Category Archives: Meta

“Very Inspiring Blogging Award” Nominee Begins Saving Up for Full-Page “Variety” Ad

September 9, 2012 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , 22 Comments

Very Inspiring Blogger AwardAfter a most unusual Labor Day Weekend enlivened by the responses to “The Day an Empty Chair Ruled the Internet“, I was humbled and flattered to be notified and nominated for a “Very Inspiring Blogging Award”. I’ve see similar awards passed around other blogs in the vicinity, but this is the first time one was pinned in my general direction. Suffice it to say, when someone presents me with the word “award” in it, I’m nothing less than honored and grateful.

Out of curiosity as a relative newcomer to the WordPress community, I tried researching the history of this blessed community achievement, but the roads were many and tangled. Who created this prize? Who was the original governing body or organization? Is there a Hall of Fame dedicated to past nominees and winners? Alas, the trail that I followed only went as far back as January 2012 before dead-ending, despite my resorting to viewing Google cached pages to connect a few broken links. Along the path I encountered many an exercise guru, photographer par excellence, fellow Christian, wizened sage, creative powerhouse, master chef, published author, and talking cat. I consider myself privileged to share the same datastream as these peers, predecessors, professionals, authority figures, and cats with an above-average command of spelling and grammar.

The official rules for accepting this nomination showed minute variations, as filtered through each respective nominee’s writing style, but always numbered at least four:

1. Display the nomination logo on your blog. See above.

2. Link back to the person who nominated you. Special, humbled thanks to Enchanted Seashells for the unexpected nod. To acknowledge this honor tonight, my planned tribute to Dial H for Hero has been postponed until a later date.

3. State 7 things about yourself. For those keeping score at home, consider these Bullet Points #101-107:

101. My best possible chance to participate in the National Spelling Bee was ruined by the word “fulsome”.
102. The first ‘D’ I ever received on a report card was in tenth-grade Debate class.
103. Despite dozens of recommendations from very well-meaning friends, I’ve never seen Fireproof because I’m afraid of how I’ll react.
104. I know all the words to “Bring the Noise”, but I prefer Public Enemy’s original to the later jam version with Anthrax.
105. The only soap opera I can say I ever really followed was Knots Landing.
106. I’m now collecting twice as many Image Comics series as I am DC Comics series.
107. One of my ears used to be pierced.

4. Nominate 15 other blogs for the Very Inspiring Blogging Award. And here we go:

1. Bucket List Publications, which I’m pretty sure is already deservedly festooned with awards a-plenty, but consider the fearless Mrs. Carter hereby named nonetheless.

2. Cristian Mihai; same deal here in terms of extra-awardedness. I first began following him early into my new-blog acclimatization period and found plenty of useful takeaways form his regular dollops of writing advice, even though he’s almost half my age and I don’t have an actual book fully planned in my head just yet.

3. Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth.
Recommended reading: “In Defence of Libraries”

4. One Grain Amongst the Storm
Recommended reading: “The Last Salute”

5. Canadian Hiking Photography
Recommended viewing: All of it. Grab a drink, give those sumptuous pages time to load, then marvel at the results.

6. Clotilda Jamcracker
Recommended reading: “Bring out your dead”

7. Leanne Cole’s Photography Field Trips
Recommended montage: “Architecture in the Picture”

8. Ms. Elena Levon Traveling. Great motto: “I choose to collect memories instead of things.” This is almost exactly why our family buys far fewer souvenirs than the average tourists, and why I’ve written online about our road trips every year.
Recommended reading: “Letter To My Father”

9. retireediary
Recommended photo spread: “The Rainbow of Flowers in Biei and Furano, Japan”

10. Simply Sage
Recommended viewing: “Weekly Photo Challenge: Growth”

11. Together
Recommended reading: “Murder in the First” (It helps if, like me, you watched the movie years ago and can still remember the impression it left on you.)

12. Honie Briggs
Recommended reading: “Eighteen Hours in a Red Cross Shelter”

13. The Smile Scavenger
Recommended reading: “‘Wow, That’s a Big Jump!’: a Fool’s Guide to Making Drastic Career Changes“.

14. LIFE is unwritten
Recommended reading: “How to Change the World Without Really Trying”

15. Iconically Rare
Recommended reading: “Releasing Your Inner Superhero — Iconic Exemplars”

As always, thanks very much for reading. Emphatic thanks once again to Enchanted Seashells for the nomination. For those of you still along for the ride, I hope at least one future post here will be worth your time.

Good night to one and all, stay well, drive safely, may God bless you, keep reaching for the stars, and don’t forget to tip your valet. That goes double for you talking cats, who really shouldn’t be driving anyway.

Grateful for “Freshly Pressed” Status, Hoping Not to Turn into Egomaniacal One-Hit Wonder

September 3, 2012 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , 11 Comments

WordPress "Freshly Pressed" badgeFirst things first: I owe a truckload of gratitude to the WordPress staffer who selected last Friday evening’s entry, “The Day an Empty Chair Ruled the Internet” as a feature selection for the WordPress.com Freshly Pressed page. Before that happened, I honestly thought the page was automated and random. Based on the gracious emails I received that offered me some proofreading and specific content input before the FP slotting went live, I’ve confidently shelved that theory.

I also owe many sincere thanks to you, the Viewers at Home, who were kind enough to give it a look-see and leave feedback. The response has overwhelmed me more with its kindness and generosity than with its appreciable volume. My Labor Day weekend took a vastly different direction than the quiet doldrums I’d anticipated. Keeping up with the replies has been a fun ‘n’ lively time, and I’ve also found myself with a plethora of new blogs and writers to check out.

For anyone who’s returned here and sampled any fare beyond the Empty Chair Blues, it’s my sincere hope that other future entries will be of some use or entertainment value to you as well. I aim for one entry per day, based on whatever’s preoccupying my mind at any given moment. The inconsistent MCC experience is fairly consistent with the scattershot nature of my aging mindset. Nine times out of ten it’s entertainment (comics, movies, TV, whatever) because of my lifelong unapologetic nerdist tendencies and my never-ending curiosity about the arts and assorted acts of creation from a variety of perspectives. Every so often I open up about my faith, though not nearly as often as I should. As special events have been occurring of late, I’ve shared experiences with fan conventions and our family’s annual road trips. Once in a blue moon I’ll write something about Indiana, even though no one ever reads those, not even other Hoosiers.

I assume “Empty Chair” will be escorted off the FP page in due time, and my daily experience here will remain on track. I’ll do my best to hold onto my sense of proportion and not print up thousands of business cards bearing the FP stamp and the obnoxious, self-anointed title of CERTIFIED WRITER. If I do, please shoot me down…and feel free to take a card.

Thanks for reading, and a round of hugs for everyone.

The Day an Empty Chair Ruled the Internet

September 1, 2012 By in Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , 62 Comments

Empty Obama Chair, Clint Eastwood's arch-enemyBehold the face of America’s newest sensation. LOLcats, Kardashians, and the horrors of something calling itself “Honey Boo Boo” all took a back seat to the poor, defenseless chair that withstood a tongue-lashing from Academy Award Winner Clint Eastwood at the closing of the Republican National Convention, which in turn drew an awful lot of press to cover any number of foregone conclusions.

I refuse to watch the video on principle — the principle being, partisan politics don’t interest me. This keeps me shut out of a lot of online discussions and ensures no one will ever pay me a steady income to become a TV pundit. I’m fine with that, but it usually means I have to go slink off into a dark corner and find ways to entertain myself until politics go away.

My admittedly secondhand understanding of the situation, then, is that the 82-year-old director was invited to close the ceremony with no small amount of star power, somehow mistook the chair for President Barack Obama, and attempted to bully it until it cried. I’ve yet to confirm if anyone involved in the incident referred this peculiar condition to Dr. Oliver Sacks.

Maybe this merciless haranguing was the most hilarious improv set of the year. Maybe it was an unmitigated disaster, like the time Anne Hathaway and James Franco hosted the Oscars. Maybe I’ve misread and Obama was actually standing off-camera on the other side of the chair, or had been shrunk with Pym particles and was resting comfortably under the chair. All I know for sure is that this spirited but one-sided argument took over my Twitter feed Thursday night and effectively shut down all other topics and memes. On Facebook, the empty chair emerged from its humble beginnings in Nowheresville and became the talk of the town, superseding the usual daily barrage of Photoshop yuks and Zynga proclamations. This week, NASA launched a rocket bearing twin probes to study the Van Allen radiation belts (the real story here being: believe it or not, NASA is still in the launching business), but that link has now been kicked off all front pages in favor of headlines about verbally abused furniture.

Some people have joked about its unintentional symbolism. Others applaud the moment as Eastwood’s best comedy gig since the flicks he made with that annoying orangutan. Someone naturally registered “Invisible Obama” as a Twitter alias. Rest assured our nation’s crack Photoshop gag specialists rushed to fill the chair with repurposed images of Kermit the Frog, the Sad Keanu meme, and Lord knows what other variations I’ve missed. The Internet plans to milk this new, inanimate media personality for all it can, until the Chair gets greedy and begins demanding large paychecks to make forgettable cameos in terrible films.

Nothing I could write about anything right now could hold an audience’s attention a fraction as much as that now-legendary empty chair’s misadventure has. I’ll just shut up and let the video roll below for the truly, insatiably curious who missed this unique spectacle. I did watch a few seconds of it just to confirm that, of all the versions uploaded, the Wall Street Journal‘s version had the best screen resolution, but that’s as far as I went.

I salute you, empty chair. Enjoy your fifteen minutes, and try to be kind to us little people during your wild ride on the shaky wooden coaster of fly-by-night stardom. Remember, today’s celebrity is tomorrow’s Goodwill bargain.

100 Posts, 100 Bullet Points: My MCC Magical Retrospective Celebration Featurette Hoedown Extravaganza

August 3, 2012 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

When I inaugurated this open-ended project as an excuse to exercise my brain on a daily basis, I figured I was good for ten or fifteen posts, tops. Burnout was/is inevitable. 100 posts later, one per day and with three double-shots, it hasn’t happened yet. Setting aside a few short entries (so I’m a sucker for new movie trailers — I do try to offer something beyond HERE IS NEW MOVIE IT IS COOL AM I RITE), I’m surprised at how much processing capacity exists when I’m not just reading, lurking, passively consuming, and living vicariously in various corners of the Internet while other people enjoy themselves actively and sometimes even make a living at it.

I’m marking the occasion in the best way I know how: with a list. Stuff about me, around me, in my head, or otherwise tangential to my existence, all somehow surfacing at once and dying to make the Top 100 Me Factoids of the Month to commemorate this subjective mathematical milestone.

Super-lengthy special-occasion list is GO:

1. I’ve lived in Indianapolis all my life.
2. I’ve been an Internet user/dweller since 1999.
3. I’ve been reading comics for roughly 34 years.
4. My favorite class in high school was a senior-year single-semester creative writing course. Easy A.
5. My entries are usually posted late at night because I’m an evening person.
6. My favorite color is purple, because it’s pretty and less common.
7. My first job was at McDonald’s. I stayed with the company for twelve years, which were worth it in many ways I wasn’t aware of at the time.
8. I don’t care for sports. Mind you, it’s apathy, not antipathy. In Indiana this complicates most attempts at friendship with other males.
9. In my previous blog, 110 entries took me six years to amass.
10. I prefer mayo to ketchup.
11. If you care about astrology more than I do, I’m a Taurus.
12. I don’t do any amusement park rides that turn upside-down or spin at cyclonic speeds.
13. My first comic book convention that utilized more than one conference room was Wizard World Chicago 1999.
14. I spend every Wednesday evening hanging out with my son. Friends and family know better than to interrupt our schedule.
15. Between July 2004 and July 2005 I lost 98 pounds. I’ve gained some back since then.
16. My favorite movie has always been Die Hard, though it’s become difficult in my later years to recommend it to others in good conscience.
17. I’ve seen every single film that’s ever won an Academy Award for Best Picture, from Wings to The Artist. Some of them weren’t worth it.
18. My first car was a 1986 Grand Am lemon.
19. If you want to see me at my worst, put me in a leadership position.
20. My first rock concert was the 1992 Guns ‘n’ Roses/Metallica twofer at the Hoosier Dome. I was more interested in the opening act, Faith No More, who only played for 45 unenthusiastic minutes.
21. In high school my original plan was to become an artist. That changed during my junior year when I realized how impatient I was with my drawing.
22. My car repair skills rank Very Poor for my gender.
23. My most-Liked post to date is part 1 of the two part “Road Trip Clip Show“.
24. I don’t drink. Not even in moderation for recreation among oenophiles. Not even wine coolers or wedding champagne. In America this complicates most attempts at friendship with other humans.
25. I’ve never played any MMORPGs because I know how carried away I would get. If these had existed in my youth, I could’ve easily spent 40+ hours a week on one without remorse.
26. I’ve been divorced once. I filed for bankruptcy the following year. The divorce lawyer was cheaper than the bankruptcy lawyer.
27. My favorite food group is breakfast.
28. I learned to tie a necktie at age 19.
29. My first Internet writing piece was a turn taken in a Usenet round-robin story when I was still a newbie to the newsgroup.
30. I took German in junior high, high school, and college. I remember more of it than I think, and at the oddest times.
31. My favorite Disney movie is Aladdin.
32. Since this blog began, I’ve received two Facebook Friend requests from complete strangers, up from zero strangers for the twelve previous months. I have no idea if that’s coincidental.
33. I still cry at an occasional movie. Examples from recent years include Up and Serenity.
34. So far I’ve visited 26 of the 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and Niagara Falls, Ontario.
35. I saw four of the Friday the 13th movies in my youth, but no longer have any need or desire to complete the set.
36. Have I mentioned my wife’s awesomeness here yet? Consider it mentioned.
37. My nervous habits include chewing on my lip and gnawing on the thumb knuckle where there once was a wart.
38. I’ve read the Bible from Genesis to Revelations a few times, but several more times definitely won’t hurt.
39. A Green Arrow show without Justin Hartley is no Green Arrow show of mine.
40. I prefer “geek” to “nerd” because its consonants can beat up those other consonants.
41. My first entry into a writing contest was a high-school short story called “The Cybernetic Wilderness”, which was sabotaged by a lousy typist whose clumsiness managed to spell “variation” with twelve letters.
42. I once cryptically wrote on a Post-It Note, “Tow Mater / Tow Maine / Tow Backy”. I’m afraid to find out what I plan to do with these thoughts.
43. The first Bible verse I ever memorized was Matthew 11:28 — “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” It’s still my favorite.
44. The Valiant/First C2E2-panels two-parter resulted from a brief nanosecond when comics journalism became an infinitesimally possible option.
45. I met my (second/current) wife in 1987 in high school German class.
46. My son and I have played 11 of the 13 Final Fantasy games. FFII was the indisputably worst; I can’t decide which was best between FFVII and FFXII.
47. I’m terrible at memorizing Scripture because English classes spent years successfully beating the moral “Put it in your own words” into my head.
48. My favorite album is Hüsker Dü’s Zen Arcade.
49. I’ve never touched an illegal drug in my life. The strongest substance I’ve ever taken was arguably Vivarin, once when I stayed up overnight to write a term paper about satire in popular music.
50. My highest-traffic post to date is the complete list of what’s not after the Brave end credits.
51. I had my very first taste of alcohol on my 21st birthday, and not one second before.
52. I had a brief stint as a co-writer of a few Star Wars fanfics, some of which are still online.
53. I’ve attended GenCon twice even though I haven’t played a tabletop RPG since junior high, and have never played a CCG, unless you count Triple Triad or Tetra Master.
54. My first date was at age 19.
55. Persuading family and friends to read this blog seems a Sisyphean task. I expect that’s for the best anyway.
56. I’m not too great with tools or home improvement. In Indiana this complicates most attempts at friendship with other males.
57. The first video I ever saw on MTV was “Since You’re Gone” by the Cars.
58. I’m not surprised Trust Us With Your Life was cancelled. I blame Ryan Stiles for not saving the day.
59. Our dog’s name is Lucky. His previous owners named him before they decided they’d rather have a hamster.
60. I once made a fanfic writers’ email list cry by being too candid about my opinion of their “columns”.
61. My first known comic book was Marvel’s Scooby-Doo #9 by Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle. The Scooby Gang teamed up with Cap’n Caveman and the Teen Angels against the threat of a surfer ghost.
62. If my TV schedule ever eases up, I’ve been meaning to start The Wire season 4 next.
63. My second entry here, “The Train Job”, was a satirical labor of love that took days to fine-tune before I launched this blog. Unfortunately all the Hoosiers in my life don’t venture into the Internet beyond the boundaries of Facebook, so its target audience will never read it, let alone get it.
64. Last night my wife brought home Chik-Fil-A for supper. She was nearly two hours late because of the lines.
65. When I’m bored in a grocery line, I use the cart’s leg hole closure as a makeshift drum and tap the intro to Primus’ “John the Fisherman”.
66. The first Star Trek actor I ever met was Garrett Wang from Voyager.
67. I refused to touch soft drinks from ages 5 to 16.
68. I dropped out of college. Twice.
69. My mom used to buy me subscriptions to kids’ magazines without even asking me. What kid ever asked for a year’s worth of Cricket or Cobblestone?
70. My favorite pop song is John Mellencamp’s “Small Town”, and not just because he’s from Indiana.
71. Sometimes I worry that if I take a single night off from writing here, the whole thing will collapse and I’ll wake up the next morning to find my writing talent has vanished forever.
72. People are always surprised when I struggle to break it to them gently that I absolutely cannot stand The Big Bang Theory.
73. When my brain is firing on all cylinders, my writing voice tries to find a happy medium between George Will and Dave Barry.
74. Post-Modern MTV and 120 Minutes permanently altered the course of my musical tastes.
75. In 1992 I registered to vote as a Democrat because gas prices had skyrocketed to $1.29 per gallon and the incumbent President was a Republican.
76. On Sundays after church service, I’m on a one-man independent Bible study in which I’m going through Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest.
77. In junior high I wrote and drew my own comics. I still have them, but show them to no one.
78. People compliment my reading voice, which I built up by necessity during the years I spent working in a fast-food drive-thru with a terrible speaker.
79. I’ve seen every Best Picture Oscar nominee from 1997 to the present, including a few truly awful ones. I plan to work backward to 1996 and beyond if Secrets and Lies is ever granted an affordable re-release.
80. My Free Comic Book Day 2012 reviews inexplicably attract more spam than any other entries.
81. My Google+ feed is a wasteland where DC and Marvel PR reps battle daily for void supremacy.
82. I thought Ernest Borgnine pretty much ruled the four-hour Jesus of Nazareth.
83. The list of classic books I’ve never read is shamefully not short.
84. I once took second place in a college poetry contest that my poetry professor entered me into, without my knowledge and some weeks after I’d already dropped out.
85. I’m pleased as punch that the Bunheads clip of Sasha dancing to They Might Be Giants’ “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” is online once again. FOR NOW.

86. I’ve been drunk exactly once, New Year’s Eve 1993. Once was enough.
87. As a child, the only pet I ever owned was a carnival goldfish who lived two weeks.
88. I had no idea which of my high school acquaintances were Christian or gay until long after graduation.
89. I don’t get Pink Floyd. At all. On Earth this complicates most attempts at friendship with other males.
90. This year I subscribed to Forbes on a lark, and now the mailman won’t stop stuffing the mailbox with Republican fundraiser ads.
91. I can’t remember if the first comic book professional I ever met was Tony Isabella or Don Rosa.
92. “Aurora.” was one of the painstaking things I’ve written in years, and is my most widely shared entry to date.
93. I’ve never flown before. Ever.
94. I accept and welcome suggestions, questions, and recommendations that don’t come from spammers.
95. Sometimes I like to think of every purchase as a donation of sorts.
96. In my combined three years of college, I made exactly zero (0) friends.
97. I’m currently reading Chris Hardwick’s The Nerdist Way. It’s funny, constructive, creative, crude, and irksome at the same time.
98. The last time someone recommended something to me, it was Rob Liefeld’s Grifter. I stand by #94 anyway.
99. I’d like to pause here for a little game we like to call “Hoedown”! We’ll call this one “The 100th Post Hoedown”. Take it away, me:

[cue Laura Hall/Linda Taylor intro]

o/~ Thank you if you’re reading, I appreciate your time
I know the ‘Net is busy and this hardly is sublime
I’m sorry that my subject matter sometimes seems so random
Some nights I’m lucky if one reader can understand ’em…

Nerd or geek or in-between, and sometimes both and neither
I can’t believe I’ve kept it up without a single breather
Will I do a hundred more? Forgive me if I fail
Can I dare hit 200 without quoting Holy Grail? o/~

100. I reserve the privilege to expand or repurpose some, all, or none of these as subjects for future entries. Hopefully none of them is a thousand-word paean to the color purple.

2012 Road Trip Photos #1: Vandalia the Ex-Capitol Presents Lincoln and Madonna

July 26, 2012 By in Meta, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Each year our family takes a road trip to a different part of the United States, takes photos, and provides a travelogue for friends. In the past, my procedure has been to spend months assembling the stories in my head; actually write it once the right set of mental circumstances fall neatly into place (usually about the same time my wife starts asking me, “How much longer?” every other day); and refuse to share a single word of it with any other soul until the entire piece was a complete work from start to finish. The process was arduous and drawn out, but often fun and usually worth it.

Note how the careful use of adverbs in the previous sentence belies my reasons for trying a fresh approach this year. This year, with laptop in hand I wrote on the go, spending the last few hours of every evening capturing our day’s journey in print as thoroughly as I could, then posting them here on a nightly basis for nine consecutive entries. It meant sleeping a lot less than I normally do on vacation and temporarily relinquishing the entertainment/news aspect of my brain that sparks my writing impetus more often than not, but I enjoyed the immediacy of the experience and appreciated the support of those readers who graciously followed along.

In several non-consecutive entries, I’ll be sharing the photos of our experiences from our nine-day semi-adventure, which took us from Indiana, via Illinois and Missouri, to Kansas and our primary destination of Colorado. The trip had its ups and downs just as any road trip does. Even in the worst of times, we thought some of the pics were keen.

The photos will largely be presented in chronological order, but not slavishly so. Front-loading this with all the shots of breathtaking mountain scenery is tempting, to be sure. We’ll get there.

* * * * *

Day One was a nine-hour marathon from home to Topeka, with only one certified sightseeing stop in the small town of Vandalia, Illinois. My wife had one particular item on her agenda: their Madonna of the Trail statue.

A Madonna of the Trail

Continue reading →

How Not to Respond to Aurora: a Plainspoken Primer for Pundit Pretenders

July 22, 2012 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I’m not sure how healthy or productive it would be for me to dwell on current events for too extended a time frame. Last night’s writing jag became one of my most uncomfortable sessions in years, so I’m still trying to get my head back in the right space, or at least within the same area code as said space. It absolutely does not involve any cessation of prayers, but it does involve a bit of disengagement from the single-subject “news” stream and minimizing my additional reading, which has been winnowed down to links passed along by well-meaning online friends.

I realize that reading and writing about the subject must go on for others, whether it’s the quixotic quest for understanding the incomprehensible or the hypnotic allure of a true-crime drama destined someday to be reenacted awkwardly on numerous low-budget basic-cable true-crime shows. All I ask is that such commentators show a modicum of decorum, restraint, and best judgment. (I can dream.)

The following would be examples of opening lines and excerpts from articles and opinion pieces I do not want to see, that should neither exist nor have readers:

Continue reading →

Aurora.

July 21, 2012 By in Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , 3 Comments

Obvious things first: my prayers tonight are for everyone in that theater, that community, and all connected circles shaken by the emotional shockwave from this tragedy. This much I know and can do, if nothing else remotely useful.

Our family stayed in Aurora three nights last week, arriving on July 8th and leaving on the 11th. From our hermetically cultivated hotel zone near the airport, it seemed harmless at the time.

I can’t say we’ve never considered seeing a movie while out of town. If our employers’ vacation calendars had worked out differently, if our excitement for The Dark Knight Rises had matched our giddy anticipation for The Avengers, if I were amenable to one midnight screening as an exception, and if we’d been eager for another anecdote to add to our vacation saga…

Or if James Middle-Name-Surprisingly-Not-Publicized Holmes had decided against a comic book theme for his master plan and had rescheduled for an earlier date in another crowded but more pedestrian location — say, the 16th Street Mall on July 10th…

Or if another equally lost soul in some other town had carried out the same plan at some other showing…

And so on. There but for the grace of God, and all that. When we determine in hindsight that our odds of sudden death, for one indefinite time span, had improved without our knowledge or permission from trillion-to-one to several-billion-to-one, there’s a pointless split-second frisson of fearful relief that obscures all statistics and gives me pause to think, “That could’ve been me!”

For the fourteen [EDIT: now twelve? The count changed overnight] who passed away at that fateful midnight showing, the dozens more wounded, and the even more countless traumatized…it was them. Against all odds, at the whim of an apparently unchecked mental case who’s unfathomably distant from God’s grace himself right now, who, when surprisingly captured alive (how rare is that in these cases?), allegedly called himself “the Joker”. Under the circumstances I’m reminded less of the Bat-villain and more of Private Joker from Full Metal Jacket.

All his random targets wanted was a night’s entertainment, nothing more than the simple pleasure of the cinema, one of an infinite number of simple pleasures now denied them evermore. At least the brutal murderer of Thomas and Martha Wayne allowed them to finish their movie before committing his monstrous act.

Those in the immediate area are in a position to help, to intervene, to be there for the victims. Those of us further away can only react. We pace back and forth awaiting the opportunities to bless them from afar (monetary donations? song tributes? kind words? DKR multiple screenings in their honor?) and meanwhile do what we can with what’s at our disposal. Meanwhile, we’re haunted by the same college ID photo of the worst person named Holmes ever, his now-ironic smile plastered on millions of sites far and wide as the new poster child for the Face of Evil. Personally, I’d much rather be treated to a mugshot with him frowning, scuffed-up, and repentant. I can dream.

Whether we mean well or seek cheap laughs, reacting is all we can do with those moments when we’re not simply praying (a better use of time, all told). The Onion has predictably turned meta about the situation (better them than me), but what other options for action are available to the common man? After all, if a million monkeys at a million typewriters can recreate Shakespeare according to bad homilies, perhaps a million rubberneckers with a million pet theories can bang out The Aurora Massacre: the Definitive Narrative and Final Commission Report with the same finesse and relevance as A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Simians.

Ads for The Dark Knight Rises have been pulled from various media. Some consider them unnecessary reminders. The film is certainly not starved for publicity. Christopher Nolan has released a dignified statement of well-spoken volume.

Photoshop tributes are already worming their way through Facebook, as are several commemorative pages — some in honor of the deceased, some alarmingly in honor of the assailant, surely a new folk hero to the spiritual descendants of Beavis and Butt-Head. Several Colorado residents also named James Holmes have had to post disclaimers for the benefit of prurient looky-loos poking around the wrong profiles.

Discussion on the Facebook page of the Indianapolis Star turned quickly away from courteous regrets to loud questions about just why the heck parents were bringing babies and children to a midnight showing. Somehow this now matters. Something has to, after all. Perhaps shaming the parents in hindsight will result in justice.

All over Creation, self-styled pundits are already fishing for root causes, insisting on using every tool at their disposal — no matter how primitive, dulled, or unsuited for the job — to plumb the depths of What Just Happened, catch what they think is The Reason Why, and ultimately present to us What It All Means on a platter with garnish. Most of them will be wrong and their dishes will taste bitter.

Even outside TV and news sites, debates naturally abound as to which evil medium can be blamed. Who do we need to persecute to ensure this kind of tragedy never happens again until the next time it happens again? Movies, because of their immediate proximity to this flagrant lapse in sanity? Video games, because First-Person Shooters make it easier than ever for deranged young men to stockpile a real-life arsenal unsupervised and unsuspected? Comics, because they’re a smaller field that for decades has been much, much easier for poorly informed journalists to beat up? Music, because of artistic expressions of unhappiness and F-words?

Of course it can’t possibly be a combination of factors, poor parenting, or isolated incidents of unhinged minds latching onto the things lying around them for inspiration, patterning, and designing for death. No, every horrible thing has only one cause (and you can’t just say “Satan” because, y’know, that would open the wrong door), and we must hunt that one cause down, sue it to pieces, and legislate it into so much pabulum. If an artform gives a killer all these ideas, then clearly the solution is to render the entire artform as bland and stupid as possible. That way, no one will ever get ideas, never again. It’s the only way to be sure.

So much of the babble and din is and will be about the mitigating factors, the blame, the why of it all. At this point, do we need to know why? Can we even truly know why in any earthly sense? Why do we need to know why? If we can make sense of it, if we can somehow explain it, will it hurt less? If the parents of the casualties can be convinced to think, “Oh, okay, now I get it!” would the funeral arrangements become any more festive or colorful?

Right now I’m not in a position to need to know why. I sincerely don’t think it will help, and I’m not interested in hearing other people filibuster about gun control, or video game control, or video game gun control. I do know from my insignificant perspective that, Lord willing, I’m still seeing the movie Sunday afternoon. If I stay home and wait for the Blu-ray release, Buck Private Joker wins.

Until then, and for some time afterward, my prayers will continue for the lives lost and for those they left behind. I pray especially for those in a position to step up and offer aid, comfort, healing, and whatever else is needed by those who sorely need it most in this trying time.

Lord, may they rise.

500 Festival Parade Second Encore: Smurfs in Surplus

May 31, 2012 By in Conventions & Events, Meta Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

I don’t understand why, but now that Houghmania is on the wane for the moment, I’m finding that, out of all the other Indy 500 Festival Parade photos out there, apparently shots of Mega Papa Smurf — even this many days after the fact — are inexplicably in higher demand than some celebrity nude pics. In many ways that’s a good thing.

More fodder, then, for those who believe love is blue and blue is love:

Alternate fuller shot of Papa Smurf rounding the corner from Washington Street onto Meridian. Street signs about loading and unloading zones are useless against him.

Papa Smurf so close you can see his seams, right before he destroys all who oppose him.

Beneath him, his merry oppressed Smurflings do his every bidding or risk his stompy wrath.

To a lesser extent, Smurfette and Clumsy were also in the parade, but refused to exit their mushroom love hovel and say hi. They had either a bad case of stage fright or a terrible secret to hide.

500 Festival Parade Encore: the Hough/Menounos Reunion, Take Two

May 27, 2012 By in Conventions & Events, Meta Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

Since I don’t watch reality shows anymore, I’d never heard of Dancing with the Stars‘ Derek Hough before he appeared in the celebrity lineup of this year’s Indy 500 Festival Parade. Based on response to my previous entry, I’m beginning to realize I’m alone in my ignorance. I appreciate being schooled on this, and truly have much to learn about The Hough.

As a thank-you and a gracious acknowledgment to his legion of fans, please enjoy this bonus parade photo of him, which includes a much better view of fellow passenger and Extra correspondent Maria Menounos.

Derek Hough and Maria Menounos!

WikiPedia tells me they were once partners on DWTS. If we’d known this were a highly anticipated reunion of sorts, my wife and I would’ve tried much harder and snapped a dozen more shots. I regret this is the last of our Hough/Menounos photo material, though I’m tempted to find ways to insert gratuitous mentions of him into future entries to prolong the magic.

Easily Distracted New Blogger Takes Four Weeks to Realize “About” Page Still Blank

May 25, 2012 By in Meta Tags: , , Leave a comment

[Sometimes it’s the little details that evade me.

The following “About” intro has now been inserted into the proper section of my li’l Internet nook here for future Googlers to peruse and evaluate.]

* * * * *

In the physical world my name is Randy Golden. As far as the Internet is concerned, this name belongs to another Randy Golden who’s been writing and publishing for several years in the name of Georgia tourism. I sign here as “R. A. Golden” out of deference to whoever he is, and as a nod to the small R. A. bandwagon crafted by my predecessors R. A. Lafferty, R. A. Salvatore, and R. A. Jones.

I’m a full-time customer service rep, part-time unpaid Internet participant. I’ve been a steady, sometimes verbose content provider to Nightly.net since 2000. I was on staff from 2001 to 2010, and was the most prolific contributor to their now-moribund Front Page news section. My previous, sporadic blog remains open for perusing if you’re into historical reference. I promise the site-specific in-jokes are minimal.

My amazing wife and I have been married for seven years, but have known each other for twenty-four. Our spare bedroom contains our combined bookshelves and the numerous longboxes that house my 34-year-old, yellowing comic book collection. She, in turn, has memorized the complete script to Superman: the Movie; the titles of all 178 episodes of Star Trek: the Next Generation; and the entire Book of James. One of the many reasons I love her thiiiiis much is because she knows which of those three will be most useful inna final analysis.

My son is in high school and maintains a strict line in the sand between his half of the Internet and mine. Our dog Lucky appears to be a Jack Russell terrier/chihuahua mix. I spend much time every day writing and speaking his dialogue for him as if he were a furry little ventriloquist’s dummy.

The roles of Christian, husband, father, and geek should be a no-brainer to prioritize. I do what I can with what I’ve been given, but some facets lend themselves more comfortably to writing than others.

I set up this blog three weeks before my 40th birthday as a means of charting the effects of the aging process and this fallen world’s degrading standards on my impressions of, reactions against, and general experiences with various works of art, commerce, wonder, majesty, and shamelessness. It’s my way of keeping the writing part of my brain alive and active, rather than let it atrophy and die. Until and unless I can discern what I’m meant to be doing with it, here I am.

I’m prone to lurking on Twitter as @RandallGolden because naturally someone else was first to register my name, and they wasted it on a single 2010 tweet. Here or there, I welcome input, questions, ideas, and simple pats on the head.

Views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of any other being, corporation, hivemind, or party line.