Today’s post is going to require patience and alcohol. Be prepared. You need to view the whole thing the same way you need to relax your brain if you want to make those Magic Eye 3D things work (remember those?!). I swear, having written this paragraph first and being completely unable to make promises, the whole thing is best viewed from afar. Afar, afar, avast! I say!

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  See, that’s the general tact I take towards the writing process: hidden, or buried and therefore requiring some work, in the midst of a dozen other tangled sentences is one notion, one thing that is working hard to reward the viewer from having hacked away at the jungle of declamations.

Scope and format dictate the larger form. But the process is all the same, and easy to follow. Observen vous:

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I’ve been thinking the last several days about this format, how so many things seem to go the same way. So today I came up with what I’ll refer to as “Diggy’s ‘Life as Comic Books’ Theorem to Describe the Movement of Climax Towards the Middle and Away from the End“.And yes, I know I’m supposed to be moving on from the subject of Time Distortion. Unrelatedly, I can’t help but think that G.E.B. would’ve been better if it had been written 30 years from now when Hofstadter could have peppered his chapters and dialogues with sonic and not just visual stimulation. Please listen to the following on repeat before trudging through the rest of this column, you may or mayn’t have a better experience.

The best bit is from 2:18-2:33:

Poorly told stories always have the good bit for only about 8 seconds in the middle. What do I mean by that incredibly bold statement? Simply put, there’s no punchlines in life and stories don’t end when they’re supposed to. You have a really funny or heart-rending experience and the world doesn’t fade to black…everyone laughs or cries and then you still have to go eat, and take a shit and pay bills because it just keeps going.

 So the best bit ends up in the middle. The organic nature of debate and storytelling and human interaction necessitates that we lumber/roll forwards and leave the little pearls of wisdom untouched and entrenched in a world of minutiae. Pearls being the apt metaphor: sparkling, beautiful, rare and constantly irritating to the host (of course the irritation ends with It’s dislodging which can only be achieved by the violent death of the Keeper, but man oh man, is that another post entirely).

;Really the only medium that can touch this is the serialized Comic Book. I know it’s nerdy to talk about comic books, and that they only appeal to a limited literary population, but name me any other form of “art” or “story telling” that has gone on for generations and generations the way a Batman or Avengers can. Not since the end of the Oral Tradition have the Audience, the Storyteller and the implicit awareness of change over time been encompassed so completely. Comics understand that they’re not the end all and be all of any myth, or any larger structure. They exist, easy and consumable within the vast expanse of stories, devoured unknowingly by the populace and shunned by the Intellectuals.

And that’s what we People do with the little stories of our day to day; they may or may not illuminate a larger truth; they may (capital letters) Speak To The Human Condition, but they are better left as silly little parables you break out to fill time and punctuate the churning hours. The description of how hard your work environment is is always done in the middle, before concluding that it’s really starting to bring you down. Your impression of your boyfriend, and his callous, nasally-voice is right there in the middle, where it can be most easily digested and forgotten, even though your hatred of him is the most important part. We do this all the time.

Look, I’m not trying to re-invent the wheel. I know that my version of reality is disparate from everyone else’s. All I’m trying to say is…comic books. Wait. No, feelings…

…what were we talking about?

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It goes like this:

• 1) The first thing to do is earn the listener’s ease and trust. I know it’s easier said than done, but when it becomes easier to do than to realize you’re doing, you can pat yourself on the back and call yourself a Quite Charming Man, which is always nice. That or alcohol. Ya know what? Just use alcohol, being charming is tricky.
• 2) Next, assault them with unprovable and therefore irrefutable stimuli. Assure them that everything you’re saying is true, or conversely that you’re only going based on your own experience, so it’s probably entirely wrong, but that it’s proven true for yourself, and that they should not trust it. Both work exactly the same.
• 3) Speed up while they’re still thinking about the prior things. Go faster and faster.
• 4) Slow down just enough to Prove Your Point. Make it in the middle. Get thoughtful and serious for this bit. Look off into the distance. This is where the punchlines goes, and the tears. Whatever touches the human soul
• 5) Speed back up. Assure everyone that everything you said must be wrong or incorrect, that it’s all based on faulty information that will surely be disproven in a moment.
• 6) Give examples of how what you said was wrong or unimportant. Go fast
• 7) Ask your audience what it was your were talking about in the first place. Laugh at your lack of insight. Carefully listen to them and allow them to tangent.

And that’s how you persuasively navigate the human consciousness and write essays in the 21st century. Congratulate yourself later for virally implanting a thought that someone will claim as rote knowledge for the rest of eternity.

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Today I learned about the great  Latke v. Hamantash Debate. That shit’s awesome.

    -diggy

I just learned that if a recipe calls for baking soda, and all you have is baking powder, you don’t even get partial credit.  We’ll see what happens with this here banana bread.

LATE UPDATE: Fuck that, this is delicious.  Another reason not to listen to grown-ups.

-andy

Today, I started the second of the Lord of the Rings book (the first of which I read something like 3 years ago), and was struck by what occurred in the very first chapter. The main guy, Vigo Mortenson, finds the guy who played Alex Treveleyn in that James Bond movie, and he’s all dead and everyone’s really sad.

But at the same time Frodo and Sam are kinda missing and no one knows where Charlie from Lost or the Cuter One went, so they’re all confused and sad and angry. So here’s what they do: they take the dead guy, spend time collecting the weapons of all the Orcs he killed, lay them in a boat a mile away, arrange him and his weapons in the same boat in a respectful manner, comb his hair (seriously), send the boat into the mouth of a waterfall to assure that his remains aren’t desecrated by carrion, then they write and sing songs that they made up on the spot, then figure out which way the Orcs took their friends and start sprinting after them to go kick a bunch of ass.

Like in a row, they did all of that, and had conversations the whole time explaining that they can’t dilly-dally.

I understand that they’re fictional characters in a book, but I got really depressed at the non-fantastical nature of the way it was presented. It’s heroic that they’re able to have such constitution in the light of dire events, sure sure. But the fact that they’re carrying all the stuff out before nightfall is just kinda par for the course.

I, in the meantime, woke up too late on Sunday, and lamented leaving a comic book at a friends’ house. That took like 45 minutes. Then I started reading the Lord of the Rings and whined that I wish I could spend an entire day just watching the extended versions, with a big buffet of food and wine in front of me. That was like another 20 minutes. Then when someone challenged me to make some food, I agreed that I would, read two more pages and then got up to search the internet for the last two Dr. Who episodes, e-mailed it to myself so I could watch them later, and felt very self-satisfied, completely forgetting about the food I was going to prepare.

Then Nick texted me to tell me the hockey game was on and asked if I wanted to go watch it at a bar with him for the rest of the afternoon, which of course I did. I’m probably going to get home around 8 or 9 having spent a lot of money to get drunk to a hockey game I don’t really care about, then I’m gonna start watching the Dr. Who episodes I had carefully set aside, while drinking some of that bourbon I bought yesterday. When I get hungry, I’m just gonna order take out, and when the internet connection slows down and I have to pause the episodes to allow it to catch up, I’m gonna wander over to the giant TV I barely use, and play a video game. Then come back and watch more television on the internet.

Around 1 or 2, I’m gonna be kinda well drunk, and start sending out texts about how I always cry during Doctor Who; and despite telling myself that this was the last serial television show I was gonna plow through for a while dammit!, and that it’s time to knock off some of those books in my pile, I’m gonna cue up Season 1 of Torchwood and sail into that for a while. Afterwords, I’m gonna re-read this post, marvel at it’s eerie accuracy, and have another drink. Then I’ll wonder what happens to my weekends, and why I never get anything done.

So yeah, today I learned don’t try to compare yourself to Aragorn, or you’re just gonna end up being disappointed. The dude was the twenty-sixth King of Arnor and wielded the sword Anduril. I can’t even make potatoes.

-diggy