Tag Archives: QOTD

QOTD- “What Did You Say Your Name Was?”

by Doran Simmons

awesome-rad

Ken Tremendous.

Just saying it is awesome. A name like that can propel a man to greatness.

Remington Castle. Alexandro Bloodharvest.

I’ve been thinking a lot about names lately. Names say a lot about us, and yet we have little to no control over them. Every day children are born with names waiting for them. They become Michaels or Jennys or Norbits without any regard to their individuality.

Yet the reverse seems scarier still. Think about what the world would be like if people chose their own names. It would be pandemonium. Everybody would want a cool name. No one is going to choose to be called Irving when they could go by something cool like Gunter or Rodrigo. Or even Pandemonium. That would be an awesome name. The point is, most people can barely be trusted to name their boat. There’s no way we, as a society, could allow people the right to pick their own names. It would be irresponsible.

Todd Irresponsible.

It all started this morning when I read that TV producer Michael Shur wrote a sports blog under the pseudonym Ken Tremendous that I started to seriously think about the name I would have given myself. As writers we spend more time than most thinking about names and titles. We give titles to our works and names to our characters, always aware of the power these labels have.

Our very own J. Gabriel Allan wrote a piece a while back about the power of names and the way they influence our perception of others. My question is a little different.

I want to know what you would call yourself if you wrote your life. What you name yourself if you were your own boat?

Me, I can’t decide. It’s a toss up between Billy Knightblade and Special Agent Don Shark.

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QOTD – How Do You Feel About Poetry?

by J. Gabriel Allan

poetry-sm

In its inception, the poetry question was simple: is poetry relevant in the 21st century.

Through our meandering exploration of the written word it has become more… or less, depending on your perception.

Recently, Chris started a segment called “How does so-and-so feel about poetry?” in which he asks celebrities the question via twitter and posts their 140. The responses have been beautiful, fun, funny, creative, insightful and wonderful- especially the words from Jon Favreau (the speechwriter, not the Swinger).

I feel that poetry is everywhere; everything is poetry. Life is poetic if you allow it to be. The world is poetic if you look for it. Seek and ye shall find.

The way you speak, the words you say, the way you move is your poetry.

I not only feel poetry is the most important thing we do, I contend it is all we do.

QOTD – How Do You Feel About Poetry?

QOTD- What’s Your Favorite Scary Movie?

by Doran Simmons

It’s that time of year again. My favorite time of year.

The weather is getting cooler and the leaves are changing. Kids are headed back to school and companies everywhere are taking advantage of the month’s extremely pun-able name with sales events like Trucktober and special programming all Shocktober long.

This is a very special time. But the promises of low APR and special episodes of sitcoms where everybody dresses up in crazy costumes only a professional could have pulled off aren’t what keep me coming back, autumn.

It’s the movies. The scary movies. I love horror movies and this is the time of year to watch ‘em.

I’m about to sit down and set up an itinerary for my upcoming month of spooky favorites. No joke. Word file, on the desktop. I might call it something simple, like “Scary movies.” More likely, I’ll go all Cryptkeeper with it and use a pun for the title. I’ll probably sit for an hour or so trying to think up an original one before going with something generic and embarrassing like “Creature Features.”

Nevertheless, I am really excited to do this. But I might need help. I know there are scary movie experts out there. Gimme some suggestions.

I might need something good to follow the double feature of Slither and The Innkeepers I’m planning for this weekend.

 

 

 

QOTD – What’s My Age Again?

by J. Gabriel Allan

murtaugh

There are constant remind that I am no longer in my twenties: the reflection in the mirror every time the stylist wets my hair before a cut (way more forehead than necessary), the pops in the shoulders, knees, and elbows, the not getting carded for alcohol at most places, and the fact that most of my students were born when I was in high school (and some of their parents are my age).

The reminders that I am no longer in college are more frequent: the all-day hangovers, the fact that I have no desire to drink copiously for multiple days in a row (and rarely even one), eating actual meals instead of microwaved pizza, and the transition of the word party from a verb to a noun.

This weekend I had a nice reminder that I might not be an adult either.

My wife and I are avid Oregon Ducks fans. We had been planning on going to watch them play in Colorado on October 5th… you know, cause Boulder is so close to Iowa. During the planning, I realized she had never been to a game in Autzen and one of the friends we were planning on meeting couldn’t go anyway. With all this new data, we decided to plan a trip to Eugene to watch a home game.

The game: Saturday, 9/28 versus California. Perfect. Our flight was slightly inconvenient for travel, but great for our work schedules. We would leave Des Moines after work, 6 something flight, and we would arrive in Portland at midnight. We would leave Portland at 7am Sunday and be back by midafternoon (3 of the clock) and have plenty of time to have a good work day Monday.

And then the kickoff got moved to 7:30 pm Saturday night.

And then the weather report came in.

Instead of taking the time to tell you how well we planned for these new contingencies, let me tell you how the day(s) went.

Airplane delays, which are on par with death and taxes, caused us to get to bed Friday night in Beaverton (a Portland suburb for the uninitiated) at 2:30am. We woke up Saturday morning at 7:30 and had a nice breakfast with some friends and their kids. At 10 o’clock we picked up our third travelling companion who had flown in from Texas and stayed with his mom in Portland the night before and headed down to Eugene to have lunch with my parents and his dad.

We had lunch, killed some time, enjoyed some conversation, talked about how nice the weather was considering the weather report that suggested the remnants of a typhoon were heading our way and the heavy rains would start around 7.

Then we tailgated and marveled how it was cool, but not cold while wearing T-Shirts and jerseys. (It should probably be noted this tailgating included five people and three beers consumed)

As if scripted, at 7:00 the rain really came in proper.

By the 7:30 kickoff it was easy to tell this would be a game where you would have to stand or sit the entire time or you would be splashing in and out of a puddle.

I was extremely thankful I had purchased a hoodie to keep me warm under my thin rain jacket. The receiver gloves were a nice touch, too. The jeans and tennis shoes, on the other hand, were drenched. It was before halftime that the water had leaked through the jacket’s neck hole and the sweatshirt had transformed into 20 pounds of dampness. The shirtless guys in the student section had left, and most of the people who remained were the adults in their rain gear or fishing waders.

Most people bring dry clothes when they go snowboarding, skiing, or to stand in a monsoon, right?

I drove back to Portland pantsless and barefoot.

Most people create a plan of egress, especially when on a tight time schedule with a very early flight, right?

We realized we had a passenger who needed to be dropped off 35 minutes away from where we had planned to sleep.

By 2:40 in the morning we had stopped to grab our bags, dropped off our passenger, and began to painfully realize we had only had five hours of sleep in the last thirty plus. A hotel would be a great idea, right?

We slept in our rental car in the parking garage of the Portland Airport for two hours. I walked barefooted into the airport and bought a $10 pair of socks to put on to shield my (still mostly numb) feet from my (now only “mostly damp”) shoes.

One thing I’ve learned – it would suck to be homeless… especially without taking a lot of heavy drugs or being too drunk to realize what’s going in.

One thing I can’t stop thinking –

“What is this? What are we doing? What in God’s name are we doing?”

“What?”

“Our lives! What kind of lives are these? We’re like children. We’re not men.”

“No we’re not. We’re not men.”

(George Costanza & Jerry Seinfeld in “The Engagement”)

There are plenty of quotes and expressions telling us age is a state of mind, not a number or that being an adult (or a man) is not determined by the number of days you’ve lived, but how you’ve lived them, etc. etc. etc.

We’ve all heard the expressions about being a child in a man’s body or just being a “big kid”, etc. etc. etc.

We’ve all met someone who seems to have been born in the wrong decade.

Do you need a Murtaugh list (I’m too old for this $#@!) or an Old Man list (you are not old enough to go to bed before 8)?

QOTD – How old are you really? (not according to the year you were born, according to your “you”)

QOTD: What Would You Do With A Million Dollars?

by Doran Simmons

lawrence

 

And don’t say, “two chicks at the same time.”

It’s kind of obvious, and quoting directly from movies is a very lazy form of comedy.

However, I won’t deny that this scene from Office Space is the first thing that popped into my head as I passed that billboard with the lotto jackpots on the way to work this morning. That scene where Peter recalls being asked by a guidance counselor what he would do with a million dollars. The idea is to think of the thing you would do if you could do anything.

The amount of money makes the question feel dated, I know. It is especially apparent as I pass the aforementioned billboard promising to award hundreds of millions of dollars to whatever convenience store patron or suburban book club played their kid’s birthdays and came up with the correct series of numbers. But the idea remains the same. What would you do if you didn’t have to worry about money?

I assume that we can all share a common love of words, so for most of us the answer to that question probably involves writing. But writing doesn’t cost anything. Anyone with access to a scrap of paper and a piece of charcoal can write. When I was a kid I wrote swear words with bark dust on the sidewalk. It doesn’t take resources to write. It takes desire.

So, aside from writing, what would you do? That billboard is offering you $200 million. You can only buy so much crap. Would it become a burden? Would you grow to hate all that money and yearn for simplicity, like Hurley from Lost? Or would it destroy your humanity and turn you into a cocaine-snorting, assault-rifle-wielding maniac like Pacino in Scarface? Obviously these are only a couple of examples of the effects of sudden, extreme wealth. You might not get marooned on a magical island or take over the Miami underworld at all. But think of the possibilities.

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QOTD- Is It About Writing?

by Doran Simmons

I think I messed up my shoulder this weekend trying to move a fish tank across the street without taking all the water out of it. It was stressful. For me and the fish.

Do I talk too much about my minor injuries? I think I do. It makes me sound older than I am. But the injury isn’t really the point here. The point is the strange peppermint oil I was talked into applying to my shoulder and the scent of it that now fills my nostrils.

It comes in a little bottle that says ‘Deep Blue’ on it and is supposed to be good for inflammation. It tingles a little when first applied to the skin and seemed to make my shoulder feel better at first, though that may have been the Advil that I also took. I’m all for alternative treatment, but I’m more interested in results.

I’m not a big fan of mint. I realize I’m in the minority here, and I have learned to be comfortable with that. I find the combination of mint and chocolate especially confusing. You might as well eat a Hershey Bar while you brush your teeth. Could it be my bias against mint as a whole that has me feeling hostile toward the snake oil that I was convinced to apply to my person? Very possibly. At this point it has permeated even the air around me.

But my shoulder does feel better.

I’m babbling. I have no idea what this has to do with writing. I’ll be honest with you, sometimes I just start typing and hope for the best. I think it’s because, in my head, there is no subject that can’t be related back to language, and that’s what this blog is about. It’s all fair game. Unless it isn’t. I’ve never known the rules.

I guess my question is whether or not there is a line. Are there some subjects that are appropriate for a site about poetry and some that aren’t? I know my view of poetry as an all encompassing term for well-honed language is not shared by everyone. Structure is important too.

Where do you stand? Does this even makes sense?

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QOTD- Children’s Books

by Doran Simmons

Super_Grover_flying_high

I don’t have children*, so I don’t spend a lot of time with them. In fact, as an alpha male mammal, I sometimes feel a vague urge to eat children that are not mine for the sake of genetic dominance.

Even so, I think I know a thing or two about them. I was once a child myself, as I’m sure a few of you were, and even after all the brain cells I sacrificed in my twenties I still remember a couple of things about the experience.

When I really try to think back to my earliest memories I can’t help but notice the common theme of books. I recall laying on the floor of my grandparent’s hallway and looking up the rows of books on the shelf, intoxicated by the smell of the old books and the classy-looking leather covers. I remember the bedtime rituals at our house, when my sister and I would choose a book for Mom to read to us before bed. It started with picture books. I remember a particular favorite that involved Grover from Sesame Street, but I don’t remember any details of the plot, which was probably incredibly complex.

Seeing this theme can only lead me to believe that books must be pretty important. At least to a kid like me they were. And unlike my early interest in all things having to do with dinosaurs, this interest did not fade.

Today’s prompt has a nostalgic feel to it. Lets run with that.

What is the first book you remember reading? Do you read to your kids?

 

 

*No. I’m not gonna follow this phrase about not having kids with that terrible old joke and say, “that I know about.” I’m just not gonna do it. You deserve better. Instead, I tried a joke about wild animal behavior which, if delivered wrong, could come off totally cannibalistic. You’re welcome.

QOTD-What Do the Facts Say About You?

by Doran Simmons

 

investigate

It all comes down to what they can print out and put in a file folder. Inventories and bank statements and phone bills.

Every once in while you should use your card to pay for something fancy. Just so that if you get murdered, the investigators won’t think you’re a total degenerate who only shops at the record store and Arby’s. I might have shared this piece of advice before, but it’s worth another mention.

I’m in the middle of moving, and the process of going through my possessions has me thinking about what my things might say about me. It also has me exhausted, so my brain is firing on about 6 of 8 cylinders. I know. It’s the perfect time for introspection.

I found three shoeboxes under my bed when I was packing up. They were full of assorted crap, as if I had just pulled the junk drawer out of my desk and emptied the contents into the nearest container. Which is exactly what I did. The junk these boxes contained could have all been thrown out. It should have been thrown out. I think there was even some actual garbage in one of them, somewhere buried amid the chapsticks and key chains.

I know these boxes say something about me, but I don’t think I even want to know what it is. I just know I could use more classy shit in my life. Or in my apartment, at least.

What does the inventory of your life say about you? What conclusions might detectives come to in the investigation of your life?

And do you know where I could find some boxes in this town? My whole world is boxes right now.

 

moving

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QOTD: Your Special Place (Not Talking About Your Privates)

by Doran Simmons

 

There is a lake in the foothills on the east side of the Cascades that is almost too small to even be called a lake. It’s more of a pond, really, or a big puddle if you wanna be a dick about it.

It sits in a little meadow all by itself, five miles up a horse trail about twenty minutes south of Bend, Oregon. This time of year, when the bugs are starting to die down and the mornings are getting cold, it’s a perfect place to spend the night under a dark sky so full of stars they cease to be individual points and become a swirl like the static between stations. This little lake might be my favorite place on earth. Thus far, anyway.

Often, in the late afternoon on summer days, I will feel myself overcome with restlessness and find it impossible to get comfortable. I find myself drawn to the door, compelled to go outside and stay there, to close my eyes and taste the air with my senses like an animal and go where they tell me. It is in those times that I will throw some things in a backpack and head for my lake. To sit on the ground somewhere high where the air is thin and feel the world struggle to keep its grip on me.

This is how I placate my mind. Without the peace I find out in the wilderness I wouldn’t be able to engage in the only other activity that allows me to maintain a veneer of sanity. Without these increasingly frequent overnight trips, I wouldn’t be able to sit still long enough to write.

What is your lake?

Do you have a place that recharges you?

Is it as dumb and cliched as mine? It’s cool if it is.

 

 

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QOTD- Last Chance Summer Dance

by Doran Simmons

This is it, you guys.

Here in the States, it’s Labor Day weekend, which as we all know means the advertisers and designers of drug store displays have decided that summer is over.

One last chance to enjoy yourself before the sunless and soul crushing winter begins, they say. Maybe I’m paraphrasing, but its basically just like Game of Thrones. “Winter Is Coming,” CVS tells us with their autumnal imagery and college ruled notebooks. “Time to stock up on school supplies.”

Ancient civilizations seemed to see the turning of the seasons as a representation of life and death. The approaching winter was seen as a little death. And not in the French sense.

In that way, Labor Day weekend is seen as the last chance to blow through your summer bucket list. All the irresponsible fun you meant to have in June and July has to be crammed into the last weekend of August.

I am fully behind this.

What do you regret not doing this summer? Will you do it this weekend?

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