Writer's block

You're in a very difficult situation when you have to write for work and you have major writer's block. This isn't even "creative writing", but sociological research. I need to craft a persuasive literature review three weeks ago using a compilation of article summaries/ideas and my own words, but no words will come. I can't even put together logical sentences summarizing the findings of these articles when I have already summarized most of them in outline form. Yet I can knock out a paragraph on here in one minute about how I can't write. Dude. It's probably because I have no desire to write this literature review anyway, except that I like getting paid...

Harry Potter BAFTA and J. K. Rowling

I want to share with you a thought-provoking blogpost by Kid In The Front Row. Enjoy!

The Great Escape from the Freeway at the Wonderland Carnival

You know how sometimes when you wake up from a weird or unsettling dream, you really want to share it with someone but you have a hard time piecing it altogether in a way that makes sense to relate?  That’s where I’m at right now, so I’m typing it.  My friend T told me that if I was looking for blog ideas, I should take inspiration from my subconscious and write down my dreams on my blog, ergo, I’m writing this here and now.  Ed note after writing: You may not find this interesting; I realize now that it was definitely not my most captivating dream.  It is also unfinished—I woke up part of the way through and couldn’t fall back asleep to finish it.  I wonder how it would have resolved.

For the record, I typically have crazy dreams.  I have an overactive imagination, and I think my subconscious tries desperately to make up for my boring life.  Gotta live somehow, right?  When I say I have weird dreams, I mean they are never boring or “regular” stories that could happen in everyday life.  Well, occasionally they are that way.  But most of the time, they are fantastic stories that could only be captured by a book, a movie with awesome special effects, or an episode of one of my TV shows (for example, I’ve dreamed up—literally dreamed—several brilliant ideas for Glee and Bones TV episodes.  I’m sure I could sell these ideas for a small fortune if I wrote them down.).  Bear this in mind while you read the following.

My sister K and I were the only people I know who were in the dream.  I don’t remember how it started, but it seems as though we were at an amusement park/state carnival of sorts, running around and having fun.   We were probably a few years younger; I don’t think K was married.  I’m the youngest, and there are only two years between her and me but four years between her and our older sister C.  Growing up we spent a lot of time running around and participating in various shenanigans together, so it was not surprising that we were doing so in my dream.

K and I decided to get on the freeway to go somewhere.  We got into a convertible (a trashy one, mind you—no rich snobbery for us!) and got on the 10 freeway in California.  If you asked my conscious self where the 10 is in California, I would have no idea and could only tell you that I have been on it once or twice.  But my subconscious is all-knowing, so we were on that freeway.  It was soon after this happened that the scene seemed to change to the state carnival, and I recognized that we had been there the whole time.  The freeway was actually a racetrack for kids, you know, the kind for the toy cars to ride on.  K and I were in one of those toy convertibles (K was driving), and we were small enough to fit yet too large at the same time.  I realized at one point that there seemed to be a tour guide directing us, showing us “the sights” and talking.  These were almost exclusively the car track, which was sometimes like a roller coaster, sometimes like train tracks, sometimes like a kid’s toy car track, and it was mostly enclosed in tunnels with occasional peeking out around corners to see flashes of the park.  The track led progressively higher in elevation, with ups and downs along the way, but it was at least a story or two in the air.  K and I weren’t really paying attention to the tour guide; we were talking and laughing at this or that.

Traffic on this road was pretty congested; we were going very slowly.  Always, we would have a quick spurt of road and then would end up stopped bumper to bumper for a minute while the tour guide showed us something like the inside of the track (It was a terrible tour idea).  But here was the thrill of it: when we would gain a small stretch of road quickly, one or both of us would invariably fall out of the car onto the side, probably because we were too big for the cars and there were no seatbelts anyway.  We would laugh and have to pick ourselves up and get into the car quickly again before traffic cleared and we were to take off again.  It was usually me who fell out, since K was the driver.  I would get back into the car just in time for us to start moving.  Somehow when I got back in the car, I’d fit in the seat again.  It was like I would grow or shrink à la Alice and Wonderland.  It occurred to me that the tour was more like a sadistic game in which the tour guide tried to time the traffic stops just so that we would lose a passenger or two periodically along the way.  The Quillan book of the Pendragon series comes to mind.

One time when I fell out of the car, we had stopped not in a tunnel but in one of those stretches that was open to the world.  As we were high up in the air, I almost fell over the edge and had to hang on for dear life.  K almost got out to help me up, but the stop was shorter than the previous ones and the cars in front of her had already started to move forward.  She looked scared that I wouldn’t make it up, but I somehow climbed back over the edge.  I had just done so when she was forced to move forward by cars behind her and I waved her forward, saying I’d catch up.  (I wonder now if she wasn’t really driving and the cars were automatically moved along the track like most roller coasters.  It’s possible.)  I quickly climbed onto the track hands and knees style, following the cars behind her and hoping I could catch up quickly.  It was a silly hope; they were driving and I was crawling because I was too large to stand up and run.  I seemed to grow larger still, and that slowed me down—maybe being in the car was what allowed me to shrink again, and without that I would grow exponentially.  I was too large and had to squeeze through tunnels Great Escape style, trying in vain to catch up with K and my tour group. 

As I was scrambling and squeezing through the tunnels, I thought maybe I could take a shortcut, but there were all kinds of tracks around us like the real SoCal freeway system.  None of them were clearly marked (figures), so I had no way of jumping onto an unfamiliar part of the 10 freeway in hopes that I would find K there.  I quickly realized I was way too far behind her to catch up now, and I didn’t know what to do.  I jumped off the track and found myself at the beginning of it, but I couldn’t find the end of the track.  I figured I’d just wait at the front of the ride for K to get off and meet me there, but then realized with a panic that I didn’t have my cell phone on me to call or text her.  How would she know where to meet me?  (That was what it was like before we had cell phones.)  I walked around, hoping for her to find me, but I had been walking around for a few hours with no sign of her…maybe something had happened to her?  Maybe she had fallen off and gotten stuck somewhere in a tunnel?  Or maybe she had not been able to find me and couldn’t reach me by phone?  Maybe she had given up on me?

Someone rang our doorbell and I woke up from my Great Escape from the Freeway at the Wonderland Carnival dream, feeling dissatisfied and unresolved.  It was definitely one of those moments where I wanted to go back to sleep to finish my dream, but I couldn’t.  Instead, I lay there with my brow furrowed (ignoring the door) as I tried to figure out what this meant.  I don’t believe dreams are always significant, but I believe they often have aspects that represent feelings or thoughts the dreamer has.  I have my thoughts about this one, but my interpretations are too personal for a public blog.  Think what you will.  I know this was not a very interesting dream—the plot was much less intricate than my usual dreams.  If you’re still reading this now, I apologize, though you’re the one who came to my blog in the first place.  The dream was still puzzling all the same.

Lifelong Imprisonment: the Beast or Gaston?

Watching a good old Disney movie is the perfect thing to do while cleaning: I’ve seen ‘em a million times and I always enjoy them, which makes them great motivators.  So, this afternoon I put on Beauty and the Beast while I was cleaning my room.  I got the DVD for Christmas and this was its maiden voyage.  All in all, it was a successful experience – the movie worked fine and my room is now clean.  Hallelujah.  But this is all background information.

You see, it occurred to me while I was watching the movie that Belle makes two decisions that when put together reveal something very interesting.  At the beginning of the movie, Belle comes to a dark, imposing castle and finds her sick father stuck in a drafty tower.  Seconds later a terrifying, monstrous Beast shows up.  Although there really could be nothing positive about it, she readily agrees to stay in the tower forever as the Beast’s prisoner so that her father can go free.  She is even the one to suggest it and determinedly resigns herself to her sad fate.  The Beast shows none of his hidden softness or kindness in this encounter, and Belle has no idea of what the future will hold, yet she throws away her young life.  Could this be because she really hates her “provincial life” that badly?  No, I think it is because she really wants to protect her father and has faith that the future will turn out for her situation.

At the end of the movie, her father is in another kind of danger.  The people of her town come to lock away her father in an asylum because they think she is crazy.  All of this was orchestrated by Gaston, who tells Belle that if she agrees to marry him then her father will go free.  Belle’s horrified is response is a vehement “Never!”  Is this because her father’s life was more in danger while a prisoner of the Beast than while stuck in the loony bin?  Possibly, but I don’t know about that.  In asylums back then, proper care and medications to sedate violent patients were not available, so he could easily have fallen victim of neglect or violence.  Maybe she responded that way because she had the mirror and thought she could prove her father wasn’t crazy…but I think she was smart enough to realize that no one would listen, especially with Gaston controlling the crowd.  She just had to try.  And even when Gaston gets angry enough that he accuses her of being crazy, too, she doesn’t try to come up with a compromise like agreeing to marry him then if he’ll spare them both of the asylum.  Notice how he doesn’t call her crazy until she doesn’t respond to his accusation that she has feelings for the Beast and she says that Gaston is the true monster.  He accepts that the Beast is real when she reveals him in the mirror, which should mean that her father can go free, since his talk of the Beast is what made them call him crazy in the first place.  But because Belle calls Gaston a monster, his pride is so damaged that he throws both Belle and her father in the prisoner cart.  She could have agreed to marry Gaston to save her father from committal, but lands both of them in the asylum (luckily, Chip is there to save them, but that is not pertinent to this story).

I’m not trying to tear down a great Disney movie, I promise.  I just want to focus on this interesting juxtaposition.  Belle is willing to remain a prisoner in an enchanted castle for the rest of her life, yet she is not willing to marry a man who could provide a home and comfort for her for the rest of her life.  Both the Beast and Gaston are jerks to her, the Beast even more openly so.  Why does she choose him at the beginning and not Gaston at the end?  Is it because at the beginning she doesn’t have a satisfactory life, but by the end she is in love with the Beast even though she doesn’t realize it?  Maybe…

I think the most likely reason is that Gaston is a narcissistic toolbag.  And a chauvinist pig.  The Beast is mean, sure, but even at the beginning Belle must have seen that he was a lonely creature who had nothing to live for, and was lashing out because of his inner pain and anguish.  Gaston shows that even at the beginning, he has no respect for women: “It’s not right for women to read; soon they start getting ideas, thinking…”  Gaston wants Belle for a prize.  The Beast only wants a prisoner and doesn’t seem to care whether it is an old man or a young woman.  If anything, the Beast reveals a glimmer of hope when he tentatively asks her, “You would…take his place?”  That suggests that he wants her there more than her father, so he is likely to treat her better than he treated him.  Gaston is shallow and vain, but is not your average puffed up windbag.  There is an element of violence that lies beneath his egotistical exterior, showing that if they had gotten married he’d probably be an abusive husband.  Beast has a cold, hard exterior with an aching but warm heart beneath, whereas Gaston is outwardly likeable and inwardly a cold, selfish brute. 

So guys, maybe you’re a little hard on the exterior, but if you learn to let that go and show a warm heart, maybe a beautiful girl will fall for you.  And if you want to get married, don’t be narcissistic toolbags or chauvinist pigs, or nice girls will choose the insane asylum over you.

Chuck Norris's Personal Code

Today I decided to look up Chuck Norris on Wikipedia. Mostly I just wanted to know how old he is, but then I started reading what Wikipedia had to say about him. For the record, I have never been a huge proponent for Chuck Norris jokes. Sometimes they're funny, but most of the time I just think they're dumb. But after reading Wikipedia today I have new respect for the man.

According to Wikipedia, Chuck Norris lives by his own personal code. I really don't know much about Chuck Norris and have no idea if this is true or not, but if it is, I gives props to Chuck. It's a great code. Here it is:

1.   I will develop myself to the maximum of my potential in all ways.

2.   I will forget the mistakes of the past and press on to greater achievements.

3.   I will continually work at developing love, happiness and loyalty in my family.

4.   I will look for the good in all people and make them feel worthwhile.

5.   If I have nothing good to say about a person, I will say nothing.

6.   I will always be as enthusiastic about the success of others as I am about my own.

7.   I will maintain an attitude of open-mindedness.

8.   I will maintain respect for those in authority and demonstrate this respect at all times.

9.   I will always remain loyal to my God, my country, family and my friends.

10. I will remain highly goal-oriented throughout my life because that positive attitude helps my family, my country and myself.

Isn't that an awesome list? I support everything on it! I've never really had a "personal code" because I just focus on following the Savior...but the things on this list are good things that will ultimately bring the one who abides by them closer to God. Worth it? Definitely. I think I'm gonna adopt this code.