The Week In Brief
Oct. 19th, 2006 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebe
I'm trying to get better about posting, I really am! But there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of time, alas. The time has perhaps come to download an LJ client to my laptop and PC, so I can type a little here or there.
Thanks for everyone's input about the bank thing! I ended up getting an account with Valley Credit Union, and they've been pretty good so far. Waiting on my checks so I can finally catch up on a few bills that are late (mostly because there's no way to pay them without a book of checks), but by the end of November I should be mostly caught up on everything and ready for Christmas shopping! Hopefully, people don't mind books, CDs and DVDs. ;)
Sunday Tube and I saw The Wild (he'll say at my request, but I will categorically deny it). It actually wasn't *terrible*, though there was a lot that was painful to watch. I'll save further comment for later review type stuff. :)
Monday was the writer's group; we watched Chicago come back from 20 points down to beat Arizona by 1 near the end of the fourth quarter. It was...impressive; I do believe the Bears are for real this season. Hopefully they won't collapse in December or anything, we'll keep our fingers crossed.
Anyway, didn't get to finish my short story on time for submitting, so I went with a few poems that fit the new fable theme instead. Most folks don't read poetry there, so again...apologies for forcing it on you. This buys me a bit of time, though, to figure out what the hell is wrong with me!
It comes down to this: I keep forgetting perspective about my writing. I'm 26 years old, and most of the people I know are a bit older than that, and have way more experience with writing short stories besides. Truth be told, I've only managed to finish three of them in my life, and I have no technique or training for it. It's going to be slow, and my stories are going to be bad. Eventually, I'll get better. I'm just not there now.
Doesn't really stop me from wanting to write like everyone else in the group. The level of quality is fairly high, and I consider myself fortunate to be in such company. It's just difficult to lower my expectations for myself right now. I'm not going to be happy with much that I write prose-wise, and perhaps I shouldn't be. I'm a novice in every sense of the word.
Tuesday we went to see a musical called Dessa Rose. It was bad. It's about the power of finding sisterhood in the pre-Civil War South. The message and plot are worthwhile, I suppose, though the material has been very thoroughly mined already. What really made the play stand out in its awfulness is the sanitized way it handled almost everything negative. Slavery came off like a mild inconvenience to most black folks, and a lot of the really bad stuff (there was a lashing, vaginal mutilation, and attempted rape, not to mention all kinds of other dehumanizing situations) was stylized away to the point of minimal impact. For all the crowing the two main characters did about the 'struggle they went through' at the beginning and end, there wasn't a real sense of struggle at all. Just stuff that happened to make Dessa tart and uppity.
This, in my opinion, does a really big disservice to the reality of what happened to black people during slavery times. If you're going to talk about it, then talk about it...don't clean it up so it doesn't offend delicate sensibilities. People, even folks who pay $30+ for tickets to a good-time musical, need to be exposed to this, need to have a proper sense of what transgressed in this country 140 years ago. I'm not saying that art should be confrontational for the sake of confrontation, but we shouldn't wrap anything harsh in spun sugar to make it go down easier. The way Dessa Rose described slavery was akin to describing rape as an "unpleasant sexual activity." Technically it's true, but it doesn't even begin to cover it.
Because anything negative was treated with kid gloves, the story about reconciliation between slave girl Dessa and lonely plantation owner Ruth came off as horribly cliched and oversimplified. The big "Hey we're all the same!" number is called (and I wish I was kidding) "White Milk, Red Blood," expressing that no matter what color a nursing mother may be, she always leaks the same kind of bodily fluids.
The whole play was preachy, treacly, and a little insulting. And I'm not just ripping it apart because I missed Peter Beagle to see it. It really was bad. :) The actors sold the material for all it was worth, though, and they did a pretty good job. They worked hard and should definitely be recognized for it.
Speaking of Peter Beagle,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
toob was nice enough to miss a lot of stuff so we could go to Berkeley and watch him speak. He read "A Dance for Emilie" from his new collection, and took a few questions from the audience. Apparently, he lives in Oakland! I am SO sending him fan mail. :D :D He was very personable and warm, and his delivery style was taken right out of vaudeville and a few notable Jewish comics. I liked him a lot!
That takes us all the way to today. I'm hoping to keep going on the short story, knock a few character descriptions out of the way, and start preparing my Christmas list for all the folks back home in Arkansas. Miss you guys. :)
There's a lot going on in national and world news, besides...Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act, pretty much making torture legal (or at least impossible to do anything about) and just widening the memory hole that 'enemy combatants' find themselves placed into. At this point, I'm almost numb to the state of the Union; I can only hope and pray that enough people see what's going on to give Dems control of Congress in '06. It's not a permanent solution by any stretch, but it at least stems the flood of sanity that's been pouring out of this country's political scene for six years now. Honestly, it's just...discouraging. I feel pretty helpless in the face of it all. I thought I could trust the voting process, at least, but what with the rise of the Diebold machines even that's suspect. What can we do? There's all kinds of groups to join, money to throw at political action groups, charities to donate to...but none of that seems to be doing any good. People are still rabidly ignorant, uncompassionate, hostile to anyone's opinion but the ones spouted at them by television and radio. What can you do with that? It feels like our political process, our way of life, our civilization is at a breaking point. I don't mean this in an alarmist sense, but something fundamental has to change about America if we're going to get to a place that's any less broken than it is now. That's the long and short of it. I don't think the Human Rights Council or any PIRG or lobby group is going to be the source of this change, either. Whatever happens, it'll be unorganized and spontaneous. All I can do is hope it's positive.
Last, but not least, happy birthday to the suddenly disappearedsugerhound! If you're reading this, hope you're doing fantastically. :)
Thanks for everyone's input about the bank thing! I ended up getting an account with Valley Credit Union, and they've been pretty good so far. Waiting on my checks so I can finally catch up on a few bills that are late (mostly because there's no way to pay them without a book of checks), but by the end of November I should be mostly caught up on everything and ready for Christmas shopping! Hopefully, people don't mind books, CDs and DVDs. ;)
Sunday Tube and I saw The Wild (he'll say at my request, but I will categorically deny it). It actually wasn't *terrible*, though there was a lot that was painful to watch. I'll save further comment for later review type stuff. :)
Monday was the writer's group; we watched Chicago come back from 20 points down to beat Arizona by 1 near the end of the fourth quarter. It was...impressive; I do believe the Bears are for real this season. Hopefully they won't collapse in December or anything, we'll keep our fingers crossed.
Anyway, didn't get to finish my short story on time for submitting, so I went with a few poems that fit the new fable theme instead. Most folks don't read poetry there, so again...apologies for forcing it on you. This buys me a bit of time, though, to figure out what the hell is wrong with me!
It comes down to this: I keep forgetting perspective about my writing. I'm 26 years old, and most of the people I know are a bit older than that, and have way more experience with writing short stories besides. Truth be told, I've only managed to finish three of them in my life, and I have no technique or training for it. It's going to be slow, and my stories are going to be bad. Eventually, I'll get better. I'm just not there now.
Doesn't really stop me from wanting to write like everyone else in the group. The level of quality is fairly high, and I consider myself fortunate to be in such company. It's just difficult to lower my expectations for myself right now. I'm not going to be happy with much that I write prose-wise, and perhaps I shouldn't be. I'm a novice in every sense of the word.
Tuesday we went to see a musical called Dessa Rose. It was bad. It's about the power of finding sisterhood in the pre-Civil War South. The message and plot are worthwhile, I suppose, though the material has been very thoroughly mined already. What really made the play stand out in its awfulness is the sanitized way it handled almost everything negative. Slavery came off like a mild inconvenience to most black folks, and a lot of the really bad stuff (there was a lashing, vaginal mutilation, and attempted rape, not to mention all kinds of other dehumanizing situations) was stylized away to the point of minimal impact. For all the crowing the two main characters did about the 'struggle they went through' at the beginning and end, there wasn't a real sense of struggle at all. Just stuff that happened to make Dessa tart and uppity.
This, in my opinion, does a really big disservice to the reality of what happened to black people during slavery times. If you're going to talk about it, then talk about it...don't clean it up so it doesn't offend delicate sensibilities. People, even folks who pay $30+ for tickets to a good-time musical, need to be exposed to this, need to have a proper sense of what transgressed in this country 140 years ago. I'm not saying that art should be confrontational for the sake of confrontation, but we shouldn't wrap anything harsh in spun sugar to make it go down easier. The way Dessa Rose described slavery was akin to describing rape as an "unpleasant sexual activity." Technically it's true, but it doesn't even begin to cover it.
Because anything negative was treated with kid gloves, the story about reconciliation between slave girl Dessa and lonely plantation owner Ruth came off as horribly cliched and oversimplified. The big "Hey we're all the same!" number is called (and I wish I was kidding) "White Milk, Red Blood," expressing that no matter what color a nursing mother may be, she always leaks the same kind of bodily fluids.
The whole play was preachy, treacly, and a little insulting. And I'm not just ripping it apart because I missed Peter Beagle to see it. It really was bad. :) The actors sold the material for all it was worth, though, and they did a pretty good job. They worked hard and should definitely be recognized for it.
Speaking of Peter Beagle,
toob was nice enough to miss a lot of stuff so we could go to Berkeley and watch him speak. He read "A Dance for Emilie" from his new collection, and took a few questions from the audience. Apparently, he lives in Oakland! I am SO sending him fan mail. :D :D He was very personable and warm, and his delivery style was taken right out of vaudeville and a few notable Jewish comics. I liked him a lot!That takes us all the way to today. I'm hoping to keep going on the short story, knock a few character descriptions out of the way, and start preparing my Christmas list for all the folks back home in Arkansas. Miss you guys. :)
There's a lot going on in national and world news, besides...Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act, pretty much making torture legal (or at least impossible to do anything about) and just widening the memory hole that 'enemy combatants' find themselves placed into. At this point, I'm almost numb to the state of the Union; I can only hope and pray that enough people see what's going on to give Dems control of Congress in '06. It's not a permanent solution by any stretch, but it at least stems the flood of sanity that's been pouring out of this country's political scene for six years now. Honestly, it's just...discouraging. I feel pretty helpless in the face of it all. I thought I could trust the voting process, at least, but what with the rise of the Diebold machines even that's suspect. What can we do? There's all kinds of groups to join, money to throw at political action groups, charities to donate to...but none of that seems to be doing any good. People are still rabidly ignorant, uncompassionate, hostile to anyone's opinion but the ones spouted at them by television and radio. What can you do with that? It feels like our political process, our way of life, our civilization is at a breaking point. I don't mean this in an alarmist sense, but something fundamental has to change about America if we're going to get to a place that's any less broken than it is now. That's the long and short of it. I don't think the Human Rights Council or any PIRG or lobby group is going to be the source of this change, either. Whatever happens, it'll be unorganized and spontaneous. All I can do is hope it's positive.
Last, but not least, happy birthday to the suddenly disappeared
sugerhound! If you're reading this, hope you're doing fantastically. :)
