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Every now and then I find myself bothered by the fact that I can’t connect with individuals from among the vast sea of humanity. I’m not talking about a particular kind of connection, rather about anything beyond the most fleeting and superficial minute or two of small talk in passing. My lack of common ground with almost everyone I meet forms the basis of the problem, undoubtedly. Allow me to collate, if not elucidate, via this incomplete yet extensive list:

I am not (in no particular order) a drinker, smoker, taker of drugs, religious believer, fan of sitcoms or reality television or the evening news or sports, dedicated follower of fashion, fitness nut, vegetarian, vegan, organic foodie, artist, musician, home owner, licensed driver, owner of a vehicle, golfer, tattooed person, early adopter, member of a political party, activist, punk, rocker, goth, businessman, hippie, gun enthusiast, iPod owner, hacker, student, teacher, scholar, devotee of the classics in literature or music or film, indie snob, dom, sub, fetishist, or financial investor.

That’s not to say I have anything against most of those categories (with some notable exceptions), merely that these are things I simply cannot relate to. Those people and I have nothing to talk about.

Let’s be clear: I am some pretty damned cool things. I’m a father, for instance, which is among the best things in my life. I’m a boyfriend twice over, and I’d have to be a lunatic to gripe about that. I’m a skeptical free-thinking computer-techie grammar-geek animation-fan dilettante, and I like it that way. The problem lies in the fact that the masses see me as boring… and more often than not, the feeling is mutual.

So be it, I suppose.

Two unusual things happened this morning.

I stopped down, after I caught up on my forum reading, to make some long-awaited changes to AEIOU. Scheduling isn’t my strong suit so things tend to get done when I happen to have a bit of free time and I actually remember things need doing.

I remembered, upon getting into the shower, that this isn’t a workday and I don’t need to rush through things quite so much. I forget that, most weekend mornings, and just run on autopilot. Instead, this morning’s shower took as long as I felt like taking. I feel not only clean but also relaxed and rejuvenated. What a change of pace!

And that’s enough about me being naked for one journal post, isn’t it?

There’s a nervous, frantic quality to most of what I do. Already a naturally high-strung individual, in the last couple of years I’ve become too focused on either The Task At Hand (winding up) or The Fun I Can Have (winding down). In between those extremes is where we find the incidental but important tasks, and if we don’t remind ourselves to slow down a bit then we’ll miss some of the good stuff entirely.

I used to be the guy with the power of perspective. Now that I’m finally shaking off my years-long depression, it’s high time I regained that power. Also? I need to slow down more often. Not to sniff the roses, really. (My sense of smell verges on nonexistent.) Just to give myself permission to “waste time” taking care of myself and the incidentals that often fall through the cracks of a normal day…

A normal life, even a moderately decent life such as I’m enjoying lately, isn’t always the sort of thing you write about much.

I just wanted you to know that I’m still here; life is treating me fairly well, all things considered. I just haven’t had much to say. Nor have I had much in the way of free time during which to assemble coherent material. This is an improvement, mind you, over the last couple of years during which I had plenty to say but no energy or willpower to put words on the screen.

Same results, different causes. I find this amusing.

This one’s going to run a bit long, I’m afraid. Apparently 2008 is my Year Of The Teal Deer…

For as long as I can remember I have loved the fantastical. The stories I seek and enjoy tend to involve things that are outside the dry, sane, normal world we inhabit. There are limits, of course. I watched “Mirrormask” a while back, and it was just a bit over the top for me. This gives you an idea about my tame boundaries. Or perhaps it’s better to say that I prefer a fantasy well-grounded in solid characterization and sense-of-place and at least a moderately sensible storyline.

Perhaps I’m introducing my topic by way of a tangent. I’m allowed to do that, dammit.

I’m a visually-oriented person when it comes to my entertainment. Listening to music is often just a conduit for my imagination to concoct wild stories with vivid imagery. Reading a story, of course, conjures similar pictures in the mind. So it’s no surprise that I like a good movie or television show, one with good characters and an interesting story and, of course, some element of the fantastic. Now, it’s certainly possible to make such a presentation with live actors and physical sets. They often fall apart, however, when it comes time to introduce the “out there” elements via props or computer-generated graphics or what-have-you. There’s a seam where the people and props and physical sets end and the effects and matte paintings and other glued-on-bits begins. Seeing the boundary between reality and make-believe can take a person right out of the experience.

One way around this problem is to make the entire presentation out of squiggly lines and broad swaths of color. You turn to animation. Cartoons. Sequential-art motion pictures.

Okay, now you’ve leveled the playing field. The people look just as made-up as the magic, or the alien technology, or whatever. There is no more seam to worry about. You can go wild with incredible feats of strength, bizarre locations, amazing powers, and all of that fun stuff without bumping up against budgetary concerns (relatively speaking, animation budgets still exist and must be adhered to but they aren’t as wild as something like James Cameron’s “Titanic“) or further crimes against the viewer’s suspension of disbelief. Let’s face it, you have to suspend pretty damned hard to get into an animated story to begin with.

The downside? Fake people and fake places. It’s harder to connect with the characters when they’re obviously not really people. That doesn’t stop us from connecting with characters in a book, so it isn’t really much of a stretch when you think about it. There are some upsides, such as being able to exaggerate features and physical reactions for comedic effect. Also, you only have to worry about paying A-list acting talent the going rate for voice work, and there’s rarely a compelling reason to do so in the first place. You’re not paying them to look recognizable, after all, so what do you need ‘em for? In fact, giving a character a too-recognizable voice can break the immersion. Irony, that.

Let’s get down to cases, though. It’s one thing to ramble aimlessly about what’s good and what’s bad about a given storytelling medium, but I should at least try to back all this silly verbage up with some examples.

Take “Avatar: The Last Airbender” for instance. (You thought I was going to go straight for the anime, didn’t you? Hah!) It’s a touching, imaginative, noble and occasionally hilarious adventure story about a boy who can fly, control water, make huge boulders jump, and shoot fire out of his hands and feet. (I know I’m vastly oversimplifying, fellow fans. Bear with me.) Go ahead and tell me how one could reasonably expect to tell an epic story about this kid in a live-action medium without spending billions of dollars in special effects. Yes, I’ve heard about M. Night “I See Dead People” Shyamalan and his impending film project. I also have no idea how he’s going to make it not suck. I wasn’t tossing around the word “epic” for fun, after all. We’re talking about a story that is taking 60 23-minute segments to complete over the course of three years. There’s some filler material, sure, but not as much as one would think. (Keep in mind the difference between “pausing between heavily dramatic or busy segments for the sake of story flow” and “pointless filler to drag things out as long as possible”.) To make a film, huge chunks of the plot will be excised, as will many of the memorable characters and locations. You couldn’t do it on television without an insane effects budget… which means you couldn’t do it without getting canceled partway through the story. I hate when that happens, don’t you? This is less often a problem in animation, since the budget and the broadcast network buy-in usually happens up front, before a single episode airs.

Alchemy. It’s all fun and games until someone creates an abomination and loses a limb. Over the course of 52 televised episodes and a follow-up feature film, “Fullmetal Alchemist” tells the story of the Elric brothers who tried to bring their mother back to life, against the fundamental dictates of alchemical science (human transmutation is strictly forbidden). The first brother is missing two limbs, one spent in the effort to resurrect Mom and the other sacrificed to save his little brother’s soul. His replacement limbs are basically cybernetic, in a steampunk/magical sort of way. The other brother’s soul inhabits an otherwise-empty suit of armor. They start out with a simple goal: To regain their bodies. Along the way, as in any good epic quest story, they learn that what they seek is both more complicated and more expensive than they originally guessed. Let’s not forget the rogue’s gallery of exotic magical villains, and the constant turning of stuff into other stuff just by drawing a magic circle and pouring some energy in. A live-action rendition of such a story may, in fact, be an impossibility. That’s a damned shame, ’cause it’s one hell of a story on which I’d hate to have missed out. It’s true that FMA started out as a manga (comic book, of sorts) but I’ve discovered a weakness within myself, namely that I find action sequences in still-image form to be both hard to follow and generally unsatisfying. If I can’t see the flow of things, the interplay of motion and countermotion, the whole thing falls apart. Also, I like hearing the voices. (It’s better than having every character sound like my own internal monologue.) So I’ll always be more a fan of the anime than of the manga… even though I’ve heard that the manga goes into some different and rather interesting directions. I should look into that some day, indeed.

I’ll give you one more example before I go. One film, more than any other, cemented in my mind the fact that animation is an entertainment field that I would remain loyal to for life. In retrospect it’s amusing that I love this movie so much since my initial experiences of it involved a horribly hacked-up version with an uneven English voice dub track. I’m talking, of course, about “Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind“. You can probably also blame this movie for my years of heroine addiction, come to think on it. Take an outspoken warrior princess, have her take the side of nature against the war machines of “progress,” throw in a swarm of gigantic bugs and some aerial combat and oh yeah a massive vaguely-humanoid war robot with the death laser from hell spouting from its maw, and you have a recipe for something entirely relevant to my interests. Well, okay, I don’t like bugs. That’s another reason why Nausicaa works in animated form rather than something made with live-action and props and CGI: I don’t want to look at swarms of realistic-looking bugs! I want my bugs nice and cartoony, damn it all. (I watched “Arachnophobia” once. Once.)

At any rate, I hope I’ve enlightened you all somewhat on what makes animated material so appealing to this little grey duck. Thank you, and good day.

Here’s an example of the way my mind works: A sign on the MAX train informed me, or so I briefly thought, that “Twins are equipped with 2-way radios.”

Well, no, they’re not. But trains are. Until my brain does a parity check on textual input, I often receive first impressions that are wildly off kilter. The amusing instances tend to get shared with whomever is handy. And by “amusing” I usually mean “naughty.” So it’s best not to inquire as to with what else I may have thought twins are equipped.

But anyway.

I’m scarfing down some comfort food, a steak burrito from Chipotle, after a long day at the office. And that’s all I can say about that. So let’s talk about the commute. On the way to work I listened to most of Garbage’s “Version 2.0,” while the soundtrack for the homeward trek consisted of most of Depeche Mode’s “Playing The Angel.” (Most of, I say, because I didn’t start listening soon enough to actually finish either album before disembarking the train.) Both of these albums aren’t quite as good as I’d hoped, though Garbage comes out well ahead on stars.

Stars, you ask? My new toy, the Insignia Pilot, comes with a handy “rating wheel” with which I can assign those ubiquitous one-to-five-stars ratings to the currently playing track. (This is all Apple’s fault. Damn you, iTunes! Now Winamp has ‘em, as does Amarok, as does Foobar2000, and so on, and so on. Then again, I’m making use of them to a limited extent, so I suppose all is forgiven.) As I listen, and if I have the player in my hand, I can simply jog the wheel one way or the other as my impression of the song changes. My rating system goes something like this:

1. Please don’t play this song ever again. I hate mopping up the blood coming out of my ears.
2. This is not a song I would go out of my way to listen to. I might even go out of my way to avoid doing so.
3. Not great, not bad, this song is probably best used as background music.
4. Oooh, I like this song! I’ll probably load it into a playlist at home when I’m enjoying a “tuning out” session.
5. This song rocks my socks, and I don’t care what anybody else thinks of it. My love is pure and knows no bounds.

“Playing The Angel” sports a distressing number of one-star tracks. I didn’t realize it was quite that bad when I ran my original “background music” tests last year. Much of the album’s middle portion consists of what I can best describe as stoner-goth make-out music. Ugh. Apparently I need to get Dave Gahan’s “Hourglass” loaded onto the Pilot for comparison. I like the first three tracks well enough but I haven’t given the new album a full, in-depth session.

It’s already after 8pm, which only surprises me until I remember that I didn’t get home until almost 7:30. I think now’s a good time to save and publish this rambling bit of lunacy so I can watch some nice, wholesome Japanese cartoons…

Perhaps I ought to wait until the last day of the year to bash out some thoughts about the dozen months gone by, but knowing how well I’ve stuck to my writing plan lately I’d probably end up writing this in mid-January… or not at all, most likely. (Let’s not dwell upon how many things I meant to write about but never did, and now can’t because I’ve lost too many of the details. Ugh.)

Two thousand seven, the year that was… after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Just because I have a place to write doesn’t mean that I have anything to say.

I wonder how much my lack of writing output is because my life isn’t terribly interesting. Not that it ever was, I suppose. Maybe I’ve just lost my enthusiasm for talking about myself. What’s to say? “More of the same, yep! Some parts of my life are good, some parts are bad, and I’m tired a lot!” I don’t want to be the broken record guy, you know?

I want to change things up, but the pressures of my life keep squeezing me into the same routine whether I like it or not. I’m not even getting the basics done, most of the time. (Let’s not talk about how long it’s been since I last shopped for groceries.) The good parts of my life are good, make no mistake. I’m not complaining about the core parts. My health is as good as ever, there isn’t any relationship drama to speak of, my kids are their usual outstanding selves, nothing has broken or burned lately.

And yet, I’m tired all of the time. I don’t make very good company nowadays because I tend to yawn, fade, or otherwise wind down once the clock ticks past 8pm. To get a “decent night’s sleep” I have to crawl into bed shortly after 9pm, and that’s still no guarantee. Nightmares and insomnia are regular visitors in my psyche.

All of the projects I say that I want to accomplish require me to get home with enough energy to want to do more than curl up and veg out. I’m not sure what I can do about this. One proposed solution is to move closer to my work… which takes me away from nearly everyone I care about, which means I’ll only see them on weekends, which means my weekends will be overbooked, which means I’ll start work Monday feeling like I haven’t rested at all and still won’t have put in nearly enough quality time with my loved ones.

Hmm, I think not.

The other solution is just as plausible: Change jobs. And the less said about that notion the better, here.

So. Much of my life is good, but my ability to enjoy what’s good is hampered by the parts of my life that aren’t so good. Fun, eh?

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

Excuses I have. I’ve been sick for a week and a half, missing two days of work during that time. My job has become more tiring and tedious. My personal life is in a state of flux. I’m broke, in spite of landing a substantial bonus from work last week. (That’s that last of those I’ll be seeing any time soon, too.) The mornings and evenings are darker, in the “sun rises later and sets earlier” sense if not the metaphorical sense, so I’m engaging in my annual battle against the onset of seasonal depression.

I considered joining one of the “national something-or-other month” activities such as NaBloPoMo. (During a particularly manic phase a few days ago I decided that I was going to do BloPoMo with a theme, such as “30 days of musical artists” or “30 days, 30 anime” or some-such.) I even considered WriMo, which I have insisted for years that I’d never do again. I realized, however, that I’d end up even more depressed if I started something like that and then failed to complete it. Given my track record with unfinished projects lately it seemed the better part of valor to forgo that particular form of punishment.

So, this month I’m just going to sit back and participate in my own little event: National Do Whatever Month. You may get a couple of the music mixes I came up with. You may get a rambling about animation from that planned theme. You may get two weeks with no posting whatsoever… yeah, that would be new around here, wouldn’t it? At any rate, I have several unfinished posts that need fleshing out and tidying up, so it’s not like I don’t have anything to say. (Of special note is the upcoming photographic journey through the building of the Very Expensive Media Center Computer.)

If nothing else, I can at least take some comfort in the fact that October is over. Hooray.

I startled myself a few days ago with a simple realization. It’s not one that leaps readily to mind when I look back at my relationship history, considering the years during which I had no idea what I was doing as well as that ugly stretch of time when I wasn’t quite the model of a responsible partner. Perhaps, then, it’s not such a surprise that I didn’t think of this sooner…

I have been in one committed primary romantic relationship or another almost continuously since I was about 19 years old.

Let’s set aside just how committed I was at any given time; I don’t make a big secret of the fact that I didn’t do a very good job of it for the bulk of my marriage, so we don’t need to delve into that here. The important part is that I don’t know what it’s like to be a mature adult and not be in a primary partnership arrangement. Is this normal? Don’t most people go through on-and-off cycles or something like that? Maybe I’m just naïve but it seems like I’ve led a peculiar life in this specific regard.

What does all of this mean, then, given my current situation?

My first thought is that I should spend time being Just Me. Not that I was going to run out and dive straight into another big romantic entanglement anyway, but now I’m certain that taking a bit of a sabbatical before my next one is a Very Good Idea. I’ll grant you that certain aspects of my current life make that plan more palatable than it might be for most other people, but that’s one of the benefits of the path I chose and the person I’ve worked to become over the past half-dozen years or so.

Following up on that thought is that I’ve reinforced my belief that I need to spend some time taking stock of who I am, what I value and where my boundaries are. My relationship style has long relied on being reasonable when I can be; in the future I want to be certain that I don’t cross the line between “reasonable” and “doormat.” (Not, mind you, that I’m saying I’ve been a doormat up to this point. I’m talking about assessing the big picture, not pointing fingers or engaging in self-recrimination.)

On the flipside of that, I also need to get a firm grip on what sets off my anger, what kind of things I should get angry over and which (of course) I shouldn’t. Much of the problems and baggage I contribute to a relationship stem from my temper triggers, and I’d like to repeat as few of those mistakes in the future as possible. (The idea is to avoid repeating old mistakes so you have the time to make all new ones, after all!)

Of course, I also need to make certain that I don’t let inertia rule my future. You can imagine how easy it would be for me to go into full-on hermit mode. I don’t think I need to take after my father in that particular respect, do you? Besides, if I don’t (eventually) get out there and put all of this planning and introspection to good use, what’s the point?

Deep thoughts for a train ride home. I think I’ll do something light and fun when I get home. (Have I mentioned yet that my laptop is awesome, by the way?)

Most of the happiness we enjoy in life comes from wringing the best out of a less-than-ideal situation, because life hands out ideal situations very, very rarely.

If you go through life waiting for ideal situations in order to be happy, then you’re going to spend most of your life very, very unhappy.

Also keep in mind that happiness is an event, not a state of being.

(This has been a public service announcement from, and to, Yours Truly. To anyone else who gains benefit from it: You’re welcome.)