Excuse me, my baby come out wrong

But he's still my Johnny

This Gen

A perennial complaint among people who aren't exactly young anymore (including me) is the good ol' "Music today sucks!" This is fun to say, but really not fair. Think of it this way: what if the generations of music were like the cast of a movie? You have your leading men and women, impressive ensembles, maybe the eye candy on the side and the comic relief—all the usual roles to fill.

Well, then the past has been filmed and released already. All the awards have been handed out, and everyone is relatively immortalized for their impact: artistically, culturally, or both. You can argue whether they deserve it or not, but you can't argue the fact that they've survived time so far, and that doesn't happen without reason. They did something big. All the people who didn't? They faded away, and you're left with those who really stood out. (Yes there are always great people who get overlooked, but that doesn't mean those who do get cemented in the spotlight weren't deserving.)

So that makes the present day an immensely crowded, years-long audition for who gets to survive and be heard beyond the next five minutes. Of course it's going to look like a lot of shit with all the masses trying out almost American Idol style. The ratio of bad to good may be worse now with the accessibility of technology and proliferation of mass media, but still! Get over your favourite generation! You should absolutely highlight and remember what was awesome, but you can't pretend it all was or even most of it was. It wasn't.

I'm not saying everyone is going to have a cultural phenomenon like The Beatles, or whoever holds that throne in your heart, but the lack of a worldwide darling doesn't imply a lack of good music. The public eye is fickle, so especially in the present, especially if you're older and have heard a lot already, you need to look more for yourself. There will always be new, incredible people making new, incredible music. Find them, and give them a chance!

Easter Legs

Grab bag blog! (Grab blag?)

First: Happy Easter! Just like Jesus, I had a dream the other day that my cousin was dating Rosie O'Donnell. She rode a tricycle. I'm pretty sure it was actually a glimpse into an alternate dimension and/or heaven.

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From "You Are Not So Smart" by David McRaney:

"Bargh conducted a study in which Caucasian participants sat down at a computer to fill out boring questionnaires. Just before each section began, photos of either African-American or Caucasian men flashed on the screen for 13 milliseconds, faster than the participants could consciously process. 

Once they completed the task, the computer flashed an error message on the screen telling the participants they had to start over from the beginning. Those exposed to the images of the African-Americans became hostile and frustrated more easily and more quickly than subjects who saw Caucasian faces.

Even though they didn't believe themselves to be racist or harbor negative stereotypes, the ideas were still in their neural networks and unconsciously primed them to behave differently than usual."

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Still plugging away at the stories I'm writing, but they're coming along. The trouble is, I'm getting reacquainted with writing prose as I go along and keep spotting new problems that I would've missed before. This is good, but is also slowing things down. Still want to get them out this month.

And I think I need to start that obligatory dance with social media if I want to take this seriously, so expect at least a Twitter feed and Facebook page to haunt as you please.

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Jaw-and-entire-face-dropping performance of "The Bad In Each Other" by Feist at the 2012 Junos. Awesome big finish!

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Question: Do you have any tried and true methods for thwarting the procrastination monster? A simple but effective one for me has been flicking the wi-fi switch off on my laptop. At the very least it makes me think twice about what I'm going to be using the net for.

Marooned on Popo Island

The past few days I've been helping to keep an eye on my grandma (Popo) in her little condo. She's had a couple strokes and doesn't talk much, so when I'm there she often sleeps the whole time and the room becomes a fully furnished box of solitary confinement.

I started to get a bit nutty today on the third day, which is strange in a sense because I usually go out of my way to be a hermit.

Maybe it's harder to be alone outside your own shell.

Or maybe it's her hospital bed that goes BRZTZRTZRTTT every twenty seconds.

She did wake up when my mom came once, and they sang Oh My Darling Clementine together which was really nice and funny to see.

Predetermined Free Willy

Do you believe we have free will?

The popular position among neuroscientists seems to be that it's nothing more than a handy dandy self-delusion that keeps society going. Our actions are merely the shiny, polished products of an extremely complex input-output program: our brains.

According to them, there is no "I chose to do this" in the terms most of us are accustomed to—just a big wad of neurons that weighs all the options with prior experiences and makes you do things. In oft-cited studies by a researcher named Benjamin Libet, the brain even lit up and revealed its intentions before subjects noted their own awareness of what they were doing (although I admit I'm a little dubious of evidence that relies on self-reporting.)

A common argument for free will has people saying "Well sometimes I want do something but then I don't!" But if, for a relatable example, you were deeply in love with your best friend's grandma, the act of resisting that mighty craving wouldn't mean you've conquered your impulses and your brain.

Many a scientist would say that before you even became conscious of it, good ol' brainington already considered that pursuing gammy would probably damage your friendship, alienate you from society and that she might reject your too-smooth body anyway and break your heart. Even if it was a difficult conclusion to come to, it was out of your hands.

But this all just a sloppily paraphrased version of one theory.

Is it so unfathomable to think that this sense of being on autopilot might be the illusion? That there's something we've yet to fully understand about how the brain, consciousness and our perception of reality works? Sure, maybe. Maybe it doesn't have to be so strictly one or the other, freedom versus determinism. Maybe it depends on how you define free will.

What's scary is the notion that if it somehow, someday it becomes a consensus that there is no free will, what would that mean for our legal systems? I didn't do it; that awful meatball in my head did.

5 foot dreaming

I saw an interview with singer/songwriter Regina Spektor the other day and thought it was interesting how she described her old dream of being a classical musician. She compared it to a person whose dream is to be the tallest person in the Guinness World Records but only grows to be 5 feet tall. While she admits that that kind of dream fades away on its own, she insists the first dream doesn't have to be the last one. Or even the right one.

I'm guessing most people can relate, at least to some extent. Sometimes it just seems like there's a natural dead end to what you're doing, and I'm not just talking about a limitation of innate talent (neither was Regina Spektor, I don't think). Maybe you just grow out of it, or you get stolen away by a new passion. But for a lot of people, it could be what some psychologists call the O.K. plateau.

This is when you come to a point in your growth where reaching the next echelon would require an amount of focus, passion and hard work that you're not willing or ready to commit. Whatever your rationale may be, you're content to stop. It doesn't mean you can't ever start again, but sometimes you just know when to leave it behind, even if it's disappointing.

For me, for five or six years I was devoted to animation, comics and illustrated poems. For most of that time, that was where my dreams were. But I exhausted where I could go with all of them.

It came down to the fact that I'm a doodler, not a full-fledged artist. Anything beyond the simplest poses and drawings were complete agony for me, and I had little to no interest in actually developing my skills to make it less agonizing. Sometimes I'd just think of the headache of it all and procrastinate forever.

This severely limited the kinds of stories I could tell, and before I knew it, I felt like I'd used them all up. I hit 5 feet, and you can only go so much farther with your high heels of Photoshop know-how.

I won't say I'll neverevereverevernenevnenreever make a comic or animation again. If it's a side dish, I don't care as much about pushing my limits. But I know what I loved best about both was the writing. They were perfect playgrounds for an insecure writer to cut his teeth because the visual charm can be so disarming and what you write never has to stand alone.

I'm more than ready to just write now though. I'll try, anyway. I'm not so naive as to prematurely assume this is the right dream, but It's already better in that I crave to work at it every day.

So let's hope I can be a little taller this time! Or at least fatter. I'm tired of being skinny.

Recalculating

Sometimes you just don't know where it is till you get there, uh huh? Huh uh. Uh.

The newerfangled Newfangled Death -- that poetry collection I was supposed to be working on -- has mutated  several times and undergone extensive stem cell therapy since I last spoke of it. But like the mighty Frieza, I believe it's found its final form and is ready to fight suddenly blonde people.

So yeah, it's now a collection of short stories! And a couple poem/short story cross-breeds. Some are short, some are long, but all of them will love you equally. There's an overarching theme of death, but it ain't all doom and gloom. If you're familiar at all with the black humour and sad-smiles I seem to gravitate towards, this stuff shouldn't be too scary.

Looking at a total length of 7000-ish words. Still $1 price tag for eReaders or computer reading. I'd suspect early April somewhere. No foolin'! Print editions to come later, compiling a few of these kinda volumes -- probably both at Lulu and Amazon.

Now I need to run off and be a sickly recluse again. It's one of the perks of being a writer.