Tag Archives: Traditionalistic

God in the (Vending) Machine

The first job that ever taught me anything was at a bar by my house. My commute was a five-minute drive.

It was late one night, the end of a shift, and I was wrapping up the host booth. Not too far away, one of the bouncers was there eating.

He was a great guy, great at his job, rarely complained. From what I could gather, his life wasn’t easy, but that night he was eating like a king; the kitchen had cooked a steak by accident, so that was what he was getting for an end-of-shift meal.

We started chatting, and he told me that earlier, he had thought of how great a steak might be. This thought, he said, had been broadcast to the universe, and the universe had provided him with a steak, just like he wanted. He was convinced that this was the secret to getting rich, living life to the fullest, and being successful. He talked about it like a preacher talks God, or a barefoot runner talks about how running shoes ruin your joints.

I didn’t think much of this at the time, but looking back, this was my first encounter with a particular American belief system, one supersedes all our other beliefs, even the Christianity many of us believe to be the bedrock of our country.

It’s part of a faith I call the religion of the Vending Machine God.

The Vending Machine God has its own church. It has its own texts, doctrine, and clergy.

It’s a faith you’ve never heard of, but it’s everywhere.
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Funny Numbers

10,000 is a funny number.

In most libraries across the country, you’ll find one book that focuses on that number like a hawk. That book, of course, is Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcom Gladwell.

The book describes the success of many people, from the Beatles to Bill Gates. The author attributes their success to mastery over their given craft, and posits that this mastery comes from 10,000 hours of deliberate practice; inborn talent is only allowed to grow if the person commits to practicing that skill in a deliberate way for long periods of time. This is not the only piece of the success puzzle that Gladwell posits, but it is a large one, and one that’s being debated.

What’s implied by this theory is that in order for a person to be a success, they must specialize at an extreme level. They must get really, really good at a single thing.

One of the people who’s put in their 10,000 hours is a comedian named Louis CK. He’s been in the stand-up game for quite awhile now; he has a successful sitcom, stand-up specials, and roles in Hollywood films. By any measure, he’s a great success, a seminal figure in pop culture today. Continue reading →

The Blood Runs Cold (Contains Spoilers)

It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that a man should be killed for so little…

– Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder

In Cold Blood is one of the best books I’ve ever read.

I got the audio book from my library yesterday. I am just beginning, but I am already hooked. It’s one of those books you can’t put down.

The story, as you might already know, is about a murder. Specifically, the murder of four people, the four brutal members of the Clutter family in unassuming Holcomb, Kansas.

That is not a spoiler. They tell you right on the cover.

Nobody would ever think of In Cold Blood as a mystery, but that’s really what Capote has crafted here. In a traditional mystery, a reader doesn’t really know if the mystery will be solved, who is going to die, that sort of thing. But In Cold Blood is not that, and never claimed to be that. Instead, Capote is relying on something else.

The suspense that the book created in a single word: why? Continue reading →

The Rule(s) of Writing

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These pages all started out blank.

“Kill your darlings.”

“Show, don’t tell.”

“Write what you know.”

As a writer, it’s easy to believe that there are certain rules of writing that, if followed, will result in your success. Rules are comforting, in a way. They offer certainty.

The problem with this is that writing is not certain. We can see the end result, pick that apart, and see what works for us. We can fiddle and tinker.

Rules are a different matter. Continue reading →

The Mechanics and Importance of Friendship

The Westside of Grand Rapids is an odd place.

This makes it, along with the sidewalks that run near every street, one of the best places to amble in the city. You’ll always see something over there that will jar your thoughts to their furthest corners. Last time I was there, I was walking with a friend of mine. We saw, in order: Continue reading →

Thoughts on NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month.

Every November, for the past few years, tens of thousands of people have signed up, gone to writer groups, and made a pact to write 50,000 words in one month.

Since it began, it has also been easy to find people criticizing NaNoWriMo in all sorts of ways, and for all sorts of reasons, most of which focus on how smug such writers can be. I cannot speak to all the criticisms here, but I can say that writers are not just insufferable in November; they’re insufferable the other 11 months of the year too.

Present company, uh, excluded. Continue reading →

You Are Not a Superhero

As a kid I loved comic books. Superhero books were my stock and trade. I had the whole nine yards: Iron Man, Spider Man, and a smattering of weird heroes I can barely remember.

Recently, I dug my long boxes out of my parent’s basement. I’ve been out of there for awhile, but I never brought them with me. I was flipping through them and one book in particular caught my eye: a Green Lantern / Green Arrow crossover.

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