I gotta dance! August 22, 2008
Posted by bluewendigo in Writing.Tags: Awesomeness, Dancing, Google Dance, Party
4 comments
I went to the Google Dance this week. For those of you who don’t know, during a conference called Search Engine Strategies, Google hosts a dance/party on their campus for all of SEO/Internet marketing professionals.
The party is huge, it’s basically thousands of search engine professionals attending the conference and every Google employee.
Free food, free t-shirt, games, volleyball, etc.
They had a dance floor outside. I just had to dance.
I’m awesome!
Jason
Smoke and Mirrors August 15, 2008
Posted by bluewendigo in Sports.Tags: China, Deceit, magic, Olympics, The Prestige, Tricks
1 comment so far
While watching the Olympic games held in China, I am reminded of a scene during the movie “The Prestige”. In this scene a little girl watches a magic trick. A bird is in a cage, a cloth is placed over the cage and then the magician slams the cloth down and the bird and the cage disappear underneath the cloth.
The girl cries, thinking the bird is killed, but then the magician shows her the bird and she is happy again. Then things turn really dark when they show you the trick behind the magic. The bird is flattened in a trap door in the table between the bars of the cage, in a ruffled, bloody mess. The sick part is they do this trick night after night after night.
So as I watch the Olympics, I was impressed by the opening ceremonies. They were spectacular. The venues have been amazing. The hosts have been gracious. It looks like a picture perfect Olympics.
Except their gymnasts aren’t 16yrs old like the rule states, aided in their ruse by the whole government of China.
Except the 9 year old who sang at the opening really didn’t sing. And the one who did was too ugly to put on t.v.
Except all the homeless people they kicked out of apartments etc. to build venues.
Except for all the human rights violations happening beyond the walls of the Olympic city.
It’s a good magic trick, it’s a great show. But I keep finding feathers floating around.
Jason
Strategies of breaking wind in the workplace August 13, 2008
Posted by bluewendigo in 1.Tags: Cubicle, Farts, Gross, Office, Stinky, Work
2 comments
Some people have no problems floating an air biscuit in public, even a loud one. However, for the rest of you who are worried about it, I have some simple strategies for emitting flatulence in a covert way in the workplace.
The Rule of Three – Always float a silent loaf in a crowd of three or more. In a crowd of two, you and the other person both know who did it, in three or more everyone except you is left guessing and if confronted, you can say it wasn’t you and then everyone is left guessing on who is lying.
The Drive By – Sometimes you don’t have a place to blast and air dookie, so you have to walk by a set of cubicles and release slowly and then quickly vacate the area. Try not to be seen as you move through the space. If done well, you can spark a fight in the cubicle area after you are gone on who let the skunk out of the bag.
Avoid the Detectives – As you apply the rule of three, keep in mind that the more you release toxic DNA into the office, the more you can be fingered as the culprit. A smart savvy co-worker may begin to find you as the common thread. “Everytime I’m in a group and there is a cheek leak, Jason is always around!” Try to avoid this scenario!
The Reverb – Try not to pop off when sitting on a chair. If you have to, wait for the timing to coincide with another sound, like the phone ringing or announcements over the intercom. If you really have to let go and you can’t hold it, use the fire alarm, but only as a last resort! The smell might make people believe it’s a real fire and call the fire department.
The Cubicle Inversion – Remember! Be on the move, don’t toil in your own stink. The cubicle walls act as a valley and hold the smell in. If someone comes by to talk to you, they may pass out and bodies lying around your workspace are a sure sign that you are cutting the cheese.
I hope this helps my flatulent readers.
Jason
“Night Games” August 11, 2008
Posted by bluewendigo in Writing.Tags: Childhood, Games, magic, summer
2 comments
My nine year old daughter asks if she could stay out until 10pm, the kids in the neighborhood are playing “night games”.
As soon as she mentions “night games” i can’t say no. Torrents of memories crash over me as I remember past “night games” that i played.
We played a game that took up the whole length of the street. We were prisoners of war and we needed to collect certain items from different houses that made up our “escape kit”, things like berries from the Ferguson’s, a piece of bark from the Lambert’s or a rock from the Bradley’s.
Once your kit was assembled, you had to make your way to the escape zone, all the while avoiding guards patrolling the street with flashlights.
We took this seriously, hopping fences, hiding in the dirt under bushes, sometimes tearing our clothes, sometimes bleeding from scratches, all of it adding to the realistic adventure that we were experiencing.
The summers were full of promise, the days were long and the world was simple. In that moment was enchantment, an elusive sort of magic like trying to catch a whisper on the wind, or bottle children’s laughter or glimpse some of the fairy-folk in the twilight, the fading hours between day and night when all magic seems to happen.
All a kid needed was a bike and nothing to do, there were fields to cross like boundaries to a little kingdom. Promises were made to friends to be true forever, imaginary enemies were fought and overcome as a team of scrubby little youths with holes in our jeans and worn out tennis shoes, treasures were discovered and lost again. We roamed the streets at night like phantoms of innocence, finally crashing in our beds at late hours only to awake and start the process all over again.
*Sigh* I have to go back to work.
Jason
It’s the end of the world as we know it August 5, 2008
Posted by bluewendigo in Monsters.Tags: Apocalypse, Demons, End of the world, Monsters
5 comments
So at work, we commonly refer to the end of the world as EOTW. And as my friends know, my favorite EOTW scenario is the zombie apocalypse.
Anyway, if you are looking for signs that the EOTW is upon us, i have a few right here.
Hell dog from the abyss
And here…
Furry dragon hellmonster from the abyss
Furry hellmonster
The ocean abyss is coughing up all sorts of hellish monsters. These are the ones that have died, how many more have made it ashore alive?
Dopplegangers, Krakkens, dragons, devil-dogs, demons, vampires, succubi, harpies, and who knows what else could be living amongst us.
Let this be a warning, i don’t want to have to say I told you so.
Jason
Men, Women and reading August 4, 2008
Posted by bluewendigo in Writing.Tags: Books, men, Reading, Twilight, Vampires, women, Writing
5 comments
So my friend Jenny has a blog called “Date Jenny” (datejenny.com) and I actually think you can date her, I’m not sure what the sign up process is, but if you are single, it’s worth checking out.
Anyway, on her blog recently there has been an interesting conversation about why we read, what we choose to read and people who read books and can’t put them down when they start to suck because they have trained themselves to believe that they must finish what they started. I do not subscribe to this point of view.
But I did start to wonder why I read the books I read and why women read the books they read.
Specifically mentioned was the “Twilight series” that is really popular right now. Every girl I know in the world is all giddy with excitement over this series.
For those of you who do not know, let me sum up! A girl in high school falls in love with a vampire in high school but they can’t be together (oh the angst!) because the vampire wants to eat her but he can’t because he loves her at the same time.
This is sappy, romantic utter female fare. Someone asked me if I would read it, knowing my liking of Sci Fi and Fantasy. I asked, “How many people does the vampire kill? Do they kill the vampire? What’s the body count?”
A similar thing happens when my wife brings home a chick flick. “Are there any explosions? What’s the body count? Are there any robot battles?” etc.
Why is it that men and women are so different? As far as I can tell, women are very socially oriented, they are all about relationships, so they like to read books about relationships and how people struggle with them.
Men are geared towards problem solving and like to read books about problems and the characters struggle to solve them. I’m sure it’s deeper than that, but I don’t know why.
I’ve even tried reading female authors and have had very little success in finding any that I like.
I might read Twilight, if the vampire was killed by a pack of werewolves and the girl decided to get revenge by going on a murderous rampage. Then I might pick it up.
Stay tuned, I may have some thoughts on how to improve Sense and Sensibility as well.
Jason
Show don’t tell July 31, 2008
Posted by bluewendigo in Writing.Tags: description, Writing, writing technique, writing tips
1 comment so far
So, one of the hardest things to do as a writer is to show instead of telling. Let me give you an example.
Bob was big and tall. (That is telling the reader)
Bob was so big and tall he was like a fat giraffe. (Slightly better but still telling the reader by using a simile)
When Bob walked in the room, I suddenly felt like I was in a Barbie playhouse. He would sit in my loveseat for two and would barely leave space for his own wallet. He could sit at one end of the room and still toast his feet by the fire when he stretched out.
Okay, so i’m not good at it either, but you get the point. It’s hard to do.
In normal conversation, we don’t talk like this. We say Bob was big and tall and we leave it at that. Most people don’t ask the follow up question, “How big and tall was he?”
The readers won’t ask that question either. But if you can paint the picture for them, the story suddenly becomes alive, they have an image in their head and you helped place it there.
Now the reader is picturing Bob ducking as he stands up, maybe even almost knocking over lamps, etc as he moves around in this Barbie playhouse.
So it got me thinking, when writing stories, how often do we take the simple route and say something cliche like:
Strong as an ox
Tall as a giraffe
White as a ghost
Eats like a bird
Snores like a buzz saw
Cliches are useful in conversation, but paint no pictures in story telling.
The trick is to show people how strong, tall, fat, short, stupid, smart, handsome, etc.
That’s why Yo Mamma jokes are so funny.
Yo Momma was so ugly, I took her to the zoo and the guy at the front gate said, “Thanks for bringing her back!”
Anyway, you get the picture.
Jason
Dodgeball with the Titans: a child’s perspective. July 29, 2008
Posted by bluewendigo in Writing.Tags: children, descriptive writing, Dodgeball, Games, Gods, Mythology
1 comment so far
Two squares, two halves of the field, separated to do battle, for honor and glory. We stand here, our rag-tag little army comprised of seven to seventeen year olds. We stand on the back line like sprinters, waiting for the whistle, the balls on the center line, waiting like shiny little easter egg surprises, two nerf footballs and three nerf round balls, 3″ in diameter.
Further across the way stand the parents, the providers of my safety, my house, my sustenance, my aunts and my uncles. However, they look different, a dangerous glint in the eyes, something is different.
The whistle sounds, we kids sprint with all our youthful excitement, trained on the playgrounds of America, we fly across the field, confident in our seizing of the nerf projectiles. But something is not right. The parents move with uncanny swiftness. Realizing that we will not reach the line in time, we dig in our heels and back-pedal like madmen. Those that had committed too much went down with alarming alacrity. Three had fallen within seconds of the whistle, granted we outnumbered the parents five to one.
There was no time to mourn, the parents moved liked ghosts our feeble attempts sailed past wisps of where the parents used to be.
The parents brought down pain like gods throwing lighting. Images of Zeus, Odin, and Thor went racing through my mind. Kids were falling left and right. I could see a parent holding two nerf balls in one hand and watched as he hurled them with such velocity that they blurred in flight. The nerf balls split in two like some wicked spell cast upon us and I watched as another kid went down in utter dodgeball humiliation.
Groin shots, head shots, dual hits, they called them like Babe Ruth pointing out home runs. I wanted to avert my eyes, but the carnage mesmerized me.
We huddled at the back line, using each other for shields, all loyalty gone out the window. We watched and waited for darkness to descend.
Okay, so that’s not exactly how my seven year old daughter saw it. In fact, i don’t know how she saw it, but i can only imagine, at seven years old, how scary a stupid nerf dodgeball game could be when facing off against the parents.
The truth of the matter is this. My daughter was the last one left standing with three adult males on the other side. We could have riddled her with nerf balls like a 1920’s gangland shooting. But instead, we let her win and faked utter incompetence.
The children chanted her name, hoisted her upon their shoulders and celebrated the day they brought the gods to their knees.
Jason
I’m all about the people. July 10, 2008
Posted by bluewendigo in Characters.Tags: Characters, Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere, Star Wars, Writing, writing tips
1 comment so far
So this is my new blog theme, writing. I have one observation and I think others share this view.
I can come up with endless ideas and plot lines. Fancy little twists and story ideas. But that will not get me very far in writing, or at least will not make my writing memorable or enjoyable.
If you think back on the books you remember most, the movies that are your favorites, it’s the characters that you related to, not the story.
Strong quirky characters that you can root for. You don’t necessarily have to relate to them as people, but you have to care enough about them to care about the story.
They could even be villians. I think back fondly about Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar (Neil Gaiman’s book Neverwhere). I can’t forget those two gentlemen.
I think about Star Wars, the first three. Han Solo was an amazing character, rich in detail. The second three Star Wars movies were not very memorable at all. They seemed to rely on special effects instead of good old fashion story telling. (I personally think that George Lucas is overrated)
So this is what I struggle with, ways to come up with interesting characters. In fact, i want to write a story where the character comes first and the story idea comes second. That never happens for me.
-Jason-
How good is your Kung Fu? July 8, 2008
Posted by bluewendigo in 1.Tags: Cliches, Karate, Kung Foo, Martial Arts, Movies
3 comments
I like martial arts movies. I think martial arts are cool, but let’s face it. There are too many cliches when it comes to the ancient arts of fighting as they are portrayed in the movies. The movies tend to not portray things realistically. Yeah, I’m sorry, i hate to burst your bubble. But let’s take a look at the common recurring themes when it comes to martial arts.
1. An ancient/Old Asian man will take on an American youngster and teach him everything he knows. – Hey, I lived in Japan for two years and I didn’t have any old Asian guys offering to teach me a thing. Not even the proper way to hold my chopsticks!
2. When a Kung Fu master fights multiple opponents, they all take turns attacking him. – Is this some sort of unwritten code? Why don’t they jump him all at once and beat his ass down?
3. Eventually the master will die, leaving the apprentice to soul search and find the final lesson within himself.- No way, the kid would freak out because he never got his diploma or something and he would never feel complete, then he would get his ass kicked by every bully in school.
4. The master knows some crazy ancient powers that have been lost to the western world. – Like slapping your hands together and rubbing them to generate heat that will heal wounds and broken bones. But they can’t figure out how to grow facial hair? Or maybe they are suppressing the growth through ancient ninja powers?
5. Really good masters can dodge bullets and catch arrows. – Has anyone ever shot a ninja? Speak up! Anyone?
6. Any object taken into the hand, automatically becomes a weapon and a true master will be proficient with it. – A plunger? A coat hanger? A balloon animal? Man I would feel stupid if I got beat down by a balloon animal!
Let me tell you the secret to martial arts success. Listen to this song everyday, and nobody will beat you.
Jason
