Then/Than and Other Helpful Tips.

Hey friends,

I just needed to get this out... Hopefully you'll read this, and hopefully it will help you be a better writer of the language you use every day.

Then/Than
Then refers to a point in time.

"Michael will bring his camping gear. Then we will leave for the woods."

Than is used in a comparison.

"I would rather Jake be hit in the head than me."

They're/Their/There
They're is a contraction of "they are."

"They're going to see Mark and Lorna tonight at the Red Fox Lounge."

There refers to places.

"Casey, go cut the head off that dead cow over there."

Their refers to a group of people.

"Their trips to Old Germany are now over."

More updates to come as necessary.

Westhaven I

I walked into the Westhaven Country Club and was only there for five minutes before realizing why murderers were driven to kill in places like this, and it was no more than a sense of decency that kept me from joining that class of the insane. It wasn't that I didn't desire to right the wrongs in the room. It's only that there was no other way to tumble this tower apart from bringing it to a crashing pile of putrescence, and I was not prepared to be buried under it all.

I had been removed from the marble and polish long enough to smell the stench of facade upon reentering. Hundreds of years of varnish piled layer upon layer - clear enough to remain unseen but making the room more closed in and suffocating than ever. The hard surfaces reflected the noise of voices, not allowing them to die but keeping them from escaping. And the dim light was enough to mask the wrinkles of the old and the scars of the rich.

As I turned to walk back into the foyer, I heard a voice.

"Where have you been, brother?" I hated when he called me brother. I kept my pace of retreat, but I could hear Russell's hard sole shoes reverberating through the room behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that he was walking toward me with his arms outstretched - his white teeth, reflecting the little light that was in the room. He was already buzzing from the high of hobnobbing and gave my shoulder a tight squeeze. I turned around.

"Sorry I'm late." I had been sitting on the bench outside for the previous half an hour watching the people come in and wondering if I could sit with them again - Not sure if I was ready to immerse myself in the plasticity of souls fueled by green blood. I guess Russell could see it on my face.

"Oh, not this again," he said with the flail of his body that looked like an octopus that had been cut in two. His squirm stopped, and he stared at me. The noise of the room didn't allow for a dramatic silence, so he turned and walked away.

"I'm just going to go to the bathroom first," I said to the back of his head knowing that he probably couldn't hear me. I wasn't convinced that I was ready to leave, so I went to the bathroom. It wasn't the solitude I was hoping for as I could no longer ignore the attendant and pretend he wasn't human. I found the stall with a sink, walked in and locked the door behind me. I ran the cold water and looked into the mirror. For the first time in months, there was unrest behind my eyes. I splashed the cold water in my face and looked back into the mirror. The same unrest, just wet this time.

The Key To Life

I decided this week on the title of my first book... "The Key To Life." Cliche? Yes, but that's only the beginning. The cover of this book will be me - more specifically, a bust shot of me - smiling really big with my hand under my chin.

I've been talking about this for a few days, and much to my dismay, Jenn sent me a picture today on my phone to let me know that my idea was already in use by the gem of a man... Joel Osteen on the cover of his book, "Become A Better You." I had the image in this post originally, but when I published it, it just consumed the page. Those teeth... oooff! The only difference between Joel's cover and mine is that he is FOR REAL! Are you kidding me?!

So, cliche title and cliche picture. You might be saying to yourself, "Cole, don't you know what you're doing?" And that's exactly the point. I've decided this week that the key to life is self-awareness. It doesn't matter how much money you've made (Joel) or how many books you've sold or - on the other end -how eccentric you want to appear. If you're living in a world apart from reality, people just aren't going to take you - or what you have to say - seriously. I mean, think about this guy.



David Cross is a genius, but Tobias Funke? He's an Analrapist (accent on the SECOND "a" ).

One of my biggest fears is that the exact people who need to read the book will never pick it up. In addition, people who don't need to read the book are the ones that will, thus making them more cynical toward the oblivious among us. So, I have some thinking to do because I want the book to be a more than solely humorous. I want it to have a point.

Here's the deal, there are people around you and me everyday that just don't have a clue. Whether it's the person who walks really slowly down the middle of the grocery isle or that girl on national television singing her heart out to a laughing television audience of 10 million (aka, the people reading Joel's book) - something must be done. We live in an age that tells people they can do whatever they want if they just put their minds to it. That's ridiculous. You can't grow wings and take flight. You can't superman jump over a tall building. And the people who are creative enough to get around the laws of gravity don't need pop psychology to cheer them on.

The fact is that people CAN do a lot of things, but things don't get done by willing them into existence. Things get done because people discover what they are good at, and they chase after those things with all their hearts.

So, if it's singing you want to do, make sure it's not painful. If it is, sing in the shower. If you want to write a book, make sure you can spel write and that you use grammar good. If you can't, write a song. Push your limits, but find the limits that are worth pushing.

Suspension of Disbelief

Suspension of Disbelief is a result of poor execution. In story, I don't want people to suspend their skepticism or turn off their critical thinking. I want participants to believe that people are real and places exist. The only time suspension of disbelief is necessary is when the hands of the real world can be seen - whether it be poor dialogue or forced action or cartoonish CG. A story is told well when the recipient is invited to believe without distraction.

This man got it.

Lexicographer

I really like words. Yesterday was the birthday of Sir James Murray, the lexicographer who wrote more than half the entries in the Oxford English Dictionary (the OED for those in the industry). I'd never want that guy's job, but I'm sure glad he did it.

Language is one of my passions. It's so pregnant with potential. Without words, we can't really even have thought. I wonder how many words haven't been invented yet. How many new concepts have yet to enter into our consciousness?

There are those that want to remove words like "better," "excellent," "wonderful," and "best" from our vocabulary and replace them with "good," "plus good" and "double plus good." The scary thing is that the elimination of words begins with synonyms and continues with any word that might be subjectively offensive.

As words are eliminated, so is our ability to think and communicate. The control of language results in the control of society.

Start

I've been trying to figure out if the things I do shape who I am or if who I am shapes the things I do. Because I haven't been able to find a clear answer, I spend most of my time allowing myself to be distracted.

I read a lot in hopes that others will help me answer the question. I think that F Scott Fitzgerald and Oscar Wilde would be my good friends if we had been living at the same time and in the same place. The three of us would sit at the end of a long dining room table in a dimly lit room discussing why we do the things we do and how no one ever understands why we seem frustrated with the world.

I'd like to think I'd be friends with Jack Kerouac and Earnest Hemingway because they seem like cool guys, but I think they were afraid of roots. Not in the Kunta Kente sense but in the tree sense. Roots are important to me. That's why - even if I did write music that a lot of people liked - labels would still hate me. I wouldn't want to be gone more than a few weeks at a time unless I could take all my friends with me. That would be expensive.

There are a lot of things that it seems I'm good at, and - for the most part - I stick to those. It's a lot easier than trying to play basketball or take girls on dates. I say that while hating people who just take the easy way in life. So, I'm forced to either hate myself or feel uncomfortable everyday. Oooff.

The blog fad comes and goes, but for as long as it's around this time, I'll try to answer some of these questions and analyze my life in front of the world's eyes.