Tag: Blogging

Life, Scifi, Writing (Published)

Published — “Pink Pastures”

Posted on by Desmond White

365 Tomorrow has published my speculative flash fiction “Pink Pastures.” The story was based on a dream, and since I can’t afford a therapist on a teacher’s salary, I resorted to a poor substitute (something I also know about, being a teacher). Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” influenced the setting, plus I really wanted to write about eldritch genitalia without using the word “vagina.” You’ll notice the comments aren’t forgiving; in my defense, my “purple prose” could have been intentional on a meta-level. (It’s not). 365 Tomorrows is an online journal that produces a new speculative fiction every single flipping day. The site would be a great complement to your morning bagel and cup of raktajino.

Life

Student Congress

Posted on by Desmond White

My Debate I course is engaged in Student Congress at the moment (during which students become representatives, argue over legislation, and vote whether or not to pass certain bills and resolutions).

Yesterday, on a resolution regarding the NSA and it’s activities, I had a student give a speech in support of the agency who 1) didn’t know what the acronym NSA stood for, 2) didn’t know who Edward Snowden was, 3) reassured us that the NSA couldn’t see if you were watching porn on your phone, and 4) when asked to identify at least one terrorist attack that they prevented, said 9/11.

Life

Peace, ho!

Posted on by Desmond White

On the occasion, my students will have outrageous interpretations for the language in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, such as in the repeated expression “peace ho!” or “stand ho!” and the late arrival of a soldier named Clitus.

All these manifestations make my students crack up predictably, year after year. But the section most perversely twisted is the following scene from Act V, which I record here for your amusement and under this new context.

Hint: Brutus is asking these soldiers to kill him, but that’s not revealed until the end of the dialogue.

BRUTUS: Sit thee down, Clitus. Slaying is the word [in my students’ lexicon, slaying has a sexual connotation]. It is a deed in fashion. Hark thee, Clitus.

(BRUTUS whispers to CLITUS)

CLITUS: What, I, my lord? No, not for all the world!

BRUTUS: Peace then. No words.

CLITUS: I’d rather kill myself.

BRUTUS: Hark thee, Dardanius.

(BRUTUS whispers to Dardanius)

DARDANIUS: Shall I do such a deed?

CLITUS: O Dardanius!

DARDANIUS: O Clitus!

CLITUS: What ill request did Brutus make to thee?

DARDANIUS: To kill him

[My students: Ohhhhh…]

 

Life

Nonfiction — “Static Movement (Family)”

Posted on by Desmond White

My parents are an amazing, oblivious people. After a quarter of a century, their clumsy attempts have ceased to be frustrating⁠—have, instead, slipped into the realm of ridiculousness. I hope I don’t come off as condescending. It’s just that through their undertaking to gratify my interests or reject them, I have been able to understand my parents as the loving, literal-minded, and culturally-stunted people they are.

Growing up, every experience had to be shared or rejected. If they couldn’t understand it, or if my younger siblings couldn’t take part, than my involvement was betraying the family’s interests. There was this notion that the family had to stick together, which is probably why I wasn’t allowed on sleepovers⁠—Dad and Mom couldn’t come.

And everything was shared, especially toys, even if it meant scratching all of my DVDs and scattering my legos between my siblings’ rooms. I was banned from watching television unless we were all watching it, and I didn’t care much for Fox News.

My bedroom had a window which looked into the living room. Or, from a more accurate perspective, my parents sitting on the couch in the living room could look into my room. My door locked from the outside.

Hiding in the restroom with a book became my escape from the ant colony. I was intrigued by the savor of stories, the sweet and sour taste of lies, the pasty sweet smack and blackened results of poetry, the prologue’s d’oeuvres and the epilogue’s bitter aftertaste. I began to regard my parents’ diet as having a sort of rot that their tongues, burnt, numbed or blunted by scriptural verbatim, could not detect.

For a long time I wasn’t aware of their literalism (paired, as it often was, with an unwillingness to participate in pop culture). I read The Hobbit, and enjoyed it, but wasn’t allowed to start Lord of The Rings because it was “unchristian.” (I did anyway.) But I could read Every Young Man’s Battle, the Biblical Art of War against masturbation.

Imagine my confusion when Dad recommended I read The Screwtape Letters. I was disappointed to find very little screwing. 

Life

Nonfiction — “Post-Grad Blues & Hues”

Posted on by Desmond White

Well, hey there. I’ve been Internet-less for a portion of Summer, and yet somehow I’ve been enjoying myself. Apparently there are “real lifey” activities as fun as binge-reading Cracked.com or absorbing via the eye-holes the entire echelon of Archer. Like fishing. Well, not fishing. But other things. And I’ve been doing them. Road trips, paintball, camping, grilling, horror movie-athons. Now that I’m a graduated man I can do whatever my bank account permits i.e. purchasing a compact bow for the much needed manlification of my lifedom. Additionally, a certain relaxing (and nerdly) hobby has reappeared: the painting, configuration, and playing of Warhammer 40K.

Summer nearly over, I’ve decided to finally begin a project I’ve mostly declined through my creative writing “career,” which is the creation and completion of a first novel. There’s an idea that’s been scratching the back of my brain meat for some time: a science fiction adventure-comedy that wouldn’t require Hemingway-level chops. It’s simple, sorta funny, sorta entertaining, and wouldn’t tear me apart if it flopped. So here goes.

EDIT (August 30, 2013): The novel flopped.

Life

Nonfiction — Mendengar Saya Menguam

Posted on by Desmond White

 

Sumatra, Indonesia

We can’t afford color blinds on our windows, not with kids in Disney shirts waving from the roadside, young women stooped by rubber trees, old men smiling with malachite teeth. There is the International conglomerate and the poor indigenous and all that separates us are barbed-wire fences and fat bank accounts. I spend my day learning U.S. History; my nights playing soccer with a ball of teak root. Some locals drop a hornet nest near my head. I think 9/11 occurred in Kuala Lampur.

 

Tianjin, China

The skies are gray. There are no pigeons but deadly chemicals disguised as bread crumbs. We can’t let the pets outside – I wonder if it is because of the poison or the markets where vendors line stalls with freshly-gutted dogs. The Chinese see us less as bourgeois, more as barges. Strangers call their friends over to laugh at our large feet, our looming height. A business man wants my picture by a bull statue’s testicles. Poverty is swept behind skyscrapers and the larder of cranes. Our U.S. passports can only get us far. From there on it is knowing which barbershops cut your hair and which are brothels.

 

Lecheria, Venezuela

We live in rich man prison – a network of mansions connected by a network of canals. Transport includes travel-by-yacht. I’ll take the boat to the Mall, tie her up, watch a film with English subtitles. I’ll take her to open water and fish like Ernest Hemingway. We say what we want about Hugo Chavez. The taxi drivers never agree; they think they’re monitored. Nothing can stop the wanton – not the insurgents, not the kidnappers who take our neighbors, not the pirates asking for agua with pistols behind their backs, not the man collapsed in the Wendy’s drive-through with a bullet in his shoulder.

 

Santa Barbara, California

I’m idling incognito, an exclusive ooze, wasting away with a cynical smile. There are scars on my legs from jungle hornets, a little red book full of Mao. I think in languages I never use. I walk along landing strips and thumb airplanes and refuse to play tricks on Gimpel. I don’t belong. I don’t belong. I don’t know where this is going.

 

Life

A letter from Barbados to my friend, Stilgard the Warren-hearted

Posted on by Desmond White

Greetings my astute and totally manly companion,

As I sit on this quite comfortable and well-cushioned lounge chair in my villa’s mezzanine, overlooking a salmonella sea that’s almost lapping against my toes, it’s difficult to retain a humble and God-seeking perspective. Luckily, my humility is about the size of a very small planet. And again, less luck and more awesomeness, it’s difficult to lower my gaze from the sublime and write this note. But by some astrological direction, although more perhaps due to the tenebrific nature of the setting sun, which darkens my tapestry, I will peruse your person for grammatical errors. And write.

Pertaining my drinking habits (and I do say habits deliberately), there’s a Stygian sting to your condemnation. Mountebank! Marauder! You… dare I say it? Friend. I have been at the drink, indeed. However, do not fret! I am Charles Bukowski only in spirit, not through spirits. I am Lord Byron only in sexcapades. I am Sir Francis Richard Burton only in my ability to speak to animals when intoxicated.

Buffoonery aside, I do do (ha!) want to speak to you at some point. Perhaps by dint of Skype, or Facebook, or auxiliary technology. Ad interim, letters will suffice. There’s a cough of Kafka in all of this, which arouses me. I await correspondence from my chums of old. Be wary of venereal warts.

Most ungratefully,

Desmond White

Life

Comic Con 2010

Posted on by Desmond White

As I watched from afar, Gandalf stood before the entrance to Comic-Con, stuck his staff defiantly into the ground, and shouted “Thou Shalt Not Past!” The on-coming nerds passed him anyway and he dropped his head crestfallen. Later, a Jedi shouted “Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope!” before being consumed by mobs of bag-toting zombies.

“Oh heinous dodecahedron gods,” a geek exclaimed. “We’re at Comic-Con.”

Comic-Con indeed. How awesome art thou Comic-Con? Awesomer than your Mom, doth Comic-Con reply. Never have I seen so many nerds, mega-nerds, hunchbacks and nerds. To describe it as nerd mecca doesn’t do it justice. Nerdvana? The Nerdiverse? Anyone who’s anybody to anyone to anything in geekistory was accounted for this sunny San Diego weekend… even the dead guys. It was nerdageddon.

To spoil some spoilers: Joss Wheldon’s directing The Avengers (woot!), Mark Ruffalo is Hulk, and they’re still letting M. Night Shyamalan make movies…? Plus Tron 2, Die Hard 5 (with Willis), Brad Pitt in World War Z, another Haunted Mansion and another Resident Evil (meh…), Cowboys & Aliens (which I’ve been anticipating 4-forevs) and The Walking Dead as a TV Show are all in our immediate drooling future.

I wanted to visit the Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World showcase, but my comic companion, dressed as Gideon from Scott Pilgrim and flirting with all the purple-haired chicks with hammers, insisted I read the damn books first. Then I ran into Matthew Fox and Daniel Dae Kim from LOST, and the entire cast of FRINGE, and the creators of The Venture Bro’s (including Patrick “Brock Samson” Warburton), and didn’t mind missing out.

But the worst part “Highlight of the Convention!” was a Webcomics Lightning Round, during which Scott Kurtz (PvP), Robert Khoo (the third guy from Penny Arcade; yes, there’s a third guy), and Brad Guigar (Evil, Inc) discussed furries. I mean Webcomics. Webcomics. The Q&A focused on creative and business aspects in Webcomic design. Amidst the awesomeness, some bearded ass in Sith robes made an off-hand comment during the sesh that the crowd was only there for a subsequent LOST panel, which Scott Kurtz turned into a world of hurt for the poor Sith bastard.

Kurtz: Jack dies in the bamboo field by the freaking dog!

Stupid Darth Asshole: Yeah, but uh… my question is-

Kurtz: By the way, the Dharma Initiative? Completely FUCKING irrelevant.

Afterwards, I picked up How to Make Webcomic, had all the authors sign it (suhweet), and split. Comic-Con was MANacular, my weekend was great, and – oh, whoa, whooooa, before I sign off, I need to mention one last little diddy: Tessa Stone’s Hanna is Not a Boy’s Name. I found her paranormal comedy (what she calls “sugarcoated horror”) right before Comic-Con, was deeply entertained, then ran into her in the Webcomic Artists’ section. Let’s just say she’s totally awesome.