The Gentle News

Pungent poetry from a potty punkin.

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Christopher Hitchens: A Confession

December 17th, 2011 · Potpourri

This started out as a comment on Joel’s quite respectful comic about the death of Christopher Hitchens. In case you weren’t aware, Christopher Hitchens has been a pseudo-idol of mine for the entirety of the Current Farris Era (a little over a decade, I would guess). I was in a rather foul mood yesterday, due in part to this (from my perspective) abrupt but not shocking end to the man. The following is my attempt to convey how important his writings and persona are to me, as well as an admission that my love for Hitch is as deeply rooted in my own intellectual laziness as his eternal sparkle was conversely the result of his uncanny cerebral superpowers.

Christopher Hitchens was (and will forever be), aside from a great hero of mine, a very convenient crutch in a world of intelligent, well-meaning, and otherwise pleasant cow-orkers who, upon learning of my atheism, seek to “debate” with me over how untenable such a worldview is. After it becomes apparent that neither side is more open to re-evaluating a truth than the other, I often drop a copy of a Hitch book, essay, or article on their desk (or in their inbox) with a quick note along the lines of “Hey, it was fun, but this should explain why I’m really not interested in continuing this conversation.” Most of the time they send me a rebuttal such as “I see. I understand how someone such as yourself would be attracted to such a poorly-reasoned argument as Hitchens’s, but the evidence clearly indicates that he bases his conclusions more on emotion than fact.”

I get a good chuckle at that, refrain from taking the bait, and go on caring a lot less about who approves of my “worldview” than most of those folks do. Hitch just makes it very easy to find an eloquent way to end such a discussion, which is much different than trying to win one. I know I didn’t change the other guy’s mind, and I most likely didn’t even make him think twice about his position, but I do feel better having not fallen into the trap of getting upset over it beyond my capacity to hold my own intellectual ground.

And most of them do exactly the same thing for themselves with the writings of William Lane Craig. At the risk of sounding snotty (and feel free to chastise me if I indeed do): (A) Which of those two men is more entertaining to read or listen to? And (B) which name is better known?

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Happiness & Comedy: Oil & Water?

December 5th, 2011 · Potpourri

The quest for wisdom & stoic joy can be detrimental to the quest for a career in comedy. The best comedy usually springs forth from discomfort or misery, and the more centered and peaceful one becomes, the less likely one is to even be irritated by the little things that serve as the genesis of humor. So it is very important to retain a small, realistic awareness of how painful life can be, even after you have reached nirvana and become so one with the universe that a stubbed toe is more likely to generate a 1200-word blog entry on the falsehoods inherent in our expression of emotion than a very loud “OHFUCKMEOHGODTHATHURTSLIKEFUCKINGBALLSCHRIST!”

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The Middle

November 30th, 2011 · Potpourri

I find myself so completely in the middle of most political issues that I cannot even relate to most of my online friends and family. The hate, thinly veiled in cynical humor, thrown from afar (or, worse, from around the corner) at the Occupiers by my so-called conservative friends is downright depressing. But, I have to admit, sometimes I can smell the urine, body odor, and patchouli through the LCD screen when I read and watch some of the Occupation activities, and the futility of their undefined goals start to seem completely divorced from the laws of physics and social reality.

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Oops

September 28th, 2011 · Potpourri

OK, that didn’t work out 100%, but it’s a start.

Why was my title all wonky? Why did I have to copy only the HTML text within the < body > tags? It seems to me that, unless there is a plugin for Scrivener that will take what I give it in Markdown, convert it to WordPress-friendly HTML, and post it directly to WordPress in an aesthetically pleasing manner, I will still have to manually cut out the doctype, < head >, and < body > crap. That ain’t me. I’m not a damn HTML coder, I’m just this guy who desperately wants to write stuff without thinking too much about how he’s doing that.

How much do you reckon Merlin Mann would charge me to come sit fully clothed on my office futon for a week and give me notes while I try to juggle my soul-sucking job and my quest to show people stuff that’s in my head in various formats?

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This Is The Title Of My Blog Post

September 28th, 2011 · Potpourri

This Is The Title Of My Blog Post

I’m going to post an entry on my blog. The temporal language might be confusing, since your reading this would seem to imply or require that this has already occurred. Don’t lose any sleep over it, since it doesn’t really matter.

Here I am again, writing about writing instead of just writing. I’m still stuck in a tool-rut. People who think they’re giving encouragement will say, “Hey, it doesn’t matter what tools you use, just do it.” And they’re right. But they can go straight to hell. I know myself, and I know that each time I try to get back in to the swing of this, the tools get in my way and I develop just enough dread over starting to write or finding where I last left off to justify procrastinating myself into oblivion.

So I’m going to try using some combination of no more than three writing tools. If there are plugins available, I’d like to get it down to one tool that I actually have to manipulate.

What I want to do is write in Scrivener, using Markdown syntax, and then hit a button (or short series of buttons) to review it and then publish it directly to WordPress. My google-fu is failing to find the special sauce required to do that, but it appears that I can add an extra step to compile in Scrivener from Markdown to HTML and then select-all, copy, and paste into WordPress. We’ll see how that goes.

(Pardon me while I try that.)

(It didn’t work. I must be missing some Markdown plugin for Scrivener.)

(I also need to learn the Markdown code for italics. Or do I mean emphasis? Man, I’m probably way off on both. I have a shitload of reading to do. Mostly about Scrivener, which I paid for, Markdown, which I think is free, and WordPress, which I have used for almost a damn decade and still get mad at frequently.)

This is getting pretty bad. Let’s recap the progress:

  • I have written some words.
  • I have not learned anything about the tools I have decided to try to use for continuing to write word.
  • I need a job that gives me more free time to read about these things enough to be productive with them.
  • I have some awesome links with my own commentary in the Research section of my Scrivener file about how to fix all the problems I’ve discovered so that I can just use Scrivener for blogging.
  • I think I’m still missing some magic to let me compile Markdown -> HTML from within Scrivener.
  • No, I’m not, it’s in the “Compile for” drop-down in Scrivener.
  • I need to figure out my file workflow. A new Scrivener file for each blog post, or separate Binder items in one big Blog file in Scrivener?
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