Dylan Charles's Blog, page 33
September 4, 2011
Reverse the Polarity
After working in retail for almost a year now, I've become drawn to those websites that are about bitter, awful customer experiences. I read Not Always Right and Clients from Hell daily. Each story I read confirms my belief that at least 60% of all customers are completely and utterly unaware that retail employees are human. They forget common courtesies like "please" and "thank you". They lose their temper and insult the staff, while we have to bite our tongues and offer our apologies about ...
September 2, 2011
Closer Now
It's moving closer now, moving sly and subtle, a thing you only notice out of the corner of your eye.
Today, for example, I was in the CVS, shopping for my usual lunch of Arizona Iced Tea and a bag of gummy bears. And something felt…off. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I froze in the middle of the hair-care aisle, my senses tingling.
I whirled around, but there was nothing there. My heart started pounding wildly. In that overbright white of the florescents I saw something flash...
August 30, 2011
It's Coming
Certain folks have been looking at the weather lately and are claiming that these are portents of God's wrath. After all, hurricanes are a rare novelty on the East Coast and the only explanation can be that a deity who's heavily invested in Congressional hijinks is really angry.
Nonetheless, they're all watching for the wrong signs. Not me. While everyone else is looking at storms and earthquakes, I'm paying attention to the new crispness to the air. I'm noticing the red and orange and yellow ...
August 17, 2011
The Rules of Horror
Horror movies exist primarily to do one thing: scare people. And, for the most part, horror movies fail in that one goal. They shock, they gross out, they startle, but they don't truly scare. There's nothing scary about Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger. There's nothing scary about torture porn like Hostel and the entire Saw series.
Modern horror filmmakers seem to have forgotten the fact that these movies are supposed to terrify us, not make us roll our eyes and gag. The formulaic and tired n...
August 9, 2011
Shakespeare on Common
Emily and I went to see Shakespeare on the Commons last week. Every year, folks can see the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company perform on the Commons free of charge. This year, they performed one of Shakespeare's comedies, "All's Well That Ends Well". I didn't know the first thing about it before we went, but, after a quick Google search, it turns out no-one else is either.
There were the usual shenanigans; people in disguise, puns and innuendo in huge dollops. The performers were great and it w...
August 3, 2011
Time Is Not On My Side
I did a test once to see how I experienced time. It was simple. I started the timer and then stopped it when I thought a minute had passed. I wasn't allowed to count the seconds, I just stopped the timer when it felt like the right time.
When I took the test, I slammed the button after only thirty seconds.
This is how its always been for me. Time crawls. Whether I'm watching a movie or at work, I'm incredibly aware of each minute ticking slowly by. It's made me notoriously bad at telling how...
August 2, 2011
The Newest Book
Since it's been a while, let's talk about the book. No, not that book. The newest one. The one that hasn't been written yet.
I'm…extremely tentative about this one. I want this one to be perfect. I want the table of contents to work properly. I want the formatting to sparkle. I don't want there to be a single typo or blemish. This next book feels…important. And, if I know anything about me, I shy away from all things important.
Important decisions are to be put off to the last minute...
August 1, 2011
Suspension of DisBelief
Lately, I've become more and more obsessed with the idea of bringing my stories into the real world. By that, I mean to blend reality and fiction. I want to smudge the boundaries between my fiction and the world we live in.
I have one or two ideas on how to do this. I want to have blog entries and photographs and graffiti on subway tunnel walls. I want the protagonist to leave an actual mark on the world. I want the reader to have trouble discerning what's fact and what's fiction. I want to...
July 30, 2011
Parallels
There is something powerful about the idea of parallel worlds; the notion that there is a universe for every potential outcome. For every particle that either decays or stays, for every time you turn left or right, for every sun that goes nova or expands; there is a Universe. Every choice you made or didn't make, there is a you living out the consequences of that particular decision (or non-decision).
The very idea of it, the basic fundamental underlying principle of it, is an enticing one...
July 26, 2011
Superstitious
I consider myself a skeptic. I don't believe in things that I can't verify through either my own experience or through the scientific research of people who get paid for that kind of thing. If I can't touch it, taste it, smell it or see it, or if it hasn't been verified in a lab somewhere, then it doesn't exist.
That being said, I'm still bound up in superstition. I believe it's possible to jinx an event. I believe certain numbers are just, inherently, better than others (three, six and nine a...
