Today's Word: Appeal

You wanted the last chance, she whispered in my ear. How much would you give for a little more? How much would you sacrifice to spare your own life? Threaten a man with his life, and you'll see what life he wants to protect.

Celebrity Neural Colonialism, or Audrey Tautou owns my brain

This is a bit weird.

When scientists sampled brain cell activity in people who were scrutinizing dozens of pictures, they found some individual cells that reacted to a particular celebrity, landmark, animal or object.

In one case, a single cell was activated by different photos of Berry, including some in her "Catwoman" costume, a drawing of her and even the words, "Halle Berry."

The findings appear in a part of the brain that transforms what people perceive into what they'll eventually remember, said Dr. Itzhak Fried of the University of California, Los Angeles, a senior investigator on the project.

The findings do not mean that a particular person or object is recognized and remembered by only one brain cell, Fried said. "There is not only one cell that codes for Jennifer Aniston. That would be impossible," Fried said.

Nor do they mean that a given brain cell will react to only one person or object, he said, because the study participants were tested with only a relatively limited number of pictures. In fact, some cells were found to respond to more than one person, or to a person and an object.

What the study does suggest, Fried and colleagues say in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, is that the brain appears to use relatively few cells to record something it sees. That's in contrast to the idea that it uses a huge network of brain cells instead.

Further down...

The researchers tested eight people with epilepsy who'd had electrodes placed in their brains so that doctors could track down the origins of their seizures. The electrodes monitored the activity of a small fraction of cells in a part of the brain called the medial temporal lobe.

The researchers kept track of which cells became activated as the participants looked at images of people, landmarks and objects on a laptop computer. One participant had a brain cell that reacted to different pictures of Aniston, for example, but was not strongly stimulated by other famous or non-famous faces.

Heck, I could have told you that the brain's gonna remember Halle Berry in her Catwoman outfit. I mean, sheesh.

Today's Word: Know

He grabbed on to it, that one immutable piece of knowledge, the thing that would remain real and true. His brain was fading, dripping away as the drugs kicked in, and he needed something to remain his true North.

This whole shtick, being hard on myself for not being original, for thinking that everything's been done before...it's getting old. I'm tired of projecting my novel into everything that pop culture is tossing up these days, from Riverbend to Land of the Dead. Tired of this paralysis, this numbness that I have to rub out of some psychic skin to get the blood flowing again. It's bad enough to have an acidic demon monkey poke me and say what I'm writing could be better. At least I've trained that monkey to give me visions of how a draft could get polished. This projection shit is getting wearying, as if obsessing over if people will think of my novel as a cheap knock-off is some healthy alchemy that'll make the end-product better. No, wrong way. Worked out a decent first draft of a scene for Chapter 3 last week. And while I'm not trying to worry about audience thinks, I felt a little more confident when the scene passed the Tuesday Night Writing Group's sniff test. It's a crutch, I know, but crutches can help you walk on your own. You need to know when to wean yourself off of them.

Speaking of weaning, it's time again for another sabbatical from poli-blogs and their comment boards, locations that are all fists and no ears. Tired of textual yelling. I've got more important things to do with my time. As great as poli-blogs are for ready-mades, the snark and caustics are getting to me again. I'll stick with Cursor for now, as well as a few guilty pleasures: IGN, slashdot, This Modern World (a comment-free poli-blog), Morford. I'm reading for the articles, I suppose you could say. I'm cutting myself off of the peanut gallery. Too many fists, not enough listening.

Note: I've been writing this entry in fits and spurts all day. Sometimes very angry, sometimes snarky. There's a lot of problems I have with the general sniping that goes on at blogs and message boards. Too much noise, not enough signal.

That said, I found this at ThisModernWorld.com. It's in regard to Sen. Durbin's recent mea culpa about earlier comments over Gitmo, torture, and the growing stain on America's soul. The last line, however, stands on its own, a veritable Swiss Army Knife of wisdom to be used in so many locales.

And you can't allow yourself the luxury of being afraid of your own words.

Stepping Out for Six Years

Hi.

A brief note. Sunday is going to be the six-year anniversary for my wife and I. It's going to be a whirlwind weekend of painting the dining room, live theater, and plenty of surprises. It's also going to be a nice quiet time for both of us, so won't be updating this weekend. I'm going to be celebrating how lucky I am, and how much we have shared in the past six years. Every once in a while, when I'm not wrapped up in the in pea-soup fog of novel-fu, I get struck how remarkable and beautiful she is, kind and loving and supportive and, yes, sexy. I can't remember what my life was like without her, and I'm not too eager to venture back into that jungle. I prefer now, especially when she randomly touches me and says how much she loves me. For the longest time, I held affection like that at arm's length, suspicious of its true intentions after getting my developing brain blended by an abusive father. Sometimes I get haunted by back then, and I wish I was a bit more aware of what she offers at times. Again, it's that jungle you shouldn't venture into. It gets you lost with darkness and inhuman shadows and sounds. Just be here now. Love what you have when it wholeheartedly loves you in return.

And I do. Happy anniversary, my dear.

Periscope Up

Been working on the novel as well as putting my new office together. Sorry I haven't checked in, but writing and painting and building Ikea furniture puts the blog down a bit on the pecking order. The office, coated in a pale sky blue, is now this cavernous womb of creativity. "Great things will happen in there," my loving wife tells me as we wearily fall asleep Sunday night after a weekend of domicile makeover. I love her, and I believe her when I finally get past all the acidic demon monkeys who like to plant lies in my head.

That said, the new writing group I'm in, starring my cohorts from the year-long writing program, has some members who are willing and able to shake the tables with some well-cooked prose. While I try not to make this a competition, I'm moved to write harder and sharper, trying to get my offerings as worthy as I think theirs are. We have one member in our group who has her manuscript done while starting on her second book. Meanwhile, there's another author who, like me, is a member of Club Dystopia and the scenes we brought Tuesday were similar in a couple parts. I laughed "I know this because Tyler knows this" sitting next to him, flipping pages of our stories between my fingers. We intersect on a few things, content wise, even if we rocket into different tangents. Sometimes I wonder if we pollute each other. Well, there's always the rewrite.

And in an unrelated note, I found this article about CNN anchor Nancy Grace's complete meltdown after the Michael Jackson verdict was announced. While I have little patience for pundits, this bit caught my eye. It's something that screams ready-made if you look at it the right way. It's also a slap at the technotopian dreamers who think that the Web will erase ignorance forever.

So it is that we find ourselves in an age when people flip to a favored television channel, or buy a specific publication, or click on a particular URL, for one reason -- because they know that when they go there, inconvenient information will not intrude, and they will find their dearest beliefs, their strongest prejudices and their deepest fears reinforced rather than challenged.

The phenomenon doesn't have a name yet -- to our knowledge, anyway -- but it's the opposite of the ancient Greek agora or the New England town hall to which people flock to disagree with one another and to hash out differences.

I think "Logic of Positive Fallacy" is too long. Needs to combine sex and violence and the glitz of 21st century media warfare.

Foxllatio, anyone?

Today's Word: Laser

A gun, another application of science turned into a weapon. Found in the DVD players and printers. Light as energy, directed and blasted across infinity.

Being Green, it ain't easy

It's Friday, and the end to a week that feels like it's been going on for four months. In the past few days, I've had to deal with some of the worst nightmares I've ever had, which is a complete electromagentic pulse to my needed slumber subroutines. I'm just wiped out, finding it hard to write or get a coherent thought together. I've been off emotionally, too, getting far too upset over things. Small things, random things.

And it doesn't speak well of me, in that celestial report card kinda way, when I simmered in that slow soul burn for 24 hours after learning one of my former classmates is a finalist for the PNWA writing contest. We both write in the same genre, although we have wildly different styles and stories. It felt as if some ghostly indicator pegging him as the one to be published over me, if I ever get the nod at all. And then there is the author in class who finished her draft of her novel, and I sit there congratulating her as well while sinking down in self loathing, yelling at myself why I haven't finished my novel yet. I try and be as supportive and as gracious as possible to my comrades, but the lesser angels of my nature have been buying drinks lately, and it's not pretty.

I know, the ideas of not being finished or a finalist equaling "inferior" is all an invention of the acidic demon monkeys who roam my mind, spraypainting nasty murals just behind my optic nerve. I suppose it's just the dark island of this week, a lowlight that I hope I can put behind me soon. Writers don't win all the time. Writers move at different speed. Just keep your eyes ahead and pay no attention to the vile mirages on the side of the road.

The good news is, I am getting new office furniture soon. If I can swing it, I'm gonna get this sweet desk that looks like something Q built, complete with sleek lines and hidden compartments. And then there's a graduation party for a dear friend who is getting her master's degree this weekend.

As the kids say, w00t!