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National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.
Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.
Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.
So here's my lame starting attempt to play along this year...
i.
The thronging masses squirmed along 6th avenue like a centipede at a dance competition, bodies pulsing and gyrating to the rhythm of the street. Everywhere one looked there were people dressed in the most outrageous costumes imaginable. But then again, they weren't perhaps all that outrageous, considering the state of thing. But no matter your perspective, one was likely to find something visually interesting amidst the assembled horde.
It was fall in New York, halloween to be precise, and the evening was cool yet pleasant out. Everywhere one could hear the sound of people in full revelrie, wandering the streets in search of some as of yet unknown adventure which was, nonetheless, pulling them forward towards their destiny.
The several preceding days were cool, not really unusual for the end of October in this part of the country, but today had been warmer than expected. With such nice weather, and not a hint of rain in the air, it seemed like the entire city had come out to play.
The group of young people I was wandering the streets with were looking for trouble of some kind or another, nothing necessarily illegal or life threatening, but nonetheless adventurous. The parade of costumes seemed like as good a place as any to start, and it was to this destination that we were irresistibly drawn.
Our meter was measured yet dispersed, as is any group of fifteen or so odd people trying to navigate their way through New York this time of year...
How I Single Handedly Changed The Elections---and Made History
Just when you thought it was all over, I went and ruined the party!!
That's right folks, I am the real chris crews, and this is my video. I am so working on a response video to this before the weekend, so come back and see my side of the story!!
chris crews
Posted by horatio on Friday, October 31, 2008 (01:46:45) (10 reads) comments? | | Score: 0
Thought I would pass along a few interesting things in my mailbox today...
Crackdown on Women's NGOs in Nicaragua
WLP colleagues from the Autonomous Women's Movement (MAM) in Nicaragua have called our attention to the government's raid and seizure of documents and computers from their offices on October 10th. The raid of MAM's offices as well as the Centre for Investigation and Communication (CINCO) offices are another step of President Daniel Ortega's government's campaign against civil society organizations, particularly feminists, who have been outspoken critics of his government.
The wider government crackdown includes harassment of several civil society organizations, journalists, and the international organization Oxfam GB, which supports the work of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The government has accused such groups of money laundering, misuse of funds, and subversion. The government has specifically targeted feminists who have been vocal in condemning Ortega's sexual misconduct as well as the 2007 comprehensive ban on abortion. Activists have been threatened and persecuted for defending women's rights, as have journalists who have been targeted for reporting on corruption within the government.
The Panic of 1907 was a financial crisis that occurred in the United States when its stock market fell close to 50 percent from its peak the previous year. Primary causes of the run included a retraction of market liquidity by a number of New York City banks, a loss of confidence among depositors, and the absence of a statutory lender of last resort. The crisis occurred after the failure of an attempt in October 1907 to corner the market on stock of the United Copper Company. When this bid failed, banks that had lent money to the cornering scheme suffered runs which later spread to affiliated banks and trusts, leading a week later to the downfall of the Knickerbocker Trust Company—New York City's third-largest trust. The collapse of the Knickerbocker spread fear throughout the city's trusts as regional banks withdrew reserves from New York City banks. The panic would have deepened if not for the intervention of financier J.P. Morgan, who pledged large sums of his own money, and convinced other New York bankers to do the same, to shore up the banking system. By November the contagion had largely ended. The following year, Senator Nelson W. Aldrich established and chaired a commission to investigate the crisis and propose future solutions, leading to the creation of the Federal Reserve System.
This second video is from the October 15, 2008 Hofstra University Presidential debate protest and rally in the afternoon in Hempstead, Long Island where a number of speakers talked about everything from civil rights and racial justice to immigration and economic reform. Gutierrez works with the New York May 1 Coalition.
Well, I finally got the raw footage from the protests and rallies edited down a bit. Here is a 10 minute sample of the rally and protests on the street. The film starts in Hempstead, where the early rally with a bunch of speakers was occurring, and then follows the march to Hofstra itself where the main protest was taking place. It loosely follows the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) from their early announcement of their letter asking to be let into the debates through their march to Hofstra, and then their march to the gate after the 7pm deadline had expired. It has some footage of the arrests as well as the brief clash with police before they pushed people off of the streets and brought out the riot cops and fences. This short documentary does not really include any of the interviews that i did, as those will be put out in another piece listening to people on the streets, so keep an eye out for that later this week.
Well, things are heating up as the Nov. 4 date approaches. Back in my home of Ohio, as in many rural places in this nation, the racist factor in this election is becoming crystal clear. Nothing else explains rallies in Eastern Ohio where people feel quite confident openly talking about "a nigger running for president," the fact that Obama is a Muslim (news flash - he's not!), or that he is a "friend of terrorist" and secretly "hates whites." WTF?! This short Al Jazeera clip does a great job of showing this in action...scary, but not surprising.
Cyrus: "You're standing right now with nine delegates from 100 gangs. And there's over a hundred more. That's 20,000 hardcore members. Forty-thousand, counting affiliates, and twenty-thousand more, not organized, but ready to fight: 60,000 soldiers! Now, there ain't but 20,000 police in the whole town. Can you dig it?"
Well, tonight was quite a treat. I went with a few friends to see a showing of The Warriors at the Freak Show in Coney Island, where the movie is based around. If you haven't seen this 1979 film, based off of the book by Sol Yurick, you're really missing out. I feel like, having watched it now, how in the hell did I manage to miss it all of these years. I've heard samples from it, seen it referenced in films, but never realized it until watching it tonight. Plus, there's nothing like seeing this film at the Freak Show in Coney Island, where a group of people were dressed as the Orphans, and a few in the Warrior vests even, complete with a Rocky Horror-esque interactive crowd cheeringl jeering and clinking their beers:
(clicking beer bottles) "Waaaarrrrrriiiorsss, come out to pla-ay!"
Posted by horatio on Sunday, September 28, 2008 (07:57:20) (24 reads) comments? | | Dear Diary | Score: 0
Well, the first Presidential debates are now over, and the outcome seems quit clear. Simply put, this was one of the most worthless debates I have ever seen, not to mention one of the most boring. Not only did both candidates put out numerous positions that make me more hostile to them, but they showed, at least by my standards, why neither of them is ready to be President.
This mockery of a debate looked more like a prep school sparring match with two fighters who don't know how to draw blood or hit a mark, than it did a top level elite political and intellectual debate. Jim Lehrer, the host, was also pathetic and a terrible moderator, never once pushing the candidates with hard questions or cornering redirects, as a good moderator needs to do at this level of debate. I kept thinking to myself, why isn't John Stewart or Ellen DeGeneres or Amy Goodman or somebody vaguely interesting and provocative moderating and forcing them to deal with real issues and not talking points.
So let me offer a few concrete examples of problems, and how they should have been addressed, in my view. And for the sake of my liberal friends, I'll argue as an Obama supporter and trying to make his position stronger (but for the record I don't support either candidate). Let me run through a few key areas that I think he needed to hit on, or respond to, that were totally missed and wasted.
--Venezuela
This was a huge negative for me when he called Venezuela a rogue regime, and reflects the exact 20th century mentality that both candidates were criticizing in relation to Russia and the Cold War. Venezuela is only a rogue regime if you define US interests in purely capitalist and hegemonic terms, and by using and supporting that frame, Obama showed he is exactly the same as McCain and no friend to the American Left or those interested in a stronger and more vibrant Latin America. Many in the American and international “Left” (I use that hesitantly, since the US “Left” is mostly non-existent) are largely supportive of Chavez and his efforts in Venezuela, as well as neighboring leftist movements in Latin America. Sure, it's not all candy and roses, but it's new and potentially transformative in its implications for future continental politics in the Americas, not to mention shifting power into a “multipolar” world, which we desperately need right now as a counterweight to US hegemony. For Obama to attack Chavez and Venezuela as a rogue nation only serves the interests of militarist neocon strategists in Washington who want to keep American in a war-first mode indefinitely.
--The War on Terrorism
This is one issue both candidates seem to miss the point on, and I think Obama could actually hurt McCain on if he was strategic with his points. Here's the take home message: no one will “win” the war on terrorism because you can't win a war that has no fixed enemy, no fixed resources, and no capital to conquer and control. In short, the best you can hope for is destabilizing the support base that allows the terrorist movements to continue to grow and thrive, thus minimizing their effects. You can go back in history thousands of years and find what would likely be called acts of terrorism by today's standards, and we will continue to see them as long as there are people alive on this planet. That's just reality. So if Obama really wanted to show his tactical/strategic knowledges and nuances, here's what he should be saying when they debate Iraq or Afghanistan or the larger War on Terrorism: “Look Jon, or Tom or Jim, whatever your name is, I think your comment about winning the war against terrorism is the exact problem. We're not going to win an asymmetrical conflict by waging a symmetrical war against an enemy that is dispersed and diffuse, and operates across the entire globe. It's just nonsense. Yet this logic of yours has allowed for the continued occupation of Iraq, the failures both there and in Afghanistan, and the continued rubric of fighting terrorism to the tune of billions of tax-payer dollars. And what have we got? An Iraq that is more unstable than it has been in the last century; an Afghanistan that is arguably worse than the height of the US-Russian proxy wars; an international insurgency that is far more powerful than it ever was before 2001; major human suffering and displacement in Iraq and Afghanistan; major human rights violations by both Coalition soldiers and armed insurgents. This is not how you win a war on terrorism John, this is how you make them.”
If Obama said something like that, I think millions of Americans (not to mention the world community) would jump out of their seats and start cheering and yelling Amen! Sure, McCain would respond that such a view is childish and dangerous (just as he did to Obama's militarist view of fighting the war on terror in the debate), would be tantamount to letting the terrorist win, and shows exactly why Obama is not fit to be the President/Commander in Chief. And here is where Obama could really hit him back hard.
“No John, I'm afraid it's you who just don't get it. Our reckless militarism over the last few decades is a central reason that many people hate this country, and is one of the central reasons that fighting more wars, occupying more countries, is making the problem worse not better. The time of US military domination has to end, and the return of American soft power, of global moral leadership not global policing, is on the horizon. If we truly want to make America, the world, safer, we must learn to put the stick down and remember how to extent our hands instead of our guns around the world. And frankly John, your from a generation that refuses to let go of that Cold War militarist mentality, and that's a major difference between us. You see force as the first option, not the last, and the American people, the world in fact, is tired of that approach because it isn't working, it hasn't worked. It must change, and that is exactly what I plan to do when I'm President of the United States.”
--The Economy
This was an area that I was especially disgusted with, because it really shows the class bias of both candidates, elite through and through. Seriously, we're looking at major financial collapse in this country, perhaps on the scale of the Great Depression or worse, the economy is in shambles, wages are dropping and costs are rising, and here are McCain and Obama debating cutting 18 million in por-barrel spending? And wen asked what they would change, they both said nothing at first, and Obama again and again. Sadly, this just confirms for me how out of touch these candidates are with the real American reality, the one that I see and live every day, where worrying about my economic stability is measured in the hundreds of dollars in my bank, not the millions in my investment portfolio. But if Obama were going to really try and hit McCain on this, he blew what I think was his biggest opening ever last night. When Jim Lehrer asked them for the third time how the fiscal crisis would impact their spending, and what they would do, McCain proposed freezing all spending except Defense. Here's his exact quote:
“How about a spending freeze on everything but defense, veteran affairs and entitlement programs.”
Now if Obama were really on his game, he would have gutted McCain like a fat hog for that comment, perhaps saying something like this:
“I'm really appalled at that suggestion John. Freeze everything but Defense and entitlement spending? Right now we're spending over $600 billion alone in DoD and related areas, more than 20% of the entire 2008 budget, yet we're only spending about $60 billion, or 2% of the budget, on something as critical as American public education. To think that in a time like this, when the country is in a major financial crisis, caused in part by the massive costs in Iraq, that you want to freeze everything except the single most costly endeavor? A majority of the American public has shown it wants us out, and have pointed to the costs as a major factor for them, and now we're talking about how to deal with this very financial crisis and your solution is to continue the most expensive part of that problem? It makes no sense at all John, and the American people can clearly see that, and they want it stopped, want the money to stop flowing out like oil from a sinking ship, and yet you want to freeze everything but that. I think that really shows how out of touch you are with the American public, with the average American, to suggest that a solution to our financial crisis is to keep funding the DoD, a major source of the spiraling US debt. It's insane John, it really is. And I know exactly what you're response is, that this would hurt our troops, out them in danger, and will let the terrorists win, but I've already show how that logic is false, how we need to move out of that Cold War mentality.”
Something like that would, I think, really put McCain on the defensive and would force him to go back to his only real area of retreat, which would be to attack Obama for cutting funding to the troops and letting the terrorists win, which Obama has already preempted and essentially left McCain looking like that is all he can talk about, which is in fact largely true. It's either his maverick experience in Congress or his military credentials, that's what McCain always goes back to when he's unsure what to say. Just look at how much time McCain spent talking about the military in the debate, even though most of it had nothing to do with the actual issues. It was all feel good fluffy, hey look at my bracelet pandering. And Obama, and Lehrer, let him get away with it.
But the biggest problem is that neither of them gave any serious response to the economic problems, never acknowledged it was that serious, and showed no sign at all of having seriously thought out what it would mean to their presidency from a big picture perspective, which is really scary!
There are other areas I could go into, but that gives a sense of some areas that really need to be looked at closer by Obama, and which should have really driven this debate, at least in my mind, but it seems that either Obama just isn't there, or his party isn't there, I'm not sure which. Either way, it could have been a good chance for him to really go after McCain, and he didn't. And I think it will cost him.
Well, I wasn't able to make it yesterday down to Wall Street, but there was a descent-sized protest (actually pretty small if you consider the amount of money and people this will impact). From the looks of it, there wasn't anything major going on event-wise there, although it was clear there was some street theatre and also Billionaires for Bush (McCain)? folks there. This is one of those hard situations where I imagine a lot of people are feeling like, shit, what can I do about this. And rightly so, but that shouldn't stop us from thinking creatively about how to try and deal with these situations. Here's a photo from the rally, and more are available at the link.
How should I start, by describing this project of undoing
or undoing this project of describing
it may be extremely harmful
the words that i will tear from deep within
those hidden and mist-covered places
where only demons and bad dreams lurk
where the cut of razor wire and the black ooze of blood
are more than simple images on the wall
they are living and breathing monsters
hiding deep within the darkest recesses
just waiting to be let out
like wild beasts locked behind iron cages,
held at bay by feeble paper locks
and empty ink fountain troughs
crying in the corner is my muse
clothes torn, tattered, a sight to be see
yet simultaneously hidden from
visibility and invisibility
the gaze and the watched
turning on the iris, red and swollen
while poems are sacrificed in front of her
burned like so many books
burned like so many dreams
burned like so many people
flames ablaze
searing in the way that only words can hurt
in only the way that looks can kill
leaving nothing but the taste of bitter medicine
and the alchemical smell of sulpher
i turned this poem inside out so that i could see
where the words were pouring out from
where the genealogy of ideas was emanating
where the structure of knowledge was rooted
but all i found were stupid words trying to sound smart
letters pretending at something bigger
teeth bared, snarling
hoping no one will notice the quiver
of fear and murmurs of loss on tense lips
speak not of this, nor of that
only speak when spoken to
and then only tell lies
until the lie becomes the truth
and can speak for itself as self-evident
inspiration is a muse of death
whispering into your ear
as you paint life on the page, the canvas, the screen
reminding you of your mortality
while tempting you with immortality
flowing like the sands of time
fissures – ruptures – disassociation
i try to stitch meaning together into fleshy circles
wound tightly around each preceding ring
like a coil in a magnet, or a snake in its lair
smooth dark loops through the ether
connecting the here with the now to make the
ever proceeding space that will be tomorrow
but even here words fail me
like they fail so many others.
09.23.08
Posted by horatio on Tuesday, September 23, 2008 (05:43:16) (30 reads) comments? | | Dear Diary | Score: 0
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