Jeff’s Journal

I’m not a resolution guy, but I am a goal guy. I like words. So, beyond the stuff I can’t yet discuss publicly:

1) Write more. While the Kroger Babb bio is my priority, that doesn’t mean I can’t do more other stuff:

a) I’ve always talked about writing a novel, I’m a NaNoWriMo failure 6 times over - a 120k word novel requires about 330 words a day. I think I can force myself to write a paragraph or two a day on most days, right? At the very least, just be able to say I’ve done it. The fact that I have zero faith in any of my ideas or ability to execute them can be dealt with later.
b) I need to get moving on this Babb bio. The window of opportunity is closing on a few things, and with the various life changes that are inherent, if I don’t get a lot of legwork done now, it may hamper my ability to get anything done later. At the very least, I need to get more significant research done - locate prints, locate people, maybe locate an agent/publisher where I can get some help? I dunno.
c) Blog more consistently. None of this “life is depressing and so I need to stay away from my keyboard until I want to explode and then get everyone angry.” It’s no good for anyone, and keeping my mind sharp and informed is important to me.

2) Get healthier. I don’t eat great, and I don’t exercise enough. The federal government thinks I’m 5 pounds away from obesity, which is somewhat ridiculous, but the fact remains that I could stand to lose 15-20 pounds. Dodgeball once a week ain’t gonna do the trick, and my diet is unlikely to change because I simply have too many food issues, but I was at 155 in college and that was fine, albeit when I didn’t eat period. If I were at 165, I’d be pretty happy with myself, to be honest. The other roadblock, though, is that writing about it is pretty much the extent of my significantly caring, so if I really want to lose some weight, my level of caring has to increase.

3) See better movies. I’m actually considering a self-governed project where I’ll watch all of the Best Picture winners in order, but then I fear eventually having to watch The Greatest Show on Earth, never mind Titanic or Crash. But, while it’s fun to throw on Harold and Kumar for a diversion, that’s 90 minutes I could put toward, say, Kicking and Screaming instead. I only watched 30-something movies last year, that’s something I’d like to improve upon.

4) More gaming. Hopefully, this will be easy once Mike’s Genius game gets off the ground, but I would like to feel comfortable enough with things to possibly run a one-shot near the of the year. It’s a goal, hey.

5) Be a better husband. I don’t pull my weight enough, and I know it and Ann loves me for it anyway. I need to stay more aware of it, though, and make a better effort.

6) Be more creative. I haven’t recorded a piece of music in 2 years now, for instance. Even if I’m writing 300 words a day, maybe doing some short stories might be fun. Why hold back?

Actually, I think that may have to be my mantra going forward - why hold back? I’ve become too concerned with my own perception of myself and, as much as I hate to admit it, my own perceptions as to how others see me. I know what I’m capable of. I’m going to be 28 this year. Why hold back?

I started this at 10:30pm Friday night, I’ll probably finish in the morning. Who knows. If you want 5 of your own, let me know - these were from Mike:

1. Are you having kids any time soon?

In the clearest possible terms, no. For one, we’re simply not ready in any way shape or form - we don’t have a second bedroom, I don’t have a job in 7 days, and we’re enjoying our life as it is anyway. Beyond that, the adoption process is, bare minimum, a two year process. We’ve put off buying a place until the economic stuff sorts out a bit more, so we’re at least 3 years away at this point, I think.

What’s your thoughts on being a parent? What kind of dad do you picture yourself being?

I’m scared. It’s the single scariest thing on my future horizon. I fear being a poor parent, about not doing right for my kids, for not being able to provide what they deserve, for not bringing them up the way I think they should be. I fear my genetics. I fear my own insecurities.

Ann thinks this might make me a better parent, since I’m so aware of all these things. I’m not convinced yet, but, again, 3 years down the line.

2. You’re a literary nerd. Why aren’t lyrics important to you?

It’s probably because I’m even more of a music nerd. I’m drawn to a song’s structure - whether it be a catchy melody, a great hook, or an interesting arrangement - long before I even hear the words being sung.

Even as a “literary nerd,” there’s very little in literature that sticks with me. I just finished Anathem today, which is probably my favorite book in 12 months, and I couldn’t even begin to tell you the details of a passage that really caught me, even though there were plenty. Maybe I just don’t have that sort of mind, not that I know what sort of mind it is.

3. How in the world do you find the time to read as many books, watch as many movies, listen to as much music, and do as much stuff in a 168 hour week?

Okay. First, a typical “adult” book is 250-400 pages long. A typical “adult” book, as it is, I can read at a clip of 55-70 pages in a 30 minute sitting. I’ve always been a fast reader, so it’s pretty natural for me. Rarely a day goes by that I don’t fit in at least 30 minutes of reading, and it’s usually closer to an hour when it gets to the points in time I can get 10 minutes in here or there. The 30 uninterrupted minutes over lunch alone make up for that easily. Now, that’s close to a book a week on lunch breaks alone. A book like Anathem or A Game of Thrones, both 900 page tomes with a ton of detail, move slower but get more attention than normal. Meanwhile, I’ll read a young adult novel with larger print and smaller book sizes at a clip of maybe 100 pages in a 30 minute time span. I can polish two or three of those off in a week. Or perhaps a graphic novel, which is 100 pages on a good day and can often be finished in one or two sittings. Add them all together, and it’s not so strange to have read 115 books as of this point in time.

As for movies, baseball season and the advent of the DVR has cut back on that tremendously, but if I can find time to watch two episodes of Mad Men in an evening, what’s a 90 minute movie? I could, in theory, probably watch a movie a day if I didn’t give it my full attention. I just enjoy movies too much.

Music? Wicked easy - satellite radio plus having a CD going whenever the TV is off and I’m near a computer.

And why isn’t working on The Most Important Book In The World included more often? Seriously. Get back to work on that thing.

I know, I know. The Drama is nearly over, and the creative juices feel like they’re coming back again, which is a good sign for that. Hopefully the prodigal grandchild will understand…

4. What happened to all the Palin love in your blog as of late? Are you still as enthralled with her?

The love went the way of most other writing as of late. I just haven’t been enthralled with anything, the election included. As it stands, if my excitement in late August was an 11, it’s probably around a 9.75 right now - I’m still a huge fan, and I just don’t know how much to blame that rough Couric patch on her or the inept McCain campaign.

5. Stubbornness: a boon or bane? Explain. (Bonus points for a tie-in to your recent job situation.)

Depends on the context. It’s a boon in some ways because it keeps me grounded - my stubbornness goes a long way when I know I’m not completely off-kilter. I know I’m not insane when it comes to recent troubles, and it keeps me from going completely nuts in my head. It’s a bane in the same way, however, where if I wasn’t so stubborn, I could have saved myself a ton of mental anguish.

The whole library thing isn’t unique to my typical stubbornness. It’s probably the number one cause of my inaction on many areas of my personal life, and probably gets mistaken for apathy in a lot of areas. I need to overcome it.

6. WHY SO SERIOUS?

All that time in the asylum…

I hope to reach some sort of basic schedule again at some point this week. Business + craziness = no time for annoying people on the internets.

1) Another busy weekend. August is poo!

I shouldn’t say that - it was busy, but another generally fun weekend. We hit a movie on Friday, did an Irace family gathering in Maine followed by a stop at the Great Lost Bear and home on Saturday, and a Sox game on Sunday followed by dinner in Watertown with the D&D crew minus Billy.

1a) At the Sox game, I sat next to one of the crazier people I’ve ever encountered at a Sox game. He’s convinced there’s a massive conspiracy to oust all the nonwhite players a la the Yawkeys of old, that the games are fixed by the pitching coaches, etc. Stunning, really.

2) Downsides to the weekend? I’m probably more sunburnt right now than I’ve been in a very long time. I tried to be proactive, too, but my face is all bright red as well as the tops of my hands. Ah well. It’ll be a sore day or two I suppose, but the switch to a long-sleeve shirt paid some serious dividends.

3) This week’s the last week of summer reading. I don’t know if this has been more harrowing because of drama or just because, but I’ll be glad when it’s done nonetheless.

Enough for now.

1) I love tax season, really.

Usually, I’ll do my taxes online. Takes 30 minutes, just a lot of number plugging and not getting distracted. Of course, when you a) get married, and b) move to a new state because of c) a new job that d) doesn’t deduct state taxes for the arbitrary amount of time your primary residence is in your old state, it’s almost worth saving the hassle and paying other people to do it.

The key word of this exchange is “hassle.” As in, I don’t want one.

You’ll recall my noting that I scheduled our taxes to be done by H & R Block this year, since they’re 3 minutes away from the condo and they’re H & R Block. What you won’t recall is my own distaste with the whole affair to begin with. I like being self-sufficient in these areas, and something didn’t sit well with me, but I was able to brush it aside as a residual from my whole issue with paying people $100 to do something I can do myself. Frankly, I should have listened to myself.

The first strike was late Friday night. Late being around 6:45ish - I get a call from the H & R Block people saying that the person I scheduled with doesn’t work Sundays even though the website form claimed she did and allowed me to set an appointment. Now, I didn’t care that much - the differences between the folks on the website that were listed (we’ll get to that) were minimal for me, I just wanted to get my taxes done. But anyway, the person I’m scheduled with doesn’t exist on Sundays, so do I want to switch to a day she’ll be there or what? Well, I tell them I want the Sunday for a reason (the reason being that Ann goes away this coming weekend, she goes in for surgery next weekend, and then it’s February vacation), and to just swap me to someone who’s there. Okay then.

So we fast-forward to today, we head there a little early to a near-empty office. Two “tax professionals” in cubes with their clients finishing up, and that’s it. So we take a seat in front of reception and wait. One of the people there poke their head out and see us with a semi-bewildered look on her face, and we tell her we have an appointment scheduled. She seems unaware. Great.

Our preparing protagonist takes another 10 or 15 minutes, finishes up with the young couple she had, and talks to us. We tell her the situation (new marriage, new state, no withholding at the new job for me, odd investment income, etc), and, well…she pawns us off on the other woman working. Since, you know, she doesn’t have that much experience with that many complex schedules and doesn’t want to screw it up. On one hand, I can accept that - if you’re not 100%, hand it off to someone who knows. On the other hand, you work at H & R Block. This isn’t “I don’t know what the best book for your 60 year old grandmother is, let me ask the other clerk,” this is “You are a paid tax professional who doesn’t know how to deal with a new marriage in a state where people move from Massachusetts all the time.” So now I’m angry, but hey, I really want to get this out of the way. So we sit back down and wait for the other woman.

Another 5 or 10 minutes pass by, and nothing’s finishing up yet, but our new woman comes out of her cubicle looking at us funny. Tells us (paraphrased) “so this is going a while, and I don’t want to hold you guys for lunch or anything, so we’ll hold your spot for you until you get back.” I tell her that we had an appointment for 1:00pm, and her response is that she can’t get to us for “at least another half hour or so.” Strike three. I tell her to cancel the appointment, and I tell Ann that we’re leaving. She gave me an extremely odd look as if it was absurd of me to not want to be held up further because her co-worker doesn’t know how to do what they’re paying her for, and that was that.

A little overboard? Perhaps. But as I expect even a basic level of competence, the fact that I walked into a business who’s entire existence is to deal with tax returns and I a) couldn’t find more than two people on a weekend during tax season, and b) of those two people, half of them didn’t know how to deal with my “complex” return, enough is enough. Was I going to wait 30 more minutes to find out that this person couldn’t do our return properly and have wasted an entire afternoon in the process? And, hello, H & R Block? YOU DO TAXES. THAT IS YOUR VALUE TO SOCIETY. That’s the part that irritated me the most.

So now our taxes will have to wait until March. That’s annoying, but that’s life. Granted, we won’t be going to H & R Block for it, but yeah. At least I know I won’t be blowing my money on something I’m uncomfortable with who can’t even do my return because it’s apparently too hard.

2) Enough bad stuff, here’s some questions for people:

a) I’m still plugging away at the book (I’m hoping to take a HUGE step this weekend if I can make it work out), but part of my goal in terms of getting a Real Life Publisher is proving that I can write and actually having some sort of consistent writing schedule to show for it. Sure, blogging’s a very informal medium by nature, but since I’m not a journalist and more of an enthusiast, it’s a bit of an uphill climb. Essentially, I want to run a film blog of sorts for really bad movies like the kind Kroger made his millions on. Anyone have an idea as to what a good name for it would be? Anything I come up with sounds lame.

b) Related to a, anyone want to help contribute on it? Flesh things out a bit? Chelsea, Mike, Stacey, I’m looking in your general directions, I wouldn’t be looking for more than a post a week or something. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll give you more information vision-wise.

3) Dustin Pedroia cracks me up. I don’t think I’ve been this excited for a baseball season in 4 years.

And another week begins…

…of the non-political kind.

1) It’s hard for me not to get excited over things like this, for obvious reasons. Of course, the media isn’t always rock-solid on reporting science issues reasonably, and any wide-scale rollout of this would be too late, but still.

2) Not to say I haven’t been excited about Super Smash Bros. Brawl up to this point, but this reveal about classic demos really gets me excited. Why? I couldn’t tell you, honestly, but I like the concept and it’ll likely get me spending money on the Virtual Console.

3) I don’t hate the Giants (ETA from the comments: Hitler HATES the Giants), and I look forward to a good Super Bowl if the final game of the season was any indication, but does this come across as dickish to anyone else?:

Everyone else on the Giants sideline ignored him, even the team managers, who had been keeping players warm all game. They didn’t bother to drape a jacket over Tynes’ shoulders as he stood alone near midfield, listening to the crowd cheer for his miss and watching the Packers win the coin flip to get the ball first — and perhaps exclusively, had Brett Favre not thrown that interception — in overtime.

Tynes would say later that the lack of communication from his teammates was “no big deal. … I don’t talk to anyone during games anyway.” He would also explain away his decision not to celebrate his winning kick on the field with his teammates. As the ball was tumbling through the uprights, silencing the Lambeau Field crowd and sending his teammates onto the field in a frenzy, Tynes turned and ran 75 yards through the opposite end zone, through the tunnel and into the locker room. He ran alone.

“I was cold,” he said. “I wanted to get inside.”

Maybe it’s just that simple — his teammates were celebrating a trip to the Super Bowl, but he was cold. He’d meet them inside. Who knows? But I will say this: I shadowed Tynes for most of an hour inside the Giants locker room, and Feagles was again the only teammate who said a word to him. Yes, there was a 10-minute period immediately after the game when the media was not allowed inside the locker room, and perhaps the entire organization used that time to kiss Tynes’ feet — but for the next hour, not a single teammate said a word to the guy who kicked the game-winning field goal in the NFC title game. That seems strange.

I don’t feel as if we’d see that on the Pats if it were Gostkowski. Maybe I’m wrong.

4) Speaking of football, one of the Patriot wide recievers, Dante Stallworth, believes he has a Martian alter-ego. But it’s okay - he only comes out during games. And people thought the Red Sox “idiot” culture was weird…

5) I don’t watch these often enough to stay caught up, but Michael Cera fans should enjoy Clark and Michael, a web-video thing. Also, Cera plays a role in the first installment of “Drunk History, which tells the story of the Hamilton/Burr duel through beer goggles. Thanks to Liz for this one, I got a kick out of it.

6) This is fun: Background Music for Your Movies. If I ever get around to making silly short films, I’m liberally using these.

7) Also from WFMU, Adlai Stevenson election spots. A really neat piece of American political history that gets so easily forgotten. It’s incredible the amount of stuff like this that probably exists in people’s attics and basements that may never get to see the light of day.

8) A pimp out for Fantasy Book Critic and Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, two book blogs that have become instant favorites as well as extended my already-too-long-list of books to read beyond anything manageable.

9) I was hoping that the buzz on Rambo would be similar to Rocky Balboa, but it doesn’t appear to be the case. I’m hoping to catch There Will Be Blood this weekend, though.

Tis all for now.

I think I gave up my longshot dream of being a fiction writer about a year ago at this point - my writing tone is too conversational unless I have a point to make, where then I can get crazily academic as I oversource everything.

With that said, The Complete History of My Sexual Failures, a documentary due out this year, essentially mirrors a work of fiction that’s been floating in my brain for a few years now. There are noteworthy differences, but the basic concept is incredibly similar.

Alas…

1) So, yeah. Obviously, we’re seeing a bit of a different thing here - I’m starting to separate from LiveJournal a bit, which is what that top thing references.

My reasons are many. For one, I’m more than a little annoyed with some of the tactics of LJ’s leadership, both old and new. The, uh, “Great Strikethrough” was one thing, but when, for instance, you can’t search for “spice girls” in one’s interests anymore, well, it’s not quite the bastion of free speech that it was when I signed on back in, geez, 2000. It’s a little sad, honestly.

Secondly, a lot of it has to do with my literary endeavors - quite frankly, if my book is good but unfinished, having relevant material to point to and say “hey, look, I DO know what the hell I’m talking about and I can write in a coherent and consistent fashion” will only help me. I’m not ready to launch that blog for real yet - I want it to be based on bad movies, but I can’t figure out a good name let alone necessarily want to run it on my own. If anyone has suggestions on the former, let me know, and some of you may be hearing from me on the latter.

So either way, when I saw Lance with his crossposting recently, I looked into it, and hell, why not get the best of both worlds - my material can post on LJ at the same time it does on my site, and I can have separate blogs for separate things and still centralize them on LJ without having to worry about crappy syndication on LJ’s end. I’ll still have the occasional friends-only post on LJ, but you can always comment where you’re reading it, and yeah.

Yeah, this may seem trivial to a lot of you. That’s fine, but that’s just what I am, I suppose.

2) So, what’s new, right? Well, it’s old news to about a dozen of you, but we got a new TV. Instead of being responsible and paying some bills, I decided to pool together my Christmas money and get a better television for the front room. It’s nice, and gave us a little more leeway in how the room is set up, and yeah:

We went from a 26″ to a 37″, this one has 1080i and HDMI, and was a floor model to boot, so we didn’t pay an arm and a leg. I’m pleased, and, as you see, it fits in rather nicely to the whole room. We had about 16 people packed into the room for the AFC Championship game on Sunday (and thanks to everyone who came out, it really meant a ton to us), and yeah. Good times.

3) I held a massive event at the library this past week, where Jeff Kinney, author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid did a Q & A and a signing. It’s really refreshing to see such a big shot author be so down to earth at the same time - it’s like he doesn’t quite comprehend how much of a rock star he really is. I’ll never forget how disappointed I was in Judy Blume when I met her, and seeing the kids so excited to meet a genuinely good guy was really fun. I should have gotten a picture, but I forgot. No matter, though, we had about 90 people show up and it was pretty much completely awesome. Thanks to Ken for tipping me off, I love when old Scholastic contacts work out.

4) I don’t recall if I mentioned this, but I did buy a Nintendo DS. I like it - i don’t love it yet, but I also only really have one game at the moment, and that’s New Super Mario Bros., which is great but isn’t Team Fortress 2. I’m sure once I land Mario Kart DS and Zelda: Phantom Hourglass it’ll be a different story.

What’s shocking is that my mother ADORES her DS. We bought her one for Christmas, and she absolutely loves it - she has a bunch of puzzle games and keeps “burning the motherfucking food” on Cooking Mama. It’s hilariously unexpected. Talk about a great system overall, really.

5) Since it’s going around Facebook: I apologise for not pimping Kate Nash to everyone sooner, but she’s awesome and you should all listen to her.

6) On Heath Ledger - I was never a huge fan, but found his acting better than average for Hollywood folks his age and thought he made interesting choices when he could have just as easily been a heartthrob/action hero. It’s shocking to see someone less than a year older than you die, quite frankly, and that part is unsettling, but I’m more disappointed that we might not have ever had an opportunity to see what he was truly capable of as an actor.

Now, if we can only get Amy Winehouse to lay off the crack…

I think that’s it for now.

np: Kate Nash - Made of Bricks