Dec. 27: Finale
When I take my last breath, I hope that I am sitting in an easy chair and watching a video of my son when he was a baby.
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Critics of the American playwright, Christopher Durang (whose birthday is in less than a week) say that he sometimes has difficulty ending his plays.
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The greatest magic show in the history of the craft was, and still is, David Copperfield's 14th television special. His grand finale was flying. Seriously, the dude actually flew around the stage as if it was the sky. You can check it out on youtube and read comments from all the stupid youtube idiots about how Copperfield did it and blah blah blah.
Shut up, idiots. My two cents is: "Wow, that was amazing. I don't care if you know how it was done. If you're so little that you have to wreck the magic by posting your idiotic comments here then I hope no one is ever foolish enough to hire you to do a show."
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The problem with using a deus ex machina in a story is that it often makes the protagonist obsolete.
It happened with Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indy spent most of the movie trying to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis. Then he finds it. Then the Nazis steal it. Then God intervenes and kills all the Nazis. Indy survives but he wasn't needed. Even without Indy, the Nazis would have found the ark, opened it, and then died.
-
The date right now is December 27. On December 31, I will write my final note-a-day.
I simply don't have the energy to keep this up anymore. Writing note-a-day is fun, and it is a challenge, but it's also fluff. There is no War and Peace in note-a-day. Sometimes I was capable of hitting one out of the ball park but, for the most part, note-a-day will be 365 days of singles, pop flies and strikeouts.
I can tell you that I wish I came up with the idea for note-a-day when I was 12. I could have dedicated my life to the project and it's entirely conceivable that I'd be making a living doing it today. Every year, a publisher might have printed a collection of my best essays/stories and I'd have developed a small cult following. Maybe I would have even been the third guest on Conan O'Brien on a Thursday night.
I dunno... I wonder what the 14-year-old me would have done with titles like "Awful presents," "Life is Women's Tears" and "What scares me about parenting."
-
I need to stop note-a-day for two reasons:
- I have a 22-month-old son and I need to spend more energy on him and less worrying about what I'm going to write that day.
- There are more important writing projects I need to focus on.
One of those projects:
-
The Bible talks about mankind's finale. The world will end in fire. The story is contained in the book of Revelation but it uses a lot of imagery. Bible scholars have been unable to come to a consensus as to what that imagery might mean.
Even so, people aren't go to be here forever anyway. We're going to use up all the oil and then our technology will stop working and the world will be filled with high-tech equipment that is completely useless and we'll become a primitive agrarian society again before we finally go extinct.
Five hundred years from now, historians will probably look back at people who lived in the 21st century and will talk about us the way we talk about the Nazis. I predict they'll even have a name for us. It will be "the wastlings."
They will like Greenpeace though.
-
In Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut quotes Robert E Sherwood's 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Abe Lincoln in Illinois. In the play, Mr. Lincoln recounts the story about an eastern monarch who commissioned his wise men to come up with a statement that is true in any time and in any situation. He was presented with this statement: "And this too shall pass away."
Let's separate the sentiment from the King James prose, shall we? A modern day translation: "It won't last forever."
Right now I am writing this note while the Calgary Flames enjoy a 3-0 lead over the Edmonton Oilers. The game won't last forever.
I suspect I might be coming down with a cold. I am comforted knowing that it won't last forever.
My son is an infant. He won't be one forever.
My apartment is a disaster. It won't be a disaster forever.
The year is 2014. It won't be 2014 forever.
William Shakespeare's name is known around the world. It won't be known forever.
I am alive.
I won't be alive forever.
-
Christians believe in eternity and that is a fantastic inoculation against the nothingness of death.
Someone once said that beauty is a short reign. If Father Time doesn't like you, he will eventually take your beauty and replace it with age. Oh, and a word to the wise: Father Time doesn't like anyone.
-
As I type these words, I am aware of many sounds around me.
There is the sound my keyboard makes as my finger taps the keys.
There is the hockey game. The announcer is saying we'll be right back after these commercial messages and that the Flames are still up 3-0.
From my window come the sounds of several young people having a conversation on the street below. They sound like they're talking about how nice the weather is and about how great it was to see their families for Christmas.
Those people's families will not be around forever. Neither will Christmas.
Neither will love.
-
I've just spent the past 15 minutes looking for Kurt Vonnegut's essay collection, Wampeteers, Foma and Granfalloons. I couldn't find it anywhere so I'll have to go by memory.
Mr. Vonnegut (who also didn't live forever) was a lifelong atheist. But in one of those essays, he confessed that he found the nihilism of such a worldview to be of little comfort. He believed the creeds of the world's great religions to be nonsense, yet he pleaded with college graduates to believe in nonsense instead of reality.
I hope I am quoting him accurately.
-
There was a time when Hollywood movies would put the words THE END on the screen when the film was over.
They don't do that anymore.
But I think I'll do it here.
THE END
-
Critics of the American playwright, Christopher Durang (whose birthday is in less than a week) say that he sometimes has difficulty ending his plays.
-
The greatest magic show in the history of the craft was, and still is, David Copperfield's 14th television special. His grand finale was flying. Seriously, the dude actually flew around the stage as if it was the sky. You can check it out on youtube and read comments from all the stupid youtube idiots about how Copperfield did it and blah blah blah.
Shut up, idiots. My two cents is: "Wow, that was amazing. I don't care if you know how it was done. If you're so little that you have to wreck the magic by posting your idiotic comments here then I hope no one is ever foolish enough to hire you to do a show."
-
The problem with using a deus ex machina in a story is that it often makes the protagonist obsolete.
It happened with Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indy spent most of the movie trying to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis. Then he finds it. Then the Nazis steal it. Then God intervenes and kills all the Nazis. Indy survives but he wasn't needed. Even without Indy, the Nazis would have found the ark, opened it, and then died.
-
The date right now is December 27. On December 31, I will write my final note-a-day.
I simply don't have the energy to keep this up anymore. Writing note-a-day is fun, and it is a challenge, but it's also fluff. There is no War and Peace in note-a-day. Sometimes I was capable of hitting one out of the ball park but, for the most part, note-a-day will be 365 days of singles, pop flies and strikeouts.
I can tell you that I wish I came up with the idea for note-a-day when I was 12. I could have dedicated my life to the project and it's entirely conceivable that I'd be making a living doing it today. Every year, a publisher might have printed a collection of my best essays/stories and I'd have developed a small cult following. Maybe I would have even been the third guest on Conan O'Brien on a Thursday night.
I dunno... I wonder what the 14-year-old me would have done with titles like "Awful presents," "Life is Women's Tears" and "What scares me about parenting."
-
I need to stop note-a-day for two reasons:
- I have a 22-month-old son and I need to spend more energy on him and less worrying about what I'm going to write that day.
- There are more important writing projects I need to focus on.
One of those projects:
-
The Bible talks about mankind's finale. The world will end in fire. The story is contained in the book of Revelation but it uses a lot of imagery. Bible scholars have been unable to come to a consensus as to what that imagery might mean.
Even so, people aren't go to be here forever anyway. We're going to use up all the oil and then our technology will stop working and the world will be filled with high-tech equipment that is completely useless and we'll become a primitive agrarian society again before we finally go extinct.
Five hundred years from now, historians will probably look back at people who lived in the 21st century and will talk about us the way we talk about the Nazis. I predict they'll even have a name for us. It will be "the wastlings."
They will like Greenpeace though.
-
In Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut quotes Robert E Sherwood's 1938 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Abe Lincoln in Illinois. In the play, Mr. Lincoln recounts the story about an eastern monarch who commissioned his wise men to come up with a statement that is true in any time and in any situation. He was presented with this statement: "And this too shall pass away."
Let's separate the sentiment from the King James prose, shall we? A modern day translation: "It won't last forever."
Right now I am writing this note while the Calgary Flames enjoy a 3-0 lead over the Edmonton Oilers. The game won't last forever.
I suspect I might be coming down with a cold. I am comforted knowing that it won't last forever.
My son is an infant. He won't be one forever.
My apartment is a disaster. It won't be a disaster forever.
The year is 2014. It won't be 2014 forever.
William Shakespeare's name is known around the world. It won't be known forever.
I am alive.
I won't be alive forever.
-
Christians believe in eternity and that is a fantastic inoculation against the nothingness of death.
Someone once said that beauty is a short reign. If Father Time doesn't like you, he will eventually take your beauty and replace it with age. Oh, and a word to the wise: Father Time doesn't like anyone.
-
As I type these words, I am aware of many sounds around me.
There is the sound my keyboard makes as my finger taps the keys.
There is the hockey game. The announcer is saying we'll be right back after these commercial messages and that the Flames are still up 3-0.
From my window come the sounds of several young people having a conversation on the street below. They sound like they're talking about how nice the weather is and about how great it was to see their families for Christmas.
Those people's families will not be around forever. Neither will Christmas.
Neither will love.
-
I've just spent the past 15 minutes looking for Kurt Vonnegut's essay collection, Wampeteers, Foma and Granfalloons. I couldn't find it anywhere so I'll have to go by memory.
Mr. Vonnegut (who also didn't live forever) was a lifelong atheist. But in one of those essays, he confessed that he found the nihilism of such a worldview to be of little comfort. He believed the creeds of the world's great religions to be nonsense, yet he pleaded with college graduates to believe in nonsense instead of reality.
I hope I am quoting him accurately.
-
There was a time when Hollywood movies would put the words THE END on the screen when the film was over.
They don't do that anymore.
But I think I'll do it here.
THE END
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