A Few Things to Mention Before I Leave

It's the morning of October 29th as I write this, so Nanowrimo 2011 is hours away from beginning. I've been playing with different ideas over the past several weeks, looking for ways to build concrete ideas around collections of notes and random thoughts. And I seriously feel more prepared to begin than I have been for any of the three previous years I've taken this on. But right now that planning doesn't feel like it adds up to much, because the only thing I'm thinking as I get closer to the starting date is "Holy crap, is this going to be a lot of work." All that work I've done to try and wean myself off caffeine? Gone. Worthwhile sleep? Not so much. Too early mornings and too late nights? Here for the foreseeable future. It really makes me question why I'm bothering, and I don't mean participating in this particular marathon so much, but to question why I even bother investing the time it takes to try and write at all. The odds are overwhelming that anything I ever write, including any given post here, might read by maybe twenty people, tops, if I'm lucky. But I guess in the end it comes down to that in the life I've built for myself I simply can't see myself NOT writing. So forward I will go. Even if it means that 'Summer Vacation' will likely be taking a vacation of its own for the next month or so. I'll probably do a series of short posts to just clear my head from time to time and remind myself that the word count is actually moving forward, but seriously, knowing what I've got ahead of me this year, I fully know I'll be lucky to even get that much done here.

So today I'm doing another version of Take Out The Trash Day, or Big Block of Cheese Day. And even if the latter reference doesn't quite apply as much as the former, I like it better. And if you don't understand the references behind either of them, sit down and watch "The West Wing" already....

*I still can't wrap my head completely around this new level of social interaction called the Facebook friendship. I have several Facebook friends I see frequently, and yet we never mention anything to each other about anything that's come up on Facebook. Has commenting on a post, or even just reading one, or even clicking the Like button, taken the place of actual discourse? And how is it there are people you can have several common friends with but neither person pulls trigger to "friend" each other? For my part, I really hate the idea of trying to wedge myself into someone else's life in any capacity at all, even just being on a Facebook list, unless I'm positive I'd be welcomed, so I don't send out a lot of friend requests. And yes, I'll fully admit the collection of defense mechanisms that passes for my personality doesn't make it easy for even people I LIKE to reach my inner circle. But who are these people that have 900 or 1,000 Facebook friends? How do you even KNOW 1,000 people? Do you friend everyone you share a bus ride or a grocery store express line with? My point here is: Out of all these Facebook changes, I actually kind of like the group update thing. Even with the small number of friends I have, I can click those and see what's going on just with my family, or one particular group of friends, or whatever. It feeds my compulsive organization.

*Monday will be the Halloween party at school, which means the bunny suit will again be making an appearance. Based on the popular t-shirts at school this year, I'm curious to find out exactly how many people will be dressed up as Angry Birds or Wimpy Kids. I'm not sure how someone would pull off a Wimpy Kid costume, but something tells me the good people of the costume industry have already figured this one out.

*All week I've been listening to Coldplay's newest album, "Mylo Xyloto," which, even though it has a tragically awful title, is a pretty good album. Now, do I consider myself a Coldplay fan? Not really. If I'm a fan of someone, I really have to think they can do no wrong, or at least have a remarkably high average of doing things right. And Coldplay? Eh... not so much. I hate the song "Yellow" so much that if it comes on the radio it makes me want to scrape all of the skin from my face just so I will feel such an overwhelming pain I won't notice the song anymore. I bought their second album when I kept reading and hearing about how great it was, but when I listened myself I felt it was the musical equivalent of an empty notebook.
Being ever the optimist (?!) though, I still bought their third album "XY" when some of the radio songs were interesting. I hoped this indicated a new direction and they really were becoming a band close to as great as everyone kept saying they were, but it wound up having just a couple of interesting radio songs and more of the same dull. But then "Viva La Vida" came along, and yeah, even if that title song became ubiquitous in the summer of 2008, I liked the album so much it made me glad I gave them one more chance. It had a very strong progressive streak for a pop album and really broke around what was considered the template for popular music at the time. When they released the companion EP "Prospekt's March" soon after, I took the best songs from the two and made up my own playlist album that I think is better than either of them. So I was kind of psyched for this new one, since I expected they'd continue the more progressive trend and not fall back to the empty melancholy pop that defined them early on. And after a week, I'm very happy with this new one. Still prog-pop, but with a much stronger electronic sound to it. And I don't mind saying -- partly because I know it would offend the Coldplay antifans/musical hipsters of the world -- "Mylo Xyloto" has a musical sensibility to it that would easily let it pass as a lost album by Cloud Cult. And if you have issues with this? Shut up. My music can mean something to me without me caring if it means anything to you.

*I am completely addicted to the "Stuff You Should Know" podcast. I have few moments of zen more satisfying than lying down in my offce and playing Bejeweled Blitz or Words with Friends on the iPhone while listening to Josh and Chuck have their researched conversations about things like asteroids, the Nile River, Quantum Suicide, Scooby Doo, hiccups, samurai, breathalyzers, alien hand syndrome, how dogs perceive time, lobotomies, James Bond, innovation, mountaintop removal mining, igloos, venomous animals, Legos, Spam, Twinkies, anti-matter spacecraft, or any other number of seemingly random but surprisingly fascinating topics. It's almost enough to make me wish I lived in Atlanta so I could hang out with these guys, if I was smart enough to keep up with the conversation. If you listen to Podcasts at all or are even just curious, I highly recommend going on iTunes and finding one of these to try out. Most of them are only about half an hour long. Pick a topic that sounds interesting and you'll be hooked.

*And now to close, a special dedication to Mr. And Mrs. Bomani, in light of the rather significant week they've had. Perhaps you won't entirely agree with the philosophy of these lyrics, but I'm confident you'll appreciate the poetry and sentiment behind them:

Taken from "Living Proof," by Bruce Springsteen from the 1991 album "Lucky Town."

Well now on a summer night
In a dusky room
Come a little piece of the Lord's undying light
Crying like he swallowed the fiery moon
In his mother's arms
It was all the beauty I could take
Like the missing words to some prayer that I could never make
In a world so hard and dirty
So fouled and confused
Searching for a little bit of God's mercy
I found living proof

And thank you for not naming him Brock.

Okay folks. Talk to you in a month. Wish me luck, and if you do see me in the real world, stay on my back. It takes a lot of pushing to come up with 50,000 words.