FUCK DR. OZ........HARD

I have no respect for Dr. Oz and I never will. I'm not a Dr. but I am the son of a Physician that was the very embodiment of the Hippocratic oath. As a child I remember my father looking upon diet foods and crash weight loss products in a less than favorable manner. This idiot recommends every available product that's willing to pay him a hefty fee for valuable real estate in his show. He was grilled on the floor of congress and basically engaged in self contradictory statements and made himself look like a fool. Fuck you Oz you are not the wizard you want people to think you are.

If you want advice go to a Doctor that's willing to tell you the good and the bad in several areas. Stay away from the Physician featured in  The Canterbury Tales.

WHY WE ARE FASCINATED BY JACK THE RIPPER

The story of Jack the Ripper is one that continues to fascinate us to this day. Some people may ask "why?" I think the fascinating thing about Jack the Ripper is the fact that no one was ever found out. There was a list of suspects and plenty to talk about in England's circles of high society but nothing else. You fast forward over 100 years and all we still know is who the victims were, the fact that the victims were all women, the location and so on.

The speculation has run rampant without clear answers, unless you are author Patricia Cornwell, who decidedly fingered Walter Sickert as the killer in one of her books. The book stated that one of Sickert's motivations was the fistula in his penis. If we move away from Sickert we will see that there were other suspects as well, all with different motives. Even with a fair list the fact remains that this case went unsolved and it was really the first notorious case that led to dead end after dead end.

The Jack case was something different not just because the police did not find anything conclusive enough on anyone. The murderer  did a great job of making the police look like total idiots. The book What Alice Knew also points at Sickert but it does so on a fictional setting. I see the Jack the Ripper case as the first case where the criminal had a sort of superstar status, due in part to his uncanny ability to stay anonymous through the whole thing.

We will never know, but the Ripperologist inside us will always remain curious and fascinated.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

When I first read some of Ernest Hemingway's work I was just a freshman in high school. I was taken by his life story more than his work. I thought that Hemingway was a cool guy, well traveled, and interested in life's grand pursuits. I began to read Hemingway's work more thoroughly and was taken by the very real quality of his characters, larger than life and yet incredibly flawed.

Hemingway was one of those guys that was straight up badass before badass was some stupid classification for punks with big mouths and guns. What I thought was great about Hemingway was the he was a man that believed in living hard and full. I think it's really the nature of writers like Hemingway that made literature in those years so great.

There was no fear, no politically correct bullshit, Hemingway and his contemporaries were all about truth. Hemingway had that unchecked depression which only made him all the more compelling. Mental health was not really considered important in those days so for Hemingway to stay as creative and powerful given his issues only made him a more mythical figure.

Hemingway was also an example of someone who could have benefited from treating his depression. I could only imagine Hemingway writing a book about Vietnam and the love power generation. I wonder what Hemingway and disco would have been like, given that the 70's was the me generation. Sadly none of that happened, we lost a genius and life went on. Still, it's not that bad to think of what might have been every now and then.

POETRY

I'm no poet but I love reading poetry simply because I feel that there is some manner of genius in brevity. Poetry was something that I loved as a kid because it was short but most of the time it told some story. Let's look at some of the things that poetry covers in a few lines:

1. Love.
2. Heartbreak. 
3. Happiness. 
4. Sadness.
5. Success.
6. Failure. 
7. Appetite.

In short, poetry covers just about everything you can imagine and write about. When you do it correctly a poem can pretty much sum up the long and short of your life. Poetry can be what defines a writer, shapes a generation, and establishes a legacy. 

I'm writing this because I want to encourage people to really seek out poetry, not as a drag but as a form of enrichment. Perhaps you are a poet, perhaps not but either way you can really yield something great from it. Seek out a poem from days of old, seek one out from recent time but remember it will broaden your mind.

IF YOU CAN SELF PROMOTE YOU ARE OKAY

I love the term shameless self promoter because it's kind of a contradiction. When a person says you are shameless they almost mean it in a derogatory manner. I am shameless but it's because I have nothing to be ashamed of. The fact is that when you are starting out no one will promote you so you have to do it yourself. If you are a writer this means multiple things outside of putting pen to paper on a daily basis.

Oh my blog! let's all get on the blog train to blog city. When you are a writer looking to get attention it's a great idea to go ahead and start a blog with opinions on relevant topics. The more outrageous your view the more attention you can draw to yourself. It's not about shocking people so much as it is about getting a little attention from different places. Of course there is a secondary option outside of blog city and that is self publishing.

The chances of you writing a best seller without any proper backing are very rare but if you have that little book to demonstrate what you can do as well as that sense of esthetics that's ever so important you definitely have an opportunity to draw some much needed attention to yourself. The point is to make yourself as visible as possible in order to show potential backers who you are and what you can do.

Always remember that no one ever paid attention to a person with little to say.

WHY A WRITER NEEDS TO KNOW HISTORY

I have always loved history because when you really get into the description of it it's almost like you can see it unfold once more in your mind's eye. My favorite subject through my primary education was history because I felt like I knew the players. I recently realized that history lessons are the first stories we are ever told. Sometimes we hear the tall tales of Americana and other times we read key literary works such as The Great Gatsby which serve as a glimpse into specific periods. The fact is that history reveals that the greatest stories told are told by each and every individual.

I never met the founding fathers but I feel as though they were truly civilized gentlemen with enormous skills in the art of diplomacy, otherwise known as bullshit. A historical document such as the declaration of independence reveals an ardent desire for a new identity, great concern for proper linguistic correctitude, and a fierce need to prove intellectual superiority in certain respects. Then there are works like the bible which is referred to by many as the key work in literature. A story can either be an approximation of the truth, a play on fact, or a total fabrication of the imagination. Honestly it's history that serves as a basis for all of that.

George Orwell wrote 1984 over sixty years ago and while his concepts seemed to far fetched to be real they were realized and validated over the years. While Orwell's work was fiction there can be a safe assumption made that Orwell felt through research that Big Brother was not an unreal and purely fictional idea. Everyone has a view of the future but those that express it in print base it on certain historical study. I am not saying that every person that desires a career in writing must be a history bookworm but it helps to know history in order to avoid sounding like a complete jackass.

THE MORE SOCIAL MEDIA GROWS THE MORE THE WORLD SHRINKS

As I look back over the last 12 years since I became a card carrying member of the previous century I must say I am surprised at how the world has shrunk. It seems that as technology and ways to connect with people grew it became a lot easier to know other parts of the world without real effort. The world became smaller and today it's as common to talk to someone in South Africa or Indonesia as it is the person next door. Social Media my dear friend you are one tricky whore for sure.

I don't subscribe to the ideas behind big brother simply because I refuse to live in fear. If someone wants to know about me they will know about me. When I look at my Facebook, Twitter, and Google I realize that Social Media is the kind of advent that was thought of in literary works such as 1984, Brave New World, and We. The familiarity with strangers that was thought of as something radical and impossible is normal today. A heightened and sometimes frightening level of communication that gives us unparalleled access into one another's lives is the norm.

The world is as small as it looks on television only now we don't really need to look at it in physical terms. Today we kill distance with the left click of the trusty mouse. I remember when computers were something of a luxury. Today a cell phone with net access, a laptop in a WiFi hotspot, and a social media account are all a necessity. Yes Social Media is growing and the world is shrinking, especially when you consider that a person's Social Media feeds can take them to places that they never expected.

The fact is that if you don't meet a person online you are not normal. If you don't make friends with someone that lives 8,000 miles away from you then you are considered socially awkward. A person's popularity and charisma is now defined as their "clout" and ability to land friends or followers. While this planet has an estimate of nearly 7 billion inhabitants it's not unreal to think that we are all connected in some six degrees of Kevin Bacon Social Media way.

We may not be living in the age of big brother but perhaps we are living in the age of second cousin. Yes it's true, this is in fact a very small world and it gets smaller every day.

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