Please get help if you need it

Posted on August 21, 2012 by wellsdc

“You fly jets long enough, something like this happens” -Viper, “Top Gun”

Tony Scott, director of more than a few legendary Hollywood blockbusters, died Sunday in what by all accounts was a suicide. According to the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office, he jumped from a bridge near L.A., leaving several notes behind for his family.

The news has not said much beyond speculation about the reasons why. To a certain extent, it seems like a gross invasion of privacy to delve too deeply into the issue. He reportedly had inoperable brain cancer, but we do not know if that played a role in any way. For whatever reason, he was in pain, and this must have seemed to him to be the best way out.

Over a span of six months in 2011, I lost two friends to suicide. I’ll never know exactly why. I have a sarcastic or snarky responce to nearly everything in life, but this is a subject on which I will never, ever joke. It is something I understand far better than I would like.

Most people would have looked at Tony Scott and seen someone who “had it all,” whatever that might actually mean. He may not have created iconic classics of cinema like his brother, Ridley Scott, but he left behind a memorable body of work. His films included venerable blockbusters like “Top Gun” and “Beverly Hills Cop 2,” but also the cult classic “True Romance” and the cerebral blockbuster “Crimson Tide.” His lesser-known 1990 film “Revenge,” starring Kevin Costner and Madeline Stowe, left an impression on me when I saw it in high school. It was, as its title would suggest, a story about a man who cuts a path of destruction to save the woman he loves, but it is not a Hollywood love story. It explored the fine line between love and brutality, something Scott would return to in 2004’s “Man on Fire.”

I guess my point in bringing up his filmography is to say that his career had more depth than he may get credit for, particularly with movies that took a pretty stark look at what people do when they are pushed to an edge, like Costner in “Revenge” and Denzel Washington in “Man on Fire.”

However successful a person may be, that tells you little to nothing about what they are thinking or feeling. Suicide is almost never a rational action (allowing for some extreme examples), usually brought on by a sense of desperation or hopelessness. An excellent talk by JT Eberhard from late last year about his own struggles with depression offers the view of someone who went right up to that brink and came back. He sums it up in the perfect way, a point of view I have heard from friends, and one that I can recognize in my own thoughts at certain points in my life. To roughly paraphrase how he described his thought process leading up to his suicide attempt, he said “I didn’t actually want to die, but I wanted it to stop.”

As trite as it may sound, this too shall pass. Please get some help.

National Hopeline Network – 1-800-784-2433
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline – 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-799-4889 (TTY – Hearing & Speech Impaired)
Austin-Travis County Mental Health Hotline – (512) 472-HELP (4357), (512) 703-1395 TTY
More Texas and national resources

Rice University, The Happiest Place on Earth!!!

Posted on August 20, 2012 by wellsdc

320px-Rice_University_-_Rice_statue_with_Lovett_Hall

If Willy’s statue could talk…

Maybe I am overselling it a bit.

The Princeton Review released its big book of rankings recently (h/t Bob), and West Virginia has regained its title as the best school for gaining 25 pounds due solely to beer and having to explain to your parents pictures of yourself naked and fellating an unfamiliar lacrosse team on Tumblr . Okay, that’s what I think “#1 party school means,” but what the hell do I know? I went to Rice.

Rice retained its title as the school with the “happiest students,” which must be a new development in the decade+ since I graduated. I mostly remember a bunch of neurotic nerds, but I was also pretty drunk during that four-year period.

This year’s rankings require registration at the Princeton Review‘s website, but I did find a description of Rice from last year’s announcement of the rankings.

Academics

A sunny and social place to get a prestigious degree, Rice University is Houston’s answer to the Ivy League. Consistently ranked as “one of the top universities of the nation,” Rice maintains a stellar faculty, a “vibrant research program,” and a “diverse selection of courses and departments.”

Okay, good education, but happiest?

Life

Rice University offers “the most amazing balance of serious education and an unbelievably rewarding personal life.” According to most undergraduates, “The college system is the key to life at Rice University,” through which students are assigned to residential communities for all four years of study. The cornerstone of the Rice community, “The ‘Hogwarts style’ housing system creates an intimate place to create lasting friendships, as well as friendly competition between different dorms.”

I graduated from college around the time J.K. Rowling was writing the first Harry Potter book, so the Hogwart’s comparison obviously was not around when I was there. Here’s the thing: Hogwart’s was not a happy place.

Student Body

While they look like a bunch of “outgoing, down-to-earth kids,” students reveal, “Everyone at Rice is, in some way, a nerd.” At this “geek chic” school, “Regardless of your interest and no matter how nerdy it might be now, you’ll definitely find someone else who shares your passion.”

***

“Rice genuinely has a diverse community that accepts people of all backgrounds.” Nonetheless, Rice students do share some common traits, generally described as “liberal for Texas,” low-key, and “good natured.” While most undergraduates are “studious,” they’re not overly serious. The typical student “rolls out of bed in a t-shirt” and is “willing to help you out in times of need.”

I think this is the key. The single most important thing uniting Rice undergrads, in my experience, was that we were all nerds in high school, and we all came to Rice to be among our own people. The Rice University of the 1990’s was a sociological experiment run amok: take 2,600-2,700 people aged 18-22, almost all of whom spent their high school years studying, at debate tournaments, or playing 8-bit video games, turn them loose on a campus in the middle of America’s fourth-largest city with no adult supervision, and see what happens. I could tell you tales of wildness, but my memory is fuzzy.

The Rice University Class of 2017 started classes today, as it happens. I wish them well. This is a different world (old-school TV pun intended) than the one in which I attended college. I have heard that the administration is more cautious, and that today’s students may not have the opportunity to learn firsthand that releasing twenty pounds of live crickets inside another dorm building is not, in fact, a funny prank. The old Wiess Commons is no longer standing, so there is no obvious place to post cutouts of German porn magazines in preparation for Night of Decadence. Still, I have no doubt that this new crop of kids will let their freak flags fly proudly.

To the students of Edgar Odell Lovett College, I have two bits of wisdom to share:

1. No matter how many times they paint the bathroom walls in the Commons, Cobb will still suck.

2. Rah rah, fuck.

Photo credit: ‘Rice University – Rice statue with Lovett Hall’ by Daderot (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Happy Left-Handers Day from an Ambidextrous Weirdo

Posted on August 13, 2012 by wellsdc

Today, August 13, is Left-Handers Day, a day to celebrate the roughly thirteen percent of the human race that absolutely hates writing in pencil.

For some fun facts about left-handedness, read this piece on ABC’s website (so I don’t have to summarize it for you.)

Research suggests that lefties tend to be more creative, but also more prone to ADD and other mishaps. Those who know me should not be surprised by that one teensy bit.

While I write with my left hand, technically I am ambidextrous, and I have a highly random and unpredictable set of things I do left- or right-handed. I’m actually right-handed for most things. The two major things I do left-handed are writing and cooking-related activities (i.e. cutting, stirring, etc.), unless I’m using a knife and fork, in which case the fork is in my left hand. I actually have no idea how most people use cutlery. I use scissors with my right hand (which made kindergarten much easier), and I am universally right-handed in sports. Video game controllers seem to be set up to require left-handed use of the joy-/thumbstick, and that has never been a problem.

Where it gets fun is in activities where I switch hands depending on what type of device I am using. In music lessons, I have learned that I play guitar right-handed (fretting with the left hand, strumming/picking with the right), but that I play wind instruments (based on an attempt to play the recorder in elementary school) left-handed.

Having taken classes in both riflery and pistol safety, I learned that I shoot pistols right-handed, but rifles and shotguns left-handed. No one can figure that one out.

If I were capable of juggling one-handed, I just have this feeling that it would be my right hand.

Photo credit: Via leftorium.com.

Free-form Writing

Posted on May 28, 2012 by wellsdc

(Written in June 2012, not published until now for whatever reason.)

This was an exercise from a session I went to at the Writers’ League of Texas Agents’ Conference today [June 23, 2012 – ed.], called “Care & Feeding of Your Writer.” We were asked to tear out an image and two words from a magazine, then write something about them. I edited for typos, but this is what I wrote.

My creativity comes from my connection to others. I write as much to be read as to get the ideas out of my head. I do not necessarily need the approval of others, but it means a lot to have their attention. Also knowing I have the support of people who care about me gives me a sense of security and freedom to be creative.

Am I the person offering the helping hand, or the one receiving it?

Yes. I am both.

The two words I chose, “helping hands,” are an inextricable part of my creativity. None of this would be possible if I didn’t have opportunities and support.

Scary Childhood Memories: The Bunyip

Posted on May 18, 2012 by wellsdc

I had managed to completely erase this bit of scarring from conscious memory until a Cracked writer had to go dig it up. The 1977 Australian children’s movie “Dot and the Kangaroo,” which I vaguely remember watching in what would have been the early 1980’s on cable TV (probably HBO), mostly consisted of singing cartoon animals like koalas and the eponymous kangaroo.

It also had a musical sequence, in a style unlike anything else in the movie, about the mythical bunyip. Try to watch this from the perspective of an 8 year-old:

Of course, growing up in the middle of a big city in Texas like I did, the bunyip didn’t exactly pose a great threat to me:

The bunyip, or kianpraty, is a large mythical creature from Aboriginal mythology, said to lurk in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes. The origin of the word bunyip has been traced to the Wemba-Wemba or Wergaia language of Aboriginal people of South-Eastern Australia. However, the bunyip appears to have formed part of traditional Aboriginal beliefs and stories throughout Australia, although its name varied according to tribal nomenclature. In his 2001 book, writer Robert Holden identified at least nine regional variations for the creature known as the bunyip across Aboriginal Australia. Various written accounts of bunyips were made by Europeans in the early and mid-19th century, as settlement spread across the country.

Dammit, though, that shit is terrifying to a kid.

Soon, you will call me master…

Posted on April 13, 2012 by wellsdc

Introverts run the world, says Susan Cain at CNN:

The theory of evolution. The theory of relativity. The Cat in the Hat. All were brought to you by introverts.

Our culture is biased against quiet and reserved people, but introverts are responsible for some of humanity’s greatest achievements — from Steve Wozniak’s invention of the Apple computer to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. And these introverts did what they did not in spite of their temperaments — but because of them.

As the science journalist Winifred Gallagher writes: “The glory of the disposition that stops to consider stimuli rather than rushing to engage with them is its long association with intellectual and artistic achievement. Neither E=mc2 nor Paradise Lost was dashed off by a party animal.”

I haven’t written any bestselling book series (yet) or invented any groundbreaking computer systems, but my power is gathering…

Photo credit: ‘Relampago BSB 12 2006 zoom 8082’ by Mariordo Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Something is turning me all progressive and stuff

Posted on March 21, 2012 by wellsdc

About five years ago I took the World’s Smallest Political Quiz and the results indicated that I was a left-leaning libertarian:

I took the test again, to see what five years have done, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, I’m all liberal and crap:

Here’s how it describes me:

Liberals usually embrace freedom of choice in personal matters, but tend to support significant government control of the economy. They generally support a government-funded “safety net” to help the disadvantaged, and advocate strict regulation of business. Liberals tend to favor environmental regulations, defend civil liberties and free expression, support government action to promote equality, and tolerate diverse lifestyles.

How did a kid from Alamo Heights grow up to be such a stinking hippie? I’m sure there are lots of reasons, but for now I just thought the shift in test results was interesting.

Of course, the test presumes to categorize you based on ten questions (five political and five economic), so its reliability is dubious. Meh.

I dare say my mind has not returned to the working world

Posted on March 15, 2012 by wellsdc

My SXSWi experienced has left me feeling inspired, intrigued, excited, energized, and…..utterly, entirely unmotivated.

Perhaps not surprisingly, spending several days talking to interesting people about interesting concepts and innovations is far more exciting than sitting in a home office and actually doing the stuff we talked about.

Cryptic Philosopher

Blerping Blumpstr min Brinwaq Blerfzit

Category Archives: Personal