"So much for that..."

There is a common occurrence in the life of a casual writer which I like to call a “so much for that” moment. At such times aspiring authors begin with a fresh idea having all the enthusiasm in the world only to discover that this idea was not meant to be seen through to completion.

This is one of those times.

As somewhat of an amateur writer I was riveted with the initial idea for this short story, though I quickly discovered that it really couldn’t go anywhere. For that reason, I suspect I shall never finish it and have been forced to respond by simply sitting back from my keyboard and sighing, “Well, so much for that.”

But because I like the idea I began with and have access to the internet I can at least give myself credit here for having though of something clever in the first place even though I lack the creative energy to complete it.

The idea is that i- or, rather, the narrator- am describing having not been born. By this I don’t mean being in the womb but actually not existing yet. You might like to call it the “twinkle-in-the-eye” stage of humanity. As something of a draft title I’ve been calling this permanently incomplete story “Before I Was”. Anyway, this is the introductory paragraph:

“Caught in that inconceivable space between “unthought-of” and “I am”, I watched or rather seemed to know, the happenings of the family which would soon be my own. How soon I could not know, but the very vapor of my awareness was cause enough to tell that my coming was certain. There was no anxiousness, no discomfort, no impatience in that immeasurable time when time itself went unknown and unmeasured, but I was sure that I should love to be. All was peaceful patience for me as I considered the comings and goings I would one day take part in, but regardless, I could not help but dread my own gestation. There was no telling what it would be like before having experienced it oneself, but it sounded frightfully drawn out. Although, I reconsidered in my immaterial self, to experience anything must be lovely."

As I’m sure you’ve already guessed, the problem here is that not much can happen in this “twinkle-in-the-eye” stage of life (or maybe “pre-life”?) but I had some vague ideas such as the first impression of ones mother…?:

“In my indistinct self I could distinctly make out her lips all full of smiles saved up for me. I discerned her eyes- they were bright with shimmers and wondered if one of them might be myself. And in some way yet unknown to me I overheard her voice. I supposed you would call such a voice “warm” -for though I couldn’t say with any certainty that I understood the idea of warmth (or, for that matter, “say” anything at all), some sensation of thought affirmed to me that anything which sounded so comfortable must be warm.
“You know,” mother was saying, “I don’t think we’ll ever stop hoping for a little boy.”
Boy? I considered. A boy did she say? I hadn’t any idea what “boy” was but it certainly didn’t sound like me. It seemed unlikely however, that I should know better than my own mother. Or perhaps there had been some mistake and this mother was supposed to have a boy and belong to someone else. Oh my, they must be mistaken! But could such a mistake be corrected?”

Anyway, I’m obviously never going to take this anywhere so I’m posting it in full expectation that if anyone even makes it to the end of this blog they will respond by promptly switching off their computer and saying, “Well, so much for that.”

And I give you full permission to do so….

Here's to hearts

Curse you, anxiety.

It is so inconvenient that every bodily response to stress is exactly what will be least helpful under the circumstances. What about the human biology is convinced that an unbelievable rise in blood pressure will be useful when your mind is full to capacity?

Useless, useless, useless….

The last thing I need when trying to clear my head of chaos is the deafening sound of my own accelerated heart rate. Though it wouldn’t be surprising that my heart purposefully takes advantage of any small reason to test itself since this is likely the most exercise it gets all year. …sad but true… and, despite such frustrations, our hearts really don’t ever get the recognition they deserve.

Dear heart,
My sincerest apologies for overlooking you. I really am most grateful for the mechanism that you are and would be frightfully disappointed if you were to seek employment elsewhere. All the same, I find it most thoughtless of you to race out of control when I most need to concentrate or am pressed for time to escape something fearful or unable to find the words to impress someone by whom I am most impressed. Consequently, I am formally appealing to you to take greater caution in doing what you do best.
Yours ect.
Ashley

Welcome... my REAL first blog.

Welcome.
This, I am proud to announce, is the very first of many actual blogs to be recorded in this space which bears my name as author and it is a great relief. My interpersonal communications class- and, consequently, my entire freshman year of college- has now been completed and I am free to use this region of virtual existence as I please.

I have considered before the possibility of creating a blog, but never pursued it. I suppose I felt it a little conceited to assume that anyone would want to read anything I think and say just because I said it in the form of a blog, but as it was required to use one for that class I think I won’t let this opportunity go to waste now that I’ve got it all set up.

I’m home for the summer. And I’ve never earned a break more in my life. But, as everyone here’s still in work or school all day and I haven’t found a job yet, the amount of time left to my disposal is overwhelming. My art box which, after an entire school year in hibernation, was probably considering writing a will when I finally opened it 5 days ago and I don’t think I’ve ever sharpened pencils so many times in one week. It’s a good feeling and one I’ve been missing to have no place to walk in my bedroom because of the unending heaps of paper and erasers and various tools that would destroy the carpet if accidentally stepped on. I even broke out my guitar (Cedric) and old sheet music to brush up. I’m not getting far yet, but I’ve got time, that’s for sure.

Today I drew, played, sang, cooked, read and slept. That’s about all. I certainly believe I’ve earned the relaxation, but I don’t know how anyone could live their whole life that way. Especially not by themselves. I really can’t wait to start working and doing things that have purpose beyond filling up my day. Such as writing a blog that I already know no one will read. But then, I don’t think I’m really writing this for anyone else. I think it’s me that needs to project my thoughts into something else. Like a pensive. Just to relieve the growing tension in my mind. And so, in that respect, I suppose I’ve served my purpose here.
Good night.

The Red Herring: our favorite fallacy

I believe that of all the logical fallacies this is the one with which I am most familiar. I spent a period of time last year studying them because I was curious and I had a class that wasn’t teaching me much for a period of time so I would read about it. The reason this particular fallacy is so distinguished to me is that it is more common in our universe than any of the others. Alright, that wasn’t in the book I read, but if I ever were to write a book about logic (which I am seriously considering- the world needs it!) I would mention that I am convinced of this fact.

The red herring fallacy may take many forms, but the goal is the same: distract the other person from the actual problem at hand. This fallacy got its name from the historical use of red herring fish (or maybe it was just a part of the fish? I don’t remember the details) in shark hunting. Fishermen would employ the fish to distract and lead sharks away from noticing the trap/net/whatever they used to catch and kill them so that they wouldn’t see it coming and could be caught. Now in the context of arguments, the person applying this fallacy usually doesn’t actually trap the other because they are already working against a logical resolution, but the main idea is to inhibit the progress of the other person’s argument by throwing out something completely unrelated to the issue at hand.

The interesting thing is that in order to use this fallacy one must nearly always employ another fallacy because the other person will only be drawn off their point if given a reason to. For example, I’ve noticed that the absolute most commonly used fallacy in this case (as far as my experience proves) is the “appeal to pity” or more specifically, “appeal to emotion”. For instance, if I accuse my friend of lying to me and want to work it out so we know what actually happened and they respond by accusing me of being unreliable, they are trying to make me upset by the attack (appeal to emotion) to distract me from the original problem of mistrust (red herring), that is a red herring fallacy by means of appeal to emotion. I think that spells it out pretty obviously.

The point is that this happens to me and everyone I know multiple times a day. It irritates me to no end that no one realizes how irrational it all is that they can’t just take care of one problem at a time. Because most of the time the accusation being used to distract is entirely valid and should be addressed, but not in that context. No one will ever get anywhere by throwing accusations back and forth like some kind of senseless, angry game of blame-tennis.
That’s all.

Class Connections

Something I’ve noticed since the start of this course is that a great deal of my analyzing
of literature and film consists of interpersonal principles that I had no names for until we studied them. I’ve been picking away at two literary-critique-type writing assignments and it seems to me that every good literature paper must contain some form or element of philosophy and interpersonal communication principles; philosophy to sort out aspects of truth and ethics, and interpersonal communication principles to discern behavior patterns caused by good and bad communication methods. Because that’s what literature’s for isn’t it? I mean, it is for entertainment in part, but to such a great degree we use stories as a scope through which to view the world or ideas or questions we cannot answer without a controlled example. I suppose it does a great deal of other things too, but for the sake of argument… the point is that I like having my classes connect to each other. Not terribly philosophical, but there you have it.

Movie Project

I’ve really enjoyed watching our class give these presentations. It is so interesting to demonstrate the communicational principles we’ve been learning through film. I was really curious what everyone was going to use because I don’t think anybody remembered to post their decisions in their blogs like we were supposed to. It seemed to me that in the course of watching the presentations we are learning a lot about what each other has learned in the past few months because everyone chooses something that they understand well to teach about. There are a lot of things I totally forgot about discussing earlier in the semester that people have talked about and it is working like the most painless review method I’ve ever used. I think this will be really helpful.

Demand-Withdraw Pattern

Over this last weekend my sister and I watched a whole season of a random tv show we found on the internet. You may be surprised to hear that, as uninteresting as that sounds, we actually had a blast. One of our favorite things to do together is watch things and make fun of them. we often spend the entire time we watch a movie tearing it apart in every area from the cast to the story to the script and then leave the theatre having a serious conversation about how much it impacted us. People who don’t know us well are often confused by this- which we don’t blame them for. But we can’t help mocking things. It’s just a part of how our relationship/family operates. I’m sure I could center an entire communicational study on that dynamic alone- and I suspect I’ll devote an entire blog to it before long- but that isn’t the purpose of this one.

The point is that we were making fun, as usual, of a certain episode about a journalist who was writing a column on an author of multiple “how to pick up women” sorts of books. Needless to say the interviews were already hilarious without our supplementary commentary, but I began to notice as we were jeering at the author’s method of insulting women to make them want you I had heard this principle before. Our text book called it the “demand-withdraw pattern” which we saw demonstrated in “The Tao of Steven.” I found it interesting to look at the differences in these two pop culture applications of it. In the movie we watched in class Steven says to appear disinterested, be excellent in the woman’s presence, and then retreat. This fictional writer demonstrated his technique by telling a girl walking by with a pastry, “You know, that is so awesome that you’re not at all concerned about what that doughnut’s gonna do to your hips,” and then ignoring her until she’d practically thrown herself in his arms. Obviously both of these examples are extremely exaggerated and unrealistic, but I did find it funny that the common element was the “retreat” or “withdraw” which causes greater demand.