bittersweet to see him revisit this sense of loss. He said he likes cats, would get one someday. That's kind of sweet to me, too -- I think B1 is more of a cat person, and B2 is definitely a dog person (B2 keeps nagging for me to get a bulldog; he loves bulldogs [tee hee, so do I]). But it's funny to see B1 express his aesthetic.

Speaking of aesthetics, B2 wanted to watch "Wall-E" yesterday, and he noticed a parallel between the Axiom tech in that movie and the stuff in "Portal" -- and it's very true: the red eyes, the stark white with black highlights -- B2 kept saying "It's like PORTAL, Daddy." Hahah! B2 is very aesthetically attuned. He's definitely going to be the performer and the creative type -- he's got such a strong sense of theatricality and imagination. He'll set up these Lego dioramas and will play meticulously with them, setting up scenes with them with such care. It's charming to watch that young imagination at play.

I have nine screenplay ideas I need to develop. I perennially wrestle with screenplays -- while I do write in a cinematic style, that doesn't lend itself to a ready comfort with screenplay-writing. But the ideas I have simply would work better as screenplays than as books or short stories; they just would. So, I'm trying to do honor to the work by presenting it in the format that would work best with it. Seven Horror, one Thriller, and one SF love story.

Caught with one's pants down

Oh, man. Something funny happened this evening. I swapped the day with Exene, because she was going to be super-late with work, so I took the boys tonight. Anyway, I was minding the boys, wearing my TAB cola t-shirt and some boxer shorts, when there was a knock on the door, and the boys started raising a ruckus, and I thought it was going to be Exene with some unexpected issue, but it turned out to be a candidate for Ward Alderman and one of his supporters, doing a door-to-door thing with prospective voters!

So, I'm standing there in my doorway, in my boxers, talking about education reform with a would-be alderman. He was asking me what issues mattered to me, and I pointed out how the TIF system was a wreck and needed to be fixed, and so he shpieled on that a bit. Then one of my neighbors came home from work, down the hall, and saw me talking to these guys. I felt like saying "Hey, we're talking about education reform! Just leave your pants and join in the debate!" When they left, the supporter said "Btw, love the t-shirt." Bahah!

I'm happy to report that I can smoothly debate city politics with complete strangers while in my boxers.

Final Solution

I haven't listened to Pere Ubu in awhile. I always loved this one...

The Call of the Mild

A visual representation of the dichotomy between the romantic's conception of love, and the realist's, below...

The Romantic.

The Realist.

Heart-Shaped Box

My creation of valentines for the boys for school went well; B1's classmates loved them, and B2 talked about the "millions" of valentines he got (really, more like a couple of dozen, but for him, everything good is in the millions).

Valentine's Day has come and gone. No doubt the cards are sold, the candies bought. I cashed a check at the bank and the teller asked me "Oooh, something for Valentine's Day?" and I scoffed: "Yeah, right."

I figure I won't blather about love for the rest of the month; leading up to Valentine's Day is more than enough. Suffice to say that romantics understand love; realists and pragmatists never truly will -- it's like trying to compare wildlife with livestock, and finding equivalency -- romantics love wildlife; realists love livestock. Romantics get the wild nature of love; realists run from it, are haunted and frightened by it. Realists try to tame and train love, to harness its power and put it to work for them, which might reap dividends for them at some point, but at the cost of passion and other pleasures of true romance. Romantics never presume to try to tame love, but let it roam freely through their worlds. Which is well and good, except when love upends their worlds, or when it breaks their hearts. But true romantics accept that as a price to be paid for knowing the full joys and agonies of love -- to feel deeply is to feel both pain and pleasure keenly; it is integral to the artistic temperament. The pain can be staggering, but the pleasures of it can be no less intense, if truly felt. To the realist, the logic is apparent: why go through all of that trouble, why travel through the wilderness when there's a perfectly good, paved road right there? Avoid pain and uncertainty, reap rewards, turn the heart into a metronome, counting out the beats until inevitable death. To them, "the road less traveled" is less-traveled for a reason. I understand why a realist might do that; it's their choice, and it may, in fact, be a logical and even rational choice -- not terribly exciting or interesting, but it's safe, if unimaginative. I'm just not a realist, myself. If I were a realist, I wouldn't be a very good writer, though, now would I?

Anyway, onward and upward. Spring is teasing its way into the weather, here. I refuse to accept Spring in Chicago until, I dunno, May. ;)

Truly, we get warm spells sometimes like this, and then when you think it's time to pack away the Winter gear, a freak storm comes in and wallops you. So, I'm not holding my breath over this warm trend of the moment.

The Look of Love

Need another video...

ABC, "The Look of Love"

...something to capture the absurdity of love, and of 80s videos, in general. Still, ABC cranked out nice dance-pop tunes in their prime.

Movies

This is kind of amusing -- Five Movies to Cure You of Valentine's Day. I like the line the writer wrote, saying "Maybe love is both awesome and sucky." Bahah! Glad "Valentine" wasn't included in this list, although it would've been funny if it had been, since it was just a crappy slasher movie.

This is also amusing: The Dark Origins of Valentine's Day.

Happy Valentine's Day

I don't like OutKast overmuch, but this one is topical, ergo, I post it. I like his pink-hued Desert Eagle...

Slushy

Man, the temperatures went up a little bit (not even that much; it's still cold, just not AS cold) and so much of that deluge of snow is melting, turning the city into slush-and-puddle central. I'm just surprised that so much snow is melting so quickly.

I made valentines for the boys to take to school, which was fun. B2 loves playing with art materials (making a mess, of course). B1 just kinda rolls with it.

Love Song

This is a nice, acoustic version of The Cure's "Love Song"...



The Companion Cube from "Portal" really comes into its own on Valentine's Day...

Happy Valentine's Day!

Someecards always crack me up with their Valentine's Day e-cards. I'm sure they brainstorm cards like these and just slay themselves. These are some of my favorites of this year's batch...

Howl

More howling winds again. Likely means another temperature crash, maybe a storm approaching. Looks like 20-34 mph winds for the next couple of days.

Love Will Tear Us Apart

Oh, you know I had to do it, what, with Valentine's Day looming...

Brokenhearted

Happy Almost Valentine's Day! In talking/thinking about love, the unavoidable topic of heartbreak must come up. People like to say that everything happens for a reason, and never is that perhaps truer than in the arena of heartbreak. There's always a reason for heartbreak, and responsibility for it is shared, like so much else in love. Either you loved the wrong person, or loved for the wrong reasons, or you didn't see something that you should have about the other person. When a heart is broken, there is clearly a reason for it. Heartbreak doesn't just happen. Maybe you really did love someone more than they ever loved you, and so, for them, stomping on your heart was as inconsequential to them as getting a cup of coffee in the morning. Maybe they didn't respect you, or respect themselves, or were too stupid to recognize a good thing when they had it. Maybe they were just a rotten person. Maybe all of the above.

The weird or cruel aspect to it is that if you don't love deeply, or lack the capacity to love, you'll never feel heartbreak. Which, sadly, gives an edge to folks like that in relationships -- if love makes you vulnerable and at the same time prevents you from thinking solely of yourself, you're toast if you're up against someone who lacks the capacity to love you in kind. You'll end up emotionally defrauded, or flat-out devastated. And the person who broke your heart? They'll just dust themselves off and be fine at the end of the day.

I've known true heartbreak only a couple of times, but it was real agony. The closest calculus for me was reacting to a death -- just that deep, full-body ache and gusty sobs. It's horribly painful. Just as the infinite promise of true love is intoxicating and delightful, so the desolate reality of a shattered, broken love can be horrendous. Some folks respond with thinking that they'll never love again, will never trust their heart to someone else. Others perhaps just pine. There are any number of ways of responding to heartbreak. I know my own heartbreak scarred me.

The cold consolation of it is that you can't make someone love you. You can't fake that. Either they love you, or they don't. And if they don't love you, you're just going to humiliate yourself if you fawn and brood over them -- you'll earn only their contempt, and if they're unprincipled, they'll use that to roast you alive.

You have to accept that if they broke your heart to begin with, then you're better off without them. There may have been any number of reasons for why a love might die, and there's probably some shared responsibility for it, but there's usually someone who pulled the trigger first, someone who gave up on the love, who broke someone's heart to begin with. Once that's done, there's no way to salvage it. Just bury it, leave some flowers, and move on. Otherwise, the ghost of that lost love will haunt you, and you don't want that. Ghosts will pull you down with them into oblivion. Ghosts always win, if you let them into your world, or worse, into your heart.

But it's hard, if you really love someone, because part of you believes you could have made it work, there's a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking -- If only I'd done this, if only I'd done that. The simple truth of it is that if they loved you at all, you wouldn't have had to do those things -- if they'd loved you truly, they'd never have broken your heart.

The Bow in the Snow

Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Okay, I didn't even know there was a video to this tune, which was always one of my favorite Queen tunes. The psycho-sexual subtext of this video makes it particularly amusing these days, since there are the obligatory video babes in it, whereas we know that Freddie Mercury could give a rat's ass about those babes, but the demands of the time required those dancing pretty boys to be off on the margins, instead of right next to Mercury. It would've been far more amusing and subversive had they actually done that, and put the video babes on the fringes, but the times required that to be all under the radar. So, the leather daddy rockabilly vibe of this video is just damned funny, making it a worthwhile addition to the love videos...

Unrequited

So, what does one do if they're in love with someone who doesn't love them equivalently? I don't really have an answer for it. What're the options?

1. Heartbreak, suffer for it
2. Be used and abused, put up with it
3. Wallow in limerence
4. Move on, find someone else

I guess that's it. And, really, the second and third options aren't really options at all; they're just how one can react to an asymmetrical love. But people find themselves in those situations, anyway, which is why I'd even write about it. And it also matters because one can be in a situation where they don't love someone as much as they are, in turn, loved. There could be any number of reasons how this comes about -- maybe Person A has self-esteem issues and is plagued by self-hatred and can't recognize a good love when they see it; or maybe Person A finds insufficient chemistry with Person B to really be moved to that higher love (it's surely the "Let's Just Be Friends" school of love, which is really a soft-pedaling of "You just don't do it for me."

So, if somebody's so fucked up emotionally as to not recognize what a good thing you offer, then lose'em, move on. That's the safest, most logical route to go, if you want to protect your heart. But we know that love is seldom logical, which is why people get into trouble.

If you love someone not as much as they love you, then it's perhaps stickier, because you can recognize the good thing they offer, and still find yourself not transported to those nicer places. I've been on a "courtesy date" or two in my day, where the woman in question most definitely is into me, and I'm not into her, and I'm in the position of not making any sudden movements, lest they be misinterpreted. Because a person can read into whatever they like -- there've been many times when a friend has asked me "What does this mean? Why would they do that?" and I'll offer my opinion on it, and you can see the person reading into it, trying to find the meaning, there. Hope is a wonderful thing, but hope can all too easily become delusion, when love is involved. I remember lovestruck friends mooning over and pining over loves who clearly didn't give two shits about the person in love with them.

If you find you have to justify yourself to someone else, or laundry list your good qualities, or bend over backwards to make someone (fleetingly) happy, odds are you have an asymmetrical relationship, and you're just going to be hurt.

Someone in love with you accepts you fully for who you are, appreciates you completely for who you are, admires you for who you are, treasures any moment they have with you, respects you for who you are. If you're not getting that kind of feedback from someone else, then lose'em, fast, or else you're just going to suffer needlessly and endlessly.

If you're on the receiving end of that kind of asymmetrical love, then it's perhaps harder -- because you might love the person well enough, and genuinely not want to hurt their feelings, and maybe "try" to love them more. But in a Zen kind of cruelty, if you have to "try" to love someone, then you don't love them very much, after all (for whatever reason), and you're in the position of just using that person, or humoring them, which deprives you of the fuller pleasures and agonies of love.

It's like when some of my friends had grimly talked about finding "Mr. Good Enough" because they'd given up on finding "Mr. Right." Of course, those people were themselves rather unsuccessful at ever finding a good relationship (big shock, that), but I found it surprising that "settling" for someone even came into anybody's mix.

Who wants "good enough?" Meatloaf is never going to be steak. Ever. So why tell yourself otherwise? Seems like a recipe for dissatisfaction and woe to me.

The Look of Love

Felt like posting another video/song on the love theme. This is a good one...



I don't think the look of love can be faked. I've seen it a few times in my life.

Losing His Marbles

The boys love playing marbles. Of course, B2 turns marbles into a bit of a rugby match by the time it's done -- he'll get fired up and/or feisty, and marbles go flying around the place. In fact, I told him a couple of times, "It's marbles, not rugby, Buddy." But for a brief, shining moment, the boys will peacefully play marbles, which is cute to watch. I offer a running commentary as we play. B1 pretends (of course) that the marbles are stars and/or planets, complains about "gravity wells" when a shot goes awry.

Freaky Friday

Another Friday. I never say TGIF -- it's right up with "Are we having fun yet?" as one of those incredibly annoying, nearly-empty expressions.

The boys and I are now effectively over the influenza. Grateful for that. Flu never hits me quite as badly as colds do, for some reason. Go figure. My late father claims that his side of the family never caught the flu, that they were always resistant to it, so maybe some of that purported resistance to it was handed down. I don't know.

I woke up over-early, as ever (3:30 a.m. seems tied into my circadian rhythms for the past few months), and I got up and wrote awhile, before re-sleeping, taking another little nap when I got sleepy again, nicked another hour-and-a-half of sleep. Makes a difference, that.

Heard a dad picking his kid up from school the other day --

Dad: "Did you have a good day?"
Kid: "Yeah."
Dad: "A REALLY good day?"
Kid (annoyed): "YEAH."

That amused me. When I pick up B1, I just ask him "How'd your day go? Did you do anything fun?" and he tells me how it went.

It's been so blisteringly cold lately, we've all hunkered down pretty much. February in Chicago is one of the worst months. I'm sure lots of places wrestle with bad weather then, but here, it just gets so damned cold. I remember my folks visiting me in February (years ago), and me warning them about it -- I still remember their faces when they came out of their hotel and got blasted in the face with icy wind. Their expressions were comical. Sorry, Ma! It's frickin' COLD! They'd talk about that for years, and we'd laugh about it.

If it's not too bad, I'll run some errands today.

You've Got to Hide Your Love Away

This is one of my favorite Beatles' tunes, one that comes to me unbidden at times (along with "All My Life"). Paired with this odd, very 60s video, it's kind of amusing. The prim, uptight, man-faced English Mod babe in pink sitting with them, what's that all about? Anyway, I add that one to my list of love-themed (or at least titled) songs...

Productive

I was productive yesterday, cranked out around 3000 words, and am well on my way to reaching that minimum today.

It was staggeringly cold yesterday; supposedly the coldest day in the city this winter season. It felt it, for sure. That kind of cold that just freezes your face.

I was thinking about the weather the other day, and when I said how no weather really affects me, I will qualify that -- the Blizzard of '11 had one feature that did get to me: the nonstop howling winds. Now, maybe it was because I was battling a fever at the time, but that ~16 hours of winds took a toll on me. I love wind as much as the next guy, but the howling of those winds just didn't stop. It was ceaseless. And that got to me. I could not be anyplace where the wind howled constantly like that. Maybe it's part of being an audiophile, but while an hour or two of that kind of wind is interesting, stack hour upon hour of that kind of wind and it begins to really wear on you. I can't articulate why, precisely.

It's kind of like listening to too much Wagner -- I can enjoy Wagner in small doses, but an extended listen to his work wears down my ear. I'm not entirely sure what it is, but Wagner tires me out. He's the only classic composer who can do that to me, and somehow, those ceaseless howling winds made me think of Wagner...

Lohengrin, Prelude to Act III

It's funny, because I like Wagner fine in measured amounts, but the prospect of sitting through an entire opera of his would have me jumping off the balcony. The human ear can only take so much. Or this human's ear can only take so much, anyway.

The Flying Dutchman

I had to put another dose in there, since a mere 8 minutes of Wagner isn't enough to really get at the sonic assault he represents. Again, I'm not a music theorist or sound technician, so I am unsure why it gets to me, but my pet theory is that the midrange is overrepresented in his works, and it just kind of bludgeons the listener into aural submission. Shock and awe, Baby!

Disco

Hmm. I'm minding my own business, trying to read an article on the Web, and this "Do It with Disco" sidebar ad from American Apparel keeps distracting me...

In fact, I'm distracted again, just seeing this. Mmmm. Wait, what the hell was I even talking about? Who am I? Where am I? Mmmm....

Happy 80th Birthday, James Dean

Death was likely his greatest career move.

I wonder if James Franco has kind of coattail-ridden on James Dean's ghost, the way that, say, Daniel Craig did with Steve McQueen, or Tom Cruise did with Montgomery Clift? In terms of actors who perhaps superficially resemble those earlier icons and therefore profit from it.

Marbles

My apartment is full of marbles. We've made a kick-ass marble run throughout the place, but misfires have marbles all over the place. I've had the boys clean them up, but there are still marbles about. B2 calls'em "Marballs" -- I love that. You can see the kid logic at work in it. B2 is funny -- he's very adept at language; he notices rhymes and delights in them, and joins in. He's done this for quite awhile. I made up a kind of rhyming game between us where I'll rhyme something, and he has to come up with something to match it, and he does. There are other examples of his linguistic prowess, but they're eluding me at the moment. It makes me smile, though -- he's gotten my facility with language. He's also a natural actor. Love that.

Everybody's nearly better after our weeklong bout with the flu. Just a few trace congested coughs, going away in steps. That's good. Good fucking riddance to that.

Weatherman

I find that I never complain about the weather. Ever. I like all weather. Weather is fun. Good weather's fun, bad weather is fun. I love storms. I love clear skies. I love cloudy skies. I love windy days. I love still days. Everything. I love it all.

I think about it sometimes because people will complain about the weather, but what's the point of complaining about the weather? It simply is. I love it. It forces one to look at one's environment and react to it, prepare for it. Good thing. If one had perfect weather every day, that'd be boring.

Not saying that I dance out in rainstorms or anything, but I don't complain if I get caught in them, and if they're particularly strong, I dig'em. It's all good.

I just roll with things.

Going off the rails

I got B1 a Skyrail marble run set back in Christmas of 2009, which he enjoyed for awhile, but hasn't played with for a long time. Anyway, he started playing with it again over the weekend, and it's cute, especially since B2 is now old enough to be able to play with it, too. So, they're busy crafting their own marble runs, and I hear B2 saying "Okay, let's test it!" Loving that. They had me make them a loop in the rail, and have crafted a track that lets it work. It's nice to see them working together, instead of the usual brotherly scrapping! And I just enjoy seeing new life for the toy, and how much fun they're having with it, launching marbles and ball bearings down their tracks. B1 also made one into a ring and had marbles going down both sides, said "Look, it's a supercollider!" I loved that!

Argh

Man, I've got a total headache right now. Not sure if this is just a going-away present from that frickin' flu, or what. I never get headaches. Of course, I knew my brain would have me up bright and early. That's always been the case -- doesn't matter how late I might stay up; I always wake up early.

Awakened

I went to sleep earlier, only to wake up when the Cheeseheads in town cheered the Super Bowl win. My computer was off, my television still incommunicado thanks to Comcast, so I had to turn on the computer again to find out, rather than bother friends by trying to find out for sure who had won.

Now I'm awake, have been for a bit or awhile. Reading my book and brooding. I haven't been sleeping terribly well for the past week, owing to that fucking flu (and if you get it, you'll know just what I'm talking about -- it's not the worst flu I've had, but it just sticks with you and nags and nags and nags and nags). Anyway, it makes it hard to focus and get one's feet under you. I think I'm a day or two away from fully rebounding from it, and hopefully I'll be back to being able to sleep properly again.

(break to get a glass of icewater)

There, I'm back. This week, I plan to query some of my books to other agents, sling out a bunch, just shotgun it, see if I can garner any interest. We'll see.

I'm thinking of adapting some more of my short stories into screenplays. I tend to write fairly cinematically, and while, as ever, the screenplay format daunts me, I'd still like to turn a few of the pieces into them -- especially a few of them that would play very well onscreen. Of course, this is even more of a longshot than anything else, but I have the material, so it's just a matter of adapting it and finding homes for it.

Was thinking about unrequited love today, as perhaps part of my monthly musing about Love(tm). Given that, according to a study, 98% of people experience unrequited love in their lives, that might be a worthy aspect of love to go into, although what a dismal graveyard that place is, yes?

It does, however, introduce a word most people don't likely know (at least by name): limerence -- an intense feeling of attachment toward someone (or, I suppose, something). Limerence can be felt as extreme joy or intense despair, depending on whether it is reciprocated or not. Wikipedia nicely sums it up...

Limerence is characterized by intrusive thinking and pronounced sensitivity to external events that reflect the disposition of the limerent object towards the individual. Basically, it is the state of being completely carried away by unreasoned passion or love, even to the point of addictive-type behavior. Usually, one is inspired with an intense passion or admiration for someone. Limerence can be difficult to understand for those who have never experienced it, and it is thus often dismissed by nonlimerents as ridiculous fantasy or a construct of romantic fiction.

What does a soul do in such a situation? Love stories have two limerent souls finding one another, of course, and that gives one the happy ending, the Hollywood Ending -- but an unrequited love is ultimately a tragedy, and can, alternately, be a horror story (one of my favorite horror movies, "May," has an absolutely cringe-inducing plot in it where the title character, the painfully shy and fucking weird May, falls for Adam, this coolio mechanic in her neighborhood, and May tries hard to make it work with her and Adam, only to have it go terribly wrong -- that part of the story is almost more horrific and squirm-inducing than the rest of the movie, which is actually darkly funny throughout -- good little horror movie, if you like horror movies).

Related to the "levels of love" I was nattering on about earlier is precisely that -- what do you do if you love someone more than they love you? That seems like a recipe for emotional disaster. Of course, SEINFELD parodied it comically with George Costanza obsessing about a woman who clearly didn't like him, was actually repulsed by him -- he said something like "She just hates me so much, it's irresistible." Which, of course, is just the situation George would find himself in. It's funny because it's painful, because George is such a twisted, fucked-up guy, of course, he'd dig that.

Anyway, as a Romantic, I don't like to think about unrequited love, obviously -- true love should win, true love deserves to win, so when it doesn't, or isn't shared, or whether someone's deluded and thinks they knew true love only to find it turning to ashes in their mouth, it's painful to think about. But it exists, for sure, and is definitely a part of the equation, even if it's the dark side of the coin flip. And it's surely part and parcel of the notion of the "Hopeless Romantic" -- and, so, I suppose I should dwell on it a bit. Consider this just a preview; gotta brood on it awhile. Well, it's tomorrow, now, so I guess I'll go to sleep!

Ghost!

I'm reading Susan Casey's, "The Devil's Teeth" -- an account of the Farallone Islands, a noted Great White Shark hunting area frequented by researchers, with a long and unusual history, and on page 111, there's a ghost story in it, which is especially interesting because of the concentration of scientists on the island who believe they witnessed things there, and the amusingly named room that appears to be the worst of the allegedly-haunted areas...

"Peter and Scot informed me that the Jane Fonda bedroom was notoriously haunted.  'There's a ghost there,' Peter said matter-of-factly, after a few beers. 'It's a woman.'

'In the house?' I'm not sure why I found this surprising. If any place deserved to be infested with ghosts, it was the Farallones.

'Around the island. There was a body found in a cave.' He went on to explain that a century ago, a well-preserved skeleton of a woman had been found in Rabbit Cave, down by East Landing, close to the site of the original Russian settlement. Most people assumed she was an Aleut slave; it was their custom to entomb their dead. But others believed she was a Caucasian, a claim they insisted could be confirmed by her dental work. The truth is that no one really knows, and there is no record of her death. Her bones remain on the island, buried near the cave's entrance.

In the years since there had been reports of odd, ghostlike encounters: trouble breathing was commonly cited, as were chills, whispering voices, glimpses of shadowy silhouettes moving across the cart path, footsteps and doors slamming in the night. Now, it's one thing for a few people sitting around on heebie-jeebie island to wind themselves up thinking about ghosts. It's another thing altogether for that group to be composed entirely of scientists, most of whom would rather eat dirt than admit to any sort of belief in the paranormal. But at the Farallones some very logical minds had been flummoxed and terrified by unexplainable encounters.

In the mid-eighties, Peter told me, a biologist was walking back to the house in the last, foggy light of day when he noticed a woman with long dark hair standing on the marine terrace in a filmy white dress. Figuring it was one of the two female biologists on the island, albeit in a fairly strange getup, he continued on his way into the house -- where he immediately encountered the two women, sitting on the living room couch. He turned on his heel and ran back outside, but the woman in the white dress had vanished, though there was really no place she could have vanished to, short of jumping into the ocean. 'And he was Mr. Science!' Peter recounted, snickering. 'A guy who would do things like rebuild the transmitter. He said it made a believer out of him.'

On another occasion, a visiting botanist was intercepted sleepwalking out the front door in the middle of the night, screaming, "NO! I'm NOT going up there!" When someone tugged on his arm and woke him, he explained that a dark-haired woman was trying to entice him to climb to the lighthouse with her.

'What about you?' I asked them. 'Had any ghost action out there personally?'

They both nodded vigorously.

'Oh, I've had scary experiences,' Scot said. 'You get the creeps. It's the feeling of a presence around you. It usually happens when you're alone. At night.'

For Peter, one incident in particular stood out: he awoke to loud, thudding footsteps on the stairs, followed by the front door slamming, an attic trap door in the Jane Fonda bedroom stuttering rapidly, and a chill wind that blew through the house, rattling the windows from the inside, after the door shut. At the time he was one of four people on the island, all of whom were cowering together in one bedroom, scared witless. There was no extra set of human feet that could possibly have been pounding up and down the stairs that night -- they all knew it, and they all felt it. This had occurred more than a decade ago, and I could see that telling the story still gave him a chill.

'Certain rooms are scarier than others,' Scot said, fingering his glass. 'That Jane Fonda Room...the one you stayed in...'

'Yeah, that's the one where most things happen,' Peter agreed. 'I've never liked that room, either.'

'I stayed there for awhile. Man, I couldn't wait to get out of that room.'"

I Melt With You

This is a great cover of the Modern English tune, which is a classic to the point of almost being a cliché of 80s music, but which is still a good tune. The one above is sweet and sensual, and it's fun to incorporate it into the overall "Love" meme I've been working on the blog this month, and a continuation of what I was musing about earlier this morning.

The nice thing with that song title is it's so lovey-dovey -- the song's not "You Make Me Melt" or "We Mix Well Together." Bahah! It's "I Melt With You." and so it embodies something of that idea of synergy, of becoming stronger and larger than yourself through love. Above and beyond the biomechanics of reproduction, mind you, there's the psychosocial strength of true love, that makes you melt and both strengthens the individual and bonds them to another. To a Romantic, it's a beautiful thing, that communion of spirits.

A better union is going to yield a purer blend, a stronger alloy; a less sanguine one is still capable of being spot-welded together, or bound up with duct tape and staples, but it's not going to match that alloy's strength, flexibility, and durability. Of course people aren't metal, but true love is an alloying of spirits, creating something greater than the sum of its parts. It must be.

I think some folks, for various reasons, are less comfortable with "melting with" someone else than others. You have to give up some of yourself to be able to love someone else, and for a taker, versus a giver, that has to be threatening. That's got to be a serious flaw in the ability to love, or to recognize true love when/if it even appears in one's life.

So maybe there really are weak loves and strong ones, represented by the nature of the relationships that result from them. A one-night stand is by its very nature devoid of love, about the most love-free human transaction you could have, short of outright prostitution. And, big shock, those tend to be the least-emotionally satisfying. With those as the street- and curbside view of relationships, and with true love cavorting in the penthouse, then you have a number of floors between. That's your continuum from loveless to true love, with the love growing stronger as you work your way toward the ideal.

The key is understanding what makes it stronger or weaker, then, and when you factor in individual foibles, quirks, stupidities, and out-and-out insanities (which'd likely be the love equivalent of taking a swan-dive out the window of one of those higher floors), it makes it really hard to get to that penthouse, that "Melt With You" place of peace.

So far in my musing/brooding, I think there's mutual attraction, appreciation, respect, trust, chemistry, acceptance, forgiveness, and reciprocity as vital and necessary elements to true love.

I distinguish between attraction and appreciation -- because you can greatly appreciate someone without being attracted to them; and, god help you, you can also be highly attracted to someone without appreciating them, too. And while chemistry is bound up in attraction, I think it's far more magical than that -- a good-looking person is attractive, but you can have two great-looking people together who simply lack chemistry; you can have two objectively unattractive people who have magnificent chemistry as well. You could have a Beauty and the Beast kind of pairing, too, bound up in chemistry. If you and someone else work, you just work; and it's an ineffable and beautiful thing. But if that chemistry isn't there, I don't think there's anything that'll make it work.

Chemistry matters. Big-time. No chemistry, no true love is even possible. I'm just going to flat-out declare that. A workable love could probably be had without much chemistry, but it would be like saltine crackers, not something magical, memorable, exquisite and beautiful.

And you'll notice I didn't include "Romance" in my list of vital components to true love, because I don't think romance is, strictly speaking, necessary to it. I think it's nice and wonderful if you have it -- hell, it's surely a blessed byproduct of that vital chemistry, a blending of attraction, appreciation, and desire. And as a Romantic, I hold that romance is a vital component to my conception of true love, I imagine a couple of statuesque Stoics could politely hold hands while sitting on marble pedestals and be perfectly happy with that. Romance is seasoning for love, but you can have love without that seasoning; it's just romance makes it so much better. No wonder the Romance genre continues to thrive even in an age when it seems fewer and fewer people read. Women in particular crave that romance, so while one can love without romance, it makes love more savory and sweeter and spicier.

But one cannot reach true love without that chemistry. It's what separates Mr./Ms. Right from Mr./Ms. Meh or Mr./Ms. Good Enough. And while someone can perhaps feign romance, I don't believe chemistry can be faked; either a couple of lovers have it or they don't.

Musical interlude

In for a penny, in for a pound

Does romantic love have degrees and/or levels? Can you love someone a little? A lot? Or is it all or none? I think the truest love has to be the strongest love, too -- the most intense, the purest. But I don't think it's possible to feel true love lightly, is it? Hearkening back to that SIMPSONS quote the other day, before I got sidetracked by the flu, the "true love lightly" is the "I Love You Like I Love Fresca" school of love, which, of course, is precisely the punchline of that joke. That can't be true love at all.

But are there shades of romantic love? I don't have a proper answer to this, except to view it in terms of the good and bad of a loved one -- if the good outweighs the bad (and the nature of the good and the bad itself is well-defined), then you love them, and if the bad outweighs the good in your eyes, then you love them less or not at all. And if the good vastly outweighs the bad, you love them the most. A continuum?

I don't know if that calculation is honestly made at the front end, when one is enamored of a new love, enthralled by them -- the "honeymoon period" of a romance, that dopamine thrill ride. At that point, a person is probably highly unlikely to be able to objectively assess the worth of a person they love, because they're just too high. And I'm only using "worth" in a romantic love context, because, obviously, if somebody's net worth is a factor in it, then you're falling into a rather commercial category of relationship, there. At the front end of a love, it's highly unlikely that one can make a reasoned or proper calculation of their love, because they've got pinwheels in their eyes -- that's how people fall in love with the wrong person. And the type of soul who is willing to actually fall in love will do that, versus the person afraid to commit to love, who may not risk anything at all, first and foremost being their own heart.

So, what's "right" -- what feels right? Are some loves stronger than others? More intense, more "right?"

Small wonder that the notion of "chemistry" comes into play (and it probably does, in all sorts of ways). If a couple has good chemistry, they accentuate each other, they complement each other, and are stronger together than apart by that chemistry (and sexual chemistry is surely part of that large alchemical bonding of love, as well). That's a powerful indicator and reinforcement of love -- that's an incentive. It's why some couples form that kind of a gestalt, a blessed synergy of two souls that leaves both parts stronger than they were alone. That kind of unity is apparent to those who see it: "They're such a great couple!" "What a happy couple!"

But the only true measure of happiness is whether the couple is happy -- whether both parties are happy together and happy with each other. I know friends were floored when they found out Exene and I were splitting, because we appeared to be a strong and happy couple -- but that was only because our relationship was built on me making her happy, and I was good at that. That was the bricks and mortar of our union. I stopped laying those bricks, and the structure came crashing down.

So, the only true measure of a couple's merit is whether the members of it are both happy, are both giving and taking equally (reciprocity is a vital component). High energy = low entropy. Stronger together than apart? Happy, energized, not drained. High entropic unions are, on the other hand, incredibly draining, accentuate weaknesses and faults and flaws, and bring out the worst in one or (more likely) both parties.

Those are the couples who actually seem to hate one another, or not like each other very much. I've known a few like that in my day, who actually can't stand each other, and I'd wonder "Why are they together??" You'd see them at parties actually sniping at each other, or even flat-out arguing, which was always uncomfortable. The "liferaft" school of love seems so co-dependent and joyless -- a pair of soaked, parched, and starving souls clinging to one another on a chunk of flotsam, on a perpetually stormy sea, not a speck of land in sight, sharks circling, clinging to each other because they're afraid of drowning? Bliss? Not in my book.

Love's a dance, not a grim death march. I mean, you can make it a death march, or a gladiatorial fight to the death, I suppose, but fuck, that's not fun. I mean, life is a death march, strictly speaking -- blessed entropy is going to claim us all eventually. So, from the Romantic/Epicurean's standpoint, make it a dance and a banquet, why not, so at least it's a happy trek before eventual oblivion.

This seems like a meander from my original premise about levels of love, but it kind of makes sense to me -- if the relationship is good, if both players are good to one another, are happy with one another and each other, then that's a better, stronger, worthier love. If you can just be you, and still be loved for that, then that's a stronger, worthier love. If you can look at someone just being themselves and find relish and delight in that, then that's a stronger, worthier love. The opposites, of course, point to structural flaws in the love, itself, or else in the individuals in the relationship.

This might be a "to be continued." I'm still thinking about this one....

Phased

Kirk showing you what a phaser's for, Fuckers!

Not to belabor Trek-related points, but one other telling sign of "The Next Generation's" limp-dicked 90s ethos was the redesign of phasers. Whereas the original 60s phasers were either the little boxes of Phaser I variety, or the more butch Phaser II variety (which incorporated Phaser I in the top, the black part)...

Phaser II means fucking business.

...the TNG phasers looked like fucking Dustbusters...

TNG Phaser: "Shine your boots, Guvner?"

The original phasers looked like they'd fuck you up in a retro futuristic fashion; the TNG phasers looked fit only to pick up lint. You know I'm right.

The first time I saw them dishing those things out, I thought "Oh, nooooo."

Magic Bus?

Woman's Brilliant Backside Wins Her VW Bus

No doubt this isn't something she wants to leave behind! I don't think the winner's can is so fab, gotta say...

Lizzy Marola's winning picture.

Dearly Departed

I watched "The Departed" last night, which I've seen and enjoyed a few times over the years. Only a couple of complaints (and some spoilers follow herein, if you're one of those folks who frets spoilers, and somehow hasn't seen this movie but intends to). One is that Martin Scorsese, who is a director I'm fond of, (or any other director) should be prohibited from ever using Rolling Stones' songs in his movies, particularly "Gimme Shelter." It's almost a cliché anymore. Yes, it's a good song, lots of drama in it, but it's way, way overused. And the rat at the end is irritating (and was nicely parodied in SIMPSONS: "The rat symbolizes obviousness!")

But overall, the movie's a great time, a tense piece done only the way Scorsese can do it. My lone beef is with the death of Captain Queenan, played by Martin Sheen...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N49bRIT3lPU

Queenan is the "good cop" half of the Undercover Division, with Marky Mark amusingly playing Dignam, the "bad cop" half (an amusing role for him to play, I'm sure). Now, while it's clear the Queenan's mostly a desk jockey, in the scene that leads up to his death, it's frustrating, because he goes to his death without firing a shot -- not only that, but he actually thinks of drawing his gun, and, instead, draws a cigarette and has a last smoke before meeting his doom.

Now, I understand the nice imagery of him being lobbed off a roof and how his demise catapults the story forward, but Queenan's passing that way has a strong whiff of a character being sacrificed for the sake of the plot, a case of "I Must Die Now."

Because, tactically, Queenan's got the edge -- he's got a gun, there are guys coming up the stairs and the elevator, but Queenan could have positioned himself somewhere to pop those elevator guys as they came out (and there are exactly two of them in the elevator, and I think four come up the stairs, having to open a door to pop into the room).

Queenan had enough time to position himself for a takedown of some of these guys. And we know that: 1) he really wants to take down Costello's outfit badly (sure, he may not be as passionate as Dignam, but his exchange with Costello reveals his desire to bring Costello to justice); 2) he knows that Costello's goons are brutal, deadly murderers.

From that perspective, knowing that your doom is coming to you, why the hell wouldn't you take a few of them with you? He dies without firing a shot, without even drawing his gun -- in fact, he only briefly considers drawing it, and thinks better of it. Instead, he gets interrogated (alluded to later when one of them says how he was a tough cop) and lobbed from the roof to his death.

Why that hesitation? He has to know that he's not going to be in for gentle treatment from Costello's goons. He has to know that should they break him, he'll spill the beans on the operation and blow Costigan's cover. Why would he take that chance? Especially when that bad decision costs him his life and nearly jeopardizes his entire operation (by putting the police mole, Colin Sullivan, in a better position to investigate the Undercover Division). He knows that there is a mole, thanks to Costigan's complaining about it, so he has to realize that this moment matters.

But he doesn't act like it does. He acts scared, to be sure, but that's about it. I know they didn't want to have Queenan popping off some of Costello's goons and perhaps surviving the encounter -- since Sullivan had Queenan tailed, if those tails had heard gunfire from the building, they'd have intervened sooner, and the thing might've spiraled out of control at that point.

Now, it's okay to have Queenan die that way, except that it has to be written credibly to reflect this -- maybe have him have his gun out and have them somehow get the drop on him, then you can proceed that way. Or have a shootout. At least one shot fired. C'mon, Queenan! This is your life!!

To have a police captain of long experience and awareness of what he's up against go down without a shot fired? It strains credibility (of course, one could also argue that his inability to realize that he'd been tailed might point to a certain operational naivete on his part, as well). Queenan was clearly simply sacrificed for the requirements of the plot.

It's really the only sticking point for me -- and certainly his demise is arresting (pun intended), and memorable, and it's unfortunate, and advances the plot. His death does its job for the story. They just needed to write it just a little bit tighter to cover the bases.

And Up Early

Alright, doing laundry at the moment. I like getting down there early to beat out the usual weekend laundry crowds. I usually try to do laundry on the weekday, but got behind because of the flu. Feeling about 90% better; still have some lung congestion lurking, especially when I lay down and try to sleep (joy), but otherwise nearly better. Can finally properly think again, so I'm diving into my writing again.

Up late

For some reason, not sleepy. Probably rebounding after three or four days being zonked out with flu.

Mind wandering, brooding, musing.

Tomorrow morning: laundry, then getting a much-needed haircut.

Nice one...

I know "Star Trek: TNG" had a chummy, smarmy servility embedded in it, but watching this clip, I find it laughable to think that Riker would ever be entrusted with his own command...

Riker destroys the Enterprise D

Riker was always a Grade A bootlicker on that show, a consummate kiss up/kick down type, watching him destroy the Enterprise D amuses me. He'll have to do a lot of asskissing to get his own command, given that a Klingon scout was able to so effectively kick the Enterprise's ass under Riker's leadership. I mean, he entrusts Deanna Troi to Helm -- I mean, what the fuck was Riker thinking, there? Sure, Troi's a former squeeze of Riker's, but she's a Counselor -- she's a psych officer -- she's not a pilot, navigator, or helmsman. Now, one could say that the bridge was under fire (again, thanks to Riker's fuckuppery) and they needed anybody they could get...BUT there are plenty of other mouthbreathers on the bridge who'd be better suited than Troi. I would have liked it instead for Troi to say, when Riker orders her to that station) to pipe up "But I don't even know how to do this!"

It would also be great if, in that scene with Picard, where Riker pipes up about aspiring to the captain's chair one day, and instead of being polite and genteel about it, Picard sarcastically gives Riker a pat on the shoulder and says "Sure, Number One. You keep telling yourself that. Maybe I should've called you Number Two, instead." and walks off, muttering.

Just saying, Riker loses the Enterprise D in a slapfight with an obsolete Klingon scout commanded by women Klingons. Kirk would have seduced and impregnated all of those Klingon women and he would have destroyed the ship once he was through, then chased it down with some Saurian Brandy. Picard would have played some kind of Machiavellian head game with them and talked them to death. But Riker nearly gets everybody killed and gets the Enterprise destroyed. Real smooth, Riker. I'd love to see him spin that around the next time a captain's chair opened up. I imagine that smarmy fuck trying to talk his way around that.

"I'm Number One. This beard'll help me buff those shoes of yours, Captain."

Makes me glad I only watched the first season of that show. Q was really the only cool character on it (Data was alright, and Tasha Yar was okay, but they killed her off). Worf was alright. Picard was perhaps okay, but he was never my cup of Earl Grey. The rest were shit, with Riker as the undisputed King of Shit Mountain.

Feeling the love

I'm going to continue my musing about love, no worries; I just have been battling influenza for the past week, which hasn't had me in a terribly romantic frame of mind. Bahah! Something about coughing up a lung every so often, aches, chills, fever, fatigue -- not a recipe conducive for thoughts of love, and what love means!

Maybe I'll post some videos, in the meantime...

Elastica, "A Love Like Ours"


Howard Jones, "What Is Love?" (*snicker*)


Dead Boys, "What Love Is" (amusingly, the late Stiv Bators, the frontman, from Youngstown)


Stiff Little Fingers, "Barbed Wire Love"

Sign of the times

Volcanic

B1 was explaining to B2: "I am like a volcano, and the lava is my anger, and if you keep pushing me, I'm going to erupt, [B2]. And it's going to take a long time to rebuild that dome to make me nice again. You want that dome of niceness gone?"

Bleah

Day 3 of flu for me. I hate that one has to specify flu as flu, since so many people think stomach flu is flu, when it's a different virus. Influenza's what I've got, as do the boys, although, kid-style, they're rebounding quickly from it. I thought I had it licked yesterday, but this morning woke up aching and with zero appetite, so I forced myself to eat a little bit, just to ease the hunger pangs. Popped some painkillers, and will try to get some sleep later. I have the boys today, which'll keep me busy, since B1 has no school -- I figure I'll just cover the bases with them and try to sneak in sleep when I'm able.

Wow.

Another snow day for B1 tomorrow, apparently. He's thrilled!

Blizzard of '11

Thundersnow

Well, looks like the thundersnow blizzard came and went. Something like 15 hours of nonstop howling winds, thunder, lightning, snow -- although the accumulation looked like it wasn't anywhere near the two feet they were predicting. Maybe six inches? Maybe seven and three quarters? I haven't gone out there to check for sure. But that crazy, endless wind finally stopped. That was really something. The city is pretty quiet today, except for the periodic wind howls.

Looks like the 'burbs got hammered.

The forecast calls for 2 to 5 inches more this morning, with high winds continuing into the afternoon, at times gusting to 40 mph. Total accumulations will be in the 12- to 18-inch range over north central Illinois and the 15- to 24-inch range in the Chicago area, the weather service said.

State police said all other Chicago area expressways were "impassable" and that ramps had three- to four-foot-high drifts.

Okay, so I guess the big snowfalls did hit the city, after all. I had thought the 'burbs got it worse, but apparently the whole city got nailed.

Apricot

Mmmm. I love fresh apricots.