Endless Time

Oh. My. Goodness. I'm (kind-of sort-of) graduating on Sunday, and this morning at 9:48 I completed my final final ever... finally! Since then, I've officially already decided I'm bored with the real world and its vast scads of free time that will eventually - and begrudgingly - play host to a job. And pruning the hedges. And weekends spent on the couch as a disillusioned 35-year-old; holey, Dorito-crumb-smeared underwear and remote control in tow.

But that's all still 13 years away. What I've got in the immediate future are my twenties, and I'll be damned if they don't look fun! Something in the past few days has really clicked up in the ol' noggin, and I'm realizing that - provided, of course, the world doesn't end - I just can't wait to do something stimulating and exciting and creative in a way that nothing else before really has been done. My experience at the Jejune Institute left me reeling: if someone else created an entire company that produces entertainment in so revolutionary a manner, why can't I?

I feel like the ingredients are in me, so what I've narrowed down my necessities to are the following:

- Proper funding.
- A team of like-minded, super-awesome individuals.
- A city setting with which to work.

If you've an idea how I can procure any of them, do tell.


The future, my friends, is bright. Now you've all just got to help me not grow too disillusioned too quickly, because I have a tendency to collapse in the face of anything that isn't immediate success. And I'd really like to keep my distance from the proverbial bag of Doritos.

The Time Has Come...

To talk of many things. I'm sitting in a laundromat as I write (the same location that served as inspiration for my creative story that rendered me eligible for the Kidd Tutorial exactly a year ago!), and there's a massive bumblebee buzzing between my seat back and the window. I want to smash it, but I'm concerned for humanity's future. Did you know roughly two-thirds of the US bee population didn't survive this past winter? And that when the bees go, we all do?


At least that's what Albert Einstein said.

I'm also finished with college. Well, there's still summer school to contend with, but no one really cares about that. It's just another excuse for me to spin my wheels and fret over the future. THE FUTURE. Agh! As I walked from my Shakespeare lecture the other day, I was seized with a combined sense of loss and panic. The truth of the matter is that I love love love college, and I'm really in no hurry to leave the land of beer, attractive young people, and zero consequences. Also, the notion that my brain as it currently sits could feasibly be the most formally educated it's ever going to get pretty much freaks me out. Big time. Am I supposed to feel enlightened? In control? At some kind of apex? If so, whoever was in charge of handing out all that shit totally skipped me over.

But there are other, more important items up for discussion. Like, for example, the series finale of LOST. What can I say that hasn't already been said? How about: if you were angered by its conclusion, you've totally misinterpreted the finest show television's ever offered (just behind Six Feet Under, of course). I could go into some kind of lengthy analysis about what it all [probably] means, and how brilliantly structured the final act was in terms of leaving lots of elements available for individual conclusion-reaching (because I already used "interpretation" a sentence or two ago, and any writer worth their weight in eclairs knows not to repeat vocabulary... ever), but instead I'll just say that right about the time Sun and Jin drowned in a submarine, my desire for forward momentum came to a screeching halt (here, of course, I'm choosing to ignore another writer's rule and employ a go-for-broke cliche). I realized I didn't want any more of these awesome characters to die, and that what I really, really wanted to see more than anything was all my favorites back together again, hugging it out in some kind of timeless realm where fate and consequence didn't matter. And that's exactly what I got!

Mmm. Boone.

And then there's my San Francisco trip, during which I reveled in mysteries so extreme I'm still kind of addled. If you missed my previous mention of The Jejune Institute, be sure to check it out. And then also there's this:

The Clock Without a Face

Plus that's not even to mention not getting lost in search of the Redding In-N-Out for the first time ever (!), the Santa Cruz boardwalk (Katelyn shout-out!), The Castro, family reunions (Simone!), and driving around for nearly an hour in search of a parking spot. It's an unpleasant experience, I can assure you. At any rate, wohoo! Here's hoping Google and/or Facebook hires me. I hear an "in" is absolutely essential, though, so if any of you out there in the blogosphere know someone (or even know someone who knows someone) please do be sure and let me know. I'd love to move south.

Finally, there's Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Having been tainted at a very early age by the film's intentionally slow pace, I was wary of watching 2001 in its entirety. However, after viewing - and loving - the more recent Moon, and after Netflix assured me the two films are similar, I gave it a shot. Fast-forward to approximately 2:30 am after a long night at the bars, at which point a stupored Yours Truly decided (and the following is verbatim): "dammit! I'm nearly a college grad! If I want to sit down at 2:30 am and start up 2001: A space Odyssey, then I'm goddamned gonna do it! And it's gonna be fun! And to hell with the rest of the world! Right now it's me, this television, and the cold wind blowing."


The above, ladies and gentlemen, is how I'd highly recommend you watch 2001, if you haven't already (that is to say: drunk and late at night). My mind, to be brief, was freaking blown. What a trip! What cinematography! And the music! My God, the music! And the special effects! Flawless! And the layers of mystery! Let's hear it for mystery! Epic, epic, epic. This film pretty much cements Kubrick, in my mind, as a genius, and I've got to get to watching everything else he's done rather immediately. How did none of you think of mentioning this one to me over and over until I finally caved?


I have an EWEB envelop with me, on the back of which is written quite the list of topics to broach right about meow. But my laundry's done, and I'm a college graduate, so whatevs. Take it easy, yo.

Funny. Clever. Heartbreaking?

With only three days to go until "The End", I just can't revel in enough expressions of LOST fandom like this one. When hardcore rappers and I feel the same way about something, you know it's worthwhile. The coolest part is that the cheese and the wink-wink lyrics only make it better. Or have I now totally lost my mind?

-->"I'll Never Be LOST Again"<--

Which Color Scheme Says 'ME'?

If you haven't noticed, I've been conducting quite the remodel here at Minor Fiascos, Etc. over the past few weeks. After deciding it was time to simplify, and out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new and all that, and not to even mention I'm graduating in, like, three weeks, and plus wasn't I supposed to adopt a much more serious tone because of whatever the hell's going on with Entertainment Weekly? Or something? Yes? No? No one cares?

At any rate, to get to a point when I'm not entirely sure there's one to be had: this is my new format!

I'd appreciate feedback from anyone. Is the font too difficult to read? Do you miss a picture behind the title? Are the colors not cheery enough for summer '10? I gots to know! In other news: look for a brand new short story headed this way soon! (And by 'soon' I of course mean in the next one/four weeks, because who are we kidding?)

Crave the Mystery...

With the series finale of LOST looming (God, do I talk about anything else these days?) and my bizarre thesis project finalized to the point where I no longer have any hulking workload to cower behind, I'm finding myself more and more contemplating my need for mystery.

Like, I'm just not a happy camper unless I've something to puzzle over, to form theories about, to think and rethink until I end up twice as confused as when I started. Mystery, for me, is one of those compelling forces (along with sex and spicy food) that keeps me going. After all, who actually likes reaching a novel's final page? Don't we all long to be back at the beginning as soon as we realize the end is in sight? Is any of this normal? Does everyone enjoy not having all the answers? What would any of us do if we got them?


I'm not sure - obviously. What I do know, though, is that this interest is widespread. Thanks to JJ Abrams (above) - whom I believe is Hollywood's single greatest young asset - television and film are beginning to embrace the question mark. LOST, Fringe, Viral Marketing, the Super 8 trailer... all purposefully enigmatic. All utilizing media in innovative, downright revolutionary style. Mystery is cool again, and its 21st-century format is being branded in the guise of whole new concepts - none of that who-shot-who bullshit.

We, my loyal readers, are living and breathing in 2010: a decade in which humankind has reached the point of exhaustion in its successful search for answers, and we're ready to be baffled again. We have Wikipedia. We know why things are melting just as precisely as we know why other things are exploding. We understand the widespread hate that grips the globe, the impending exhaustion of fossil fuels, the convecting of gases in our atmosphere, the nation's reliance on increasingly synthesized food, the fact that Iron Man 2 can rake in over $100 million in 48 hours at the box office while simultaneously several thousands of children died of hunger in Africa - and several dozen more perished in our own country. We've reached the point where we don't want any more blatant answers. What we want are more thoughts that defy both rational explanation and solution. If there's no clear path of action, then we don't really have to do anything about it... right?

Now, that last paragraph was a bit of a bummer, and I'm not implying the mystery provided by corporatized entertainment is any kind of appropriate remedy. What I am saying, though, is that America's sort-of collective consciousness is veritably gasping for air at this point. Those who aren't living in complete denial need something to distract from the painfully obvious truth of our current situation, and that thing is as easy to come by as a single compelling thought that holds no inherent, gloomy conclusion.


I present, then, for your keen perusal, the following fantastic links:

Super Cool Mystery House

Real-life DHARMA Initiative

That last one is courtesy of my good friends in San Francisco, and I plan on checking out The Jejune Institute myself in less than two weeks! I promise a full report following the adventure. Which brings me, of course, to my second favorite topic behind mystery... me!


I've recently decided I'm much too boring a person, and that in order to make my twenties (or, the 7.2 years of them that remain...d-yikes!) truly 'zing' I need a whole new set of mysterious affectations to keep people guessing. After all, who doesn't want to make friends with the weird guy at the party? As it stands, my one idea (a perplexing little slogan) turned out to also be the name of a Northwest hipster/rapper (Mad Rad), so I'm back at square one. Feel free to lob suggestions! I should warn you, though, that I draw the line at facial hair, cryptic tattoos, voluntary amputations, and any organized religion, new or otherwise.

I can only hope tomorrow's horoscope will promise something along the lines of a treasure map soon making its way into my grubby little hands. Until then... Iron Man 2, anyone?

I kid.

It's a Doozie

Here's the one rule: no judging.

--> Smith Experience <--

In related (and fairly obvious) news, I've finished my thesis! Or at least the creative portion. What's all this about 25 pages of research?!

For Good Measure

An excerpt from David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. Go! Buy! Read!

"Orin and Marlon Bain's view was always that C.T. was less like a person than like a sort of cross-section of a person. Even The Moms Hal could remember relating anecdotes about how as a teenager, when she'd taken the child C.T. or been around him at Quebecois functions or gatherings involving other kids, the child C.T. had been too self-conscious and awkward to join right in with any group of the kids clustered around, talking or plotting or whatever, and so Avril said she'd watch him just kind of drift from cluster to cluster and lurk around creepily on the fringe, listening, but that he'd always say, loudly, in some lull in the group's conversation, something like 'I'm afraid I'm far too self-conscious really to join in here, so I'm just going to lurk creepily at the fringe and listen, if that's all right, just so you know,' and so on."

- pg. 517

More on my life forthcoming.