Romancing Your Inner Extrovert

 Olá, Fellow Orators! 

Although most of my previous jobs have been pretty craptacular, I'm thankful that at least one of them forced me to get over my paralyzing phobia of public speaking. 

It was during my University tenure when I first discovered my crippling fear of group presentations, as detailed here and here.  Although I managed to avoid the cold, communal eyes of my fellow classmates for most of my education, I couldn't avoid it in the workplace.  When I became a manager at Sears I was forced to do training for the staff.  Eventually I got over the thought of being silently appraised by my peers and, in turn, I soon discovered the power and reward inherent in becoming an effective orator.

So, when I began my monthly readings as part of the Left Bank Poetry / Open Heart Forgery group I already had somewhat of a leg up.  Having conquered my reptile-brained fear of public speaking I could now read in front of a group of strangers with relative ease.  Although it's a daunting prospect for most people, the rewards are considerable.  Honestly, there's nothing sweeter then applause, even if it comes from a charitable crowd who are already somewhat predisposed to what you're doing.

Ever since I was told that people have to hear about your book seven times before they consider buying it, public readings are indispensable to me.  Personally I try to do at least one a month but in all honesty, I'm such a ham that I'd probably do one every day if I could.

Although I personally don't do a lot of prep work before a reading, I certainly don't expect you to follow that particular lead.  In fact, if you want a few pointers from someone who's actually done this a coupla times, you're more then welcome to these tidbits: 

1. What strikes fear into the heart of Fear?  Two words: preparation and knowledge.  Quite often the training material that I was given at Sears was so poorly written and organized that it would have been a slow motion train wreck if I'd been stupid enough to present it as is.  Without altering any of the actual content, I always tore it apart and re-arranged it so that it was easier to present, conducive to memorization and didn't bore the bejesus out of my audience.
2. Talking to yourself isn't as nutty as it sounds.  Do some out-loud practice reads before the big show.  This'll help you uncover any potential verbal snares and it may even inspire you to do another round of editing.  And trust me, for most of us, that's not such a bad thing.  
3. Spalding Gray you ain't.  Time yourself while doing your practice runs.  DO NOT, for the love of everything holy, read the lion's share of your latest unpublished novella out loud.  DO NOT overstay your welcome.  Try and limit your time to around five minutes or so.  Remember what the frozen head of Walt Disney says: "Always leave 'em wanting more".  That or, "Can a brotha get some robotic legs all up in this bee-yotch?"      
4. Don't go to a coffee kegger before your reading.  Even if you're tired and logy, try to avoid the temptation to guzzle a gallon of liquid motivation.  Trust me: once you get up there sheer adrenaline's gonna kick in and carry you through.  You're gonna be nervous enough without the completely useless ability to vibrate your physical body into another plane of existence.
5. Make 'em laugh!  Humor is an indispensible tool for snagging the audience's attention and holding onto it for dear life.  Having said that, make sure that what you intend to read is actually funny.  P.S. your best judge of this is probably not your mom.
6. Be Great-(ful). When you get up there, thank your host for the opportunity to speak and then thank the gathered for agreeing to listen to your lame ass blather on and on about some pointless crap.  Also remember: confidence.   
7. PROJECT, DAMN YOU, PROJECT!!! Unless you're working with a sound system that would make Iron Maiden proud, you're gonna hafta do it the old fashioned way.  See that sad, squinty, spectator in the back of the room with their hand cupped to their ear and the look of frustration etched onto their face?  If you can get that person to hear you then everyone else should be gravy.  As a corollary try not to yell so loud that the audience pees a little.    
8. E-NUN-CI-ATE!!!   E-NUN-CI-ATE!!!  Lack of volume is bad but mumbling is even worse 'cuz then even the poor shlubs sitting next to you can't hear anything!  Although it's wise to make each word sound distinct, try not to over-emphasize every single syllable.  You want to sound clear and concise, not like your at the reading only because the facility you're staying at let you out on furlough.  
9. Take a seat or just retreat.  If you find yourself on the verge of fainting then sit down or drape yourself over the parapet-like defensive wall of a podium.  Although shaking like a cat dipped in icewater will probably engender considerable sympathy from the audience it also inspires feelings of pity and pity is the last thing your want.  Typically, people have a really hard time multitasking pity with anything else.  This includes listening to someone who's speech is clearly equivalent to the act of public self-flagellation.   
10. Don't be a READ-BOT 2000.  Go out of your way to vary your pitch, tone and volume.  When you do dialogue, try to speak like your characters would speak.  Speed up the pace during action scenes and slow down for quiet moments.  Blurt out a sound effect.  Use your voice to establish a mood.  If you sound bored by what you're reading, then what are your listeners to think? 
11. Where's the fire, sonny?  You win at public speaking by successfully conveying your message while entertaining the audience, not by blasting your presentation out like a radio ad, stumbling back to your seat and then passing out from asphyxiation.
12. Find your oasis of tranquility.  Periodic eye contact with a friendly face in the crowd make it feel as if you're talking to a single person.  This can really put you at ease.  I'd also recommend that hoary old chestnut of picturing everyone in the audience nekkid but you're probably doing that already, ya pervs. 
13. Be an extrovert, even if only for a few glorious moments.  Assuming that you're not tethered to a mike or frozen in place like a rabbit in the middle of the TCH, you really should consider moving around a little bit.  Break away from your podium-perch and wade out amongst the people like a literary Ellen Degeneres.  Use gestures to illustrate the actions that you're reading about.  If you're feeling particularly frisky, why not lick one of the audience members at random?  Y'know, just to make sure they're paying attention
14. Remember: pain is temporary  Although it may seem like you're up there forever, I promise you it will end.  And when it does you'll fee invincible.  So why not have some fun while you're up there? 

***

One of the greatest things about going to these readings is watching people improve as public speakers.  It's great to see folks who were once barely audible or shook like they were afflicted by some terrible, anxiety-fueled palsy,  blossom into confident, relaxed and highly-effective speakers.   It's all very empowering. 

Honestly, if you consider yourself to be a writer or have ambitions about being one, you really need to learn how to do this.  It isn't just a handy skill, it's downright mandatory.

So, my last piece of advice: just go ahead and push yourself out of that open airplane door and start getting better at it tout suite.

EPIC SPEECH  For actors, the power of public address is indispensable.  Here's an oldie but a goodie: Charlie Chaplin's closing monologue from The Great Dictator.  

IRRATIONAL FAILURE  There's probably some deep psychological underpinnigs as to why I was completely terrified of group presentations as a kid I also loved my pet tarantula.  Here's a list of the Top Ten Common Phobias. 

How Can We Miss You If You Won't Go Away?

Salutations, Self-Satisfiers!

More then any other age group, it seems as if Baby Boomers have linked their jobs to their identities and subsequently, their feelings of self-worth.  I'm not even talking about the doctors, lawyers and action heroes in this age group, I'm talking about the sixty-eighty year old customer service rep sitting across the aisle from you in the call center.  You know the guy, the two-pension-collecting multiple retiree who seems to have an inexplicable, masochistic desire to be screamed at by strangers.

If you ever get a chance to ask him why he's still slaving away at some crap job I'll wager that he says something like:

(best read in the voice of a grizzled 1860's prospector)

"Tarnation!  It beats sittin' 'round at home watchin' Kojak.  'Sides, if you aint workin', you might as well be DEAD!"

And herein lies the crux of my point.  Of all the current generations still chippin' away out there, it's the venerable Baby Boomers who still cling doggedly to the whole "JOY THROUGH LABOR" lie propagated by our corporate taskmasters.  So, why is that?

In once sense I really can't slight them.  After all, one of the first things we ask people upon meeting them is "So, what do you do for a living?"  Unless you just bumped into that dude from the Dos Equis ads, 99.9% of the time the answer to that creatively bankrupt question is gonna be more boring then a Taylor Swift interview. 

Personally I'd much rather learn about someone's creative talents.  Or what book is currently getting them through their morning commute.  Or their ideal travel destination.  Or what television show they prefer to spazz out on.  Or what their favorite childhood toy was.  Answers to questions like this allow you to really peek into the window of the soul, as opposed to scrying the boring details of some obligatory task that most people feel obliged to perform just to prevent themselves from starving to death.

Well, at least the Baby Boomers believe that face-to-face interaction with real, bona fide, flesh and blood human beans is a mandatory catalyst for entertainment.  This is important to me since I really do believe that technology is making us more and more socially retarded and physically disconnected from one another.  Unlike people my age and younger, Boomers don't seem to mind the "pop in" and they actually seem kinda wistful that impromptu social calls don't happen anymore.  These people seem to be at their happiest sitting around a kitchen table just havin' a yarn.  The only conversation lubrication they require is a cup of tea and maybe a deck of cards if they're feeling particularly wacky.

This is in direct opposition to Generation X and onward.  If I invite a bunch of my friends over to my place, invariably their next question is: "Okay, so what are we doing?"  Beyond triggering feelings of conversational inadequacy, I can't help but think: 'Jesus, can't we just sit around and talk like civilized adults?  Why does there always have to have a friggin' AGENDA, fer Crissakes?"

Our ability to find distraction everywhere is arguably our greatest talent, but for many Boomers, this just isn't an option.  Since many of them eschew the bugbear of technology in lieu of a good old-fashioned chin-wag, Boomers seem notoriously difficult to entertain.  A lot of them dismiss current movies and music as worthless.  Hand them a video game controller and they recoil as if you're offering them a dead vole.  Many of them are convinced that the the only decent analog games involve a crib board or wooden letter tiles.  And although they tend to avoid cable networks like the plague, they still watch the bejesus out of network T.V., which I think may be the real leading cause of Alzheimer's and dementia.

Sorry, but if I thought that the shite peddled by the major television networks was my only valid entertainment source, I'd probably lose touch with reality pretty damned quick as well.

For the past three years I've had no boss to answer to, no schedule to adhere to and no performance appraisals to be threatened with.  Because of this some people would liken my current existence to retirement and I think, to a certain extent, that this is a fair cop.  But these same people also need to know that I haven't been bored for so much as one millisecond in the past three years.  The most difficult challenge I've had to grapple with is a bout of temporary paralysis in the face of what fulfilling and awesome thing I want to do next.

Now, don't get me wrong, as a boss I'm a bit of an asshole.  I definitely work longer and weirder hours then I ever have.  I could be composing a blog entry here, volunteering for a good cause, crafting a movie review, recanting a session report, doing background work, editing travel footage, researching alternative news, hammering out the latest chapter in my next book, drawing some freaky picture, providing content for a friend's iPad ap, tapping out a short story, figuring out how to do a better podcast, filming a boardgame tutorial or creating a poem.  There's no shortage of things to do, just the amount of time I have to cram it all in. 

That's doubly true for my so-called "down time".  During the summer I can flake out at the beach, take a nature hike, hop on my bike, go swimming, pitch a tent or biff a tennis ball around.  Granted, my options are a bit more limited during the winter but I can still can catch a documentary on Netflix, play a solitaire boardgame to learn the rules, indulge in a Game of Thrones marathon, lure my unsuspecting friends into a Google + Hangout dungeon crawl, plan my latest road trip, get my ass beaten senseless by some Malaysian kid in an X-Box Live Halo match, bliss out to the tune of an iPod playlist, blast through several years worth of webcomics, listen to a gaming podcast or read one of a trillion different books. 

Unfortunately, for many Baby Boomers, many of the pursuits that I've just cataloged are completely Greek to them.  Except, of course, for Greek Baby Boomers in which case many of the pursuits I've just cataloged are Double Dutch.

But look, younger people don't have a monopoly on such diversions.  Don't give up on pursuing new things.  Or more precisely, don't give up trying to figure out how to do new things.   

Now, do I think that every single person over the age of fifty adheres to the tenants I've described here?  Hells to the no!  There are plenty of tech-savvy, dialed-in, pony-tail-wearin', wireless-networkin', smart-phone gropin' seniors out there.  I also know full well that the 2008 economic crash unfairly gutted many a senior's life savings and robbed them of their pensions, tragically forcing them to postpone their well-deserved retirements.

This post isn't directed at those people. 

It's directed that all those selfish idiots who still labor under the misconception that society might degenerate into anarchy if you abdicate your pivotal role as a Wal-Mart greeter.  It's directed at those cranky oldsters who linger around like entitled wraiths, surrounding themselves with co-workers they can barely tolerate just because they'll listen to how things were "so much better" back in "their day".

Please, please, I beg of you...just go home.

But first, swing by the store and pick yourself up a decent video game console.       

Photo credit: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/boomers-will-work-until-they-drop/2006/01/30/1138590443500.html

EPIC ADMISSION STRAIGHT FROM THE BOOMER'S MOUTH   I'm so not motivated by money that this angle hadn't even occur to me. 
 
EPIC SENTIMENT #1

EPIC SENTIMENT #2
       

AGEISM FAIL   See, Boomers can be cool!  And let's face it, ain't nobody gonna replace these guys when they retire...   

Not Everyone Is A Critic, But They Damned Well SHOULD Be

Hey, All You Siskels and/or Eberts!

As a member in good standing of several communities on Google + I'm constantly amazed by what people consider to be good creative works.  Now, I'm a big proponent of the concept that every movie, game, book, comic, band and T.V. show has its own built-in audience but I also know that sometimes things just plain suck.

My dad, bless his heart, used to take me to the theater quite a bit as a little kid.  Unfortunately his taste in movies was questionable at best.  I remember, even at that discriminating young age, sitting through such diverting but sketchy dreck as The Cat from Outer Space, The Land that Time Forgot, Caveman (starring Ringo Starr and Barbara Bach!) and the truly deplorable Hangar 18.  This last one was a particularly memorable experience for two reasons:

1. After being knocked out and slung over the hero's shoulder, an anonymous goon reaches up to keep his hat on his head.  Ohhhhh...
2. Before the movie started the theater inexplicably decided to show what amounts to a modern red-band trailer for a British sex comedy.  Since the audience that day consisted mainly of hormone-addled, desperately horny pre-teen boys who had never seen boobs before, the denizens of the theater (present company included) promptly lost their shit without further ado.    

As a kid, if someone asked me about a film that I was lukewarm on I'd often say something boring and non-committal like: "Well, yeah, I guess it was alright."  Looking back on it now, I'm convinced that what I really wanted to say was "that movie sucked like a Hoover".  I think I served up these milquetoast dismissals mainly because I was too polite or lacked confidence in my own judgement.  Honestly, there's nothing wrong with saying "it blows", "it rawked" or even "it was m'eh" just so long as you can articulate your position reasonably well.  Until you can do that, then you're just kidding yourself.  

So why do we do this?  Why do we have such a hard time admitting when something is wrong and/or terrible?  Perhaps it's because we've just laid down our hard-earned money for the privilege of hearing new music, reading the latest bestseller or catching up on last week's home video releases.  Even though I firmly believe that we shouldn't pirate stuff and that artists should always get paid, sometimes I can't help but feel that, half-way through a crap movie, I've been hoodwinked somehow.  After all, a fool and their money will inevitably be parted.

My interest in formal criticism was sparked years before I read the works of John Locke, Immanuel Kant and Martin Heidegger in University.  In fact, it all began in 1983 with the release of a little indie picture called Reveng...er...Return of the Jedi.  Now I've already recanted my troubled relationship with that flick in anal-retentive detail elsewhere (here and here for all you completest types) but a brief summation still bears repeating.

In 1983 I was totally obsessed with all things Star Wars.  I completely and utterly enthralled by the first two parts of the saga.  But after watching the final film of THE HOLY TRILOGY, I was left feeling strangely cold somehow.  It was if my best friend had been replaced by one of the Pod People from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  

I couldn't put my finger on it by I felt let down by the film somehow.  The revelations seemed ludicrous, not to mention kinda icky.  The movie looked relatively cheap and slapdash.  Compared to the modern mythos established by the first two films, the tone of Jedi felt completely juvenile and flyweight.

Since I was still completely under the thrall of Lucasfilm, I had a really hard time giving breath to my secret misgivings. If one of my friends tried to solicit my opinion about Jedi, I'd always play the apologist.  "It's good!" I'd enthuse, sounding suspiciously Stepford Wife-ish.  "I don't know if it's as good as the first two but, y'know, it's...good."

And then came that fateful day when I picked up the November 1983 issue of Starlog Magazine.  I didn't know it at the time but this historic periodical would also soon introduce me to the wild and wonderful world of Dungeons & Dragons.  But even before that happened, I bought this issue purely for noted sci-fi author Norman Spinrad's review of Return of the Jedi.  

As soon as my thirteen-year-old self was ensconced in the back seat of the family car for the return trip home I whipped open the magazine and went right for the review.  Since everything that Lucas and company had touched thus far had immediately turned to gold, I fully expected that Norman's review would act as a positive, geeky bulwark to protect my unflagging Star Wars fandom against the rising floodwaters of doubt.  But as soon as I read those first two paragraphs, I began to feel a cold chill creep over the sub-cockle region of my heart:

"I had my trepidations about reviewing Return of the Jedi and by extension, the completed Star Wars trilogy before I saw the film, and now that I have, I'm even more nervous about committing the act of lese majeste that honesty requires.  This is a dirty job but someone has to do it.

"Not to leave you in suspense, let me say at the outset that, in this reviewer's opinion, Return of the Jedi is a bad film.  It is bad on almost every possible level.  As science fiction, it is massively illogical.  As drama, it is anti-dramatic.  As action-adventure, it manages to make about two hours of almost continuous fast action and spectacular effects boring.  And as the capper to the Star Wars trilogy, it is a dreadful letdown that betrays most of what virtues the first two films in the trilogy had.

"On to the sad task of autopsy."

I was complete gobsmacked.  Over the course of four vitriolic pages, Spinrad went on to mercilessly savage the film.

At the time, I remember thinking to myself: 'Well, clearly this guy is an idiot.  He doesn't even know anything about Star Wars!'  After all, Jedi had a lot more plot then Blade Runner, which Spinrad had positively orgasmed over in a prior review.  Far from having "little or nothing to do with the rest of the film", the rescue of Han Solo served to illustrate the maturation of Luke Skywalker and his marked development as a Jedi Knight.  And never in the entire saga have the words "nuclear power" ever been uttered.       

I remembered throwing the magazine down in disgust.  If Spinrad likened his review to an autopsy then I was convinced that he should be sued for malpractice.  He even went so far as to raise the nasty specter of incest.  Incest?  In a Star Wars movie?  Seriously?  At the time I felt like a devout Muslim who'd just watched someone defile a copy of the Qur'an right in front of me.

But eventually I started to calm down and I read it again.  Yes, a lot of what Spinrad had written was ill-informed and inflammatory, but it also made me think.  The script did kinda suck.  The Luke / Leia / Han love triangle had been boringly dispensed with.  The second Death Star was a creatively bankrupt concept.  Jabba's courtiers were disgusting, the Ewoks were transparent marketing ventures and every alien looked woefully fake.  And if Lucas was aware of the relationship between Luke and Leia all along, why the hell did he let them make out with one another?  Seriously, that's just gross.

I'm telling you this because I know that it's difficult to dislodge our entrenched perspectives, even in the face of irrefutable evidence.  Slaying sacred cows often leads to irrevocable complications.  But I'm here to reassure you that it's downright imperative to do this from time to time.  Every day that goes by I grow increasingly terrified that society is getting more and more ill-informed, narrow-minded, obstinate and less discriminating.  We're far too willing to accept things at face value and embrace the mediocre.

I also know that the sort of paradigm shift that I'm proposing won't be easy since the exact same thing happened to me again as an adult back in 1999.  It took months for me to admit that The Phantom Menace makes Return of the Jedi look like friggin' Shawshank Redemption.

The moral of the story is: ask about the source of your pablum.  Take a peek behind the curtain.  Don't let your scared inner child force you to bury your head in the sand when you know full well that something is undeniably bad or terribly wrong.

EPIC REVIEW  Here it is folks, Norman Spinrad's historic diatribe against Return of the Jedi, in all its gory vitriol.  Man, talk about your Rancor monster...

(Make sure that you right-click and open each page in its own tab to read it better.) 

EPIC PLUG  You can catch my own brand of persnickety at my sister blog Entertainment Tourettes.   

THE CONSEQUENCE OF FAIL-URE  Not only will listening to our inner critic save our world, it might also cut down on some of these godawful parody movies...

  

  

       

Devil's Advocate Part II

¡Hola!, Common-Sensians!

In Part I I talked about how a firing range *slash* gun shop visit left me partially traumatized and completely confused.  Why does a significant segment of the U.S. population feel the need to procure military grade hardware?  Obviously a 40 mm machine gun would purée a deer and an AA-12 automatic shotgun is nothing but overkill against home invaders. 

The legality of open carry / closed carry gun ownership also had me totally perplexed.  So, let me get this straight: it's perfectly legal to display a holstered pistol while standing in a Burger King in Eagle, Colorado, but if you get caught with a derringer shoved into your boot you'd need produce a concealed weapon permit?  What the f#ck is this, Bizarro World?       

Whenever I heard gun enthusiasts wail "But the Constitution's Second Amendment gives us the right to bear arms!" I'd always respond by saying: "Yeah, but you do know that was adopted back in December 15, 1791, right?  Hey, if you wanna start working on that bitchin' vintage musket collection, then by all means, go nuts."

Since nothing about this made a lick of sense to me I began to suspect that I was missing some key puzzle piece.  After the recent Sandy Hook tragedy, I wanted to try to know why many American had this "cold, dead hands" attitude towards gun control. 

WARNING: obligatory history alert.  

This all goes back to the American Revolution in which thirteen North American colonies railed against what they considered to be the tyrannical and illegitimate rule of King George III.  The rebellion succeeded, in part, because the local militias were armed to the teeth with comparable weapons.  This led constitutional contributors like Patrick Henry to state that a "citizenry trained in arms was the only sure guarantor of liberty" and Noah Webster to maintain that "an armed populace would have no trouble resisting the potential threat to liberty of a standing army".

Ergo, when the Constitution was being tweaked a few years later, a clause was included which gives citizens the right to keep and bear arms, thus enabling another rebellion if need be.  In modern parlance: if the government becomes too corrupt and abusive, they want the freedom and ability to shoot these folks right in the pie-hole.  It's kinda like insuring the ultimate democracy reset button.

Although at face value this appears to be an obvious case of bat-shit paranoia, lets just follow this line of thinking to its inevitable conclusion.  Back in 1776 all a willing Patriot had to have in order to participate in revolution was a trusty flint-lock.  Nowadays, you'd need to have a lot more firepower to deal with the hypothetical minions of tyranny.  Police, for example, come equipped with riot gear, tear gas, Glocks and Heckler & Koch MP5s.  The military has body armor, M9 pistols and MK 17s, M1 Abram tanks and Blackhawk helicopters.

So, what gun nut...er, enthusiasts are saying is that they want to right to remain competitive in the arms race against their own government in case it becomes so degenerate and corrupt that it turns on its own citizens.

So you're probably thinking the exact same thing I am: "What kind of sad, paranoid, tin-foil-hat-wearing bullshit is this?"

But then I dug a bit deeper.  First up, I decided to humor loony du jour Alex Jones, who recently created a petition on the White House website to deport ex-pat British journalist Piers Morgan for his public anti-gun stance.  After the petition drew 104,000 signatures, Jones was invited to appear on Pierce Morgan Tonight.   During his bombastic, cringe-worthy and ultimately truncated segment, Jones essentially performed the equivalent of a verbal curb-stomp on the flummoxed host.

   

After watching this "debate" my initial reaction was: 'Man, this guy's a complete and total lunatic!  I wouldn't want guns in the hands of paranoid kook like that either!"  But then I made the mistake of digging into the meat of what Jones was ranting about. 

And let me tell ya, folks, a strong case can be made for the nutbars.  Don't believe me?  Well then follow the links...

• Elements within the American government once humored a plan to stage fake terror attacks on its own citizens in order to drum up public support for an invasion of Cuba.  Mercifully John F. Kennedy (arguably the last U.S. president who wasn't completely under the thrall of corporate taskmasters), personally rejected Operation Northwoods outright as totally unconscionable.
• Although that particular scheme was never greenlit, many believe that the U.S. government compelled Israel to attack the USS Liberty as a pretext to war with Egypt.
• It's a proven fact that the C.I.A. staged very real and very lethal terrorist attacks in Italy during the Cold War in order to discredit leftist regimes.  Indeed, the details of Operation Gladio are pretty stomach-turning.   
• The Gulf of Tonkin incident was totally blown out of proportion, giving Lyndon B. Johnston carte blanche to take his nation into war in Vietnam under false pretenses.  That bloody conflict dragged on for years and cost fifty-eight thousand loyal and oblivious servicemen their lives.    
• Compelling evidence suggests that the Bush Administration knew full well that Saddam Hussein didn't have any WMD's before going to war in Iraq.
• Under the Clinton Administration, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 allowed major financial institutions to freely engage in credit default swaps, a particularly heinous con game that would have been considered illegal gambling if an aggressive campaign of deregulation hadn't made it all kosher.  This created the perfect climate for the 2008 Market Crash which effectively destroyed life savings and evicted scores of people from their homes all the while sheltering the "too big to fail" criminal financial institutions with bailouts to cover their losses.  Honestly, the more you look into the government's complicity in this crisis, the more sympathy you begin to feel for gun owners.  P.S. Rolling Stone journalist and professional muckraker Matt Taibbi has done some tremendous work shedding light on this sickening spectacle.  
• Exploiting the fear, anger and paranoia that was rampant after 9/11, George W. Bush passed the Patriot Act which gave the President sweeping powers of surveillance and detainment .  Not only was this extended by Obama, his National Defense Authorization Act kept Gitmo up and running and also makes indefinite detention of U.S. citizens a very real possibility.  
• This also gave way to the United States publicly sanctioning torture (er, sorry...enhanced interrogation techniques) as a valid method of information extraction for the first time ever in that nation's history.    
• Given recent developments, U.S. citizens can now be killed abroad without the benefit of due process.  For added convenience, this now be accomplished via the tidy abstraction of remote control.  As a side note, drone strikes have a hideous record of killing innocent civilians. 
• Via sanctions, indiscriminate bombing and  illegal warfare, the U.S. government has directly and indirectly caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of women and children.     
• Also, if the government is supposed to protect its citizens why does it have such a deplorable history of safeguarding us against such patently harmful things like antidepressants, DDT, flouride, bottled water, and even water bottles, for f#@k's sake? 

And just because we're up here in good ol' innocent Canada, don't think for a moment that everything's hunky dory.  We've seen plenty of evidence that paints the Harper government as patently undemocratic, indulging in such distasteful practices as election fraud, environmental plunder, corporate toadyism, suspension of human rights and the wholesale disillusion of our national sovereignty. 

Faced with such pervasive and overt madness, the "gun nuts" are starting to look downright rational in comparison.  To quote psychiatrist and academic Thomas Szas: "Insanity is the only sane reaction to an insane society."  In fact, my appraisal of Jones's performance on Pierce Morgan Tonight has softened considerably.  If he'd ventured into that studio and indulged in a civil give-and-take debate, his prime-time appearance would likely have gone largely unnoticed.

Besides, why is it socially acceptable for people to lose their shit over a football game or a reality T.V. show but it's verboten to exhibit any sort of passion over the state of this dystopic Brave New World that we're blissfully leaving to our children?

EPIC   I sincerely wish that everything I'd just written about was complete and total hogwash.  If things were that simple then I could blissfully subscribe to Jon Stewart's recent and brilliant gun control dissertation with a clear conscience. 

FAIL  Pro-gun/Second Amendment proponents will always be regarded as ignorant f#@kwits so long as they let chuckle-heads like this speak for them:

LEGITIMATE WARNING SIGNS OR A FAILURE OF TRUST?

Devil's Advocate - Part I

Felicitations, Seekers of Cover!

Back in 2005 I had the good fortune of visiting my wife's uncle down in Texas.  While we were there he offered to take us to a real, gen-u-wine firing range *slash* gun store.

The prospects of going there weighed heavily on my mind for days.  This despite the fact that had plenty of experience dealing with ranged weapons as a kid.  Dad comfortably displayed a vintage ten gauge single-barrel shotgun on the basement wall for years.  Hell, with supervision, I was even allowed to play with it on occasion.  Having said that, I have only the faintest memory of handing an actual shotgun shell.

And then there were the two BB guns that I was inseparable from as a kid.  Way before I was allowed to even so much as look at one, my dad put the fear of Crom into me:

"Now, if I ever catch you friggin' around with that thing I'm takin' it away.  And if I hear that you shot a bird or some other animal, you'll be gettin' up close and personal with the one down in the basement."

Needless to say I took this very threat seriously and pledged my unwavering adherance to THE RULES OF PROPER GUN HANDLING.  As such, I was allowed to own two guns, the first was my beloved 111 BB rifle:

And the other was a Dairy Model 188 B-B pistol:

I proved so trustworthy that my parents even let me set up a home-made bullet trap in the house to use for target practice.  It kinda looked like this, minus the big, dumb-ass, ricochet-alicious metal binder clip stuck on the front:

So even though I was no wilting flower when it came to slug-throwers, the prospects of going to a real firing range made me inordinately nervous.  As a willfully disarmed peacenik Canuck, I still had a healthy fear and respect for guns.  No matter how careful you are, accidents can still happen.  

As I walked into the store my anxiety level instantly shot up.  Suddenly we were surrounded by literally thousands of potentially deadly weapons.  Hunting rifles, pistols, shotguns, assault rifles and even what appeared to be an M60 machine gun were displayed with the same casual, blasé abandon as a goalie stick at Canadian Tire.  

After we picked out two guns to shoot, I was totally gobsmacked when the dude behind the counter asked without a hint of irony:

"So, we got two kinds 'a targets you can use: reg'ler and Bin Ladin.  Which one you want?"

Stunned but still resolute, we politely procured two of each and then made our way out to the range.

As I paced back and forth waiting for my turn with the guns, I couldn't help but notice all of the spent shell casings clinking around on the floor underfoot.  And then there was the intense gentleman who was in the range next to us.  He was methodically and mechanically squeezing off one shot after another from a .45 as if he was working on his glutes at the gym.  Also disconcerting was the myriad of bullet holes everywhere: in the ceiling, the floor and a Sonny Corleone amount of them in the wooden frame where you shoot from.  Silently I couldn't help but wonder if this scene from The Simpsons had been re-enacted on this very same spot on more than one occasion.

I had a chance to fire two guns that morning.  The first was a .22 calibre pistol; the equivalent of a handgun with training wheels.  Honestly it wasn't much more powerful then the average CO2 pellet gun.  Nope, I was not impressed.  Where was the recoil?  The stopping power?  My intoxicating feelings of compensation?  The drunken and inflated sense of ego?

Mercifully, all of these elusive qualities came part and parcel with firing the .38 special.  It kinda looked like the sort of service revolvers that policemen used to carry in old Seventies-era cop shows.  Even though it was physically smaller then the .22, it definitely packed a wallop in comparison.

On the way out I spent some time perusing the ample and intimidating hardware.  I quickly realized that the .38 special we'd just fired would probably be ridiculed as a pop-gun by enthusiasts who had Glocks, Uzis, AK-47s, M1911 pistols, G3s, M-16s and AR-15s in their collection.   As I began to roll a few frames of video to commemorate our visit a staff member hustled over to me and growled:

"Hey, whutareyewdoin'?  You cain't video tape in here!"

Already more nervous then a cat at a rocking chair convention, I'm pretty sure that I visibly jumped.   Sheepishly I shut off the camera and apologized profusely.

"Sorry!  I'm so sorry!" I spluttered.  "God, I didn't know!  Oh God, I shouldn't have said God.  Sorry!  I'm just a stupid Canadian..." 

Later that night my wife's uncle invited some friends over for dinner.  Naturally, the discussion inevitably turned to firearms and gun control.

"I remember when I bought my first gun," one of the female guests said, sounding vaguely wistful.  "Originally I was going to get something small and simple, like a .22 pistol.  But after I told the clerk that I'd never fired a gun before he said that I should probably get a shotgun.  I still remember his exact words to me:

"'Look, if you got some burglar or rapist chargin' atcha, it ain't gunna be easy to get a bead on 'em, 'specially if yer scared.  But with a shotgun, all you need to do is lure 'em into a hallway and sorta aim it at 'em.  Now granted, it'll prolly strip every bit of the paper off the all, but I guarantee that you'll put 'em down!'"

Between my trip to the firing range and the testimonials that night, I came away thinking that all Americans were paranoid, gun-obsessed lunatics.  If the purpose was hunting, why did they need something salvaged from the flank of a Vietnam-era Huey helicopter?  If they were protecting themselves against home invasion, who were the invaders?  Agent Smith from The Matrix?

These events haven't crossed my mind for years, but the back-to-back horrors of the Aurora Theater / Sandy Hook tragedies have me thinking about it again.  Ever since these horrendous events took place, I've been trying to pinpoint the real reason why Americans don't want to be parted with their ludicrously over-compensatory military hardware.

And after I share my epiphany with you, Dear Reader, it will likely surprise you for two reasons:

1. Their logic kinda makes sense in a frighteningly real sorta way.
2. It actually called into question my own immutable stance on firearms for the first time in my life.  

 To be continued...        

EPICLY SURREAL

THE "WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED" FAIL

Hmmm, Smells Like Bacon...

"OooOoo!  Red...pretty..."

Greetings, Fellow Carbon-Based Life-Forms.

Every time I sit down to look for a job I'm overcome by a primal fear.  It's not that I'm afraid that there'll be nothing to apply for.  I'm terrified by the prospects of actually getting something.

I've been toiling away for half my adult life and in all that time I can count the number of decent jobs I've had on two fingers.  The first one doesn't count because it was only a make-work project and the second one shouldn't count because I was hired by my best friend.  For everything before, during and after I've had to feign levels of interest and aptitude that would earn anyone a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance in a Existential Comedy. 

And then there's all of the overt screwage.  I can point to at least four distinct occasions in which I've been royally buggered by an employer, in spite of all my dedication, hard work and proficiency.  Three out of those four times happened at the last place I worked, fer Chrissakes!  But as needlessly monotonous and/or stressful as that last gig was, by far the worst part about it was having to listen to everyone bitch, moan and complain about how terrible everything was from 9:30 am to 6 pm, all day, every day.  And let me tell ya, folks, after marinating in a stew of negativity like that for eight and half hours every day for three years you start to think about throwing on some Pink Floyd, climbing into a nice, warm bath and then turning your wrists into venison. 

And then there are all the telling work-related Facebook notification that I see each and every day.  On Friday everybody's doing back-flips, on Saturday they're livin' large, on Sunday they're paralyzed by indecision, on Monday they're all shell-shocked, on Tuesday they're all sitting underneath their desks with a loaded revolver, on Wednesday everybody unlocks a mid-week survival achievement, on Thursday they wake up hoping it's Friday and on Friday they're all back to start.  Then the whole brain-damaged cycle starts up all over again.

I'm also not looking forward to being the "new guy".  Y'know, the guy with zero seniority.  The schmuck with the rapidly bleaching hair who can't seem to grasp things, even after fifteen quality minutes of training.  The dweeb who gets to scrub the virtual toilets at 8pm on a Saturday night.  The clown who gets paid with bottle caps and loose bits of string.  The yahoo who stands to earn forty-eight minutes of vacation time if he can just avoid getting sick or take a day off over the next six months.

Seriously, is anyone out there happy with this arrangement?  Does it make sense to spend the lion's share of our best days performing meaningless, ethereal tasks that have no positive or lingering impact on the world?  Duties that you won't even remember doing a month from now?  All the while surrounded by backbiting, petty, sabotaging co-workers that you just want to smoke in the head with a keyboard tray? 

I know that you're gonna say: "Well, that's just the way it is."  Well, I'm here to challenge that with a simple question: Why?  Why do things need to be this way?  Do you remember having a say in how our society operates?  Have you ever asked yourself why decent jobs are so scarce?  Do you ever wonder who really benefits from the current North American labor paradigm?

Insanity is often described as performing the same action over and over again and expecting different results.

Well, personally I'm tired of the insanity.  I'm tired of putting my hand on an open burner just because some stranger assures me that I won't get burned this time.    
   
EPIC SENTIMENTS

FAIL-URE TO COMMUNICATE  Okay look, I loves me some Jodie Foster, but if people need a friggin' Rosetta Stone to figure out what you're trying to say in your acceptance speech, then it might not have been particularly effective. 

2013's (Hopefully) More Realistic 'Things To Do' List

This time last year I posted a pretty massive list of things that I wanted to achieve in 2012.  

This year I'm paring things down to two (hopefully simple) goals:

1. Break my ruinous addiction to writing.
2. Prevent my savings from bleeding out like Marcus Fenix during a full-scale Grub invasion.

I love my life right now.  I love getting up every day and nurturing instead of ignoring the creative thoughts germinating in my skull.  I love exploring these ideas through mad loose leaf scribbling over a cuppa joe.  I love the process that occurs when I trap these thoughts in electronic amber, refining them twice before releasing them to the world.  Above all, I love it when people read what I've written and give me feedback.

There's only critical thing missing from this seemingly perfect equation: I'm not making any money.  Y'know, money...scratch, shekels, dinero, cash, bread, currency, cheddar, dough, rupees, coin, capitol...friggin' greenbacks.  I.E. those numbers on a paycheck or scraps of colored paper that we receive in exchange for goods and/or services rendered?  I.E. that mass hallucination which arbitrarily assigns a relative value to everyone and every thing in our society.

Hmmmm, for some reason the NHL settlement just popped into my mind.  How odd. 

Anyhoo, this irrational compulsion to write has set me on an inexorable collision course with the iceberg of financial ruin.  In fact, because of my three-to-five-times-a-week-habit I didn't even attempt to do most of the things on last year's list.  

It kills me to say this, but I'm either going to have to quit these blog posts cold turkey or, at the very least, scale back my usage.  As I transition back into some nebulous, yet-to-be-determined "real" job, these posts will become less about composition and research and more like diary entries.  I just hope that I can find a paying gig that offers even a fraction of the bliss I feel whenever I'm writing something.

I honestly didn't expect to degenerate into a word-slave when I started exploring the blog culture over two years ago.  My first tentative posts were only designed to hone my skills as a writer and maintain a regular production schedule.  In doing so I was hoping, rather naively, that some hypothetical employer would notice that I could string a sentence together, work under self-imposed deadlines, and attract a healthy cadre of followers.  In my warped imagination I though that this might lead to some sort of regular paying gig.  Surprisingly, this hasn't materialized yet.

I also recognize that I should have paid my dues as a writer back when I was in my twenties, not now.  It's forgivable to be dirt poor in your twenties but it's considerably less romantic and indie when your forty.  In fact it's kind of, hmmmmm...what's the word I'm looking for...oh yes, pathetic.    
 
Now, I certainly don't regret using the last two years to practice my craft.  In fact, I think I've exhibited dramatic improvement as a writer, editor and all-around embloginator.  But as I've come to learn rather painfully: producing content is considerably easier then parleying it into a career.  Although I'm still holding out some hope for an It's a Wonderful Life-style resolution to my story, I now know that life isn't like the movies.  No-one's going to magically materialize out of the ether and grant me some semblance of a future.

In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, after Kirk has become disillusioned with the administrative assignment of Admiral, Spock tells him: "Commanding a starship is your first best destiny.  Anything else is a waste of material".

If the last two years have taught me anything, at least I can say with total confidence that my own "first best destiny" is to be a writer.    

Unfortunately if I keep blindly pursuing this destiny, I'm gonna end up wasted by the material.      



EPIC SUPPORT  I just want to say a hearty thanks to anyone who's ever contributed to my hit count either here or at my entertainment site or my gaming blog.  If you're a regular reader and you want to help, honestly the best thing you can do is pick up a copy of my book in paperback for $19.99 or the e-version for a paltry $4.99.  You can also throw a coupla bucks my way by using the Paypal link above.  Considering the state of my finances, these donations should technically be tax deductible.    

Honestly, I had no illusions about becoming J.K. Rowling-rich while persuing this racket but I'd love to  keep writing without loosing my shirt.  The funny thing is, if all four-hundred and twenty-three people who read last year's "Things To Do" post had donated a dime to the blog I'd actually be well on my way!

NOT GETTING PAID TO DO WHAT YOU LOVE?  YOU'RE FAILING AT LIFE!  Honestly, I understand the world less now at forty then I did when I was twenty.

FAILED PRIORITIES  If this douchebag can get paid over five million dollars a year to chase a friggin' black rubber disc around a rink (or not in the case of this disastrous season) then I don't think it's unreasonable for people in creative pursuits to earn enough money to pay for basic living expenses.