The ongoing chronicles of a closet optimist

People are strange...

namfle — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 21:55:37 GMT

Boy have I been a stranger!

The irony of my noticing my last post - me talking about a work anniversary - is that I came back because someone "liked" it yesterday (why???? it's been a year!) after learning my days at selfsame job are literally numbered. Because I apparently needed the chaser after the shot to rub salt into the wound of my shortcomings. C'est la vie.

In other news, I sold a short story to an anthology, target publishing date roughly early next year. So hooray for that, I guess.

Moving forward

namfle — Thu, 02 May 2019 19:44:10 GMT

I have celebrated 1 year in my current position last week.

I have celebrated 2 years with my current partner (I hate using the term 'girlfriend' at our age) earlier this month.

I will be in attendance May 21st at an event in which I will be reading my latest published work.

I have been invite to submit to 2 more anthologies, and possibly a few more after that.

I am so far above my ideal weight that my feet, ankles, knees, and hips are having issues.

I spend all my energy at work, and am completely useless after quitting time.

Writing is still a struggle. I'm currently (slowly) working on a new novel. I won't speak of it any more unless it is completed. Don't hold your breath.

The struggle is real.

I am in 4 tabletop RPG groups. I have gone too far. Don't stop me now, 'cause I'm having a good time (having a good time)

OH HAI???

namfle — Thu, 02 May 2019 18:59:25 GMT

I have a thing to say.

NEW BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT

namfle — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 19:23:56 GMT

Hell's Heart, released TODAY digitally.

My latest piece appears in this wonderful anthology. I'm in some great company here.

namfle — Mon, 22 Oct 2018 19:21:04 GMT

Entry reposted from https://amygrech.livejournal.com/490201.html.

Quit Early Today

namfle — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 16:27:37 GMT

Quit early today.
Snuggle your woes away with me.
Stay with me.
Let us meander with no destination,
no premeditation or agitation,
all over creation.

Quit early today.
Let your spirit stray aimlessly,
Casually.
Actually, you should come laugh with me.
Fill the room with the best sound in the world,
your laughter as you spin and twirl,
then unfurl yourself into my arms,
where you shall never come to harm.

Quit early today.
No reason, just 'cause,
Then come over so it's just us
for a little while, at least.
We'll have peace, together.
Under covers, or whatever.
And don't ever feel that you must,
for WE are built on trust,
and will survive every draft and gust.
We have a lot of love and enough lust overlayed,
So quit early today.

__________________

I haven't written anything like this in over a decade.

2... weeks!

namfle — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 18:24:21 GMT

Hrm.

LJ will not let me see a post on my friend's feed that is older than 2 weeks.

That is HIGHLY annoying.

Step 1: Go to Museum. Step 2: Have deep thoughts. Step 3...

namfle — Mon, 20 Aug 2018 20:43:35 GMT

This is collected from a Twitter thread I put down yesterday.

I spent a chunk of yesterday at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. First... I thought using the term 'indian' to describe indigenous Americans went the way of the dodo about 2 years ago. What is up with that?

Anyway, their Transformer exhibit was interesting. It was a collection of art installations that essentially tried to remind people that indigenous cultures are just as modern as every other culture. Some of the art installations were a bit pretentious, and some were chilling.
I was taken most by the Taino exhibit. Genetically, I'm (mostly) half Puerto Rican, but my own cultural identity has been shaped by a childhood rife with rejections of every ethnic culture I could belong to.

I eventually fell into what is now called 'Nerd Culture', which knows no national or ethnic descriptors. But I digress; the Taino exhibit.

What struck me hardest was the overbearing erasure that has occurred. It's staggering.
Historically speaking, there is no actual Taino culture; this is the term given by Europeans to South American and Caribbean indigenous cultures that spoke Arawak. Since the individual nations have been completely overwritten descendants have now rallied behind the term and claimed it as their own. This includes Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, and Haitians. While there's a relatively rich history of Continental US indigenous nations and cultures preserved, the footprints of whom we call Taino have been nearly wiped clean from history. Between intermixing with their conquerors, and later the African slaves brought to work on Caribbean plantations, there is barely anything left that can be recognized from the individual cultures that comprise the Taino. Even the names of the tribes have been forgotten, because indigenous traditions were told orally, and no one else thought enough to preserve them in writing. And if that's not enough, at the turn of the century, ruling governments declared the indigenous peoples extinct. Further still, there are movements that claim Taino cannot exist now because of too much intermixing. That last bit really is galling.

All of this hit me hard, as I've had to redefine my own culture because other people decided I didn't belong in their culture, and I wasn't smart enough to refute that. Couple that with the growing movement for ethnic representation in pop-culture, and I find myself having something of an identity crisis, years after i thought I had made myself comfortable with who and what I was. Erasure, representation, it matters on every scale imaginable.

Holy crap, I remembered my password!

namfle — Wed, 27 Jun 2018 14:36:32 GMT

Should I post more often?

By unpopular demand

namfle — Tue, 30 Jan 2018 04:54:59 GMT

...

Sooo....

namfle — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 06:22:37 GMT

I wrote a new story, the first new thing since 2012.

And to think...

namfle — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 12:16:00 GMT

I was suicidal BEFORE the election.

POC

namfle — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 15:13:04 GMT

There's a strong movement in pop culture these days to increase representation of non-Caucasian Americans. It's nice, and it's necessary, when you consider this nations background of immigration. The American forefathers make up a pretty well known list of 'old white guys', but the true strength of our country has always been its diversity; different cultures bringing different points of view to the same American issues, making the USA something far greater than the sum of its parts. Somewhere along the line, these most recent generations have become privileged, and this fallacy that America is monochromatic has seeped into the public thinking and has been accepted as truth. Even overseas depictions of Americans fall back onto the Aryan template; blonde hair, blue eyes, strapping build. Well, sans the strapping build; more modern depictions of Americans show us as slovenly, obese creatures of ignorance and egocentricity. The digressive point here is that even externally, the 'face' of America has been, untruthfully and for far too long, a White Male.

The truth of America is that it is comprised of People Of Color, hailing from literally every other country in the world. The cry for representation is being answered, not in just in TV shows cordoned off in the ethnic corners of Cable, but out in front in summer block-busters and smash-hit network, cable, and streaming Television shows. Every time a show or movie featuring a character of color stripped of the age-old stereotypes does well, it opens the door for representation of another group. People whose voices could not previously be heard are now part of a growing chorus, and - slowly - change is happening.

This is beautiful. My own personal world was always a weird dichotomy that I struggled to make sense of. My family is mixed, through 5 generations, so I grew up surrounded by a veritable rainbow of people. One of our family reunion photos looks like a United Colors of Beneton ad. Additionally, the leaders in my family were women; they worked the longest and the hardest, and they called the shots when the shots needed to be called. Most of the men in my family were functioning alcoholics who spent their energy on good times with a bottle, and earning the scratch to support their habits.

Yet television and films showed me time and time again that heroes were white guys who handled the crises and got the hapless women in their lives out of the scrapes in which they found themselves. I can't imagine how many times I asked myself, "why can't she just free herself? Why is she just waiting to be rescued?" In my mind, Tarzan should have been hanging out with the gorillas while Jane was the one dealing with evil poachers. Also, Jane would have been Hispanic, but that's just me.

That does, however (and finally), bring me to the point of all this. I am in love with the growing POC movement in media. As an aspiring creator, though, I find myself lost and questioning my own place in it.

The ethnic mixing that I mentioned earlier has given me a weird viewpoint. I grew up in what was essentially a Puerto Rican family. Loud parties when we got together, pasteles during Christmas, salsa music whenever the hell we felt like, and all that passion and fire that we're known for. My immediate household, however, wasn't exactly that; my biological father was a middle-aged white guy that knocked up a troubled Latina teen who was in the deep throes of family rebellion. Since I was born as part of that rebellion, I was intentionally kept from a lot of the cultural hallmarks that Puerto Ricans are known for; I barely speak Spanish, my sense of machismo is non-existent, and I never really learned to dance well. This meant that, growing up, my Puerto Rican peers didn't think I was Puerto Rican enough to associate with, and so I was rejected. Getting back to that mixing, my grandfather was a tall, handsome black man from the south (who apparently oozed charisma, according to the stories). Yet I'm not even close to being black enough for my black peers to accept as one of their own. And of course, if you're half-white, whatever else that half is automatically disqualifies you as being white as far as any of the Caucasian people I met in my youth were concerned. The grand sum of all that meant I grew up lacking a cultural identity. I would - and sometimes do - say I'm Puerto Rican, but I always felt that was fraudulent, that I couldn't prove it, so I never really bought into it myself.

Twenty-plus years into my adult-hood, and I've learned to accept myself and solidify my own self-identity. I don't feel the need to associate with a single culture or ethnicity. My friends hail from, forgive the cliché, all walks of life. The rejection I faced regularly during my formative years has given me an outsiders point of view; I've often considered myself an Alien amongst "my kind". I don’t think this is a bad thing, as it’s served me well.

Now I'm striving to become a writer and creator during this movement where the previously private voices are gaining public audiences, where support for People of Color is growing even as the pushback gets more aggressive. What do I do? I support the movement 100%; I think the art and literature and stories that are coming out of it are not just great in quality, but contain concepts and lessons that I think are necessary for all of us to learn.

But this lack of cultural identity that I have, which has served me well previously, has now left me wondering where I fit. I'm a kid from The Bronx - one of THE GREAT melting pots of this country - with black and Puerto Rican features, an Irish last name, and a worldly sense of self inscribed through association with Asian, Black, Hispanic, and rich American cultures.

I know who I am. I know what I am going to be. But today I find myself wondering if I can make my place in the part of this world I want to stake a claim in. It's not that I fear rejection - rejection is the hammer and chisel with which I was carved - but that I require an audience in order to succeed, and I'm terribly afraid the voice and message of the outsider born from within - my voice - has no audience to find.

Social Media Rules

namfle — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 12:08:06 GMT

I hereby decree these 3 rules for internetting via the internet.
1. Be excellent to each other.
2. Don't be a dick.
3. Don't take any shit from anybody.

Spread the word.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

namfle — Tue, 19 Jul 2016 12:11:49 GMT

Can i defect? A one-way trip to Mars grows in appeal every day.

Maybe I'll settle for the Antarctic. Penguins probably make for better neighbors.

mmmMMM

namfle — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 21:51:54 GMT

BLORP

The long & the short of it.

namfle — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 12:04:51 GMT

I've been lighting up my Twitter feed lately. I need to collect some of them and post them here.

Where is everybody?

namfle — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 22:51:44 GMT

And now i have that NiN song in my head.

No one on my feed posted anything since Friday.

Bloop

namfle — Thu, 19 May 2016 22:58:25 GMT

Fnarf

No aliens

namfle — Fri, 22 Apr 2016 11:56:10 GMT

I've seen, in a few places, certain recently decreased celebrated celebrities referred to as "aliens" primarily because they appeared beholden to no social standards and were exceptionally and remarkably skilled and talented. This has been bothering me for a while, and after seeing it again last night, in regards to the terribly sad news of Prince's untimely and sudden death, I've finally put my finger on why i think it's a problem.

Referring to another person as an alien strips them of their inherent humanity and enforces a perception of otherness than creates separation while at the same time diminishes our own perceivable potential. To call David Bowie or Prince, our anyone else, an alien essentially says, "I/we are incapable of doing what they have done." This is self-limiting and defeatist.

All people represent the realized potential of human-kind. These persons we call aliens did not exist outside of that potential, but instead represent the extremes of possibilities. We are all unique and so are our singular accomplishments. However, that doesn't mean that the potential for someone else going something similar is last or diminished. Assuming so is self-limiting. Instead, take these extremes as inspiration and guidance. Reach higher and further. Those that we call aliens are really us, and serve as our trailblazers, our guides, our teachers.

Nope not me

namfle — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 13:05:15 GMT

I live. Barely.

Nothing good to report. Still losing to entropy. C'est la vie

namfle — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 04:30:21 GMT

It turned out to be my connection, and my machine about to crash.

???

namfle — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 01:44:48 GMT

LJ is NOT displaying correctly. Did it finally break, or is it just my connection?

Star Wars: The Force Awakens twitter rant

namfle — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 15:38:32 GMT

I have to say, The Star Wars people have really upped the merchendising game again. This current Star Wars: The Force Awakens merch blitz is insane. I have seen merch released before the actual media release, but this is an unheard of amount, and way, way before the film release. I mean, what if the movie sucked? What if you bought merch for a character you wound up hating? Do people not realize the gamble here? The last thing JJ Abrams did that was unanimously considered good was ALIAS. WHY WOULD YOU TRUST HIM NOW? I wonder if, at this point, Disney has a chance of recouping filmmaking costs before the damn movie even comes out.

I think this pre-release campaign is insidiously genius. It's already so entrenched in current pop culture that you're almost forced to see the movie just to keep up with culture. Which means, it doesn't really matter how good the movie is.You have to ask yourself, do you want to be the only person you know who hasn't seen it? Not many people are willing to be the outsider.Thus, the insidiously genius nature of this current marketing scheme.

namfle — Mon, 31 Aug 2015 22:47:58 GMT

I give you elfish hugs and support.