On the Road - First Days

Saturday

It has been an interesting last few days, I've been road tripping (sounds like a drug reference its not, I just like making trip into a verb like that) down to Arizona with Amanda. First day was mostly driving and we made it down to a camp ground in the Redwood National Park. It was quite fun in the evening when Amanda and I were coming back from the restrooms and our flashlight gave out on us. Since we were camping a little ways into the woods it was nearly pitch black as we made our way back. I really do think it was fun walking back in the dark, but I'm not sure Amanda enjoyed it as much as I did.

Sunday

Sunday we did a little more exploring of the park and walked around one of the nature trails. It was amazing how few other people were around. I do suppose it was Sunday morning, but still. After that we began our long haul down to San Francisco. We stopped by drive-through tree, which was interesting and served my purpose of getting food and gas. I'm not sure how I feel about the place since it really is just a big tree that had its middle carved out. After that we pretty much took a straight shot down to SF. The Golden Gate Bridge was fun, and great because we literally had no more cash on us. We didn't have any enough in change, but I luckily remembered that we had a little extra cash in our emergency kit. So after a little fanagling in the line we were on our way. Navigating the city wasn't too terrible and after a little bit we found our way to our hotel, The King George. To say the least it was quaint. It was very old fashioned and our room was surprisingly small, but comfy.


I'll try and update this log a little more, but I'm a bit exhausted right now. Up next Death Valley and the Luxor.

I'm only here to present the facts

I don't know why but every time I read an article or book that is prefaced by the idea that the author is only trying to provide the facts I find myself immediately looking for their basis argument. It usually isn't hard to find, because they are too busy writing about the "facts". It is a silly argument to make (that you aren't expressing an opinion, but are just writing facts) because if you are writing on the topic chances are that you are invested in the topic, and that you in fact (ha!) do have an opinion. The two things I recently saw this argument for just made me laugh. The first was a book that claimed it took the liberalism out of history and made it a fair judgement of history. It sounded interesting, but didn't even come close to being a fair representation of the "facts". The second was an article about vegetarianism. I personally don't have anything against vegetarians, if you only want to eat vegetables go for it, but when you start telling me that you have all the answers and that my way of life is wrong, then I am a little peeved. This article pretty much went in that direction, but of course it was only presenting the facts so it is crazy that an argument was put forward, but I digress.
I'd like to believe that I have seen something that has just presented the facts but I can't think of one off the top of my head (or the bottom). It isn't that they don't exist, it is just that they don't tend to be very interesting because once you start including analysis in the writing it starts developing a basis - and is no longer just the facts. So present the very boring poem, The Facts.


The Facts


First off
this is a poem.
Secondly it is written in
free verse,
that is it has no rhyme
and no rigid structure.
This poem is treads on safe ground,
staying away from the cracks in the ice.

The fear of this poem,
however,
is that it will present an untruth,
and that you will no longer be able
to trust said poem.
If you can't trust a poem who can you trust?

Can you trust anything beyond the facts?
The bare bones that tell you
that the walls are white
and that the little black spots
are ants crawling through
that massive unused space.

I won't tell you about those ants,
because I don't know.
I could say they are probably going for
the brownie crumbs on my desk,
but I don't know,
so I can't tell you that.
Nothing that might be an untruth.

Finally I have to tell you that
everything above is not true.
There is are no ants on my wall
(which I am glad)
and this is not a poem that is scared of
lying to you,
it is only scared of you believing it.


So I'm not a big fan of that poem, even while writing it. I never knew where it was going. I think with revision I might be able to find some direction to it, but it is definitely going to need some work.

Copyright 2008 William Curb

John Dies at the End

While I was browsing books at Amazon.com, yes I actually go to the site to browse books as if I were in a real book store - it is kind of surreal in the most literal sense of the words - and I came across the book John Dies at the End. I think the title is what really drew me, because I fully expect that John (whoever that may be) will die at the end. When glancing at the book's page a few things quickly caught my notice, first that it was listed as costing $180 (marked down from $200). That is a pricey book no matter how you look at it, but I suspect I could find it cheaper else where if I really wanted too. The second thing that I noticed is that out of 107 reviews, 96 were five star reviews. You don't see that very often. As usually I went to the one star reviews first, because those are often comical and/or inappropriate. These one's were terribly interesting, aside from one of the guys saying the book was simply too good for him and so it went over his head basically (that is an interesting reason to give a book one star - I'm not quite sure how that works out). I decided to skip the rest of the reviews because I'm most likely not going to get this book and because reading five star reviews is really quite boring, very few of them actually bring anything interesting to the table except that the book was just so flipping amazing and I don't care about that since they've already given it five stars. If you want to check out the book I'll leave the link below. It may be interesting to try and pursue this book in the future at the title still has my interested piqued.

http://www.amazon.com/John-Dies-End-David-Wong/dp/0978970764/ref=pd_ys_ir_all_352?pf_rd_p=258372101&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_t=1501&pf_rd_i=list&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0H172YW59W4R5QWDHJW1

Travel

I don't know why but I simply hate the idea of traveling to other places. It isn't the actual doing of the traveling that I don't like, but the idea of it. I have no idea why, because I really don't mind the traveling part. As such I've become a more experienced traveler than I had realized. When I was younger I only assumed that everyone traveled. My father was constantly on planes to new places and being as I lived in Hawaii if I ever wanted to go some where off island I had to take a plane. Hawaii in itself is not the most exciting place to explore if you live there (you can drive around any of the islands in less than a day, just to give you an idea). It wasn't until I was in college that I actually started meeting people who didn't travel. Up until this point nearly everyone I knew had been on a plane, and most likely had been to another country. In college I met people who hadn't been out of their own state. It was something that I just had never thought of - staying in one place. So I find it funny that I don't like the idea of travel, yet it is something that I do quite frequently as my rearing has taught me that traveling is just what you do.
The end of this week I am going to be traveling. I am going to be driving to Arizona to see my mother and brother. I have a number of stops along the way San Francisco, Lone Pine and Las Vegas and on the way back up San Diego, Carlsbad, Anaheim. As well I am going to visit a number of parks: Redwood National Park, Death Valley (wish me luck), Grand Canyon National Park and few others that I am only set to drive through. It should be quite the adventure and I am kind of surprised that I planned it. I'll be gone for two weeks, although I'm not really leaving any responsibility behind other than getting the mail everyday (and I put a stop on it so I'm set). I've been preparing my car for the long haul, it did fine one my trip to Iowa, but you never know what the road has in store for you. Should be a lot of fun.


World Travel

In Brazil they don't speak English.
They speak a version of Portuguese,
it is similar to Spanish.
I don't speak either.
Instead I relied on a friend who spoke
high school Spanish and had a little
Portuguese dictionary with him.

It became a ritual,
short back and forth conversations
of broken language.

I eventually learn a few words,
they are distant memories now.


Copyright 2008 William Curb

Information Overload

There is nothing new about the fact that with the internet we have access to more data than ever before, but that we have access to too much data. I could literally spend all day reading about one subject one a thousand different websites if I wanted to. Of course I'd have to sift through all the crap that is clustered behind a tiny amount of fact. I have with this regularly when I run across fitness websites. It is ridiculous how many different approaches there are to one's health, but it makes sense. I mean we are all different so it makes sense that different things will work for different people. That doesn't stop people from claiming that they have the end all solution to America's fitness problem. But I digress, we all already know this - I am adding to the crapola of the internet.
Anyways, I was thinking about the vast amount of information that I acquire every day from the internet. I don't think I retain very much of it - but it does give me crazy dreams. These too I don't retain so well. Perhaps I need to keep a dream journal and write in it in the morning so I can remember the craziness of the evening. Maybe not.

So I came up with an idea for a poem. It isn't something I'm super wild about but I like it. It goes along with this information overload theme. In fact it is the title and only line of the poem. The reason why is I think that is enough. Without anything else it is a line that you are forced to think about. At first it might seem ironic, but that isn't the point. The point is that the poem itself forces your brain to try and reason why it is alone, and thus it creates an information overload - of sorts. I know it is a stretch but it was what is in my head today.


Information Overload

information overload.

Copyright William Curb 2008

NaNoWriMo

It is that terrible time a year again when crazy writers get together and attempt to write a novel in a month, well not really, not till November. I believe I am going to attempt to also do NaBloPoMo, which is simply the blog alternative to writing a novel. It is a little less hardcore, although looking at my past posting stats, perhaps I am speaking too soon. Anyways if you are doing NaNoWriMo as well and want to be a writing buddy you can find my profile here:

http://www.nanowrimo.org/user/310483

or my NaBloPoMo (that just feels so much more awkward than NaNoWriMo - and it is impressive to be more awkward than that)

http://nablopomo.ning.com/profile/TheDangerousNacho

No images

I was going to post something very different but the lack of images in my google post wizard has taken me into a completely different direction. Now you might think that they don't really have many images, but trust me, just about everything that puts this page together is an image. I'm not sure why they are gone or why they are not loading with a refresh or even a browser reset, but they are gone. Something you take for granted I guess that you never really think about.

Granted Granite

This is one of those cases where the poem title came first.
Really there is no need for that,
just some words that went pretty together in my head.
It might have gone smoother had I written about granite
and then written a poem,
but I don't know much about granite.
I know it is grey
I know it is rocky
I know that some people use it for their counter tops,
but it isn't something I know much about,
so it is hard to write about.
I could have narrated this poem from granite's point of view
I could have written about all the other rocks I do know
but instead I break walls
and leave sentences without punctuation.


I'll just start this section by saying that the poem is over. The first time I tried to write in a new section it kind of looked like I was continuing the casual voice of the poem. I have to say though that I like how the poem turned out. It isn't something I usually do but I acknowledged myself writing a poem. If I recall correctly from one of my poetry classes, we read an author, Mark Halliday, who did the same thing. I believe I was in the vast minority in the class who enjoyed Halliday's poems. I can understand why many people didn't like his style, it was very intrusive and often nothing like what a poem is traditionally like. I think that last part is what I enjoyed the most thought, that he was willing to be different. I'm not saying traditional poetry is bad, but I think a few poets doing there own thing is much better for the genre in the long run.
Never the less this poem definitely needs to be revised, but it is a good start to a poem about nothing and a poem about taking things for granted, which I did and it worked out so well in the sense that I think the poem portrayed that feeling of taking granite for granted while never actually saying so. The ending doesn't please me as much.

Copyright William Curb 2008

People

I find people to be very fascinating, especially people that I don't associate with. I don't think about it too often, but there are billions of people I will never meet, and for that matter there are billions of people I don't want to meet. The internet has shown me that much, but there are people I run into in the real world (oh, what a terrible term) that are awful people. And I am not talking about the guy in Fred Meyer's who was trying to convince me that the store was fixing DVD prices because they were conspiring with the devil, but rather everyday assholes. I encountered some people like that a few days ago, and while I'd like to say that I simply ignored them, that isn't exactly how it went down. So here's the story. I was walking back from the gym talking with my mother on the cellphone when I hear someone yell "Hey fattie!", now at first I looked over because well someone was yelling - that's what you do when someone yells. Well they kept on yelling and apparently I was the target of their mockery. I don't think I am really bothered by the fact that they were trying to make fun of my weight, but I think the fact that they singled me out as someone to make fun of just because they could does. I just don't understand why complete strangers would want to put someone down - or for that matter why anyone would. It just seems like a futile exercise to me. So the way that I didn't completely ignore them is the fact that I am still thinking about the incident and even refer to it as such. If it were truly nothing then I could ignore it, but the fact of the matter is that it did bother me, but such is life and there really isn't anything more I can do about, so I am going to try and forget it (good luck on that one).

Strangers

that fucker.
just standing there,
not even paying attention.
thinks he is better then he is,
well I'll show him.
I'll put him in his place,
make him understand that he isn't better then me
that he won't ever be better than me.
I'll yell and
I'll scream
and he will notice me.

because.


Copyright 2008 William Curb

Why so serious?

Today I came across an article about how conservatives are happier than liberals (link below). While it had a good argument (and even a study!), I wasn't quite convinced. I think I mostly had a problem with the fact that they put a quantitative value on happiness. Perhaps it has to do with the number of people who are happy, but really how can you compare one person's happiness to another. All in all I think that some people are happier then others, but that there is no real line to divide the groups, and certainly not a political line.

http://attackmachine.com/blog/2008/05/10/what-me-worry-2/

I decided to write a poem about the idea of quantitative happiness. It isn't the most original idea but I went with a happiness store. I think it is a decent first attempt, but I want to come back to it later. Right now I want to go bake some cookies.


$2

I went to the happiness store today,
they were having a sale on joy.
But I have to say it was miserable
(which they were apparently giving out for free)
I had to wait in line
behind some people that were already happy.
I couldn't believe how greedy they were!
Buying happiness when they were already happy.
I bet they play with puppies too.

Copyright 2008 William Curb