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  • A Rant By…Not Against…Comic Sans

    I just had to take a moment and share with you all an amazing little monologue published by McSweeney’s called I’m Comic Sans, Asshole (Click the red title to read the monologue). After taking a few publishing classes, I found that I am a moderate typographile, but nowhere near the die-hard typographist that some people are. And there are some unfortunate fonts that bear the brunt of their wrath–Comic Sans and Papyrus being two prime examples.

    And yes, some of these fonts are over-used, or unimaginative. I get that. But why do people get so upset at these poor fonts? They have served us well over the years, particularly on school reports. I have a roommate that gets irrationally irate whenever he see Papyrus, so I tend to drop it in front of him whenever I can.

    But then there are fonts, like Helvetica, that are lauded beyond all fonts. In fact, they have whole snooze-inducing documentaries about them!

    But these lauded, stripped down fonts are boring. Yes, it’s fantastically useful and readable for signs and menues and all of that, but when you want to give your project some oomf, and are completely font illiterate, Comic Sans and Papyrus are not criminal offenses.

    Basically, I think while you are free to love whatever fonts you love, and dislike whatever fonts you dislike, just remember that I am going to laugh my ass off whenever you get your panties in a twist over a font that is basically indistinguishable from others. And I will do my best to put it in front of you whenever I can.

    But, if you’re tired of the basic fonts on your machine, check out a site like Dafont for some free alternative fonts. Of course, they may not be quite as refined as the over-used fonts on your machine (Here’s looking at you, Times New Roman), but they can be fun from a design point of view.

  • Writing Prompt #12

    As usual, let me remind you that you can share your responses to the prompt either in the comments on this post, or in the comments on my response. If your response to the prompt is too long, let me know in the comments and we’ll get it posted as a regular post!
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    Genius. It’s a funny word. We attach such importance and stigma to the concept. But here’s the question. Would you rather be a genius, or be the person who birthed/supported/trained/discovered a genius? Give us characters on all sides of the equation because without their support network, geniuses would never be able to do all that they do to advance our society. So…genius or genius’s sidekick?

    Picture of Albert Einstein

  • I See No Cat, I See No Cradle

    So, I guess I was on a bit of a surrealist bent this past week because after Saunders I picked up Vonnegut. And that man is just plain weird sometimes. I’d only ever read Slaughterhouse 5 before, but I’d always heard that Cat’s Cradle was one of his best. So I ventured into the world of Ice-Nine and was properly unsettled.

    In Cat’s Cradle, we follow the an author on his quest to write a biography of Felix Hoenikker, a (fake) father to the atomic bomb. He’s trying to get the story of the man, not the bomb-maker, and has such contacted his children in an effort to hear their stories. Through all of this he (spoilers!) ends up on a tiny tropical island, is named president, and–through a series of unfortunate accidents–manages to freeze all the water on the surface of the planet with a polymorph crystal called Ice-Nine.

    This novel is presented in classic Vonnegut form, with distinct small sections working in concert with each other. Perhaps a lot more small sections (90 some to less than 200 pages) than usual, but still broken up so the stream of consciousness-ness of the novel doesn’t become overwhelming.

    There were two aspects of the book though that I found quite interesting and engaging. The first of which is the reason it has the title of Cat’s Cradle. Hoenikker was said to have been playing with a cat’s cradle when the bomb went off, and there are several references to the fact that the game looks nothing like a cat and nothing like a cradle. I think of it as applied to things like Separation of Church and State. I see no cat, I see no cradle, meaning that the separation is a joke and there really is no such thing.

    A step in the string game called cat's cradleThe other concept of interest in this novel is the fake religion, Bokononism. Bokononism is an admittedly fake religion developed by one of the patriarchs of the island to provide their starving and depressed people with a constant struggle between good (the religion) with bad (the government). Through it, however, we are given an interesting look at some theories on the interconnectedness of the universe, and constructs such as karasses which, in themselves, resemble enormous Cat’s Cradle type connections between groups of people. Now, here’s the question, how many hipsters claim to be Bokononists? How many people have decided that this interconnected theory of religion is their thing and seriously adopted it? I know there’s got to at last be a few…

    The last concept in the book that actually had to go do a little research on was the Ice-Nine polymorph crystal. I was a little bit freaked out by it and had to reassure myself that nothing of the kind exists. And while nothing of the potency of Vonnegut’s Ice-Nine exists, there are such things as polymorph crystals. No, we can’t freeze over the entire world unless we significantly changed the pressure and temperature of said world, but we can force crystals to form differently during manufacturing and lab work with the introduction of a differently formed seed crystal. So…less freaked out by the possibility of freezing over the earth by accident, and more intrigued by an aspect of physics I was unaware of. It really is too cool.

    If you’re already a fan of Vonnegut, I say pick this one up, it’s worth a read. And if you’ve never read Vonnegut and are not used to his style, you may be better off starting with a different one, as I feel this one requires a bit of experience with him before jumping in feet first. But it is quite an excellent short read.

     
    Cover of Cat's Cradle
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  • Persuade Me

    So, I decided I was in a surrealist mood and picked up George Saunders’ collection In Persuasion Nation. Needless to say, it was more than a bit odd. For those of you who are unfamiliar with his work, it frequently involves macabre images including zombie grandmothers, ghosts who die over and over, monsters you’re not quite sure are real and disoriented humanity. It’s the kind of work that makes you laugh and then go, “Oh, that’s a little too close for comfort.”

    This book was an interesting collection of shorts ranging in topic from a grandfather trying to foster his gay grandson’s love of the theater to the lives of the characters in commercials. And the common theme running throughout is a biting commentary on commercialism, and in particular the advertising side of our society.

    Arranged in four sections, each prefaced with a thought-provoking quote, this book really made you stop and think about certain subjects, like trendsetters. Who do we look to for the trends in our lives? What if we took in one step further and had designated trendsetters with collectable trading cards and everything? What kind of life would they have?

    Or, what if the characters in our commercials had to do the same thing over and over all day long, trapped in their little violent world? That was what the title piece was all about. It followed some of the characters that tried to rise above the pat and painful roles they had been given.  Again, it made you laugh and wince all at once.

    My favorite stories in this collection were “My Flamboyant Grandson”, “The Red Bow”, “Brad Carrigan, American”, and “Bohemians.” The first was the story about the grandson who wanted to go into theater. His grandfather just wants to take his son to a show so he can see what it’s all about and finds himself in trouble with the regulatory agency who controls how much advertising you see in a day because he inadvertently disabled their tracking system while in the city.

    “The Red Bow” was an odd story about some sort of infection that was traveling among the pets of a particular town that caused them to turn against humans, and ended up killing a little girl. The girl’s family rallied around the image of her red hair bow, grossly enlarged and distorted, in order to get the town to help them kill of all of the animals.

    “Brad Carrigan, American” was a bit harder to figure out what was going on, maybe because Brad himself seemed uncertain and lost as to what his role had become. He seemed to be a character on a reality TV show that was changing and becoming more and more shallow and commercial until he’s kicked off because he can’t play along any more.

    And then “Bohemians” was a wonderful little vignette about two old women who lived in this town and the children’s perception of them based around what they’d been told about each of them respectively. I think this one may have been my favorite for the simple fact that it seemed to be the least gruesome tale of the collection.

    And, as with all of his collections, there was on story I just didn’t quite get: “93990.” This seemed to be a dispassionate lab report on the toxicity test of a new drug done in chimps. All of them died quite horribly except for one, who, despite the fact that he had been given the highest doses, just didn’t seem to have the same negative effect that the other chimps experienced. I kind of secretly wanted some sort of explosion of intelligence from the creature or something, but the story just seemed to end and leave you at the same place you started. I just didn’t really have anything to take away from that one other than a shrug.

    Overall, if you’re looking for an excellent and slightly gruesome satire of our advertising and commercial culture, this is an excellent read, as always. Saunders’ mastery of images and language immerses you entirely in his stories and leaves you feeling unsettled, as they rightly should.

    Cover of In Persuasion Nation

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  • Noisy Neighbors Flash

    I figured I had to get Valentine’s Day in here as well somehow…
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    Gregory woke up to the sounds of raucous sex echoing down the exhaust shaft outside his window. It wasn’t the first time, either. People seemed to forget that when your window was open to the shaft, everybody in the apartments above and below you could hear everything that was said, or moaned. This was the third time he’s heard this particular chorus of voices from above him at 2 in the morning, so this time, he thought he’d do something about it.

    Throwing up the screen and sticking his head into the shaft, he hollered up, “Hey, can I join in?”

    The voice stopped abruptly and the man shouted down–“Anytime you want, asshole!” And then they picked back right where they had left off, this time with some accompanying thumps on the floor/ceiling above him. It almost wouldn’t be so bad if they at least varied their routine. It seemed to be the same thing every time, and the girl only had the same stock phrases. “Oh, yeah, that’s right, right there, right there!” It was going to drive him mad. While the noises richoceted out into the night, Gregory plotted, trying to figure out the best way to get back at this noisy neighbor of his. He didn’t so much care that the guy felt like bragging that he was getting some, it was just really starting to impact his sleep schedule.

    The next night, around 4 am, after his neighbors had stopped their monotonous moaning and thumping, Gregory turned on his cable, navigated his way to the porn channels (which, of course, he’d never been to before), picked one titled “Magnificent Moaners” and turned the volume up as high as it could go. Before long, he could hear down the vent. “Christ man, don’t tear her apart! Save some for me!”

    Pausing the video, he hollered back, “As if you’d have the balls!” After restarting the video, he grabbed a broom and proceeded to slam the ceiling. Once the video ended, he finally collapsed into bed, hoping redbulls would get him through work and to a peaceful night tomorrow.

    But the next night, his neighbor was at it again, it almost sounded like he was slamming a piece of furniture up and down on the floor, and so Gregory chimed in, competing with the noise from above until the Moaners video ended. And the next night, and the next. He was starting to put cracks in the plaster of his ceiling, but he didn’t really care. He was determined to show this jackass the error of his ways.

    The next night was Valentine’s Day, and in honor of this commercial occasion that made single women depressed and single men drunk, the pay-per-view porn had added a new channel titled “Valentine Screamers.” And when his neighbor started up, Gregory turned on the show and started slamming his broom into the ceiling. About ten minutes into the program, dust started to rain down on him and Gregory looked up just in time to watch his ceiling cave in and a small man holding a dining room chair crash through and land on his couch.

    A TV teetered on the edge of the hole, finally falling through and landing just in front of his own, a woman’s naked ass showing briefly before it shorted out and started to smoke.

    “Valentine Screamers” was still playing loudly as Gregory cleared the dust out of his lungs and made his way over to the gentleman who had just fallen through into his apartment.

    “Truce?” Gregory stuck out his hand.

    The man rested his forehead on the back of the chair, and started laughing. He stood and grabbed Gregory’s hand, shaking it once, quite briefly. “Truce.”

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  • Writing Prompt #11

    Before I get to the prompt for this week, let me remind you that you can share your responses to the prompt either in the comments on this post, or in the comments on my response. If your response to the prompt is too long, let me know in the comments and we’ll get it posted as a regular post!
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    A rather fun scenario to work with is warring neighbors. Maybe it’s the next apartment down, or the next dorm room down, or your sister in the next room. Whenever people live in close proximity to one another, friction can mount and war can begin.

    Pick a scenario where a character and their neighbors are getting into it over something that may at first seem trivial, but escalates. Use this exercise as a way to build solid character progression and make sure that each escalation is, while unexpected and unique, not out of character.

  • Dragon Tattoo Book vs. Movie vs. Movie

    A phenomenon swept the nation a while ago–a fascination with the works of Stieg Larsson in the form of a spunky young woman named Elsbeth and Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist and researcher. Now, I avoided them for a long time because they just didn’t sound like my cup of tea. I finally gave in and read the first two pretty much only for market research (and only because someone lent them to me in paperback and I had a holiday weekend with nothing better to do).

    While the plot itself is interesting and engaging, the book is a soap opera with a lot of extraneous details and characters that Larsson could very well do away with and halve the length of the book to no ill effect. But his characters are well rounded and engaging and the plot well structured. So, all in all, and enjoyable diversion but not enough so for me to actually track down the third book.

    And then something interesting happened. Because it was a book published originally in Sweden, they actually got first crack at a movie adaptation. Once it had migrated over here and I could get a copy that had been dubbed (Netflix instant play totally failed me on that end), I happily sat down to watch. Of course, it had been a while since I had read the books and so I had forgotten just how violent and disturbing certain rape scenes were.

    *SPOILERS AFTER HERE*

    I found it very interesting how the adaptation handled these and other aspects of the novel. Most of it was verbatim, with a lot of the extraneous details gone because they just weren’t necessary in the first place, but the heterosexual rape scenes were violent. And I’m not talking a little violent, I’m talking “Oh, god, I think I’m going to have to skip this scene” violent. I’m not THAT squeamish, unless there’s a lot of viscera flying around, so this is unusual for me. A male roommate of mine who had sat down to watch promptly bailed and never came back. And the second one was no better. They were true to the book, I was just unprepared for them to not pull any punches and just go for it in those scenes.

    But, at the climax of the movie, Mikael ends up in the dungeon of the bad guy and the book becomes very homoerotic, with overtones of rape. Mikael is strung up, in his birthday suit, while the baddie tries to decide what to do with him because he’s “never had a man down here before.” But in the Swedish movie, every last homoerotic overtones were completely gone. Just *pft* gone. My brain immediately started saying, “So, it’s okay to show a woman get horribly raped, and then her getting her brutal revenge, but you can’t even show the suggestion of man on man rape? Interesting.” I’m not sure if it’s a cultural thing, or what, but it just struck me as odd that it was okay when it was heterosexual, but not homosexual.

    And then the movie made another change that I just plain didn’t like. In the book, Lisbeth chases the bad guy out, he gets in his car and speeds away and she gets on her bike. As the high-speed chase commences, they zig zag along until the baddie commits suicide by ramming a truck head on. Dead bad guy. In the Swedish film, he accidentally runs off the road, she climbs down the embankment, and he begs her to help him out of the mangled car. Instead, she very calmly lights up the car and walk away.

    Now, this changes her personality and character development quite a bit. Yes, she has lit a person on fire before (with very good reason) but that is not her now. And yet, the movie makes the very deliberate move to have her kill the bad guy. While it sets up a nice little segue to the next story (titled The Girl Who Played With Fire) I think it took away some wonderful nuances to her character. It made her a bit too hard edged.

    And now, a few years later, Hollywood just HAD to take a go at the film.

    Now, I was very interested to see how the American version decided to handle the scenes that were changed for the Swedish film. They left out even more of the details of the novel (this time somewhat detrimentally. If you hadn’t read the book, there was no way you’d understand some of it.) But I was more interested in how it handled the rape scenes and the climax.

    First, the heterosexual rape scenes  were just as graphic and disturbing as in the Swedish film. I almost thought for a moment that they might tone them down due to a cinematographic technique used but no…no.

    But when you got to the climax in the dungeon, it struck some sort of balance between the book and the Swedish film. That really disturbing line about having a man in the dungeon is definitely there, and the baddie partially undress Mikael, but it’s not as complete a humiliation as there is in the book. Which I for one was kind of happy about as I really wasn’t up for seeing Daniel Craig’s junk flapping in the wind, but I kind of wish they had toned down the heterosexual rape scenes as well. But at least they didn’t skip over the homoerotic nature of that scene altogether.

    And the death of our baddie was again a sort of middle ground. The man does not commit deliberate suicide, but nor does Lisbeth kill him. After he loses control and crashes, Lisbeth is completely intent on going up to the car and shooting him, but the car explodes before she can get there. I can do without the suicide, I was just happy that they didn’t pollute Lisbeth’s character with a deliberate murder. I do really like that they made her capable of it, but she doesn’t actually follow through on it.

    Now, what could these differences tell us? Is it simply a matter of cultural differences? I wouldn’t think so, because the book sold incredibly well in both Sweden and the U.S. and that dungeon scene is very sexually charged. Is it just more acceptable to show on screen here than there? Or was it simply a matter of the person who did the adaptation?

    I think the more important change was in Lisbeth’s characterization in the crash scene. Regardless of whether the guy dies by suicide or not, I think it’s vitally important to stay true to Lisbeth’s character that she NOT kill him. Ever other time she has been wronged in the book, she’s taken a rather harsh revenge, but she’s left them alive. And for her to make the change and deliberately kill this man was just too large a leap for the character.

    Anyway, those are my thoughts, feel free to leave yours below as to why you think the differences exist from book to movie to movie…

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  • Storytelling

    So, when my mother (who is a professional storyteller, for those of you who didn’t know already) moved to Boston, she went out to find a guild/meeting/workshop of like-minded people. One of the groups she found and liked was Story Space, a group of storytellers that host an open mike and featured teller every Tuesday night. And they do mean every Tuesday. My mother had been asking me if I would like to come with her for a while now, seeing as how I’m a writer and do enjoy myself a good storyteller, and I had kept putting her off because I just didn’t know how I was going to fit another thing into my schedule.

    But last night was their 20th Anniversary Concert. Mom promised that all the tellers would be good (they were) and that she would cover my ticket. How could I say no? That’s how I found myself in a church in Harvard with a very eclectic mix of people (a good assortment of young ones, I was happy to note) and some quite good storytellers.

    I could bore you with details about all the stories told, but it really wouldn’t be doing them justice. They are meant to be told aloud, and trying to parse them down to the page would demolish them. So for the content of the stories, suffice it to say they seemed to only take up an hour and a half instead of the three we were actually sitting there, which can only be a good sign. As for the ‘tellers who were present, my personal favorites were Kevin Brooks, Mike Cohen, Michael Anderson, and Jay O’Callahan. Especially Jay. His excerpted scenes from “Main Street, Jonesborough” were so incredibly powerful.

    But the main reason I’m writing on this event is because of the man who was absent. Brother Blue is the man who founded the group in 1992 and passed away two years ago. The group is going strong, mainly because the quirky traditions and love of story that he instilled in them. A lot of the things that were said this evening resonated particularly strong, especially as I am starting to move into hard-core world building for my next novel which will deal quite heavily with storytellers and the imagination.

    It appears he had a whole philosophy equating stories with religion, how stories are the language of prayer, and every time you tell a story you should imagine yourself telling it to God. Considering the track of my next novel, I have decided that I must delve more into the life and performance of a man who made stories his religion. It probably won’t come as a shock that he went to graduate school for religion and theater, and carried a doctorate from Yale.

    So, I have decided that I need to learn more about this man who passed before I could get to know him. Thankfully, his legacy lives on in an incredible community of ‘tellers.

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  • Party Flash

    Everything was opposite of her wedding. Black fondant on the cake with white swirls, sweeping black lace dress, dried flower bunches strewn throughout the room and her best friends all in garishly colored clubbing dresses. She was particularly proud of the cake-toppers she had made: hand-painted porcelain figurines of herself and Jim, with her figure pushing him off the edge of the three-tiered confection.

    Everybody seemed to be having a wonderful time, herself included. It was common knowledge that he wasn’t a good husband. A fantastic lay, that was certain, but worthless as a business man and partner and he liked sharing his bedroom prowess with too many women. Thus, the divorce party.

    Kathleen staggered up to her, martini in hand. “Are you guys exchanging anti-vows? I hear that’s super popular now.”

    “Hell no, I’m not exchanging any more promises with that jackass. With his track-record, he’s liable to just break those as well and when I actually want him to leave me alone…”

    “Fair enough!” She drained her glass. “Love the cake, can we cut it now?”

    “Sure, I think it’s been admired long enough.” She swept her train over her arm and made her way to the food table.

    “Your attention, your attention please!” The crowd quieted down and the DJ turned down the music, currently “Get Your Hands Off My Woman” by The Darkness. She had specified a play list as confrontational as possible. “As you all may know, today is the day when I am officially divorced from Jim.” As the crowd roared, she tipped his figurine entirely off the cake and watched with satisfaction as his horror stricken face shattered on her hardwood floor.

    She plunged her hand into the side of the cake and pulled out a handful, holding it up like a trophy. “So lets indulge a little!” The cheered and desceneded on the cake, everyone reaching in to grab a bit. The new divorcee bent down to pick up the broken figuring of her ex-husband and worked her way out of the crowd, everyone congratulating her as she passed.

    She finally found herself at the edge of the room, and slipped behind the decorative screen as her friends fought for a bite of the cake. Charlene was trying to maintain some sort of order until Kathleen shoved a handful in her face and it was a true free-for-all after that.

    Alone for the moment, she gently arranged the figure of Jim on the windowsill facing the next apartment building, using the figurine of herself to prop him up. She allowed herself a single tear before brushing the crumbs off her face, straightening her bodice and rejoining the party.

     

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  • Writing Prompt #10

    Before I get to the prompt for this week, let me remind you that you can share your responses to the prompt either in the comments on this post, or in the comments on my response. If your response to the prompt is too long, let me know in the comments and we’ll get it posted as a regular post!
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    First of all, GO PATS! Now that that is out of the way, here’s your prompt:

    Parties are a standard scenic device in writing. They can bring characters together, drive them apart, or set them at each other’s throats. Your characters find themselves at some party (birthday, wedding, divorce, superbowl, halloween) and something interesting happens. Remember to use action as well as dialog and make it unpredictable! (But of course, still believable…)