Writings · of · Mass · Distraction

It came to me in one of those moments when I was doing something mindless: like doing the dishes, or finishing our taxes. I needed to beef up the main site. The sole purpose of the site is to promote my writing but it's not doing much of that lately. The quote on the front page was taking from a project that has been shelved indefinitely. The excerpts were taken down a long time ago. I needed to get proactive. And not just to take zits off my backside.

So I added the prologue and first chapter of the fantasy project to the excerpts section and rewrote the introduction. Then I took the opening of another chapter, one that the Dog Nerd said "put a chill down her spine", and moved that to the front page. And then updated some of the old sections and reworked the menu which had really gotten out of shape. So now the site looks better, has some current work on it instead of living in the past, and finally promotes what it should. So gentle readers please take a look and tell me what you think. I won't even charge admission.

http://www.jeroljohnson.com/

Do you like zombies? Who doesn't like Zombies? Nothing in horror or horror/comedy matches the thrill of killin' zombies and watching them kill red shirts. And riding that trend is the AMC hit series The Walking Dead. The season finale was a couple weeks ago and it's time to get past the zombie killin' and get to the heart of the show's problems. See photo above.

If you aren't familiar with the show, the biggest plot advances were set in motion by a little kid named Carl constantly stumbling into adult situations and in every case but one, making things incredibly worse. And to do this, it required that he got absolutely no supervision from his mother Lori. Think about it, in a world full of brains-thirsty zombies, she lets her kid run around like it's summertime in a Ray Bradbury nostalgia novel.

I fear that Carl and Lori are part of a big problem with the show: lazy writing. On a Walking Dead thread on Progressive Ears we've talked about plot holes, inconsistencies, and endless rounds of ammo but when you have characters doing stupid things to advance the plot, it's a true sign that the writers really don't know what the hell they're doing.

Siskel and Ebert had a term they coined: the idiot plot. When an entire movie/show would come screeching to a halt if one character would just stop acting like an idiot, you have an idiot plot. Not just a character making mistakes (i.e., Ned Stark in Game of Thrones whose notions of honor and nobility blind him to the machinations of others) but being an idiot (if Lori watched out for Carl most of the events of the last couple episodes wouldn't have happened). It happens whenever the writers of a show are in a corner and can't find the smart way out. So someone fucks up. Again and again and again.

Heroes was a perfect example of this. Starting in the 2nd season, every single episode depended on Peter, Hiro, and the rest (but especially Peter) had to behave like total idiots in order to advance the plot. TV audiences don't always see through this right away but genre audiences expect a little more and they get irate. And then they just turn away.

Walking Dead thinks that if they give us zombie violence, we'll forgive a lot of stupidity and Talking Dead episodes. And so far it's been a safe bet. But if they don't nip this in the bud, it's going to ferment and cost this show its audience. AMC and the producers should know better.

Update:

At about noon on Sunday the pain turned into spasms. Ex-fucking-cruciating spasms. I took one muscle relaxant. Now these things are a pain in themselves. They are very slow to go to work and even slower to flush from your system. So of course, the first one had zero effect on the spasms. I tried laying down on my stomach, my side, my back, sitting up, standing, everything but standing on my head. I took another pill. Wandered around the house in circles for an hour. Laid down for just a minute. Three hours later I woke up feeling like my head was wrapped in a toasty flannel blanket. And my tongue.

The spasms were gone of course. And as usual it took a full 24 hours before I could escape the groggy haze I was in. Now here's the kicker. Those pills expired a couple years ago.

I have heard of people getting high on muscle relaxants like this and I just have no clue how or why. It's definitely not a good buzz, it just makes you so groggy you can barely stand, let alone function. Why the hell would you want that feeling?

When I was taking Adderall for my ADHD, there was a sort of cool, smooth feeling riding just behind my eyes. Everything in my tangled head just straightened out and it was a sensation that I looked forward to. But the side effects were pure hell for me and my wife. So I went off the drug, never to return. And I never had any craving for that sensation again.

I suspect that I am just not wired for drug abuse. Odd, considering that the majority of the music I listen to is somewhat druggy. It was either made by druggy musicians, meant for a drugged audience, or the musicians are so old they're on a plethora of statins, antihypertensives, and boner meds. Me, I'll just sticky to one beer every other night, served at 45-50 degrees.

You have to say that in the Doctor Smith voice (Lost in Space). There, that's better.

You know what's the worst point of being my age. Not the hair growing in odd places, the prep for the colonoscopy exam, expanding waistline, or intolerance for hip-hop, it's the goddamn back pain.

Most of my life the only issue I have ever had with my back has been a muscle cluster below my left shoulder blade. I tore it pretty severely when I was a kid and it's always been a little touchy. But once I passed the big FOUR FIVE, the rest of my spinal column and supporting musculature decided that the whole "sitting at a desk every day plus walking upright" was something I had to pay for. And there the battle began.

No matter what intelligent design idiots think, we were not meant to walk upright. Evolution has barely caught up to our spines and by the time you hit middle age, discs degenerate or rupture or just plain don't work the way they used to. And that brings me to today.

It's my upper back today. Somewhere in the last 24 hours I did something it didn't like and this morning I have a pain that 4 Advils cannot touch. Today is also the day I promised the significant other that I would put up the massive blinds in her office. Oh, this does not bode well. This does not bode well at all.

Maybe I'll pop a muscle relaxant this afternoon and hope that it doesn't so obliterate my mind that I won't be able to go to work tomorrow. Not that missing work would be a bad thing but that's another entry entirely. But right now I just wish I was comfortably numb.

Oh, it's a cold one here. -6 right now and it'll drop another four or five degrees before daylight. We got some dry snow over the weekend and I actually did the entire driveway in about a half an hour. And now the deep freeze is setting in. Next week promises to be warmer but we'll not see anything above 25 for at least a couple months now.

Been doing a fair amount of remodeling and writing, hence the lack of posts on this blog. I'll try for something more substantial this weekend.

...and this is one that I have not given thought to in a while. My tastes have changed quite a bit over the last decades (never would have listened to jazz or classical in my younger days, nor understood it). But even in rock things have shifted. So let's identify my top rock or rock-based acts.

Led Zeppelin
The Rolling Stones
Bruce Springsteen
Rush
The Who
Steely Dan
Pink Floyd
Porcupine Tree
Gov't Mule
Stevie Ray Vaughan
U2
R.E.M.
Black Sabbath
Yes
Faces
The Decemberists
Slade
Heart
Jethro Tull
Susan Tedeschi/Derek Trucks

It is telling that only three acts on this list are from the 80s, and two had their start in the 90s. It is odd also that I consider the Decemberists so high on the list after listening to them only for about 4 years. I guess quality does rise to the top. And yes, not much representation for women on here which isn't fair but few things are. I'll submit this and then think more about jazz and blues.

It was a passionate affair, especially at my old job where you kept all my bookmarks away from prying eyes. But time is fleeting on the Internet; there's always a new flame just around the corner. Perhaps our love was too passionate to last; perhaps you were too damn slow and prone to locking up like my aging knees. But Google Chrome has retrieved all my passwords and we're moving on to greener pastures. Until the next big thing comes along...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFAd-zpqWiU