danieldrylie

[danieldrylie]

The other episode of Writer’s Block I read for is up. I read around the 55:45 mark. I stumbled a bit on this one (stage fright), but I think you can still make most of it out. 

[danieldrylie]

The other episode of Writer’s Block I read for is up. I read around the 55:45 mark. I stumbled a bit on this one (stage fright), but I think you can still make most of it out. 

[danieldrylie]

The episode of the Writer’s Block I read for aired last month, apparently. There are a lot of really talented writers on here, so give it a listen. I read around the 24:40 mark. 

[danieldrylie]

This is a short story I wrote about 2 years ago. It’s a little more melodramatic than I’d like, but oh well. 

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Reblogging because I forgot to tag

Well, it only took about thirty rejections before this story was finally accepted. Woo!

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Well, it only took about thirty rejections before this story was finally accepted. Woo!

[danieldrylie]

I too have wished you were here, And pondered if those chords moved for you Or me. I once was the one who left too soon And those I loved let down their heads In sadness over who I used to be. How I wish you could hear the singing Once again. It is a song for every twilight call in desperation, Every mother’s calloused knees, And all who’ve heard the siren say, 'The journey isn’t worth the pain the ocean brings Let me take it all away.' It is for those who wander,  For every friend and friend of friends Taken in the head, With breaking bones, necrotic hearts, With battered minds given in exchange For the function to choose Between the beauty and the madness Wearing heavy on your skin. I too have tasted honey Dripping from the tip Of the reaper’s scythe As in time it turns from raw To wine. But its pleasure is a lie. Cold seas don't stretch forever, And greater sweetness can be found In the green fields and flowers at the water's end.  Rest is only barely out of sight, Hidden just beyond the horizon In shade beneath the seaside trees With those of us who take our comfort there. So sail on, you are not crazy, Though waves seem hard as diamonds While they cut into the hull. The ship can hold together long enough To make it to the shore.

On Wish You Were Here

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Who decreed emotion an enemy of reason? Who said empathy implied the loss of logic? Retain the bill of sale for their lies. Return deceit to senators and snakes. You will not know them by their reason, But by their lack of love, Their fear, Their misanthropy masquerading as cognition. Hear these sadists cry in imitation battle, “Let the helpless be their help. Eye for eye; battered bodies for a scratch. Let the sickened heal themselves.” Cross along the border to the living. Leave these dead their fear and shame. They are white-washed corpses Calling on themselves indignate condemnation By invoking one who said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Thought and feeling, Each but one leg, Will always fall except in pairs. So, let us keep our feet beneath us. Heart and head go hand in hand, And in compassion, open up closed doors. Tear the blinders from your eyes and see, Our walled-off souls hold space to care For many millions more.

Wall of Lies (a poem I wrote today)

[danieldrylie]

I have a poem published here.

[danieldrylie]

I have a poem published here.

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When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away—even if it’s only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaningless of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

Kurt Vonnegut to the Paris Review. Spring 1977. (via victoriousvocabulary)

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by eberhard grossgasteiger

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Thoughts on Guns

Sant*disclaimer* I’m not an expert. These are just my opinions. This is something to do to distract me after another shooting. 

1) The “this isn’t the time to talk about policy, stop politicizing this” line of reasoning only works if you’ve already established that legislation isn’t a viable solution. 

2) Both sides of the argument suffer from credibility issues. It is painfully obvious to anyone who knows anything about guns that a large portion of liberals do not understand basic functions of firearms. This is why an assault weapon ban would be mocked. Most of the features they propose banning are either aesthetic or wouldn’t significantly affect the functionality of the weapon. If they did simple research, they would know that restricting the sale of gas-operated rifles and blowback firearms would be more effective. 

Conservatives, on the other hand, are often intellectually dishonest. They often appeal to a revisionist history and interpretation of the Constitution. Many have also disrupted research into gun violence and then used the lack of research as their defense. They make up facts in the hope that nobody will take the time to look into it. They sidestep arguments with ad hominem and an emotional appeal to #1 in order to ride out the national interest in gun violence. 

3) The conservatives actually have a point gun legislation alone would be ineffective. However, they misrepresent the weaknesses of this kind of legislation. 

4) Reining in gun violence will require a longterm, multifaceted reworking of American society and government. Because there are so many guns already in the country, the best course of action would be to destroy the market for illegal firearms in conjunction with legislation to restrict the flow of legal firearms. 

Ending the war on drugs, focusing on rehabilitation of criminals instead of retribution, and creating job opportunities for people who have been convicted of a crime would lower recidivism and violent crime. 

Ending the war on drugs would decrease the demand for illegal firearms because the risk associated with trafficking and dealing drugs would be reduced, and the risk of admitting an addiction would disappear, causing more people to seek help instead of hiding and supporting the addiction through crime. It would also decrease trafficking at the southern border. 

Focusing on rehabilitation would stop the criminal justice system from creating repeat offenders. If someone was supporting themselves by illegal means, it is counter-intuitive to then make it extremely difficult to to support themselves legally. 

Creating job opportunities would allow convicts to support themselves legally and reintegrate into society. Currently, our criminal justice system is designed to keep criminals on the edges of society, which makes them more likely to commit another crime because they have no legitimate form of income. 

All of this would reduce crime and the demand for illegal firearms. Coupled with precise legislation and a buyback program, this could significantly reduce the amount of firearms in the US over time. 

5) Every time this happens, it seems like we should have a “come to Jesus” moment. We never do. We just get more entrenched in our positions and talk past each other. It’s like we’re in a hellish version of Groundhog Day, where we put off action till tomorrow, even though tomorrow never comes. We go through this over and over and will continue to until we, Americans, get fed up and decide to change. 

The black men and women in Charleston, school children in Connecticut, moviegoers in Colorado, music fans in Vegas, nightclubbers in Florida, churchgoers in Texas, students at Virginia Tech, police officers in Dallas, public employees in San Bernardino, students at community college in Oregon, recruiters in Chattanooga, soldiers at Ft. Hood, the people of Isla Vista, the soldiers who died in the second Ft. Hood shooting, the Navy contractors in Washington, the people in Santa Monica, the women in a spa in Wisconsin, the five employees in Minneapolis, the Sikhs in Oak Creek, the students at Northern California University, the people in a salon in Seal Beach, the people at a political rally in Tucson, warehouse workers in Manchester, CT, the professors in Huntsville, the people studying to be citizens in Binghamton, the students at Northern Illinois University, shoppers in Omaha, the children at an Amish school in Pennsylvania. These people deserved better. They deserve to have their murders taken seriously enough to do something. 

The 22,000 people who killed themselves with firearms last year deserve to be taken seriously. 

The 2,000 people who were injured or killed in gun related accidents last year deserve to be taken seriously. 

In all, the thousands of Americans who will die this year, and the hundreds of thousands over the next decade, deserve to be taken seriously. If we had started this 30 years ago, most of those people listed above might still be alive. If don’t start now, a lot more will die because of it. 

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A Thought On Wes Anderson

Some people think Wes Anderson is pretentious. I can understand sentiment. I’m not going to argue on that point one way or the other. Instead, I want you to think about a movie that you saw that was almost good, but had a terrible moment of broken verisimilitude. It’s something that happens a lot with the “hyper-realistic” movies that are so popular now. They often aren’t able to follow their own rules consistently. They try to establish everything so close to the way we perceive the world, and it all crumbles down in one moment because they made a choice that wasn’t consistent with what the audience had come to expect in the rest of the movie. 

That’s the brilliance of Wes Anderson. His worlds are close enough to our own to make us sympathize with the characters, but everything is off just enough that he can make artistic choices more freely. His movies are almost reality, but a few steps to the left. So, the audience is more receptive to things that are a bit off. In fact, having the settings and characters close but not identical to reality frees the audience from having to rationalize what they are seeing. Because there aren’t formalist intrusions into an otherwise realist film, the focus can shift to the story. 

Perhaps this is why I adore magic realism so much. 

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A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just begins to live that day.

Emily Dickenson

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I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by

Douglas Adams

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Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.

Mark Twain