Daniel Dessinger

Month: February 2006

  • Blogger’s Block

    it is supremely frustrating to try and try to think of words to write and thoughts to convey, only to find that the well has run dry. i ask myself why i struggle to find the words that used to roam so freely.

    cigarette smoking was a powerful vice in my life. i didn’t just want to smoke. i needed to smoke. i depended on those smoke breaks to clear my mind, to return to calm during an argument, to feel okay in the world, and to self-medicate my ADD.

    when i quit smoking last fall, it felt like i was sacrificing my firstborn. i was suddenly alone in the world. i lost my best friend. i lost the drug that held me up.

    since then, i’ve filled spare moments with novels, movies, and television shows. i know, i know – not very poetic. so be it. the truth is what the truth is, not what we’d like it to be.

    i realized yesterday evening that i hadn’t been allowing myself any spare moments to process all of the information i was ingesting. i’ve been so busy trying not to feel empty that i now have less to contribute to the world. there is something about silence that allows a person to digest what has been consumed and process it into something useful. without doing so, all that is consumed builds up in one’s system, coating the inner walls of the soul and wreaking havoc with one’s state of well being.

    the answer to writer’s block is common sense: give your mind and your heart time to process. you don’t swallow whole sides of beef without chewing, do you? what would that do to you, other than choke you? chewing is processing is digesting. it is breaking down that which is consumed into smaller and smaller parts until the useful parts can be used and the unuseful can be removed. in a strange way it is also like sifting for gold.

    ironicly enough, i came to this realization the moment i paused in silence and reflected on the situation. i digested just enough to realize that i need to spend more time chewing my meat properly.

  • LOST on ABC: Filling in the Gaps

    Walt on LOST

    it’s amazing what you can learn by watching the entire season one on dvd. i’d missed more than i could have imagined. I just learned about Walt – how he makes things happen when he reads or sees pictures of things. This new knowledge changes all my theories completely.

    i feel like cinderella late for the ball. most of you LOST fanatics have watched every episode religiously. anything i might say will seem old hat to you… good thing i don’t care.

    i was watching the episode where Walt is attacked by a polar bear. his dad and Locke save him. Walt saw the polar bear in the comic book his father burned. in the flashback, Walt saw the bird that crashed into the glass door in his school book.

    so did he see something that caused the plane crash? is Walt the cause of everything bizarre and strange?

    my wife threw this out for a possibility: someone is drawing children with “special” abilities to the island for study or some other purpose. a psychic tricked the pregnant woman (Claire) into taking the flight because it was absolutely imperative that she raise the child and protect the child. this could mean that her child has special abilities too which would be treated as a sideshow freak if not raise by his mother. or it could have nothing to do Claire and only be about getting the child onto the island.

    back to Walt. i wonder if the other comic book frames we were allowed to see were clues. we not only saw the polar bear; we also saw an alien strapped to some kind of table in a scientific or medical lab. and then we saw a picture of an alien spaceship with what appeared to be a metropolitan city at the top of its dome. the comic book was a spanish version of the Green Lantern and Flash.

    maybe if i read that comic book i could predict certain other aspects of the future of LOST. Then again, the comic was burned and Walt could look at other pictures (like the ones his dad drew for him) and cause entirely different things to happen. we’ll see.

    i haven’t made it through the first season. i have a few episodes left.

    bear with me. for those of you who could care less about LOST… what’s wrong with you?

  • Increasing Numbers of Advertisements in Films

    There is a disturbing trend growing in Hollywood. No, not the usual suspects. I’m referring to the proliferation of advertisements in films. I remember, not too long ago, when it was considered a tacky for a film to show too many Starbucks cups or various other brands.

    It was only last summer that I heard about The Island. This futuristic film was packed full of mini-commercials. It was little more than an advertisement for bottled water, video games, and other products.

    I don’t have a problem with natural product placement. After all, it lends some realism to a film to include car brands we drive, food we eat, and clothes we wear, etc.

    Hollywood just sank to an all new low. Harrison Ford stars in a new film called Firewall. The trailer of the film tells the audience to “catch the new Chrysler 300 in Firewall…”

    Excuse me? I’m supposed to watch a movie to see a stupid car??? I normally go to the theater to watch a movie, not shop for cars. I’m hoping that Harrison Ford had nothing to do with the marketing of the film. Last I heard, he was voted America’s favorite actor. He obviously doesn’t need marketing ploys to draw a crowd.

    I was actually okay with the overblown display of Sears’ products on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Though everyone on that show is filthy rich, I have no problem with it because regular people are getting new homes out of it. It’s a fair trade off for me.