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The Little House
A cozy little one-bedroom that I share with everyone I care about.
When I decided I liked writing, and I wanted to write creatively and be recognized in some way for it, I never really had a big revelation.
In one of my last classes, the teacher was showing White Oleander to her students. I got a little itch for info, so I looked up the author of the original novel of the same name, a woman by the name of Janet Fitch. In her Wiki, this passage struck me:
“[S]he awoke in the middle of the night on her twenty-first birthday with the revelation she wanted to write fiction.”
Has this happened to anybody else? I never had this realization. I’ve been awoken by ideas, but not a revelation to alter my life. Does this mean I’m not a real writer?
As employment has become more steady (soon to be less steady, but let’s remain focused), my upkeep of the Little House has gone a bit by the wayside. I’m trying to keep the place looking pretty nice, but I haven’t really re-imagined or expanded on what’s already there.
I do have the new recycling schedule, which is awesome. Now I know when they’re picking up (since the nice lady on the phone told me she didn’t know where my street was, became belligerent, and hung up on me).
Halloween’s coming up. I think Halloween has fallen into the New Year’s curse— which is that everyone attaches an epic party to New Year’s, and it always falls short and people get disappointed. Big things are supposed to come about, and nothing ever really does. But like mental patients, we still have high expectations that New Year’s has the most epic parties, and we’re sad when they turn out a tad blase.
Likewise, Halloween has become this thing that’s supposed to be awesome, but it never ends up being that way. We have high hopes for costumes, and fond memories of “epic” Halloween parties we’ve been to. Thing is, I think we went to Halloween parties that seemed epic because we were hormonally-charged teenagers and no curfew. Now we’re still young, but with jobs and wives/serious relationships. We need to find new and inventive ways to make Halloween super-cool. But how? Some ideas, as they come to me:
These are just a few ideas. Feel free to take them if you have the means.
*I added a provision to Halloween Prom because this sounds awesome. In the theoretical, this sounds sweet, actually. Music, lights, punch, friends, costumes, etc. The problem I see with a Halloween Prom is a similar problem that I see with why Halloween seems less epic: we’re not really horned-up teenagers anymore. The other problem, of course, is the guest list. Who would go? Would it be the same group, or would we invite others? Who? And from where? Not strangers, certainly. Old friends? Former classmates? The more I delve into it, the more wary I am of a Halloween Prom.
That being said, I’m pretty open to the idea if someone dispelled these concerns. But I’m not gung-ho because of them.
So as things start to calm down a bit, I’ll play with the house a tad. I decorated a little bit, but not much. It’s actually kind of pathetic— I have a painted wood-cutting that I put outside. We have some pumpkins, but those need to be carved and stuff. Maybe that should be a thing we do with the gang. A massive pumpkin carving party. Anyway, nothing drastically different about the place, but I have a few minor ideas. Those should be realized when I get a bit more bank my way.
Speaking of which… I wonder when I get my check. That’s worth investigating.
I was reading a new interview between CBR and the EIC of Marvel regarding Spider-Man’s current continuity. While I haven’t vocalized it on this blog, I have said it enough in the past for people to know I was unhappy with the changes in Spider-Man’s comics. I’ve said my piece, though, and dropped the comics. I don’t post on message boards or get into arguments with people. I just let it go. But these interviews are specifically about the changes themselves (specifically, un-marrying Spider-Man and Mary Jane). They include preview art from the current books, and share conversations between Spider-Man and MJ about their own un-marrying, etc. These scenes, while pretty good storytelling, are damn near heartbreaking.
In their mad rush to get MJ out of the picture, they realized they needed to make MJ’s motivations for not pursuing marriage any further inarguable and concrete. They succeeded, but also unearthed this humanizing fatal flaw in Spider-Man books. Specifically, there’s a scene that breaks my heart, where MJ reveals she wants to be a mother someday, and she privately fantasizes about having a kid. Peter absently asks, “Boy or girl?” To that, we (the audience) are treated to one panel of MJ and her daughter playing in the park, and the daughter stereotypically saying, “I love you.” It’s a cheap shot, but it still hit. Her reply to her non-husband is simply, “It doesn’t matter.” She further elaborates by articulating just how irresponsible she would be for having a child with Spider-Man.
And in that moment, I get it. I get it in a way that the Spider-Editors wanted me to get it. But they took it too far. Now I don’t want Spider-Man to be Spider-Man at all. If we’re to place ourselves in Spider-Man’s costume, since he’s the Everyman and we’re expected to see a bit of ourselves in the superhero, and I was placed in that scenario, there’s no way I wouldn’t stop being Spider-Man.
They attempted to explain that MJ understands that Peter Parker is always Spider-Man, and it’s his nature to be Spider-Man, no matter what. They even used the scorpion and the frog/turtle analogy. Except the scorpion is a fucker, and Spider-Man is supposed to be a superhero, and a man. If my wife serious girlfriend who lived with me for many, many years told me she wants to be a mother, and she would never raise a child with me because I had some perceived sense of responsibility to a dead person, I would drop that “responsibility” like a hot brick. It’s not about neglecting responsibility, at that point. It’s about accepting new responsibility, or choosing to be selfish.
So I still won’t be buying Spider-Man comics, but it won’t be because I disagree with how Editorial influenced story, anymore. It’s because I don’t like this guy.
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I’m fiddling with different blogging groups. I’m over at Tumblr for the moment, but this does seem to have a slew of new options. For example, comments are enabled. People can subscribe to this, for another. The Little House on Tumblr is cute, and it’s got a sleek interface, but that’s about all it’s got. I’ve been using Wordpress for years, but I’m not overly impressed with the interface. I don’t mind shifting around, as long as it means I don’t have to put up with a ridiculous amount of crap.
I’d transfer all my posts (from Tumblr) if it meant I wouldn’t have to re-upload all the images that correspond with some postings. Annoying.
Not as annoying as my current headache, though. Class was a peach today. I tried to get through some examples of how to differentiate certain words, and I just could not come up with a straightforward approach. I stopped mid-instruction and basically said, “Wait. That sucked. I have to do that again. I’m sorry.” Not like a meltdown. More like Christopher Walken auditioning for Han Solo.
Oh, and I solved my IEP problem. I had an IEP problem. Now I don’t have an IEP problem. Thank God. Seriously, it would infiltrate my subconscious and disrupt my happier moments this weekend, the thought that I had an IEP problem.
Dude, I started this in March. I had a few threads that are still kind of dangling out there that I mean to address soon! At least one of them should be touched upon, so here’s my review of Predators:
It was cool.
That’s it. It was cool. It didn’t blow my mind, but it didn’t suck, and it kicked the franchise in the ass (which is really what it needed). It was really cool, though. I saw it at midnight.
Of course.
OK, so the next step in my living room venture is creating shelving and additional seating. You can see based on the images from prior postings that I’ve emptied the spot between the red and blue couches along that wall. This is intentional, as it allows a spot for seating, plus wall shelves above the seat.
Finally I can have a place to put my comics (and maybe nab a shelf or two for “cat shelves”)!
Here’s what I’m considering.
I think I also mentioned we need a coffee table. Here are a couple that I’m kind of interested in.
It’ll be Fall in a few short days. Here’s what I wanna do:
I’m open to additional ideas and suggestions.
Told ya there were pics to follow!
You know what’s funny? After posting all of this, I decided to keep cleaning up the living room.
I moved the decorative bottles around the house in non-intrusive spots, which allowed me to move the red wooden triangle table into the shed.
We got rid of some superfluous blankets (there was this… pink thing that was just living rent-free in my house for so long), which allowed us to put the blankets into that wicker chest standing on its side next to the entertainment center, which removed the necessity for the stacked baskets next to the blue couch (where the blankets were originally kept), which moved the wicker chest to where the basket was, which allowed me to put the blue rolly media dresser where the chest was, which opened up that area between the red and blue couches! HaHA!
(Whew!)
So yeah, pics to follow.
Oh, by the way! We’re in the market for a nice, square, kinda lower-to-the-ground coffee table. The circular marble/wood table is great, but it was never really supposed to be a coffee table. I’d like to have room for it, so hopefully we’ll find a place. If not, it’ll just go into the shed.
My poor shed. It’s basically a time capsule where I keep stuff I want to put into a bigger place. But if that area between the couches is big enough, maybe I’ll have some room for a large item from there…
Or it’ll be a nest for mice, and I’ll have to throw it out.
=(
