Observation 12/23

It may be better to give than to receive, but I've got a Bones action figure, new book, hamburger CD case, coloring books, and Super Mario Smash Bros that are making me question the adage. And it's not even Christmas yet.

Observation 12/20

I'm not depressed (at least I don't think I am), but I get sad sometimes, like anyone else, for no apparent or clear reason. But just as I think I might have trouble getting happy again, something small, like a phone call from a friend, makes it all go away.

Works for me :) Thanks, friend

Observation 12/18

It's always depressing to meet up with someone and realize you have less to say to them than you thought.

Observation 12/16

If I can't do anything right, I at least refuse to do anything wrong.

Observation 12/11

Perhaps knowing that, among your friends, you will be the one who is eaten by the bear makes you more willing to be self-sacrificing in other ways.

Observation 12/6

It's fun to feel cultured, especially if you genuinely enjoy the experience.

Observation 12/4

I am, unfortunately, very good at wallowing in self-pity. However, when I bother to stop whimpering to myself, it turns out I have amazing people who, despite the odds, seem to love me. That's more than enough.

Right? Right?

Observation 12/3

Celebrating the first snow of the year late at night by dancing and yelling "It's snowing!" to strangers and giggling uncontrollably is wonderful.

Observation 12/1

Talking to your best friend about things you haven't told anyone else is very relieving.

Observation 11/29

Homes are good. And, contrary to popular belief, you're allowed to have more than one. But the homeist home of all is the home where you laugh, a lot, loudly, and with people who make you feel like you're home without ever saying any silly words to that effect.

Observation 11/23

Small moments and little memories bring the most disparate groups of people together.

A 1990s game show that revolved around people running around a grocery store can help you re-bond with people you haven't talked to in years.

Observation 11/22

Sometimes knowing a different language (or some of a different language) makes working in your mother tongue slightly frustrating when those two languages cross over. The word "pays" is obviously a verb concerning money in English, but in French it is the word for "country."

So, caught up in the middle of composing something, and having your eye fall on that word, and confusing yourself for a good three minutes and being incapable of thinking of the word as anything but the French form, is frustrating. And odd. But exciting nonetheless, that for once you are identifying first with another language before the one you've known all your life.

Observation 11/17

Hemingway was overrated. And forcing someone to write in his style--or anyone's style, for that matter--is an insult to all involved parties.

Observation 11/15

I wonder if cat ladies (I mean the truly crazy ones) ever feel lonely.

Observation 11/14

Too often enough, people criticize Christmas for being too commercialized, saying it takes away from the real meaning. But honestly, is there any harm in the pure, sincere, ecstatic joy that comes from putting up decorations or listening to the season's music? If that's commercialization, sign me up.

Observation 11/13

Sometimes, we hide the most from the people we love the dearest. Maybe it's because we know they care. Maybe we're afraid to admit it aloud at all. Maybe we don't want to burden them with more. Maybe we're frustrated because we feel that if we're hiding something from them, they're hiding something from us, and while we know we want to know their troubles and help them because we love them, we can't ever know for sure if they want to know our troubles and help us.

In the end, we keep ourselves covered in our layers, carefully shielding our deepest secrets even when we wish we could take it all off and expose ourselves to those we love, in the faint hope that they could just hug us and make it all go away for the length of that hug.

But if there is a rare moment where we shrug off a bit of our protective shell and let someone in, even just for a moment, that's where we find our deepest friendships.

Observation 11/7

Modern computer animation is astonishing. Places and items and even animals can be re-created with such stunning accuracy and breath of realism that they can be confused with a live action version of themselves.

Yet no matter how perfectly rendered, there is something about a human being that makes him (at least thus far) impossible to craft without a real human spirit behind him. All the code and programming in the world cannot quite recreate the essential humanness that lies within even the worst actor in the world.

Observation 11/1

I love characters. Creating them gives my overactive imagination something to do. And unlike plot (existentialist literature aside), they never have to make sense. After all, real people don't make any sense: we're all so much more than the sum of our parts, after all, and it's tremendously exciting to put a physical description with a favorite hobby and a facial expression and a reaction to a moment or a person and an intonation on a line of dialogue and see what person explodes out of that little list and comes to life.

Observation 10/31

Alcohol makes great people do stupid things. And it makes stupid people do great things.

Observation 10/26

Like most Internet creations, Facebook became many things that it was never meant to be. Certainly, its founders did not have Farmville or obsessive status updaters in mind when they created a social networking site for people to keep in touch with friends and family.

But sometimes, even when it does just what it was intended for, Facebook is immensely rewarding. Chatting with a cousin you hardly ever speak to and who lives six hours away or having your aunt offer to index the children's book you wrote for a class and proudly bragged about finishing in an update: I'll be damned if that nonsense doesn't bring a family closer together.

Observation 10/21

A character can come from nowhere, but it will take you anywhere you want to go

Observation 10/20

Beauty is most beautiful when we take a moment to realize how pretty it is.

Observation 10/19

(Stolen from my friend Brad, but what he doesn't know won't hurt him)

Mechanical pencils are the writing utensils of hope. In the middle of doing a test, the lead breaks off and there's half a second where you go into full-scale "oh crap" panic, but then you remember that you're using a mechanical, you click the top, and all is right in the world.

Observation 10/15

Success can be defined in a million different ways. And that's pretty awesome.

Observation 10/14

It is truly unfortunate that the occupation of court jester is no longer an option. Being able to make a living off of merely being witty and possibly juggling would be a divine existence.

Observation 10/11

It's odd to be treated like a guest in your own home.

Still, few things are as satisfying as spending an afternoon baking apple pies.

Observation 10/8

There is something about Christmas episodes of beloved TV shows that makes them even better.

Observation 10/6

Some people are possessed by Muses and create by letting their souls explode through their fingers. That's not to say that they don't work to polish that product, but most of their genius comes in those first frenzied moments, and overworking the original destroys its divinely-inspired soul.

Yet there are other people who simply don't have those Muses. Which would be fine, except that they don't seem to believe in their existence. These people work hard to achieve a creative piece, and it may end up just as good or even better than those that come so irrationally to other artists. Their process takes more work in a different way than the tweaking of the first group.

I just wish that those latter group would not insist that us former work the same way that they do. If we don't need to draft, then why should we? It destroys the art.

Observation 10/5

Disney created some of the most endearing characters of all time, which makes them popular Halloween costumes. This is understandable and respectable. Yet, when it comes to the princesses (by far the most popular of the Disney cannon, and adorable on little girls the world over), some practical decisions must be made.

It's simply not safe to dress up as Esmerelda or Jasmine or Ariel. You're asking too much to head out into a cold October night with only a bra and some sequins holding your outfit together. Some of the Disney princesses are simply more rapeable than others.

Observation 10/4

Spending a long Sunday afternoon doing homework isn't fun. But there is a certain quiet satisfaction in working quietly, accomplishing much, and sipping coffee all the while.

Observation 9/29

There are a lot of important elements to good literature, but the most important is the final image. Entice your readers with whomever and whatever you want at the beginning. Tantalize them with your intellectual genius and plot twists throughout the middle. Leave them gasping by the end.

But save your genius, your pain, your worry over word choice, for that last moment they will ever see through your eyes.

When it comes down to it, all we want to see in a poem or a story or a life is what it ends up as. The audience any writer writes for is the one who sticks through 'til the end. Every writer writes for the reader who cannot pull away, who values the relationship between the writer and himself enough to trust the writer until the end.

Anyone who does not wait for the final image--the couple kissing for the last time at the station while the train plumes behind them, the girl sprawled in the alley with rain spattering her beaten face, the limping son shuffling up the drive to the last place he calls home, the lost dog finally bounding over the last hill while the little boy's face lights up with all the joy of a new sun--is unworthy of the story.

And anyone who denies his reader of that ultimate, most important moment is no writer at all.

Observation 9/28

There is a lot of genius out there that goes unnoticed by too many people. Take the Australian girl Kate Miller Heidke who opened for Ben Folds last night. I'm willing to bet no one in the audience had ever heard of her before she took the stage, but by the time she was done, half the theater stormed out into the lobby to buy her CD. She's too talented to be opening for anyone, that's for sure.

How many other amazing people are we missing out on? And how do we find them?

Observation 9/25

It's not so difficult to be a good person. You needn't ever go out of your way, to consciously spend hours trying to figure out how to save the world.

If an act of kindness occurs to you, all you have to do is do it.

If you do, by the sheer nature of kindness, more such acts will occur to you.

And if you simply do each of them as best you can as they occur to you, then soon you shall BE kind.

Observation 9/23

Sometimes, the kindest saints' greatest miracle is as simple as a well-timed bottle of water.

Observation 9/22

I don't know what's more maddening: being unable to remember a moment of recalled brilliance, or never knowing if that moment was truly brilliant, rather than just self-indulgent.

Observation 9/21

House is the coolest drug addict ever.

Observation 9/20

Getting angry is fun. Getting angry in groups is even more fun. Getting angry in a group at someone or a group of someones without fear of retribution is the most fun.

This is why televised professional sports are so popular.

Observation 9/17

You have never really heard the Batman theme until you have heard it "nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-BATMAN!!!!!"d by a middle-aged Italian man.