Where Bite-Size Edits was more editing help, hitrecord.org is full-on collaboration– and not just text, but audio/visual files too.  Any kind of art is welcome– drawings, recordings, words.  But, as they warn you when you create an account, anything (including your profile pic, so think carefully!) is up for grabs.  Anything can be edited and re-submitted.  In fact, this is the whole point.

I am lucky enough to be on the list of book reviewers for a major publisher & therefore got a review copy of the latest from the hitrecord collaboration, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories.  It is indeed filled with tiny stories (some only six words) and whimsical illustrations for each.   The Tiny stories are reminiscent of the short-short story or the six-word memoir:  short, concise, and often laced with humor and wit.  Often poetic and sometimes dark, these tiny stories are just plain endearing.  I dare you to read this book and not laugh or nod in happy agreement at some point.

I was worried, as I read through the book, where all the writers & artists were listed?  At the end, there is a list of contributors and their record numbers.  Your records, I found out later, are your contributions.  Intrigued by the list of usernames and record numbers, I looked up hitrecord.org on the web.

After perusing the website for oh, say, 30 seconds, I immediately created an account on hitrecord.org.  As a writer, I have often collaborated with others.  It’s not always been pretty:  in grad school, my memoir class professor hooked me (a self-proclaimed atheist with a very sarcastic tongue) up with a young, religious and straight-as-an-arrow editor to work on a chapbook.  In my memoir, I talk about smoking weed and cursing god.  I don’t think my editor appreciated it.  As a result, the collaboration didn’t work too well.  But this type of collaboration– on the nets, and in a way anonymous– might just work.  It might work out just fine.

Any ‘record’ you post to the site– be it text, audio, visual, or any combination of these– is a record that can be downloaded and edited and changed by any other member.  It’s really freaking exciting to know that someone out there– someone you don’t know– can take something you started and turn it into something else entirely.  Open-source, creative, collaborative.  I love it.

And The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories is the result of such collaborations between 83 members.  And they all get to share in the profits:  on the hitrecord.org site, it states explicitly the percentages shared with contributors.  It’s a pretty good deal.  And the book is simply charming.  Really.

Some of my favorite Tiny Stories in the book are the darkly humored ones (the egg who optimistically follows the orange off the kitchen counter)  or the ones that reflect something much deeper about our lives (the person who doesn’t get dressed anymore because they ‘don’t feel like it’).

These are the whimsical, witty, dark and delightful stories that make up our lives. This is the first volume of Tiny Stories, and I hear the 2nd volume is in the works. I can’t wait.

PS:  here’s a link to the Tiny Stories video made by Joseph Gordon-Levitt:  Watch Here.

I’m all for alternative forms of therapy; I think Americans, in general, are way too over-medicated.  Got an ill, here’s a pill.  A pill for every  ill.  So I guess it’s refreshing to see someone talking about other therapies besides chemical ones.

The Beaver puppet is startling at first;  Mr. Black’s family is taken aback, understandably.  As is the audience.  It’s awkward, it’s uncomfortable.  And just when you think you’re getting used to it, the film dives into some even weirder shit.  This movie gets really really weird.

Just like most psychiatric drugs, there are side effects to using the puppet.  The Beaver becomes a crutch;  Mr. Black becomes dependent on it. He can’t talk with out it;  hell, he can’t even have sex without the Beaver  (plushophilia, anyone??).  Mr. Black seems to be on the right track:  gets his business going again, gets his wife and one kid back.  But he’s dependent on that puppet, just as he would be on a prescribed drug.  The puppet is a symbol of modern drug therapy:  once you get on it, you can’t get off.  Eventually this happens to Mr. Black:  he can’t take the puppet off.

Several things caught my attention in this film.  First, the family’s reaction to his therapy:  skepticism at first, acceptance, then total rejection.  Work colleagues were different:  they saw the puppet as an eccentricity, until it became too horrific, and they then rejected Mr. Black altogether (how many times have we seen this in the media?).  The public loved him and his puppet until they found out just how really crazy and mental he was.  Again, sound familiar?

Mr. Black’s oldest son rejects him completely, sick or no, until the very end of the film.  Interesting that the son, too, shows signs of depression and keeps post-it notes all over his room with traits he sees in his father that he wants to avoid.  We’ve all done this, right?  But the question remains:  how will the son avoid the same pitfalls as the father?  We know that depression and other mental illnesses are genetic; we can see this in the film, but the mom (Jodie Foster) doesn’t seem quite aware of that.  She gets angry at the son for sleeping all day.  This is very familiar to me:  as a person who suffers emotionally, I’ve often felt the anger of a parent directed at me simply because I was sick.  No other reason necessary.

What is this film trying to say about depression and mental illness and our treatment of it?  The film culminates in a scene set in an institution, father and son hugging, finding common ground at last.  Is this the message?  That we can only find solutions in institutions?  That we must be taken out of society and locked up?  That no other therapies will work?

I think if the puppet is metaphor for chemical treatment of depression, then it works.  Chemicals are destructive to our minds and bodies, our relationships with others.  This still doesn’t answer the question of why he ends up in an institution, or where he goes from there.  Which leaves me wondering:  where does the field of psychiatry go from here, once we realize drugs are not the only answer?

You really gotta love a guy who not only heads up a punk band, but who writes about his anarchist views regarding religion and science.  It’s quite a combo:  punk-rocker meets evolutionary biologist.  Graffin’s book, Anarchy Evolution, is a mix of science, philosophy, punk rock, and romanticized childhood. The tone ranges from sentimental (when talking about his childhood) to academic (when explaining Darwin and evolution).

It’s a nice mix, really.  There is a worldview that comes through very clear, and is mixed with song lyrics from Bad Religion– songs which are mostly about social issues.  Graffin identifies himself as a ‘naturalist’ and is eager to show the relationship between punk music and evolution.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.  He never bashes other religions, but makes it clear that he bases his views on empirical evidence, only what he can see & know.

My only real concern in this book was Graffin’s position that nihilists (which he does not consider himself) are misguided and possibly mentally ill. This is dismissive, at best:  nihilism is a philosophical doctrine stating that there is no intrinsic meaning to life.  Those who suffer from various forms of depression may have a nihilist view of their own lives, but this doesn’t mean that all nihilists are depressed.  To dismiss an entire form of philosophy as misguided or mental is misguided in and of itself.

I plan to give this as an xmas gift to someone who loves evolution and is a bit cynical towards religion.  I think it’ll be a perfect fit.

Black Friday proves it:  you’ve got shoppers whipped into such a frenzy over the prospect of getting some coveted gift that they are pepper spraying each other.  Shooting each other.  Fighting each other.

I can’t imagine any gift, any item, on the market right now that I’d hurt someone to get my hands on.  Maybe my priorities are just in the wrong place.

I’ll shop for Christmas presents, but I won’t be caught up in the crass consumerism we’ve got going on now.  I’ll shop local businesses and buy as many locally made gifts as I can.

To sum up:  Fuck Black Friday.  Avoid the mobs at the mall.  Let big corporations worry about being ‘in the black’ without your support.

What a scam they’ve got going:  they are selling the American education dream.  What they don’t tell you (and what many of us have found out after graduation) is this: you will pay for that American dream forever.  And ever and ever and ever.  You will never ever get out of debt.

Sounds great, huh?  Sure, grad school looks awesome and you think you will grab a better paying job somewhere after grad school, but that doesn’t always happen. I hesitated like crazy before I entered grad school; I was terrified of the cost and of taking on more debt.  I should have listened to my instincts.

The thing that really sickens me is that somehow, some way, even though I paid for many years and gave up what amounts to a rent payment to those loan sharks, I still owe over double the amount I borrowed.  What the hell kind of math is that?  That’s 100% interest!  Which leads me to believe what others are also starting to believe:  the student loan industry is just one big giant scam. It’s a money-making machine.

Up until 2005, student loan debt could be discharged through bankruptcy, but under the GW Bush administration, that got taken away.  Sallie Mae spends millions to lobby against programs that give students grant money, so that students are forced to borrow to get an education.  If you don’t think corporations are fucking with your life, think again.  This is just one example of how having money means having influence over law, which means it has influence over you.

There have been controversies here and there regarding deceptive lending practices, one which involved minorities being charged higher interest rates.  I hope this scam bursts like bubbles in the bath.

Occupy Nashville

And how much glory is really involved in competitive eating?  Not much, I’d say.  Although everyone seems to know who Joey Chesnut is, including me.

Anyway, I watch Man Vs Food all the time– and I’ve no idea why.  I can’t stand being full (just one of my many issues surrounding all things edible), yet I am fascinated by a man who can gorge himself on a variety of comestibles on a regular basis.  And do it on TV, no less.

All this just to say that lately it’s been me vs. food on a daily, miserable basis.  My main nemesis?

Wheat.  Gluten.  All things related to wheat, and gluten.  Oh- and soy.  Soy protein, soy flour, soy sauce.

You’d think it’d be easy to avoid two simple little ingredients.  But you’d be so fucking wrong.

You see, the problem is that our food is way to processed.  And while you think you know what’s in your food, you’d be surprised to find all the shit that’s also in your food. Every time I think I’m safe in what I”m eating, I find out I’m wrong.

For instance:  cheesecake.  New York Cheesecake, to be specific.  Didn’t eat the crust, got way sick. There’s flour in cheesecake!

Also, potato chips:  wheat flour in potato chips.

Also, I cheat.  I cheat like a mutherfucker.  Like most kids who grew up in the South, I grew up eating a lot of breaded & fried stuff.  Also, in my quest to avoid meat, I ate a lot of bread.  I love bread.  I could live on bread and butter.  Or, at least I used to be able to.  Not any more.

I don’t know what causes Celiac Disease (the official name of my ailment) and it doesn’t really matter.  Because really, it’s all the over-processed, factory-farmed food that is probably the likely cause.  Nobody knows from whence their food came, nor do they care.  But I’m starting to.

I hate reading labels; I hate asking at every restaurant what’s in the food.  I hate being so picky about it all.  But when I’m not diligent, as in the case of the cheesecake incident, I’m sick for days.

Is this what my eating experiences will be like from now on?  Worrying over what’s in everything I put in my mouth, anxious that it might cause lengthy and painful reaction?

Awesome.

In case you’re wondering, “Red Riding Hood” isn’t all that scary; I have no idea what I dreamt about last night, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t involve wolves.  Or at least not the literal type.

I’ve been hunting jobs since last May, and have a year’s worth of resumes (hundreds) and interviews (few) to show for it.  It’s disheartening to a person who has lots of (overrated and expensive) education plus tons of (relative) experience that she cannot find a fulfilling, full-time benefitted job.  I don’t need horror or fairy tales to scare the pants off me:  life is right fucking scary enough these days.

This rant also comes on the heels of an (outrageous) electric bill, which was fattened up by a leaky water heater.   Our apartment is a scant 600 square feet; the electric company is gouging me for over $200 this month.  Robbery is the word you are looking for.

Before class today, I went to the student lounge to get a package of M&M’s.  There was only one student in the lounge; he was sitting at a table directly in front of the vending machine, which afforded him a perfect view of what happened next.  I put my money in, punched the numbers, and the metal coil turned once and froze.  And there sat my bag of candy, suspended.

The student at the nearby table let out a huge (and unappreciated) guffaw.  I had a few words stuck in my mouth, but, since I teach at this school and there was a student nearby, held my tongue.  I dug around in my bag for more change; what else could I do?  I refused to walk away without something.

As I dug around looking for more spare change, I heard the sound of the bag drop on its own.  I let out a triumphant “Ha!”  but no one was listening.

As I walked to class, I thought of the word patience.  I keep repeating it to myself, like a chant.  Patience, patience.  Patience.

Cutting funding to a necessary program to support women translates as this, to me:
Women of Tennessee, we hate you.  We don’t care about your reproductive health, we could not care less if you can actually afford preventative care.  We don’t care if you can’t afford birth control.  We don’t want you to have any preventative services whatsoever.  Sorry you don’t have health care; now we’re going to make this just a little bit harder on you and take away affordable health care that’s based on your income.  We are going to fund other programs but we won’t be able to help you.  Essentially, we hate you and hope you die.

Brian Harris, president of Tennessee Right to Life, says (in an article in the Tennessean) that Planned Parenthood is an “abortion business.”

Saying that Planned Parenthood is an “abortion business” is completely off the mark.  That’s like saying that McDonald’s is a “coffee business” because they offer coffee, in addition to multiple other (and more important) items.  Planned Parenthood doesn’t  derive most of their income from abortions; they derive it from wellness exams and preventative services.  It’s like saying that prostitution is a “blow job business.”  Sure, they offer blow jobs, but is that all?  Of course not.  All you freaks & kinks out there know what I mean.

Because certain groups have an inability to focus on anything other than abortion, which it totally fucking legal, btw, this funding cut has hurt thousands of women.  97% of Planned Parenthood’s services are services other than abortion (see this article).

So, my question is this:  Are you against Planned Parenthood, or are you against women?