February 2, 2012

The Ball

I bought a baseball the other day. The lengths I went to get it were more than one might expect, seeing as how Baseball is out of season. I finally managed to find one right near Fenway Park, an obvious place to buy a ball really.

There’s something intrinsically and inexplicably soothing about holding it. I’ve been tossing it to myself for the last two hours without even thinking about it and I miss it if I’ve set it down somewhere. It’s something that demands to be held and admired. Its appeal is pronounced and unavoidable. And I think I’ve finally figured out what it is.

It is an object that is perfectly executed. It has been designed and tweaked and re-designed and re-tweaked time and time again over over two hundred years. It is what it is supposed to be and it does it perfectly. There is no going back to the drawing board, because it has been there and back already. The materials will change once they develop a new synthetic leather or stitching that never breaks; but on a fundamental level, it’s a finished product.

The baseball is not unique in this. If you’ve ever held a knife that’s balanced and honed or driven a sports car or used a Kindle, I’ve no doubt that you’ve experienced a similar sensation. It’s the sensation of using something that is not going to get any better. It’s the sensation of using something that has been tested and tried and defined a million times over. You’re using something that will not get better because it can not get better. It has reached its peak and when you encounter something like that, then it’s hard to let go of it.

Dylan Charles

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February 1, 2012

The Lost

When learning about baseball’s history, it is impossible to ignore the forty years that African Americans were not allowed to play, regardless of ability. Any attempt by a black american to play ball was rejected by Major League Baseball. They were shut out and forced to form their own leagues.

There debates, even now, about the possibilities. What if they had been allowed to play? How would things have been different? How would they have measured up against Major League Players?

In my mind, that prompts other, far more depressing questions than who would have beat who in an All Star line-up. From the 1600′s to the late 1800′s, countless men and women were unable to pursue anything they wanted. How many artists were lost? How many doctors? How many lawyers? How many writers and sculptors and athletes and orators and businessmen and senators? What did this country lose? What did those people lose? Because they were unable to choose their own fates, to strike out on their own, to determine who they were in a very fundamental way, society lost something dear.

And society continued to throw it away with Jim Crow and segregation and through the intimidation of the Klan and other groups. The poverty and crime that bore down the Black community, kept it from achieving the great things it would have achieved. For every George Washington Carver and Lewis Latimer and Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglas and Langston Hughes and Miles Davis, how many others never got the chance to be who they should have been?

It is only recently in our history that Black Americans have the semblance of the same freedoms as the majority of Americans, but for the millions before, they lacked that option.

What they were, what they could have been, whatever they truly wanted, was and is forever lost, and we are forever poorer for it.

Dylan Charles

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January 31, 2012

Preparations

As I may have mentioned, I’m getting prepared to watch baseball from season’s beginning to season’s end. The only problem is, I’m not entirely sure what I should do to prepare for this. I’m trying to get caught up to speed on the subject, but I’m not sure where I should go, what I should watch and what I should read to do this.

I’m going to go to Fenway at some point and take a look-see and I’ve already started watching Ken Burns: Baseball (excellent documentary by the way). I just need some more ideas for things to do before the season starts so I’m not completely floundering when the ball starts rolling (Ha! Sports puns).

Ideas?

Dylan Charles

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January 30, 2012

The Stories of Baseball

For me, the sport in and of itself is not the draw. The draw is the people. It’s why boxing always held more interest for me than any team sport. It was the individual who made the sport what it was. The fire and sheer ballsyness of Jack Johnson, the lightning style and class of Sugar Ray Robinson, the sturdy and unrelenting force of Rocky Marciano. They defined their sport and their sport defined who they were simultaneously.

With boxing (or any sport that’s solely about the individual), it’s easy and clear to see the story of that person, to see the thrills and the heartaches and the failures and successes of that one person. They win or lose on the basis of their own strengths and weaknesses and it’s plain for everyone to see.

But with baseball, that’s a far more murky prospect. It’s not about the one, but the many and all those singular stories are lost in the shuffle. At least, that’s what I thought. But as I learn more and more about the history of the sport, I’m starting to hear the same amazing and terrible stories that I heard when I read about boxing: The sad and terrible monster that was Ty Cobb, whose talent and downfall both came from the same rage and feelings of  inadequacy, the talented and uneducated Shoeless Joe Jackson who threw it all away for the promise of $20,000 and Christy Mathewson, who never went to war, but lost his way of life and then his life to poison gas anyway.

It’s the stories that make any sport go beyond the confines of being a simple game played by talented men and women. It’s their lives that make their victories more than just points on a scoreboard. It’s always about the stories.

Dylan Charles

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January 28, 2012

A Sporting Attempt

Living in Boston means living with sports. In Durham, sports talk was mainly limited to people yelling about college basketball, because that was the biggest game in town. Sure, we had the Durham Bulls, but they don’t inspire the same level of fanaticism as, say, the Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics or Bruins. There are four major sports franchises crammed into this one city and lord, does it show.

I’ve long resisted any attempt to become involved in the sports culture, but more and more, that seems like ignoring a large and integral part of Boston culture. People communicate in sports, it’s what they talk about, how they interact, a reason to go out for the night and watch a game in the bar.

So, in the interest of embedding myself in the culture, I’m going to “follow” a “team”. Since football season is almost over and basketball season has already started, I picked baseball. Plus, I’ll get the thrill of following the under-dog team, just like the Bad News Bears or Rocky. And I’ve always been interested in the mythology behind baseball.

First up, I need to read up on stats and line-ups and…other…stuff. Maybe I should watch Ken Burns’ Baseball in order to truly learn about the sport from the very beginning. The more I think about this whole process, the more I realize that I know next to nothing about baseball. I know it starts in the Spring. Maybe. Maybe that’s just when they start training.

The last time I even watched a baseball game was a Durham Bulls game almost five years ago. I know there are bats and balls and bases and n ine innings, but other than that, I’m as lost as a linebacker in a hockey rink.

Time to get started.

Dylan Charles

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January 26, 2012

Angry and Lovin’ It

I’ve been noticing more and more lately that I’m getting more and more angry and aggressive and it’s the city that’s doing it.

It’s not Boston in particular, it’s just…living in a big city where people can be rude and thoughtless and exceedingly annoying. I don’t think cities especially attract awful people; the same percentage of awful people live in the city as they do in the country (20%). But 20% of 600,000 people is a metric shitton of people no matter how you look at it and you’re going to be bumping into those people on a regular basis, especially if you work in retail and especially if you take public transportation to get to your retail job.

As a result, I’ve been more surly with people and more liable to get ornery at real and imagined offenses. Some of this change in behavior is necessary. I’ve never been a very forward person and never been very liable to stand up for myself. I was always more likely to take the quiet, passive way out of a conflict. Now, I’m finding myself looking forward to a combative argument. I got to kick someone out of the store the other day and I was thrilled. I hope he comes back so I can do it again.

This is where it starts becoming more of a problematic thing and where I need to start reining myself in the tiniest bit. Still, I’m pleased that I can actually argue with someone as opposed to just grinning and bearing it.

Also, I’ll fight you.

Dylan Charles

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January 21, 2012

Borrowing without Permission

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, I’ve found a couple of my stories floating around in the internet. Usually they appear on websites devoted to something called “creepypastas,” which are, succinctly, horror themed flash fictions.

For the most part, creepypastas are treated like orphaned children. They have no credited writers and thus are up for grabs. They move from forum to forum, from website to website. God only knows the original writers for all of these stories.

But here’s the deal; someone did write them. And while I’m not speaking for the dozens of stories that are floating around out there, I would like to point out that I wrote “The Blue Man” and “The Song and Dance Man“.

You did not get my permission to post them. Only one person got that permission and that’s a Mr. Kris Straub of Ichor Falls. If you see those stories on any other site, they’re not supposed to be there.

It’s one thing if I see the story with my name attached to it. That’s, to be honest, still pretty bad. If you like a story, link back to where it was published. Or, even better, buy my book. It has those stories as well as a bunch of others! If you liked “The Song and Dance Man,” maybe you’d like those! And the book is less than a dollar. For less than a dollar, you can support a writer whose story you enjoyed. Bam, you have my thanks and everyone is happy.

But when you take my story, post it on your website and then don’t even put my name on it; that’s pretty fucking rude.

And here’s the thing, if some of these places had just asked, I would have been totally cool with it, especially if they had provided a link back to my site or put a little “By Dylan Charles” somewhere. Yay! Free advertising!

Instead, I keep bumping into my own work on the internet, with people commenting the poster on the great job they did. And that is just…infuriating.

Dylan Charles

Addendum: I am aware that there is some slight irony in posting this right after my post about the evils of SOPA/PIPA. Not a lot, just a smidge.

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January 18, 2012

A Creator’s Thoughts on SOPA and PIPA

I’m a writer. I write stories and I have, in the past, posted them on the Internet. Other people have taken these stories and posted them in other places on the Internet without my permission and, most of the time, without crediting the story to me. Sometimes, the poster even gets complimented on his or her  story, as though they wrote it. There’s even one person who’s talking about making a game using a character I created, even though it’s my goddamn character.

Every time I see one of my stories posted on someone else’s website, without it being properly credited, without my permission, a series of blood vessels begins bursting in my brain. It makes me so angry that if I were to meet any of these people in person, I’d slap them sharply and without explanation. But they’d know why, deep in their awful, crusty, thieving hearts. And then I hope that they die with that knowledge that they’re damn stealing stealers.

Now, with that said, I still think PIPA is a terrible idea. Even with my incandescent, nearly homicidal rage whenever I see one of my stories pirated, I think PIPA is so terrible, it shouldn’t have successfully gotten past the planning stages. It is clear that the people who wrote this bill had only the barest glimmer of how microwave technology works and shouldn’t have been let anywhere near something as stupefyingly convoluted and complicated as the Internet.

With SOPA and PIPA, if a user posts pirated material on YouTube, YouTube gets shut down. If a users posts pirated material in a forum, the forum gets shut down. If a user posts pirated material on Facebook, Facebook gets shut down.

In order to avoid being shut down, every website ever in the history of websites, will have to monitor its users and commenters to make sure no-one is posting pirated material or linking to pirated material. Facebook alone has something like 800 million users that they would be responsible for policing at all times to make sure that one of them doesn’t post something that’s copyrighted.  So Facebook is doomed.

While SOPA has been set aside so that they can retool it and PIPA has had some of its teeth removed (originally, the bill stated that any site dealing in pirated materials would be blocked from view by ISPs. For example, Comcast and RCN would be responsible for making sure that you can’t go to piratebay anymore), they still blundering and awkward tools that are incapable of stopping piracy and incredibly capable of hindering progress. Any new social media site is going to have to greatly restrict the flow of information in order to police its members effectively. The Internet’s growth will be determined by two bad bills.

When a bill fails to do what it achieves and does more harm in the process, then it’s a bad bill.

As a creator and as a creator who has had his work lifted by goddamn stealing, thieving pirates, I believe PIPA and SOPA, bills designed to protect the creator and the creator’s work, are a bad idea.

Dylan Charles

For sources: The SOPA Blackout, PCWorld’s take on the matter, and PIPA itself

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January 16, 2012

Good News in Failure

The more I write of the sixth and final story, the more there seems to be to write. A little more backstory, another character or two, the plot keeps stretching out in front of me with no clear end in sight. It’s daunting, because it looks like this one is shaping up to be the longest story of all of them. Already, the story is as long as the longest story, but the investigation hasn’t gotten off the ground yet.

What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think I’m going to make the midnight deadline. I’m going to keep writing, don’t get me wrong. But there is more story here than I previously thought.

So! Though I’m not making my self-imposed deadline, I don’t think any of us has a reason to feel too badly about that. I think the last story in the collection is going to be pretty damn awesome. I’m extending the deadline to Friday and we’ll take it from there.

Dylan Charles

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January 15, 2012

A Delay of Game

This morning I woke up to the sound of dripping water. Apparently, a leak we had thought gone, is now back and with a vengeance. We’ve had a leak right over the light fixture in the hallway that connects our living room with the bedroom. It’s annoying, because its warped the floorboards and goes through an electrical fixture, which is a bit nervewracking.

So that’s how the day started. While I was calling the landlord and talking to the people upstairs and chasing drops of waters, I began to get a migraine. This is not particularly how I wanted my first day off in over a week to go.

And, I also realized at the last minute, that I have a birthday party to go to tonight.

So! I’m extending my deadline to finish my story until tomorrow at midnight. I’d feel guilty about doing this, but my noggin is still achy and there’s water on my fridge.

Tomorrow!

Dylan Charles

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