Brian C. Russell

Stretching my arms above my head, I crack my knuckles.  I close my eyes. I envision a dinosaur shooting flames around the room.  Crap.  That’s Godzilla.

I’ve had this writing assignment for weeks.  I stare at the screen.  Suddenly, I’m struck with x-ray vision and I can see through the monitor, into the inner workings.  Millions of little data bytes march like ants through catacombs of circuitry.  They’re all there to serve their queen, The Motherboard.  She barks orders at them.  ”Do this!  Do that!”  Unforgiving in her mood and temperment.

Temperment?  Is that how you spell it? The word doesn’t look right spelled out on the page.  That’s because it’s wrong. I hit the most commonly used button on my keyboard.  It’s attribution is worn and illegible, but I know what it says.

Backspace.  Backspace.  Backspace.  Repeat until error is eradicated.  Alliteration.  Yeah, people like that.

The assignment was simply to write anything.  The topic was “Grrr!”  What kind of a topic is that anyway? I scratch my beard.  Think.  Think.  Think. Ideas elude me tonight.

Rain spatters on the window, and a wind rushes by.  I imagine a formation in the sky, swirling and swirling.  A funnel spurts out toward the ground to begin it’s reign of terror and destruction.  It’s cloud-based appendages reaching out.  Picking up cars and trees and houses to toss them across the highway.  Then there’s that fire-breathing dinosaur again.  He’s fighting the tornado as if it had substance.

This is weird… but I kind of like it.

The dinosaur slings it’s flames into the tornado.  The trees and houses spinning catch fire and the whole tornado turns to an incendiary disaster of epic proportions.  The tornado reels back away from the dinosaur, burning a wake in the ground.

Yeah, yeah.  This is good.  Wait.  What was the prompt again.  Oh.  Right.

Then the dinosaur snarls at the fiery tornado.  ”Grrr!”

Nope.  That’s not the one.

Backspace.  Backspace.  Backspace.  Repeat.  The cursor devours my terrible ideas.

Now he’s blinking at me.  The cursor.  Mocking me amidst the blank page.  Laughing at me in a monotonous voice.  I close my eyes again.  This time there’s nothing except the retina-burned image of my blank screen.  Cursor still blinking.  A cacophony of laughter at the expense of my pride.

I shut my laptop.  Maybe tonight’s a night I go to sleep early.

If you’re on Facebook, maybe you already knew about this, but it’s totally Doppleganger Month on Facebook.  In this celebration, you find a celebrity (or a non-celebrity) that looks like you and make it your profile picture.  I’m happy to do this.

There’ve been quite a few awesome profile pictures popping up on my Newsfeed.  It’s funny to find out who people think they look like.  Or, who people choose to make others laugh/cringe.  So…  I was hoping that my commenting system would allow me you to upload pics into your comments, and it says it will… but I can’t figure it out.  So, I’m moving on.  I’m bringing back an event that was a lot of fun last year with my friends.

The Facebook FACEOFF!

If you’re on Facebook, (are you my friend?) I’ve got an open event aptly titled “The Facebook FACEOFF!”  In said event, the goal will be to post the funniest/most ridiculous/most embarrassing picture of YOURSELF you can find.  Don’t feel all weird about posting a stupid picture of yourself because that’s lame.

The Facebook FACEOFF! is all about having fun and laughing at each other.  Because if we can’t laugh at each other… then that’s stupid.  Everyone takes a bad picture every now and then.  Now it’s time to let those pictures SHINE!

Look forward to seeing you on Facebook.  Although the event will end at the end of February, don’t wait!  Join up now and have some super-fun!

Blink. Blink. Blink.

Sight blurred by visions of greatness,

Unattainable visages of things never to exist.

Their edges shudder,

Just out of reach.

Sensation teasing my fingers,

Just out of reach.

Shut eyes up tight,

Envision new goal; one with shape.

Shape with edges,

Unblurred by expectations,

Just out of reach.

If you didn’t know, I work in my church’s nursery with 1-4 year olds.  It is in this nursery that I find one of my biggest issues growing within me whenever we color.

I have this tendency to allow kids to draw… outside of the lines.  I know, I know.  How dare I challenge the very lesson that has developed kids like me into such fine, upstanding citizens.  Decades of teaching has gone into this method of curving a child’s scribbling into the fine art of coloring in someone else’s artwork.

I don’t want the kids to color in the lines. I feel it’s inhibitive to their creative process.  Have you ever looked at scribbling and thought to yourself, I’ll never be able to do that. You should try it.  Go grab a piece of paper and try, just try, to scribble like a 2 or 3 year old.

You can’t.  Your brain forces everything, even your scribbling into a series of coherent lines.  A child can scribble in all different directions, but I’ll bet yours looks either like a bunch of connected lines because you went back and forth, or a bunch of circles.  It’s okay.  You just can’t do it.

I’ve noticed a pattern in my life where I like to learn the process of what I like doing.  I really enjoyed making comics as a kid.  So, I made them.  After a while, I decided to look up how “the pros” did it.  Turned out, many of them had a process called inking.  So, I went out to the local art store and asked what I was supposed to get, and came home with an inking pen, and an ink well.  This was unpleasant, delicate, and hard.  I wasn’t good at inking, but that’s what the professionals did…  so I stopped drawing comics.  It was no longer a fun endeavor doing something that I enjoyed, but a chore to make something that was acceptable and just like everything else.

I started making movies with my friends.  Stupid movies.  Creative movies.  We had fun.  So, I thought, I wonder how the pros do it, and I went to film school.  My friends stopped wanting to make movies with me because I wanted it to be perfect and just like everything else.

I like writing.  I wrote a book, was excited and self-published.  So, I thought, I should learn how the pros do it so I can get published “for real*”. I found a critique group.  Learned all about how my little self-published book is basically garbage in the eyes of a “real” editor.  My writing became more labored as I tried to make sure I was following the rules so that I almost completely stopped writing.

Now, I’m not saying that everything that we do should be fun or even 100% enjoyable at all times, but when you’re trying to match what other people are doing, to copy them, to be accepted as the same thing, you’re throwing originality and creativity and fun out the window.  Granted, success will feel great, but at what cost?

At what point do you stop learning all the rules and just write/draw/create?  Should you learn all the rules, and then feel free to break them?  Or, do you avoid learning “what the pros do” and break the rules unknowingly, but write/draw/create more product than anyone following the rules?

Try scribbling again.  Now that I’ve told you how you’re going to scribble, you’ll likely take more time to try and avoid the very things I said you’d draw, but now you’re just avoiding what you’ve learned.  Trying is the problem.  You know that you’re supposed to draw shapes and animals and things.

And it’s not the same.

I… am a terrible person when it comes to promoting myself.  To an extent where I should probably get locked up in a room with my fingers glued together.  Maybe that’s a bit extreme.

Either way, I have hardly any bounds when it comes to promoting things that I like, in particular, things I do.  Which is interesting because I don’t typically find myself all that selfish, but I guess this is sort of an indicator of that.  Perhaps the Internet is where my inner-narcissist is allowed to thrive.  Like mold in a warm moist environment.

So, I’ve compiled a top-five list of things I’ve done (past and present) as a confession of sorts and potentially as a guide for how others can be just as sad and pathetic as I am.

1. Social bookmarking yourself. I would love to tell you that I’ve weened myself off of this obsession, but I can’t help it.  Most of the people that read my things don’t use social bookmarking links or anything though, so this normally doesn’t go anywhere.
2. Hiding the fact that it’s your link you’re tweeting because you already tweeted it several times already. Yep.  This is one that I often fall prey to.  I’m not harping on when you tweet a link twice a day, but it’s when you use a quote or something instead of calling it a new post, story, comic or whatever you post just so that people don’t recognize that it’s the same post and generating another click/hit/visit for you.
3. Following everyone in the world of Twitter just so they’ll follow you back. Or over-exaggerating.  Seriously though.  This is what the spammers do.  I realize that following-back is what people on Twitter tell you to do… but when you’re intentionally just finding Twitter lists that have big names or lots of names and following them without knowing, liking, or whatever simply to have more followers… it’s bad news.  I have been cutting back on this.  Sorry to all the real estate and SEO people… I guess.
4. Signing up for multiple accounts and liking, tweeting, bookmarking your own stuff. Back when AOL Instant Messenger was popular, I had about 12 different accounts.  I don’t know why.  These days… if they don’t require an email address, and even if they do, I probably have an unhealthy supply of logins.  I generally justify it in my brain by saying that my stuff would never make it to the surface if it wasn’t approved by at least two other people first… or 11…
5. Writing your reviews for things on Amazon that reference your book. It was at a low point in my life when I did this dirty deed.  But, at one time, when I was into my book sales in full-swing, I would find books that I thought were similar in nature and more popular.  Write a review of their book that compared it to my own.  Something along the lines of “This is a cool book, but I really like Battle for Arkwood a little bit more.”  This combined with #4 is a super-shame combo.

I am sorry, Internet.

Sort of.

You know what the worst part is?  Those all work.  So, if you’re a cold-blooded shame-monger like myself, go ahead and spiral out of control.  You’re guaranteed to get some traffic/sales.

Just don’t be surprised when everyone hates you for it.

What’s a sh

Okay.

I’ve been hearing a lot lately about Creation again, and apparently this is a big issue for non-believers about Christianity because APPARENTLY we all think the Earth was created 6,000 years ago.

WHAT!?

How in the universe could the world only be 6,000 years old?  And what’s this I hear about dinosaur bones being in the ground as a cosmic joke to the human race from God?!  Is there a Christian archeologist out there, digging up fossils going… “Where’s Ashton?  I’m getting punk’d aren’t I?!”

No wonder people don’t believe this!  It’s ridiculous.

Where in the Bible does it say the Earth’s publication date?  Why is it sooo crazy to believe in the scientific evidence that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old?  It explains a whole lot about the Earth, how it was shaped, why we have earthquakes and volcanoes, etc.  Why is that crazy to believe in… but an unproveable and unreasonable 6,000 years (which… doesn’t even account for really anything…)?

This is frustrating to me.  I have a few people that have mentioned that this very issue is the reason they don’t believe in Jesus (which is a whole other story… but still)!  Why are we stubborn on this?  Does allowing 4.6 billion years come too close to the possibility of evolution being involved?  Why can’t dinosaurs have lived!?

What’s the deal?

Discussions ahoy!

I always try to walk through rain.  Unaffected.

I see people running around me.  Umbrellas and coats.  Struggling to hold anything over their heads to stay dry.  Prancing around through the puddles like they’re going to melt.

Not me.  I walk through the puddles.

I try to act tough, like the rain doesn’t affect me at all.  I look around at all the scurrying people thinking about how much more zen or something.  I feel cool as I walk.  Like I don’t even notice it’s raining.  Your fears and worries don’t affect me.

But… they do.

I’m still getting wet.  Potentially more than the people running as if they’re going to melt.  Why do I not just pick up the pace and not get soaked.  Being soaked is not cool.

Do I have some sort of brain malfunction that causes me to think it’s cool to not feel things?  Or not care about things?  To pretend like I’m not getting wet?  Like I’m not pissed that the bottom of my jeans are soaked and are going to drip all over the car?

Is this peace?  Is this pacifism?

No.

It’s apathy, and it’s corrosive.

Not the act of walking in the rain, but the mentality of pretending like things that affect you aren’t.  Like they aren’t there.  When it rains, you get wet, whether you walk or run.  But people who acknowledge the rain are better off than the ones that don’t.