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B1ue

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  1. B1ue

    Harbinger of Doom

    By B1ue,

    I just saw an advertisement for "Captain Dan and his Scurvy Crew," who provide the world with "Authentic Pirate Hip-Hop."
     
     
    I'm still trying to assimilate that one. I'm making an effort to be rational, and not to view it as a sign of a coming apocalypse, but I think it won't hurt to hit a confessional over the next couple days and take communion this weekend.
  2. B1ue

    Ghost Stories

    By B1ue,

    I'm throwing around a couple of different story ideas for this anthology. A couple are more cerebreal interpretations of the word ghost, but the one that has the most traction in my mind features an actual ghost, so I may do that instead. There's just one little stumbling block...which I think just came together in my mind. Well then. Ghost story it is.
     
    To err is human, to forgive divine, but not a particularly interesting story. So Khayyam Barat tells us one about bloody satisfaction instead.
     
    I came across this book while waiting for my oil change yesterday. Now, as a rule, I don't buy hardback books. They're too hard to tote from place to place. I damn near broke that rule when a flipped through this book though, to get a sense of it.
     
    I have few wounds that I can't adequately face, and this book found one.
     
    "We'd all been friends for years, but did any of us ever even like each other?"
     
    That pretty much sums up the last head-scratching neurosis I have remaining form my teenage years in the boonies. Namely, that as a group, my high school friends had almost nothing in common besides our high school. I stood out more than most, but I was far from the only square peg in a round hole.
     
    People give the advice to be memorable, to stand out. Teenagers proudly state "I am an individual!" And I wonder, is that something to be proud of?
     
    Being gay had nothing to do with it really, though that didn't help.
     
    Black rabbit summer is, at its heart, a story about people trapped in a small town. It also features gay sex, and an implied homoerotic infatuation between the (straight) main character and his best friend. The author is also apparently crazy, or at least his characters are, so I may approach this tome with caution when it finally goes to paperback.
     
    Other books about crazy gay teenagers:
    *Clay's Way
    *Mysterious Skin (now a movie!)
    *Dance, Recover, Repeat
  3. B1ue
    Just kidding about the title. Actually, Dan is quite possibly the first person to say something positive about my voice. More often, I get made fun of for it, not least because I have a greater degree of control over it. I can pitch it high falsetto, properly, so even that can be easily heard, or I can pitch it low so that it carries through doors and walls. Usually I mumble, which makes those two tricks all the more startling the first time someone hears them. This last week I've been sick, and its only been today that I didn't sound like a drag queen trying too hard.
     
    Admittedly, the result did sound kind of interesting. I think my gay superior had to change his shorts after talking to me the other day.
     
     
    I'm pretty damn sure I'm skipping the special anthology. I still can't think of what to write, and I think the entries are due very quickly. So, pass. Ghost should be easy enough. I can think of three or four topics off the top of my head. No time to start cracking like now, I suppose.
  4. B1ue

    News from the Front

    By B1ue,

    A conversation I had this morning with my sister stationed in Iraq.
     
    Her: Hey little brother.
    Me: Oh, hey sis! How's it going?
    Her: Good. I got your package.
    (I laugh) Me: Including the birthday card?
    Her: Yes. I laughed. Good timing too, since it arrived today.
    Me: Oh, yeah. Happy birthday. You 40 yet?
    Her: 36.
    Me: Close enough.
    Her: Well, Mom tells me you were moving to Texas.
    Me: Aigh! For crying out loud, I'm not moving to Texas.
    Her: I'm just repeating what I've been told. She said you were looking at schools out there.
    Me: Yeah, two years ago, when I got my degree and suddenly realized I was an adult.
    Her: I thought you went last week.
    Me: I did, but it wasn't to find a grad school. It was for gay sex. (True, as far as it goes).
    Her: You went all the way to Texas for a booty call?
    Me: What can I say? I have simple needs.
    Her: You are as bad as your sister.
    Me: Sisters. You're the one that told me at 13 that Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.
     
    This tour of duty is a lot harder on her than the last was, as bad as the last got towards the end. The birthday card I sent her was a more sentimental one, saying on the front something along the lines of "Happy birthday sister. Though we may not have always gotten along over the years, I've always thought you were pretty special...." Inside the card it said something goopy, but I crossed that out and wrote "Just don't ask what kind of special. Here's a hint, it involves short buses."
     
    On the heels of last week, I picked up the rest of Tanya Huff's "Smoke" trilogy. I like them quite a bit, not least of which because the main character is a 24-year-old gay man with a finely honed sense of the ridiculous. Admittedly, they aren't as funny as her "Keeper" novels, but how can I not like a story with lines such as "Given his adversarial relationship with the police, Tony still wasn't sure why he'd told Jack and his partner Geetha Danvers the truth about what happened in the house....Maybe he'd hoped it keep them from hanging around and scowling suspiciously at all and sundry. It had worked on Constable Danvers, not that she'd been the scowling and suspicious sort to begin with, but it'd done sweet f**K all to get Jack Elson out of his life." Taken as a whole, it brought to mind a distinction between male and female heroes in fantasy works. Properly speaking, the hero's journey ends when he has found his place in the world and earned the recognition of his people. A heroine's journey ends when she's married, or at least coupled. A bit sexist, but generally true, as far as stories go. Since Tony spends part in all three novels playing at various times the damsel in distress, the noble warrior, and the world-wise wizard, it is perhaps unsurprising that Ms. Huff doesn't let the story end until Tony gets both his recognition and his man.
  5. B1ue

    Oy

    By B1ue,

    It's been a month. Over. I completely skipped March. I have been unreasonably busy. I haven't even had time to talk to Mike in about that long, which had been heading towards an every day thing. In summary I:
     
    *Moved.
    *Saw my folks.
    *Worked two jobs to pay for above activities.
    *Slept when and where I could
    I also had to find time to keep up some kind of exercise, lest I *gasp* gain weight. I barely had time to read or write either. It's been unreal. It is little wonder the couple grey hairs I found last fall have returned, with friends.
     
    BUt, hopefully, My life can slow a little. My new apartment is quite a bit less than my last, so perhaps I don't have to work quite so hard. Then again, I do have to put together something for Texas, because damnit, I'm going. Come hell, high water, or tourist season, I WILL be in Texas this June.
     
    I had a very vivid, truly odd dream last week, about a boy of about 16 being repeatedly sexually abused by an adult, a coach I think, who once he had the kid under his thumb forced him to satisfy not just him, but just about everyone on his high school team. Including one freshman boy who convinced himself he was in love with the first boy, however bizarre the circumstances. As I said, it was odd. The gang rape imagery still comes up easily to my mind. Odder still, is that there isn't the slightest fear or arousal, then or now. TheZot (can never remember his real name, Dan maybe?) mentioned on one of his earlier blogs that multiple first person perspective flat don't work. I'm not entirely convinced of this, and may turn this dream into such a story. I need to hammer down the plot, which in the dream was pretty far-fetched, being a dream, and not needing to make sense.
     
    Yes, I just admitted my dreams have plots to them, rather than being a disparate series of images, with no internal logic that isn't serendipitous. I was an English major in college. It happens.
     
    If you have not done so, check out the Spring Anthology. I went for something totally different this time, and will do so again with the follow up for "Escape" (always assuming I finish in time). I won't say sequel, since "The Slaying of Lydia Syanto" is pretty much action/sci-fi, and next time around (tentatively titled "Chiaroscuro") I want to do horror/psychological, but it will have the same main character.
     
    Anyways, keep it real all.
     
    --Gabe
  6. B1ue

    I surprise myself sometimes

    By B1ue,

    I'm being remarkably stupid today. It amazes me how often this happens, actually. I'm comfortably in the high nineties when it comes to measurable intelligence, and I was nearly always in the top third of any class when I was in college (only four exceptions, and in two of them I was near the top when it came to actually understanding the material, despite my laziness when it came to doing the work, which drove my instructors to distraction). So I shouldn't be stupid, or at least not illogical. That said...but that's the end of the story, so I'll begin at the beginning.
     
    My birthday was Monday. 24 years and no deaths! By the way, thanks to all who wished me a happy birthday; it was much appreciated. What, may you ask, did I do to celebrate said birthday? Work, work, and work some more. My sisters swear I'm adopted, since none of them seem to have such a self-abusing work ethic. When I wasn't working, I was sleeping. I'm scheduled to work tomorrow morning, at 5:30, at a job I don't need and on a shift I wasn't required to pick up.
     
    I also haven't' slept since 6pm yesterday. I don't intend to sleep until about 4pm tonight.
     
    So yeah, stupid. But this, I believe, is the only way I'll be in acceptable condition to work tomorrow. Making omelette's is hard on a few eggs, so I guess my sleep schedule, which has been truly out of whack since I switched to nights, is getting the omelet treatment for now.
     
    On the other hand, I stand a good chance at accomplishing all the things I've been putting off until I could get up early enough to accomplish them. Starting right now in fact. So wish me luck!
     
    Edit: Perhaps I can blame this converstaion on lack of sleep.
     
    Random Car guy: "Well, we weren't able to fix your radio. We don't install Sirius radios here, only XM, so none of our guys could work on it. However, we took the satellite radio out of the circuit, and now your FM radio works fine. You can go pick it up now."
     
    Me (after a moment to process this): "You couldn't fix it?"
     
    RCG: "No. I'm afraid you'll have to take it to the dealership you got it installed at, because we can't work on it here. Now, if you'll just sign here..."
     
    Me (cutting him off): So, thanks to you guys and your service, until I get back to Ventura, which depending on traffic is up to a four hour drive away from here one way, I have a pretty piece of plastic that I paid $800 up front and $10 a month since and going forward. Is that what you're telling me?"
     
    RCG: "Well, you could have no radio at all. We could have just left it broken."
     
    Me: "And I suppose I could have taken it to someone competent in the first place. It, after all, took you guys three and half hours to determine you could do damn all, except break it."
     
    RCG: "I think that's going a bit far. You still have a radio. And as for the wait, well, you didn't make an appointment, and there were a few cars ahead of you."
     
    Me: "But I don't have my radio back. And I did make an appointment. I showed up five minutes early for it in fact, and pulled up to the lane marked 'Appointments Only.'"
     
    RCG: "..."
     
    Me: "I take it you didn't check to see if, in fact, I did have an appointment?" (long pause) "Well, I guess I can only be surprised I didn't wind up with my tires replaced or something." (After taking a moment to read the document before me, I sign here he still has his finger pointed. When I look up again, I'm smiling) "But the important thing is that I got a free car wash with my 'service' today. That has to count for something, right? By the way, how much am I being charge for this priveledge you;ve bestowed upon me."
     
    RCG: "No charge. Let me hand your paperwork off, and we can get you out of here."
     
    As he turned to leave, I had one more question.
     
    Me: "One last thing, how long has my car been sitting in the parking lot with the hazard lights blinking away merrily?"
     
    While I'd like to blame this on lack of sleep, I don't think I can. For some reason, I've been dying to lay into someone for days now. Its just his luck he drew the short straw.
     
    Meh, at least I saw "Jumpers" today, and got the details magazine where they make Zac Effron look like straight.
  7. B1ue

    This should be fun

    By B1ue,

    A week or so ago, I was chatting with Mike about how I was a morning person, and quite happy to be one. Aside for a couple years (ages 15-19), I've been getting up earlier than my peers and enjoying that sort of existence. It was really great when I was going to college, and summer mornings it could seem like no one for about a mile was up at 7 am except for me.
     
    And now my work has switched me to a 7pm to 7am schedule, meaning I have now joined the dark side.
     
    Except I haven't, really. I've been trying to stay up later and later each night, and get up closer to noon, but my body wasn't having it. I, barely, managed to push myself so I only woke up at 5am instead of 4am like normal. In about an hour, I start my first twelve hour shift on this schedule. I'm still sick form a week ago, I haven't had a nap, and disaster is just looming.
     
    On the other hand, chances are awfully high I'll sleep straight through tomorrow, which means my second night on this schedule might not be as bad.
     
     
    A while ago, I decided I would not read any YA book that had the word "Confession" in the title, as they tend to drive me batty. They just tend to be so lame and self indulgent that I could no longer stomach them. Well, I've amended that little motto, and have decided that I will merely not buy such books. To that end, I checked out of the library The Noah Confessions. I finally finished it today.
     
    As an arguement against my earlier restrictions, it doesn't really measure up. Don't get me wrong, it is a fine book. A writer's book. By that I mean it is so obviously written by a former English major I want to shake my head at Ms. Hall and say, "There's this thing called subtlety," which is the last thing I can call anyone out on. I don't mind so much that she delibretely tweaks with standard story conventions to create this work. You know, "boy meets girl, boy gets girl, rival goes to prison." I like people who do that, as it makes otherwise trite set-ups a little more interesting. What I find inexcusable is that she calls attention to it in the course of the novel, as sort of a congratulatory pat on the back. I know, "the real world doesn't work like stories do." The author, in making that very point, seems to have forgotten that she was, in fact, writing a story.
     
    When I was in high school, I wrote a story composed entirely of letters. I thought it was terribly clever back then, but I was seventeen at the time, and not particularly well-read at that. Ms. Hall, presumably, knows better. INCORPORATING LETTERS INTO A STORY DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY MAKE INTERESTING OR DIFFERENT. There's an entire genre of fiction for it, for crying out loud. What it does, is make something straightforward into something inapproachable, by putting another viewers eyes between you and the source material (even though the same person writes the reader's and the writer's thoughts). It is when you incorporate that level of disconnect into the plot (which, I will say, Ms. Hall does try to do, but doesn't quite pull off) that you can achieve anything. But that is true of all plot elements.
     
    Okay. Breathing normally now. Which is good, because it is time to earn my paycheck. I have a bottle of vanilla coke and some animal cookies, which saw me through many an allnighter in college. Wish me luck!
  8. B1ue

    Ha! Knew I could do it.

    By B1ue,

    I finished the first draft of my anthology piece, tentatively title "Lovers Really Fell In Love to Stay." I'd been stuck on the same spot for weeks, trying six or seven times but unable to move the plot forward in a satisfactory manner. I finally decided that I couldn't go to Borders until I finished the piece. That was about two horus ago, so clearly this method of self-motivation has a bit of kick to it.
     
    The next step is to finish and edit all of the unreleased Khayyam stories, and one by one put them up on Efiction. That's a fairly ambitious project, so we'll see how long that takes me.
  9. B1ue
    So. Mo. It has taken me this long to remember to bring the notebook up from my car.
     
    Note: This is the very first thing I've written for him. His character is not fixed yet, so some of the jokes may be different from how I sold him a couple weeks ago.
     
    ************
    "List every priority you have, in order, of what you want in a job." It seemed simple enough, just too bad I couldn't list, "hot coworkers" as the primary consideration. I put down "large company" and hoped for the odds.
     
    "Missouri Weeks" was the name on the top of my sheet, though most people called me Mo. Yes, my parents did drugs during the eighties, but my Aunt Michelle says they were weird even before then, so they can
  10. B1ue
    ...are getting out of hand. The Terry Pratchett row has not only spilled onto the next shelf, but that shelf is fighting back. I can't fit anymore there, but I also don't want to break up what organization I've manged to create. I don't want to buy another bookshelf, but I fear it may come to that before too much longer.
     
    I try not to take myself too seriously. I know that I'm basically a twit in the general scheme of things, but I have an Education, a Salaried Position, and an Interest in the Arts, and sometimes those parts of me do more talking and non-thinking than I really want them too. My biggest flaw in this regard is my book collection.
     
    Now, every friend and family member I have is book mad, and has a collection of paperbacks that is probably easier to weigh than to count. I try very hard not to think about how much money I spend at bookstores, as a more exact figure than "lots and lots" will probably depress the greedy bastard that is at the heart of my soul. As a rough estimate I put it at around 10,000 over the last six years, which is just f**king stupid.
     
    Despite the fact that I was an English major in college, bookstores worry the liberal in me. Yes, it can be argued that television stupifies the masses (hell, I'll even agree), but that doesn't change the fact that it is a relatively cheap way of distributing a lot of complex information very quickly to a hell of a lot of people. While for the most part that information tends towards what the lastest Disney Blonde is wearing, that doesn't mean the medium itself is worthless. ON the other hand, books are expensive, and getting more expensive as the years pass. Owning as many books as I do serves no purpose. Oh, it'd be fine if I still intended to devote my time to semi-professional analysis of those books. In fact there is nothing really stopping me from doing exactly that. But since I'm not reading for research, having heaps of paperbacks is pure conspicuous consumption, nothing more. And that bothers me.
     
    Now, this isn't to say having an Education, yadda, yadda, yadda, is a bad thing. It isn't. Nothing can convince me of that, because my parents, teachers, and I made too many sacrifices to get me where I am today for me to now say it wasn't worth it, that it'd be better if I was half-killing myself to survive like my parents had to do at my age. What I am saying is that I'm letting myself act like an idiot, and worse letting myself think I'm superior to others because I have a high enough disposable income to waste on books. It's like being good-looking I suppose. I have never nor will ever really think of myself as good-looking, but I've seen other people let themselves be defined by their looks, let it set them apart from everyone around them. I can't really say that it was a bad thing, and indeed knowing when their physical attractiveness gave them an edge and how to exploit that edge is something only to be admired in my opinion, but still... I've wanted to ask them at times what it felt like, to be treated as a hollow object of only skin and air. I never did ask, because I was afraid they wouldn't understand the question.
     
    I'm afraid of a similar process taking me over. I don't want to be a person that disdains others, that feels superior because I never watch television, like only drones would ever let themselves fall so low. I know that attitude it bullshit, yet I can feel it happening anyways. So I don't know. There has to be a way to act that would satisfy my own tastes and morals, but damn it if a part of me doesn't feel I deserve to feel superior, and I'm afraid pissing that part of my personality off would have long term consequences of its own.
  11. B1ue
    It never fails; I'm always the first person of my acquaintance to catch any free-floating strain of cold or flu virus. In fact, sometimes the first sign I have that the latest virus is loose is that I get sick again. This happens three or four times a year, and this last week. By now I've quit bothering to stop work or chores or anything really. I'd never get anything done if I let a little thing like the flu shut me down. Only once in the last couple years did I actually have to take a break, and it turned out later I'd had Hepatitis A.
     
    The reason I don't kick back is that, while I do get sick with alarming frequency, it is never particularly severe (again, excepting that time in college, and even then it was only bad the one night and next morning). Apparently, my immune system has the same attitude towards work as the rest of my mind: ignore it until this is no longer a possible option, then tackle it all in one go. Most people's seems to practice constant vigilance, but when that one strain slips in the crack, all hell breaks loose. I have asthma. Hell is not allowed to break loose. Heck, sure, but not hell. I don't want to visit that tropical destination anytime soon, and if any part of my body betrays me, it will be my lungs.
     
    In the words of Scott Adams, I had a point when I started all that, but I suspect it was not that compelling. In other news, the story I wrote instead of the anthology piece is now posted in efiction. It's a Harry Potter fanfic, but, hell, I like it. Like Cats and Dogs
  12. B1ue

    Sucessful Failure

    By B1ue,

    I quite thoroughly botched the Khayyam story, which I've tentatively titled "Happily Ever After." Oh well. I will finish it, because I want to see what happens next more than anyone, and I can't find out until I've finished what happens this time. Next time, I'll need to write a more humorous one. I tend to write one funny Khayyam story for every serious one, but so far none of the humorous ones have been published. It's a bit sad, but oh well. "The Road Not Taken" is the next anthology theme, so I'll have that work cut out for me, but it'll be fun.
     
    On the other hand, I did manage to write something just tonight. I'm half-tempted to submit it. It's a Harry Potter fanfic, so I don't think it qualifies for the anthology, but hell. I find this small success at once invigorating and somewhat pathetic. I always do better when I react to someone else's work, but I wish that for once I could have a purely creative idea, not just a creative interpretation. Even the story I'm half-through with for Khayyam is a reaction to Bryan Adam's "Run to You."
  13. B1ue

    A blog about blogs

    By B1ue,

    As I've said, here (I think) and elsewhere, I am a fan of blogs. I don't care so much for the idea of me running one, but where we are anyways. I'm told it is the fate of all English majors, so I don't feel too bad about it. I am a fan of the idea of blogging, and I especially like reading other people's blogs. My favorite sort of blog is a stream of short stories, but just about any blog will do for me, provided it is well written and there is something to interest me. A good deal of the time I spend on the internet, besides trying to untangle a phrase or play video games, is check my list of RSS feeds for updates. The following the blogs I am most happy to see an update on:
     
    1. Tom and Lorenzo. I first happened upon these two through their Project Runway satire blog, which allowed me to appreciate the show in new and better ways. I already like the show, it is one of the few programs I will actually watch, provided I remember that I have cable and what time it appears. This, their second blog, is all about the world from their perspective. Which happens to be a screamingly gay perspective, a label they not just embrace but sell as a product. Currently, my favorite feature is "Musical Mondays," where they post each Monday a "gay" critique of some musical, and how it relates to Mores and views of the movie's time. It is rather interesting. Their take on Cabaret has been one of the best so far, and according to a couple of my friends obsessed with the movie, a pretty neat and thorough analysis of both the ridulousness and seriousness expressed within the film.
     
    2. The Devil Wears Brooks Brothers. Even wittier than the boys above, Sarah, styling herself at times as "The Devil," details her life as a legal assistant and world wide web personality. Mostly, it is about hot guys, stupid people, and bashing her bosses and coworkers (though in a way that makes them laugh, in an "I am a bit ridiculous" sort of way). These are topics I approve of and value, so I looks forward to the weekly updates. She also has the quality I find most attractive in women: a sense of self you could plow a field with. Actually, I find that to be the most attractive part of anyone, but with guys it isn't so difficult to find. I've selected one of her earlier entries to show, because it made me smile.
     
    3. Back of the Cereal Box. Written by a guy I met in college, this was probably the first blog I started reading on a regular basis. It has neither the wit of the Devil or the topical focus of T&L, but I find it has a character all its own which I can enjoy. Actually, I link to him because links to him drive him a little bit crazy, which is fun. If you read even the first page of his near-daily updated chunk of cyber-reality, you'll see that crazy and him are well acquainted, perhaps even best friends. I will say this: his blog provides me with just enough current pop-culture knowledge that I can sometimes understand what the hell my coworkers are babbling about. That he keeps his readers updated on the latest pop culture chronicles is another thing that drives Drew crazy. This is one of his more recent posts, and one that basically states that the act I am performing, linking to him without his knowledge or consent, is an internet faux pas. Hopefully this act of linking to a post that disapproves of links to posts will not rip a whole in the universe.
     
     
    I will try to update this piece of sky once per my week. We'll see how long that lasts me.
     
    On another random tangent before my signature, I got a random string of melody in my mind this afternoon, and started putting words to it. I got through one stanza before I realized I was ripping off Fergie's "Glamorous." As I dislike this song, I was not pleased, though my dislike did soften a bit. But in any case, here is the stanza:
     
    Joe and I were reminiscing
    About the days that we'd be sipping
    Mint ice tea and midnight brandies
    Swinging on my daddy's porch
     
    ~Gabe
  14. B1ue

    Perils of Cooking

    By B1ue,

    Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have been forced to stop eating take-out for lunch and now have to eat my own cooking. As I'm a fairly good cook, this isn't exactly an ordeal, but the clean-up promises to be. You see, I can start cooking just fine, but it is a little difficult to stop once I'm going. This weekend (my job is three days on, three days off, making my weekend a roving holiday of sorts that bears no particular relationship to the weeks of other people) for instance, I decided on a whim to make just about everything I knew how to make, all at once, given the constraints of the ingrediants at hand. For instance, my spaghetti marina was quickly modified to include italian sausage, and I served it over bread instead of pasta. The beef stroganoff was just a mushroom gravy that I later added cream to, and my chicken a la king I had to guess at, since I only made it once out of a recipe book. I ran out of pots, pans, and space on my stove quickly enough, but it wasn't until the first dishes were ready to be packaged up that I realized I didn't have any containers to put them in.
     
    I do things like that a lot. In fact, something like this is pretty typical on my "Sautrday."
     
    Walmart came to the rescue, but only after most of the dishes spent the night in my refrigerator still in the pan they'd been cooked in. A least the desert came out well. Granted, it is pretty tough to screw up an apple pie, but the honey cream was a bit trickier.
     
    When it was all over, I looked at the tower of stainless steel dominating my nice kitchen, I suddenly remembered why, unless I have to impress some boy or another, I stick to eating snacks at home. That way I only have to cook, thus wash pans, once a week.
     
    Everyone, beware. This is the fate that awaits those of you independant enough to want your own place yet not afluent enough to afford either dishwasher or maid (or are roommates/partners with a very nice person who does dishes for free and possibly a little sex).
  15. B1ue

    Torna-atras

    By B1ue,

    Edit: Wrote this a couple days ago. Forgot to publish it. Oops.
     
    In colonial Latin America, there was a pretty extensive caste system in place based on one's skin color, and what it implied about the person's parentage. If you google it, there are some pretty specific categories, where one Black, one White, and two Native American grandparents made one a Wolf, and so on. It was also partially a breeding experiment using people and slaves. The most haunting image I saw had a little girl, with the caption (in Spanish) "Her fair face, every image of her fathers, without a trace of her mother's savagery." A "Torna-atras," the return backwards, was considered failures of the system, as Torna-atras were dark skinned children born to a light-skinned parent or parents.
     
    But ever since I could tell stories, the torna-atras has been one of my favorite themes to work with. Not in terms of race of course, because I hardly think about race, especially where it applies to me, but in terms of the way a person sees himself.
     
    For example, a few of my favorite songs:
    "Jenny on the Block"
    "Switch"
    "Who Says You Can't Go Home?"
    "Mississippi Girl"
    "Gone Country"
    "1985"
    "'Fore She Was Momma"
     
    All of these to one extent or another deal with the same theme, the "return backwards." The main character in the song, who is in many cases the singer themselves, is saying that they haven't changed from their roots, or in the case of the last two is forced to think about for far from her youth she has wandered. Country songs, with the inherent structure of the same event/image repeated throughout a person's life or across three different people, is naturally better equipped to deal with this idea, which is probably why they dominate the list.
     
    In literature, this theme crops up with surprising regularity, and is as often positive as negative, just like the examples I gave above. Werewolves and the concept of original sin are both examples on the negative side, while all throughout the novel American Gods, not to mention the endless of the Sandman comics by the same author, deal with the concept as a positive. People in these Niel Gaiman's stories are at their most powerful and most vulnerable when they have revealed their true selves, and their torna-atras have revealed that, diminished, challenged, and on the surface changed, in the end they are still the same beings they were millennium ago.
  16. B1ue

    Words Waltzing

    By B1ue,

    Some history about me. I have told stories, wrote stories, since I first learned to print. My sisters, who are farily good writers themselves, encouraged this fascination of mine. Just around August the year before I turned 11, I started writing poetry. By the Valentine's Day two weeks before my birthday, I had sold several of my poems to my male classmates that wanted to prove to their dates that they were willing to go the extra mile in originality. I didn't have my own date, but I did make five dollars that year, so I considered it a wash. For about a three year period, I wrote poems incessantly, maybe three or four a week. My creative writing portfolio had thousands of lines of verse, a few good, mostly trash, but I hardly cared. Besides the fact that it was high school, and volume counted a lot more than content, I was content to be simply writing. The only thing that mattered was feeding that particular beast.
     
    I mention all of this because over the last two years, I have written maybe ten poems, not counting the half-rhymes I sometimes find myself waking up to. I do at least a free-write every day I have the time, but all of that has been prose. I have a theory for why this happened, but it makes me seem a bit crazy. You see, one of the last poems I wrote was one called "Jeremy Dominguez," which I have posted in e-fiction. An explication of a different poem, this poem was basically taking part of my mind and letting it run away with itself. You know how there is a difference between the speaker in a poem and the author? Well, in writing "Jeremy Dominguez," I accidentally gave my default speaker a name. Later, when I was writing a couple prose pieces for a college writing class, Jeremy was given a history, family, and quirks to differentiate him from me.
     
    And aside from the prologue to that piece, titled "F--cked Up Love Songs," I haven't written but a handful or poems since.
     
    I don't think I really managed to fracture my consciousness that completely, but it is fascinating that a habit that completely ingrained into me went away that quickly. My family is known for such behavior, no addiction seems to stick to us unless we want it to (at different times, all five of us managed to quit smoking cold turkey, and diets are ridiculously easy for us to modify), but this surprised me. There was a slight petering off period when I was concentrating on completing my first novella, but that was all the warning I got.
     
    But not all is lost. I actually wrote a poem for the latest anthology. Check it out: "How to Make a Rainbow."
     
     
    Gabe
  17. B1ue

    Order of the Phoenix

    By B1ue,

    Warning: I am a Harry Potter fanatic, and my fervor has only gotten worse as July 21 draws closer. This post reflects that.
     
    With nothing much else to do today, I went down to Irvine and saw "Harry Potter" at the IMAX theater. It's been quite some time since I saw an IMAX film, so I had a good time. I'm afraid the Harry Potter movies may spoil me, since the scenes flick by so fast I barely notice time has past at all.
     
    Rather than review the movie, which other people can do with greater ability than I possess, there is one thing I wanted to mention. I think what impressed me most of all about this film, beyond the continued progress Emma Watson has made in regards to her acting ability (remember when she had to enunciate every word?), was the characterization of Tonks. Like Alan Rickman's portrayal of Professor Snape, Natalia Tena's Tonks does not quite jive with the way the character is presented in the books. In OotP, and even more so in HBP, Tonks comes off as a bit of a drip. Sure, she has to be talented, but she always acts the ditz, and gets very weepy when Lupin spurns her feelings. But due to how fast this movie moved and how much was dropped in the script, Tonks comes off much stronger. Instead of that girl who could of been very good in class but got caught up in mad crushes every thirty seconds, she's now an older sister or young aunt, near enough in age to the kids to relate to them, but old enough that she's clearly got it better together than they do. In the climax of the movie, she appears not with the trepidation one would expect of someone young to the profession, but with "This wasn't the time to f**K with me" confidence evident in her features and stance. I sat upright in my seat when they showed her, and I realized that this, alone in the movie, was a character I could relate to.
     
    I really hope the rest of the movies continue this characterization, which now that I think about it is possibly a combination between Tonks and Bill Weasley. I had looked forward to seeing Bill, who might have been a hot guy (and Lord knows the movies could use some legal man-flesh, as Tom Felton doesn't get enough scenes to qualify), but if ditching him brought me her, I'll not complain.
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