The Lost Art of Communication

There is a scene in the movie "He's Just Not That Into You" where Drew Barrymore is lamenting about how hard it is for her to get in touch with a certain guy.  In a nutshell, it goes something like this:


"I had this guy leave me a voicemail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me to my BlackBerry, and so I texted to his cell, and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies."


It's almost scary as to how true this sentiment actually is.  We live in a world where Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and instant message chatting reign supreme.  These days if I need to get in touch with someone I don't reach for the phone, I simply open up a new email message.  Most of us only carry around cell phones so we can text, and while you may not want to reconnect with some of your old high school friends, you can scope out all their drunk partying pictures by looking at their Facebook profile. 


I'm not in any way trying to say that these are useless mediums.  I'm on Facebook just as much as the next person, but I think the intensity to which some people use these sites raises some interesting ideas about how we communicate with others.  For a long time, the telephone was the lifeline of every teenage boy and girl on the planet.  Hour long phone conversations, anxiously waiting by the phone for some very important person to call you back (I guess maybe this still happens), and even though it's entirely juvenille, crank calls provided my friends and me some priceless entertainment during my adolescent years.  Of course this was before that annoying little gadget known as Caller ID.  Ahhhh....those were the days.


I'm going to presume that now instead of gabbing on the phone all night, most teenagers and others settle for hours of chatting with friends online.  Let's face it, cell phone minutes are worth their weight in gold and no one has a landline anymore.  Here's what I'm wondering: have all these fantastic online and satellite devices really brought us closer together?  Or were we better off during the days of personal phone calls, handwritten letters (I personally love getting these), and face-to-face meetings?  Unfortunately I think it's a double edged sword.  As opposed that some people may be to the Facebook/MySpace/LinkedIn culture, there is no denying that these sites are serving as very useful ways for people to stay in touch and make not just social, but professional connections (although I strongly believe that MySpace is nothing but a pick-up scene, and I wouldn't be surprised if it fizzled out in the next few years). 


On the other side of the argument, should we really be relying on a computer to keep us connected to the people we deem important in our lives?  I'm not talking about your third cousin twice removed's ex-boyfriend, I'm talking about your siblings, close friends, maybe even parents and grandparents.  Sure, it's convenient, and I email my family members and friends on a weekly basis.  But couldn't I just as easily pick up the phone and share voice-to-voice contact?  Couldn't I make the effort to take 20 minutes out of my day and call my best friend in Walla Walla and simply see how she's doing?  Sure, I probably could, but then there's the convenience factor of email and the idea of saving time.....you see where I'm going with this. 


This is probably a discussion that could go round and round, pros and cons, blah, blah, blah.  But basically I think that we (probably not all of us, but most of us) have traded the personal touch for convenience.  We are a culture that is literally obsessed with making connections and being linked to hundreds of people in some way or another.  And finally we have the ability to flaunt those connections and make them work for us, not to mention make hundreds of more connections by friending the friends of friends and so forth (that was sure an interesting sentence). 


Communication is one of those things that is constantly changing and will likely keep changing in the years to come.  We have come a long way since the days of smoke signals and hieroglyphics, but these days it almost seems like some people need a crash course in learning how to communicate outside the confines of a computer screen.  Sometimes it's almost as if we are moving backwards, and doesn't that in a way speak louder than all the progression we've seen?
       

Woe is Tiger

I really didn't want to write about this, but it's been bugging me all morning so I'm going to just bite the bullet and rant.  Unless you live under a rock, you probably knew that today was the day Tiger Woods was FINALLY going to make a statement (a.k.a. apology) about the mess he made of his personal life by cheating on his wife with about a million different women.  And yes, that "million women" is not an entirely accurate count, but it seems like a new one pops up every day, so just give it time people.

First of all, let me preface this by saying that no, I did not tune in via internet radio, television, or any other media to listen to the press conference.  I did however read a brief recap of the event which in itself was quite riveting, but nonetheless told me that I didn't really miss anything too monumental.  Poor Tiger....the media, his fans, and golfers all over the world have been scrutinizing his life down to the tiniest detail ever since that unfortunate car crash back in November.  The man has not known a moments peace, has been hounded by the press, and has separated from his wife.  He has been so ultimately traumatized by everything that he has been unable to make any sort of statement about anything until three months after the fact.  Shame on you, media, for intimidating him so much.  Can't you see that the gravity of this situation has rocked him to the core?  (On a side note, I am hoping that my intended sarcasm is leaking through.  It would be much easier to pick up on that if this were a vlog instead of a blog).

I'm not a huge fan of golf, but even I know that Tiger Woods is literally the best golf player in the entire world.  I'm not going to sit here and rattle off his stats and talk up his athletic ability, because frankly that is irrelevant to the situation at hand.  Tiger Woods is, by all means and purposes, a celebrity.  He is (well, was) the face of professional golf and will continue to be so probably well after his career is over.  When you are a celebrity, you leave the realm of normalcy where the rest of us lowly minions dwell and are elevated to a stature of supreme pampering and idolization....people literally want to BE you.  If you ask me, that's a lot of pressure.

When this whole fiasco first became public, people were absolutely shocked, dumbfounded, even confused.  I mean, this was Tiger Woods we were talking about....a celebrity.....an idol.....they never make mistakes.....or do they??  See here's the thing, you strip away the sponsorships, the fancy golf gear, the multi-million dollar bank account, and what you have is a normal guy who happns to be really talented at hitting a little white ball into these little holes on a golf course.  What if Tiger Woods was everyday Joe Schmo at the local golf course just beating everyone left and right but never trying to take his game to the next level?  What if he was the one who cheated on his wife with all these women?  I sincerely doubt he would be hounded by every press outlet from here to Great Britian, and I doubt even more that he would check himself into a clinic for sex therapy.  No, I think Joe Schmo and his wife might divorce, and he would continue sleeping around kicking butt on the local golf course.

But wait, you say.  Tiger Woods is NOT this hypothetical Joe Schmo.  He is a real person who is in the spotlight, who thousands of people admire and idolize, so when he makes a mistake of this magnitude in his personal life we have a RIGHT to know about it!  The public demands answers and he must speak to us!  You can spout that nonsense all you want but when you get right down to it, that's garbage.  We might have a right to know about Tiger's performance on the golf course in nation-wide competitions, but his personal life is exactly that: his personal life.  If Tiger cheats on his wife, wears bikini underwear, and likes to eat beef jerky in bed, that's all well and good but there is absolutely no legitimate reason why we, the general public, have to know that stuff.  We are a culture of voyeuristic bloodhounds, and when we pick up a scent all we can think is, Give me more....give me more.

And that is exactly what bothered me so much about today's exclusive press conference.  It was basically just throwing meat to a pack of hungry wolves to tide them over until the next barage of accusations and rumors build up, then it will be time for Tiger to face the music once again.  In case you haven't heard anything about this morning's momentous event, let me give you the short and sweet: Tiger apologized and doesn't know when he will return to professional golf.  He apologized to a room full of reporters, while his wife is off in Sweden or who knows where, and she is the person he should be apologizing to.  Maybe he has already and I just didn't see it in the news....who knows, but how sincere does anyone think this apology really was?  I'm going out on a limb to say this is a classic case not of, "I'm legitimately sorry for what I did and truly want to make things right," but more along the lines of, "I'm really sorry that I got caught and called out on these horrible things I did.  Had I not been caught I would probably continue with what I was doing, but now that everything is out in the open I am going to say sorry in the hopes that it will all go away."

Look, I'm not trying to get up on my high horse and say that Tiger should be burned at the stake.  I think the majority of us have a basic sense of right and wrong, and if asked all of us (I hope) would say that cheating on your spouse is wrong.  No way to talk yourself out of that.  Tiger cheated on his wife, therefore he is in the wrong.  Just like our buddy Joe Schmo.  I guess what I am most annoyed about is that we have to have this whole media circus surrounding the incident, when really there is nothing newsworthy to report.  Why should we care about this?  Why should we care about any of the hundreds of thousands of stories that are published each and every day about celebrities?  Things like this happen to us real people all the time, but no one is beating down my door to ask me questions like what designer top will I be wearing out to dinner with my husband on Saturday night (Alfani, in case anyone wanted to know).

Tiger screwed up, and now he'll probably end up getting a divorce.  He has apologized, although I'm still not sure to whom.....his fans?  Other golfers?  His caddy?  The woman who bags his groceries?  Maybe all these people and more, this incident seems to have affected a lot of lives.  I'm just tired of the staged apologies and our incessant need to have all the dirty details about the lives of people we don't even know.  I realize that celebrity athletes, actors, writers, etc. often are powerless to control the amount of access that people demand into their personal lives.  But I for one have had enough. 

We hold these people up to impossible standards by literally expecting them to be perfect in every way.  Then when they fail, we take it as a personal attack against us and everyone who admires them.  Human beings were not designed to be perfect on the golf course or in their personal lives.  The sooner people realize this the less we'll have to hear about Tiger.    

A Wolf at the Table

I took the day off work this past Friday and spent a good hour of my morning finishing Augusten Burroughs's memoir, "A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father."  I was somewhat familiar with Burroughs's writing already, having sampled his other memoir, "Running With Scissors" last spring.  I thought that I more or less knew what to expect going into this book, but like all good writers Burroughs managed to throw in some curve balls.

In this book Burroughs recounts his childhood and his feeble attempts to create some type of fulfilling, nurturing relationship with his father.  For a lot of his adolescent years, Burroughs and his mother are constantly on the run from Burroughs's father and his alcoholic rages.  Despite these traumatic episodes, Burroughes desperately seeks any type of affection from his father, yearning for even the slightest hint of acceptance.  While the author never comes out and blatantly labels his father as psychotic, a disturbing picture is painted of a man who constantly threatens to murder his wife and son, kills his son's beloved guinea pig, and stands idly by while the family dog viciously attacks a neighbor.

At times the story is so unbelievable you're positive you must be reading a work of fiction.  The writing is raw and uninhibited.  Burroughs doesn't hold anything back and nothing is sugar coated.  At times reading this story made me feel sad, horrified, and uncomfortable.  I thought to myself on numerous occassions, How could anyone survive a life like this?  Well, survive he did.  And surprisingly Burroughs keeps in contact with his father until the man is lying on his deathbed.  And even then, he refuses to give Burroughs the affection he has been searching for all his life. 

The whole book is really a whirlwind of emotions and situations that seem too outlandish to be true.  I think that in terms of how to write a memoir, this is exactly what one should strive for.  The details are not overly obnoxious and do a comendable job of holding the reader in each scene.  Burroughs obviously had a lot of overwhelming material to work with when writing this book, but I never once got the impression that he was looking for pity because of what he had gone through.  His focus on the story was very evident, and never once did he stray off-course. 

The memoir is an interesting category of writing, and when it's done right the result is a very satisfying reading experience.  This is definitely a highlight of the genre, and definitely worth checking out.

Long live Thursday

Thursday is my favorite day of the week.  I've come to this conclusion after months of deliberations, and decided that, yes, Thursday is probably the day of the week everyone should enjoy the most.  Why, you might ask?  I shall explain.

In the beginning of the week we have what I like to call Monday and Tuesday.  These are the days that are made for beginning new projects at work, attending update meetings with co-workers, and catching up on all the emails people thought to send you over the weekend.  Monday and Tuesday are go, go, go, with hardly a moment to organize one's thoughts.  They are, essentially, a madhouse. 

Then we get to Wednesday, probably my most despised day of the week (are you surprised I didn't say Monday?)  Wednesday is awful simply because it is smack dab in the middle.  After a whirlwind Monday and Tuesday you probably feel like you should already be creeping in on the weekend, that those coveted two days off are just around the corner.  Then Wednesday comes along and gives you a great big slap in the face.  The term "hump day" doesn't even do it justice.  It should be called, "tease day," because every week it just sits there waiting for you, knowing that you'll look at your calendar expecting to see the majority of the week behind you, when in fact you are stuck in middle.....in no man's land.

However, if you manage to persevere and survive to live another day, you will arrive at Thursday, which I believe is one of the most underestimated days of the week.  Thursday is the golden child you didn't even know existed for one simple reason: it's close enough to the weekend that you can cut loose a little bit, but not completely a part of the weekend so you still have something to look forward to.  Come Thursday afternoon you are more or less in a Friday mindset....knowing that because the weekend is just around the corner it doesn't make any sense to start a new project, and also to the point where you are (hopefully) finishing up all that work you started at the beginning of the week.  Thursday nights one can go home with the enthusiastic knowledge that tomorrow is Friday, and only 8 hours of work separate you from the weekend.  Thursday still holds that bit of anticipation, which disappears once the actual weekend begins.

Anticipation is almost better than the thing it is you are looking forward to.  As humans, we thrive on anticipation, on the knowledge that great things are just around the corner, on knowing that in a mere 24 hours we will be doing something really exciting.  Anticipation raises our happiness levels, it does wonders to helping us maintain a positive attitude, and it gives us something to smile about when things aren't going so wonderfully.  Thursday is anticipation day.  Thursday is our window the the endless possibilities of the weekend, when no time has been squandered or wasted, and there is not a cloud in sight to spoil our plans.

Obviously Friday and Saturday are great days in and of themselves, but I think that they also create pressure for us.  When I'm sitting at home on a Friday night I feel like I should be out doing something because, well, it's Friday and I don't have to get up early the next day.  When I'm sitting at home on a Saturday night I essentially feel the same way, only this time I also think that because tomorrow is Sunday I've wasted my weekend and will have to survive another work week before I can make up for things.  I don't always feel like this and I hope you don't, either, but do you see now why Thursday is so appealing?

I hope that from now on we can all appreciate Thursday for its anticipation factor, if nothing else.  Of course, Thursday night is also the night for Parks and Recreation and The Office on NBC.....so it's got that going for it, too.

Our love affair with Valentine's Day

We are less than a week away from Valentine's Day.  That means that everywhere around the U.S. husbands, wives, boyfriends, and girlfriends are beginning to scramble for ideas on how to impress that special someone in their lives.  Cards are being sent, boxes of chocolates are being purchased, and I imagine that the lingerie section of most department stores is seeing an increase in their clientele.  Don't you just love romance?

In elementary school, Valentine's Day was of the utmost excitement.  We all got to design little mailboxes to hang over the sides of our desk, and the morning of Valentine's Day we walked around the classroom delivering little cards and candies to everyone.  Then of course there was a party with all sorts of sugary goodness.  For a kid, it doesn't get much better than that.  Of course, as one gets older and moves into the ranks of middle school and high school, you start being much more selective on whom you bestow your Valentines.  It's no longer about being fair and making sure you have a card for everyone in your class, nope, the days of fair play are over.  If you were one of the lucky few who had a boyfriend or girlfriend then it was more or less going to be a pretty great day, but if you were, (gasp), single, then you were basically out of luck and February 14th was just another day.  We all know how smooth sailing high school was....I don't think Valentine's Day really helped anyone's situation.

I guess some people make a really big deal out of Valentine's Day.  I think it's usually the people who are still in the beginning stages of dating and are really looking for a good excuse to impress their other half.  Other people, like myself, are in the camp that choose not the celebrate the occassion with any lavish, over the top efforts.  I like what is at the core of Valentine's Day, and that is letting those you love and care about know how much they mean to you.  That's simple, and pretty sweet.  But shouldn't we be trying to do this all the time throughout the year, and not just on a designated day?  Doesn't the element of spontaneity  make our sentiments that much more sincere?

I think it's too bad that Valentine's Day is literally dreaded by people just because they don't happen to be in a relationship.  It's all well and good to have someone special in your life, but just because you don't doesn't mean you're any less of a human being.  And for those of us who are in a relationship and are feeling the pressure to shout our love from the rooftops this Sunday, remember that we don't have to do everything Hallmark tells us to.  A card and a box of chocolates on February 14th is guaranteed to put a smile on most people's faces, but that same gift bestowed on March 22nd might end up meaning a whole lot more.    

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

When you're a national bestselling writer, I suppose it's only a matter of time before you have to sit down and share with your fans how exactly you got to where you are, and the steps you took to make that happen.  Even if it's all predicated on bullshit, at least it's something to get people off your back for awhile.

By now we all are aware that I am a huge follower of Stephen King, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that I have made my way through yet another one of his books.  I promise to branch out on my next literary adventure, but please just stick with me through this latest review of King's non-fiction book, "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft."  I have been wanting to read this book for years, so when I came across the title in Brused Books a couple weeks ago I didn't hesitate for a second before pulling it off the shelf.

The first half of the book describes King's childhood, his early dabbles in writing stories, and his struggle in the early years to get published.  The first 100 pages or so of this book I absolutely devoured.  I felt like I was being given backstage access to one of the greatest shows in the world and could finally see how everything came together.  We all wonder certain things about people we admire.  How did get to where they're at?  Were they always so talented?  What were they like when they were younger?  King's mini-biography is something I'm sure a lot of his readers had been waiting for for decades, and he finally delivered.  What makes it even more fantastic is that it's the author telling the story, not a ghost writer.  This makes the whole experience that much more authentic.

The second part of the book King delves into the nuts and bolts of writing.  How to use language, how important grammar is to a writer, how to pace your story, and so on and so forth.  Creative writing classes all over the country discuss these things day in and day out, concluding with one concrete rule that King echoes in this book time and time again.  The only way you will become a good writer is by writing.  You can read all the books you want on how to write, attend as many workshops as possible to have your work critiqued (a process which, surprisingly to me, King doesn't think is as useful as many people think), but in the end you have to make the concious effort to write.  Every day (at least in the beginning), with as little self-critiquing and deleting as possible.  King also talks about the writing process, and the importance of getting through a first draft alone in a closed off room, not sharing your story with  the world until it's time to start revising.  I like this rule, and it's one I'm now going to start incorporating.  King states that by sharing your story with people before you're even through a first draft opens your writing up to questions and critiques before the story has had a chance to work itself out.  You need to let the story come from you, at least to start with, before you bring in outside opinions and suggestions.

In the last part of this book, King discusses an accident he suffered in 1999, when he was struck by a car and nearly killed.  "On Writing" was published in 2000, while King was still in recovery from the accident.  He finished the last part of the book when he was finally released from the hospital and going through the never-ending ordeal of physical therapy.  I remember when this accident occurred, but never really knew the extent of King's injuries, or how difficult it was for him to start writing again after it all happened.  This was a really touching narrative of his experience, which I'm sure plenty of people have asked and wondered about.

I think this book has done a couple things for me.  For starters, it has shown me that there really isn't a trick or magic formula to good writing.  It's all about the basics, and good old fashioned practice.  The struggles that King recounts from his early years just goes to show that everyone has to start somewhere.  I guess if you're willing to do the work and put in the time, you hopefully will get to experience a payoff.  I say hopefully because writing is not a guarantee in any way shape or form, but possibility exists in every completed draft, which in itself is pretty exciting.  Secondly, I was encouraged by the fact that the ideas for King's books all stemmed from a basic "What if?" question.  Nothing more, nothing less.  What this means to me is that when you sit down to write, you don't have to have the entire story planned out and every detail of the plot solidified.  This often holds me back in my own writing, but what I got from King is that over-thinking and over-planning can unintentionally smother what could potentially be a great story.  In other words, loosen up a bit and let the chips fall where they may.

Since this review is now almost as long as the book itself, I'll close by saying if you like to write, read this book.  If you like Stephen King, read this book.  If you just like to read in general, read this book.   

Under the Dome

This past Sunday I finally finished Stephen King's latest novel, "Under the Dome."  I say finally because the book is a staggering 1,074 pages long, and considering I do the bulk of my pleasure reading for about 30 minutes in the morning, I had to spend some extra time on this one.

I have already done a post about my love of Stephen King's writing.  I won't say it's hard for me to be objective about his work, but I am more likely to defend it than I am to dismiss.  I always expect a new book by King to be wonderful, and even the less than wonderful ones are still startingly unique.  "Under the Dome," to put it simply, was like a macabre version of the play "Our Town."  If asked to name the main character upon whom the story revolved around, I would have to say the fictional town of Chesters Mill, Maine, assuming of course that a town can serve as both the setting and the main character of any story.

"Under the Dome" is about a small town (Chesters Mill) that is one day encircled with a seemingly impenetrable clear dome.  The dome covers the entire town, and once in place no one can get in and no one can get out.  The town literally becomes isolated from the rest of the world.  Within about the course of a day, panic sets in and the townspeople only have one thing on their mind: survival.  It doesn't help that the man who holds the most power in town, Big Jim, is a manipulative used car salesman who is consequently the driving force behind the largest meth lab in the country (which also happens to be secretly located in Chesters Mill).  As tensions rise and days pass without any sign of the dome being penetrated, Big Jim wields the town into a frenzy with disasterous consequences. 

This book has a lot of characters.  Essentially, the entire town is used in this story, which means there are a lot of names to keep straight.  This initially made it difficult for me to keep names and characters straight, but once I started getting deeper into the story it was effortless.  King has always done an admirable job of being able to set characters apart from one another, so that even in a book with 20 plus people to keep track off there is no dobut about who is who and how they are integral to the storyline.

I think critics everywhere have already done their fair share of picking this book apart.  I have read reviews saying that King is using this book as a platform to bash organized religion, to push his liberal viewpoints about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that he has created a cast of overly stereotypical characters assist him in criticizing the military and the government.  You'll have to read the book for yourself in order to identify these correlations because I don't have the time nor the energy to delve into everything in this blog post.  Personally, I never really take much stock into what these so-called professional critics say, because that's just what they are: critics.

At its core "Under the Dome" gives readers a terrifying glimpse into the effects of isolation, propaganda, and small town politics.  Imagine an entire town with cabin fever, everyone suspicious of everyone else, and you get a grasp of one of the disturbing undertones of this novel.  The story itself doesn't ever take a time out.  There is no happy introductory period, no huge build-up before the action and the conflict begins.  We are thrust into disorder as soon as the gates open, and things get a lot more complicated before they get better.  I loved the pace of this book.  There was never a chance for the reader to grow bored.

The ending.  It can be hard to end stories sometimes.  Then other times it just happens naturally, and you know that everything has been summed up and there's literally nothing more to say.  I love good endings, and I crave great endings.  This one fell somewhere in the mediocre pile.  It felt forced and just incomplete.  I mean, the story was definitely over, but I still had questions and couldn't quite grasp what had actually taken place to bring everything to conclusion.  Maybe I just need to go back and do a closer read, but I had my hopes up (always a mistake) for something great and was a bit disappointed.

To sum it up, "Under the Dome" probably hasn't claimed the title of my favorite Stephen King novel, but it was one hell of a book nonetheless.  If you are a regular peruser of King's work I would recommend you check this out, but if you're new to his writing I would start with some of his earlier stuff as a warm-up.