ThomStratton.com

I’ve loved Gary Oldman’s work. The man has such a range. So when I find an article about two people I find interesting, of course I’ve got to read it. I give you Gary Oldman vs. the Ghost of Sir Alec Guiness.

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A friend of mine also did NaNoWriMo this year, and we ended up becoming “writing buddies”, with a determination to keep working together after November to encourage one another and help with the editing process. To help with that we set up our own private forum, so we could organize our thoughts and discussions better. One thread has been giving each other recommendations of works we feel they should check out as good examples of writing.

Today I found myself giving a recommendation and then wishing I hadn’t. There are some works of literature that are too important to me to recommend. Most works I enjoy I have no problem recommending to others because it doesn’t matter that much to me if they don’t like it. But there are some that are so close to my heart that I am very careful recommending. I would almost rather not let them know about it than run the risk of their not liking it.

I’m not sure why that is. Perhaps I’m afraid that my opinion of that person will be damaged if they don’t like it as I do. Perhaps such works are a litmus test for identifying people who I can let into that secret part of myself that is not open for public display. You don’t like this particular work that is core to my being? Well, then you’re not a safe person.  

In that regard I’m a very guarded person. I don’t like my kids (or even my wife sometimes) seeing me cry at movies or books, not because I’m ashamed to cry, but because they don’t understand why I cry.  I think I would almost rather cry in front of total strangers than cry in front of someone who is important to me, but who doesn’t understand. I think I feel most alone in life when the people closest to me still don’t completely understand me.

And so I am careful about what I recommend to whom. I don’t like being made to feel alone. I don’t like realizing that I can’t be completely open with someone because there are parts of me they don’t “get.” It’s disappointing having to close down access to certain parts of the Thom Stratton Theme Park. “Nothing to see here. Move along.”

Probably one of the most poignant and telling moments in my life was when I saw my father cry in a movie. Unlike me, my dad is not a crier. I don’t think I’ve seen much of an emotional response out of him from any movie. Except one. There is a scene in “Follow Me Boys” that would make him weep. I think I understand why, but in hindsight there was probably more to it than I can even imagine. I wish he were still alive to ask. I’ll have to add it to my ever-increasing stack of things to talk to him about someday.

My dad was what most people affectionately refer to as “a character.” Self-expression was not a problem for him. He would talk the ears off anyone that would listen. It’s only begun to occur to me in the past few years that there might have been vast tracts of himself he kept private. I wonder if he was like me, waiting for his kids to get old enough and show signs that they might be ready to understand those parts. What would his “acid tests” have been, I wonder. And would I even pass today?

Wow, this post took a deep turn. I should probably try to turn this into something positive and encourage everyone out there whose parents are still alive to not take them for granted, but I suspect that we take them for granted because we have yet to achieve the maturity or experience needed to even imagine there is something to take for granted. I think we spend most of our growing-up lives thinking we know everything there is to know about our parents, and then get to busy with our own lives that we forget to go back and question that assumption.

And that’s the sad irony of life. There are some questions you just don’t think to ask until the fact that you can no longer ask somehow triggers them. There is so much I wonder now about my dad, but I’m still foolishly incurious about my mother, who is still with us.

I guess I have some work to do.

I had already long given up any hope of the Occupy movement as being sane, rational, decent, law-abiding citizens trying to raise a valid point. Any comparison between them and the Tea Party is an utter insult to the Tea Party.

Their current tantrum in New York is not protest. It’s sabotage.

But picking on kids? That’s so completely beyond the pale that I can’t even begin to comment on this. How can anyone with any sanity and rational thought still support these people?

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On the other hand, I’m not so sure this is being interpreted correctly. In listening to his I really couldn’t tell what the guy meant to say. I think he was offering support the way one would to a friend who was obviously really messed up, but you hoped would get better. I didn’t pick up on anything that suggested he supported trying to kill Obama or shooting at the White House.

But you can’t tell me the media wouldn’t have been all over this, claiming proof of Tea Party violence and racism, had this been done at a Tea Party rally.

I thought it was rather decent of Justin Timberlake when he accepted Cpl. Kelsey De Santis’ invitation to a Marine Corps Ball. Well, the ball has come and gone, and from the reports I’ve read,  everyone had a good time. Timberlake even wrote a stirring report on his blog. I’m impressed–his report was all about his date, the event, and the people he met; not a hint of the “look-at-me!” attitude we get from far too many stars. For being who and where he is, he seems to have his head screwed on amazingly tight.

I can’t say I’ve paid much attention to Timberlake–not my era, mainly. I can’t say that I remember much negative press about him, though it could be just a poor memory. I remember him coming to Brittany Spears’ defense at least once. What little I do remember does seem like he’s a class act. Whether that’s really who he is, or he’s just very careful with his image (and if so, even that is amazing in the entertainment industry these days), it’s good to see.

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Not that anyone in America is paying attention, but Indonesia is hosting the Southeast Asia Games right now. So seriously are they taking their role as host that they are assigning their students to go to events to cheer for other countries that may be underrepresented by fans. This includes Indonesia’s chief rival Malaysia (and from the sound of it, it’s not a friendly rivalry like, say, Finland and Sweden).

Now that’s hospitality!

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Michael Konig has a beautiful video montage of images from the International Space Station as it passes above the earth. I’m not sure if the embedding will work, but I’ll try to embed it here, too:

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

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Everyone’s heard of the “5-second rule”–pick up something you dropped within five seconds and it’s still considered clean. Our local news station has done a report on it.

Now, for my part I’ve always enjoyed the imagery of a herd of germs seeing something fall to the floor and galloping at full speed to reach it, only to have it snatched away just before they reach it. Disappointment all around. Now KSL has ruined it for me. It turns out they’re everywhere, just waiting for something to fall on their heads so they can be picked up, like little microscopic goat-head thorns, and find their new home.

Well, the first five days of NaNoWriMo are in the can (speaking cinematographically, not scatologically), and my word count stands at just over 11,000 words. I’m over 20% there already, though some of that is so that I can take a day off tomorrow. And I also suspect that the plot line I’m working on is not going to resolve itself nicely within the next 40,000 words. Especially considering that I haven’t even gotten to the main plot line yet.

But I’m having a blast! It feels good to write again. It feels good to make progress on something that has bugged me for nearly two decades. But perhaps best of all, it’s incredibly rewarding when I reach the point that the characters start taking on a life of their own. I’m getting to know them well enough that I find what I originally had planned doesn’t really quite fit, and that the characters are doing thing things I hadn’t considered.

I know that sounds weird, but that’s how it feels. Writing is a process that engages both the conscious and unconscious minds. My conscious mind is mostly focused on controlling my fingers and describing what is going on for the fingers to write. The subconscious mind tends to scurry on ahead, analyzing the established details and trying to map the path ahead for the conscious mind. Sometimes it reaches some conclusions that surprises the conscious mind.

Like my realization that my lesser villain is capable of some very nasty stuff. It should not have surprised me, because according to the background I came up with before I started writing, he’s already done some very nasty stuff. But when it came time for him to get nasty he rose to the occasion the an enthusiasm and competence that surprised me.

Okay, bottom line: Writers are weird, and probably schizophrenic. But so long as we keep writing, we’re probably harmless.

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We got the first real snow of the season this morning. There was some on the ground when I walked the dog at 5:30 am (I know it’s Saturday, but I wanted to WRITE!). In the next couple of hours after that while I was hammering away on my novel we picked up a couple more inches. It’s quite pretty. We have a lot of trees, and they collected a lot of snow in their branches. The trampoline looks like the crimped top crust of a pie (I should probably take that down).

The sun is out now, which probably means it won’t last the weekend, but it’s almost magical for now. The first snow, and on a weekend when I can enjoy it. On a day when my villain stands up and becomes a man (albeit an evil one). It doesn’t get much better than this.

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Is it just me, or does everyone do their best thinking in the shower? Several times this week, this morning included, I’ve been stuck on my novel, but by the time I’m through with my shower I’ve got it all sorted out.

My villain’s sudden burst of intelligent nastiness had me in a bit of a spot. He’d incapacitated the male main character to where he was not able to be heroic (which is good–builds inner conflict for later). He was about to incapacitate the female main character and engage in some nastiness I wasn’t entirely comfortable with, but would certainly make his getting his comeuppance all the more enjoyable.

The problem was that if he was allowed to continue unchecked he’d derail my entire novel. The heroine would be dead, the hero framed and disgraced, and the real villain of the novel would conquer the world unchecked.

So I sent myself to the showers. Bad writer! But in my warm, relaxing think tank the obvious solution came to me. The villain wouldn’t get to be quite so villainous, but the heroine would get her chance to shine, further developing her character and setting up a stronger contrast for later. Perfect solution–or at least the best idea so far, and I’ve got to keep going.

If ever I become a professional writer I suspect I’ll be one of the cleanest writers ever.

I’ve been meaning to write a post on morality for awhile now, but Mona Charen has managed to capture much of what I would say in her column “Moral Abdication“. One highlight:

The irony is that this supposed reluctance to make moral judgments is itself a moral posture. The young people in the study, like the authors of my son’s textbook, and much of the American establishment, believe that it is morally wrong to judge people harshly. (Except, perhaps, if it’s Western civilization you’re condemning.)

Read the whole thing. It’s a beginning.

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 I’m not sure what to think of the sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain. And I don’t plan to think much until/unless we learn something close to actual fact. Right now we only know that there were several problems close to 20 years ago. If true, everyone will have to decide for themselves whether that should exclude Cain from candidacy. But until we know real details, we don’t know if the incidents were simply hyper-sensitive women who objected to his complimenting them on their outfits (yes, it happens) on one end of the spectrum to sexual assault at the other end.

I can guess by the fact that the women were willing to take settlements rather than pursue criminal charges that it wasn’t the worst-case scenario, but I would still be only guessing.

Certainly the way Cain has handled the situation could have been better. Some claim that it proves he’s not ready for prime time. I would, sadly, have to disagree. He’s been no more inept than Larry Craig, John Edwards, or Bill Clinton. Or Anthony Weiner. It seems to me he’s got the political game down pat. And in my book that is more of a reason to disqualify him.

In the mean time, here’s an interesting column by Linda Chavez on sexual harassment in general that is worth some consideration.

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Here’s at least a partial answer to the question I asked in my post yesterday: Occupy protesters disavow Oakland violence. (But not all)

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Want blue eyes? Here’s one way. Of course everyone knows you can do the same with donuts–it’s cheaper and more delicious.

Ted Rall has a column up at Yahoo! News, in which he calls for violence to advance the OWS cause. His claim is that revolutions do not happen without violence, and that revolution is what OWS wants:

If voting or writing letters to the editor worked, we wouldn’t need Occupations.

The Occupy movement can wind up in one of two ways:

Failure.

Or success, partly via the occasional use of violence and/or the credible threat of violence that results from those sporadic outbursts.

If Rall speaks for OWS, then we can forget all pretense of OWS being the “Left’s Tea Party”. The Tea Party, for good or bad, is working within the system. For them, votes are good enough. The amount of ire directed at the Tea Party of late is an open admission that the Tea Party is effective. Even while playing within the rules.

But it’s hard to say if the same approach will work for OWS. For one, they haven’t yet tried it. For another, it’s hard to pin down just what OWS wants, so it’s hard to know if they’re getting it–by any means.

Rall, however, seems to believe that OWS is about getting the rich and powerful to hand over their riches and power. And I again have to ask: Does Rall speak for OWS? Does Occupy Oakland (perhaps more appropriately named Trash Oakland) speak for the entire movement? I think OWS had better decide–and fast–what they want and how far they’re willing to go to get it, because others are already determined to take the movement there whether they like it or not.

I hope with as much hope as I can muster that Rall does not speak for OWS. This man has dangerous ideas, and I don’t think I’d care to live in an America where any revolution he would support has won (The man has written a book titled “The Anti-American Manifesto”, for heaven sake! That should say something!). According to Rall not only is violence the only way, but OWS has not yet resorted to violence!

First let’s define terms. Vandalism, theft and destruction of property are not violence. Inanimate objects do not suffer. Violence can only be inflicted upon living beings. Breaking a window may or may not be morally justified, but it is never violence.

I agree. Let’s define terms, but let’s define them correctly. Dictionary.com defines violence as:

1. swift and intense force: the violence of a storm.
2. rough or injurious physical force, action, or treatment: to die by violence.
3. an unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power, as against rights or laws: to take over a government by violence.
4. a violent act or proceeding.
5. rough or immoderate vehemence, as of feeling or language: the violence of his hatred.

The destruction of property, vandalism, and theft are violence. The inanimate objects may not suffer, but the individuals suffering the loss of those objects do suffer. The people forced to witness the violence of such acts suffer. To claim such is not violence is reprehensible, and I would not want anyone who feels this way to have power–ever.

But let’s accept Rall’s erroneous (and self-serving) definition for a moment. If what he says is true, then the OWS movement needs to go farther. Destruction of property is not enough. They need to start harming people.  They need to do actual violence by causing injury or death to other human beings, and only in that way can the movement bring positive change. There must be a revolution.

Rall does not want to change America. He wants to declare war on it and overthrow it. So I ask again: Does this guy speak for OWS?

You need only look back at the political history of the United States between 1971 and 2011 to see what 100% nonviolence has accomplished. Even under Democratic presidents and Congressional majorities, the Left has lost one battle after another.

The Left’s only major victory during that period followed the 1999 Battle of Seattle. Riots and broken windows disrupted the World Trade Organization for years. Countless American jobs were saved as a result. Yet liberals were ashamed.

I can only wonder what counts as a victory for this guy. Just what is it he believes the Left should have been accomplishing all this time? If his book title is to be taken at face value, he wants the destruction or dismantling of America as we know it. Is that what the Left wants?

Occupy Wall Street and the American Left: Does this man speak for you?

Because if he does, we have a right to know, and know now. If I’m going to need to defend myself against other Americans bent on doing me and mine physical harm I want to know now so I can prepare. Even Rall seems to grant me that much:

Further, violent self-defense is not the same as violence. Until now the violence at the Occupations has all been initiated by the police. When policemen fire rubber bullets, bean bags, tear gas and pepper spray at unarmed, peaceful protesters, their victims have every right to defend themselves–to run away, to avoid arrest and yes, to strike back.

Every civilized society recognizes the right to self-defense.

Though I do have to wonder if Rall’s right to self-defense is extended to the people being physically harmed by his revolution. I’m not so sure he would support my bashing the head in of one of his revolutionaries to keep them from bashing in mine, because I sense he feels there is only one right side in this fight he is fomenting.

And I’m not on it.

If Ted Rall speaks for you, then there is no point in further discussion, only action. No change worth having will be accomplished by anything short of revolution, and revolution can only be accomplished through violence. Anything less is pointless. The system is broken beyond hope of repair. Nothing short of violence will do.

Please tell me Ted Rall does not speak for you.