On Zombies and Being a Man

No cable in the house, but, just on a lark, we grabbed Netflix for the free monthly subscription. We haven't had it for a while, so I figured their selection would be a bit better. It was, a bit.

So Kim got season three of Parenthood, and I got to spend my whole Saturday immersed in the land of the Walking Dead. I know it's in its 3rd season, but it will NEVER stream until it hits Netflix sometime next year, so I'm stuck with my season two, and it was awesome.

He's not walking, so he must not be dead.

So I got to wondering, what is it about this series that gets me going? I mean, I hate hate hate the horror film genre. You know that feeling you get when you're scared? I get that, too, I just don't get that high from it that others do. I hate being frightened. So why do I like The Walking Dead?

Let's start on the face of it: Yes, it's zombie apocalypse/survival horror, but it's also politics and family and ideological. I like watching the process of rebuilding, seeing the ups and downs of gathering or rejecting people, of trying to create a life. It's fun to watch it all go to shit, in a schadenfreude kind of way.

I like the zombies as an enemy, too. They follow rules, they can be worked with. Sure, they show up unpredictably at times, that much is true, but they don't suddenly change how they're made or what they're purpose is. They don't all the sudden manifest the ability to turn to smoke or something. They're ruthless, impractical, and legion. They move. If they bump into anything living, they kill the shit out of it and eat it raw.

Rules. I like 'em.

Also, the writing's pretty damned good. I get all the feels from the cast and the lines they deliver. It's just good television, and you all know how picky I can be about the writing.

But let's go deeper. Let's examine why I thought the first season was cool but the second season actually moved me. It's pretty much the same plot; survive and build a life after the zombie apocalypse, so what's different?

I am, that's what.

And then I realize that the plot of The Walking Dead is a perfect allegory for becoming a man. It's about finding something grander, about leaving childish ideas behind. It's about growing up. But most of all, it's about fear.

The Walking Dead's not just an allegory for growing up, it's an allegory for the incredible fear that sets into a man's soul when he finds out he cares about some people just as much if not more so than for himself. It's about the fear of losing control, about the world becoming more dangerous, about outsiders not being friends I haven't met, but being dangers that I haven't neutralized.

When I leave my wife at home to go to work, I get that same fear that I feel each time Rick and Lori get separated by the events or needed actions of the show. It's about control. Shane is a perfect example of the Full Grown Boy pseudo-adulthood. He's got the brains and the brawn to be a man, but his mind and desires and views are that of the simplistic child. So he's a man-child, only caring about himself and those he views as extensions of himself (who happen to be his best friend's family) and nothing else.

Rick is trying for more. He's not just about survival, but about building something. It's not just day-to-day, because Rick is mature and a grown-ass man, and knows that if you're not building something, you're not living, just surviving.

So when I first saw The Walking Dead, season one, I thought is was cool. I was like, I'd be badass in the zombie apocalypse, because I'm trained in firearms (thanks, Dad!) and can build stuff (thanks again, Dad!). But this time, Season Two, I've got a wife and kid. So now I view things like fucking up at work as near catastrophic, because it could crush those that depend on me to bring home that bacon on a semi-monthly basis.

That fear that Rick's character feels when he looks out at the zombified world around him is the same exact fear I'm feeling when I look out at the world around me: Every man a potential violent thug, every child a potential corrupter of my unborn (can't wait for high school!).

In short, if you want to know what it's like to have a decent job, a wife, and a kid, and no savings, don't watch Parenthood (though it is pretty good in a continually uncomfortable sort of way), watch The Walking Dead.

Cerebreality

All my work and hobbies alike are cerebral. I sit at a computer, resolve issues remotely, stare off into space, and basically think my way through the working day.

My passions run in that vein, as well; I enjoy writing and collaborating (as in this blog), as well as composing sonnets. Two other projects, at the moment, consist of a short comic book, book reviews, which I haven't gotten to in a while, and intend to bring to this blog, and rewriting my Masters thesis into a script, which will be the basis for a graphic novel and then (in my dreams) an animated movie.

So that's why I build stuff. I'm not saying that building things doesn't engage the mind. Anyone watching me stare at a pallet or a pile of wood or tools knows that the machinery is grinding away. What I am saying is that it's engaging an entirely different part of my mind.

As Lifehacker is keen to point out, willpower is limited, and writing is all about willpower. Some say that facing a blank page is overwhelming, but I get that feeling just thinking about it. I do know how to write. Lord knows I've got the education (and huge fucking debt) to back that up, but it's nose-to-the-grindstone willpower that creates productivity, and it's productivity, above all else, that separates a successful author from a dude/chick who writes stuff.

That also explains why I built a table two weeks ago and have yet to write a post on it. It's coming. Hopefully this weekend. I've already got the pictures labeled.

So I get out there and create with my hands because working in an office all day drains the willpower from my mind, even though I do like and enjoy my job. In the end, I'm not sure if it saves money on the furniture itself, but it sure as hell beats sitting in front of the TV, watching other people live life while I do nothing, and it keeps me from spending ungodly amounts of money on grand and strange travel or dining out, which I can't afford (calorically or monetarily).

In short, I'm advocating getting off your ass. That's some great advice, and I'll stand by it. Be a maker, be a coach. Or not.

I mean, what are your hobbies? Is this too modest a forum in which to discuss?

Thanks for reading.

Weekend Project - Modern Industrial Couch

We had this couch:

Midcentury modern, retro, 50s, 60s, whatever. Kim grabbed it at the local discount furniture outlet for about 60 bucks. It’s 6 feet long, and upholstered in off-yellow vinyl or leather or pleather or somesuch.

And I hated it. It had no arms. I mean, look at it:

And the cushions were held up by this rickety scaffolding that was attached to the base of the thing, without much thought to support. So if you sit in the middle, the two cushions squish down and your back is rubbing on spiky metal.

        

Not comfy.

So I said that I hate it, and Kim said, “Tough. Live with it.”

And history was made.

Inspired by this project, I went out, bought a ton of black metal and galvanized piping, and I was off.

The Plan

This took a lot of measuring and planning, and some dry run trips to Lowe’s (more on them later). The raw materials would eat up all 150 bucks of my savings, but I thought it worth it for essentially a brand new couch.

Essentially, I bought all the pipes and put them together, spray painted them, and attached them to the couch.

The Problem

Okay, so I bought the wrong pipes a bunch of times, and had to go back 3 times to Lowe’s to come up with all the parts that I needed, but the big problem wasn’t execution, it was planning. You see, in order to make a rectangle with threaded pipes and fittings, something, at some point, needs to be reverse-threaded. Let me explain:

Say you have the piece for a rectangle, which includes four sides and four right-angle fittings. With me so far? Now, you put them together so that you have three sides and all fittings. Now you screw in the last side on one end – perfect – and then try the other end. It goes in, but the other end (the perfect one) unscrews itself. See what I mean?

This was my resolution:

Basically, we were using ½ inch pipe, so I bought T fittings that had the two ends ¾ inch and the side ½ inch. This allowed me to pull the ½ inch bar through the straight part of the fitting. Thus, if I put the parts together in the right order, everything would go together. Drill a hole through the fitting with my Dewalt Titanium drill bit (easy as pie) and blast a self-threading screw in there, and it’s good to go. As you’ll see, I did that four times.

The Process

First, I cut a 1x6x6 down to the right size, cutting the ends at a 45-degree angle so they wouldn’t peek out from under the couch so much. Then I attached that to the bottom with screws to reinforce the whole frame and give the rear legs somewhere to grab.

Second, I bought all the pipe pieces and put them together. Then I went back to Lowe’s and bought more pieces. Then I did that again. Then I had them all, and did a test run.

I laid them all out and washed them with dish soap, because they all had this oily coating that keeps them from rusting.

Once they were dry, I assembled the frame outside and Kim and I spray painted it. After two days of curing, I attached it with 20 self-drilling, star drive wood screws and BOOM! couch:

The Ingredients

I know this sounds like product placement (if only it was!), but Lowe’s was essential. I took two 10-foot lengths of pipe and had the awesome dudes at Lowe’s cut and thread them for me. It would have cost over 40 bucks to buy the smaller pieces individually, but I got them all for around 12 bucks and 10 minutes’ wait.

So we used:

1x6x6 pine board, cheap as I could find

1 10 foot galvanized pipe

1 10 foot black metal pipe (slightly cheaper than galvanized and, hey, we were gonna paint it)

11 ½ inch L fittings (right-angle fittings)

2 ½ inch T fittings

6 of the aforementioned ¾ to ½ T fittings

2 eight-inch lengths of ½ inch threaded pipe

2 ½ inch flanges

6 ½ inch pipe straps

Tools:

Miter saw and stand. I got the saw for Christmas and bought the stand at Lowe’s, because a miter saw’s no good without a stand. I didn’t really need the saw, since I could have gotten the lumber cut to fit, but I really really wanted to use it, and it’s awesome.

Electric drill (no substitution is possible)

1 ½ inch star headed self-driving exterior wood screws, which rarely strip out or shear off, unlike cheaper woodscrews that I’ve used in the past.

Lessons learned:

1)      Preparation is the key, baby. We thought about this project for forever, and did a couple of dry runs and lots of other prep. In the end, it went together easily, but only because it was ready to.

2)      You can’t make rectangles with threaded pipe. This has already been covered.

3)      When you’ve help create or improve something, it’s so much harder to hate it.

One more time:

BOOM! couch.

Thanks for reading.

New Page!

Hello, all.

I've added a Daily Sonnets page to the ol' blog (hit that link at the top to see it in all it's glory). As I've said before, this has been a project for some time. But I didn't want to burden my (loyal, limited, obligated) audience with poems. Poems are like children, I think, in that other people don't really want yours, but love their own with an unending fire.

I went and learned how to add a new page, so as to keep it nice and visually separate from my main posts. Since it will be daily, with a handy excuse or an obligatory sonnet, I didn't want to drown the other content.

So, enjoy if you wish. Ignore if you want. I just love to pretend that there's an audience out there, and nothing is more enjoyable than performance.

Thanks for reading.

A Poem for your Patience

Okay, our internets have been broken, and Time Warner has taken 1.5 weeks to fix them. So far. I'm not holding out any hope that they're actually fixed. Thus far, two different brigades of cable techs (technical term) have replaced a total of 3 junctions, replacing a splitter with a barrel (one-to-one) fitting, a splitter with a "better" splitter, and a barrel with a new barrel.

We'll see.

But I know I've promised original content, so I'll send you this one from work (it's really quite slow today). Since late January, I've decided to write a sonnet every day (with varying degrees of luck and/or persistence). The goal is twofold:

1) Follow through on something long term; and 

2) Learn to think in the sonnet form (iambic pentameter).

Like the late, great Billy S, I don't title my sonnets. Sometimes, please allow me a little bit of writerly pretension. I paid for it, after all.

Here you go:

22 March 2012, Thursday

The pop and fizz of new ideas was

An understanding past the brink of one

Belief in childish wants of past-ing fuzz

And broken bleached duress offending scum.

To take and use the broken views of some

And stake a view on someone’s use of form

Will breach and blow the violence sowed by gun

Or sleeping slow and leaving low deforms.

The time is passing hot and heavy still

As sleeping eyelids flitting up reveal

The action of the dreaming mind’s berill

And from yourself your luscious lines you steal.

    The blood of all the things that I’ve done wrong

    Will fill the riverbanks of coming dawn.

This nonsense poem is basically me leading up to plagiarizing myself from an earlier poem that was a type of sonnet that I did during my MFA studies.

Please comment in iambic pentameter or haiku.

Ten Years. Minimum.

Our debt happened in the good, old fashioned, American way: We earned it. Here are some of the myths we took part in:

• College is worth the money
• Private schools are better than public school
• YOU HAVE TO HAVE [whatever]
• You absolutely MUST have the biggest goddamned wedding that you can pay for. Not afford, mind you, but pay for
• Being poor is the best way to be creative
• Hanging out in bars is fun
• Workaday life is slavery, not working is freedom

I think, in time, I'll tackle each one of these with a blog post. I'll call the series Money Myths, or something else just as hokey. Well, maybe I just won't call it anything, and just label it Personal Finance.

The point is, we bought in, and we paid up, but with other people's money. Here's some things we can't do, because the long money is too tight:

• Start a family. I know, I know, plenty of people have had families with much less money and much more debt, but our goal is to get solid before we have kids
• Buy a house. Debt to income ration = too damned high! [insert meme here]
• Work as a teacher. This one is mine, not Kim's. I'm not taking a 50% pay cut at a time when the benefits that make teaching even remotely attractive are being cut across the country
• Buy health insurance for Kim. My work covers mine, hers doesn't.

That's not going to stop us, though, from living in our own way. We've worked it out so that, while we're digging out of the 10-year hole, we've got a pretty good life. No more bullet-points, but we build furniture and other projects, I write, we work out and go for walks. It's all quite fun fun. But over it hangs this hideous dead cloud, this idea that old age will be 10 years closer by the time I'm able to even start saving a significant amount towards retirement.


What do we do? We follow the Get Rich Slowly ideal: Try to get more money, while trying to spend less of it. Still, without some kind of major change, we're looking at 10 more years. Minimum.

We're here. Let's get started.

I'm 33. Kim's only 26, which is good for her. Yeah, I've made some mistakes in my financial life, got a Master's Degree that don't add up to a hill o' beans, rolled around in too much debt. So I'm behind the eight ball, under the gun.


Not only that, but we just got married (more posts on that to follow, to be sure), and just moved 2,500 miles across the country. So it's there I'd like to start.

Seattle is a beautiful city, with a vibrant EVERYTHING. Seriously. And the climate is perfect for a guy like me. Not too much sun (almost none in the winter), but no snow to speak of, either. Apart from the occasional freak storm in the dead of winter. The people are, for the most part, great. I felt safe at virtually all times, which is not normal for me. And I started learning Kung Fu there. If you're in Seattle, check out Seattle Wing Chun, on 12th near Pike. It's the best thing that I experienced in Seattle, and I had a lot of good times over the year that I was there.

So why leave?

We looked around and decided that we just didn't need... so much of everything. It's all there, at our fingertips, and we didn't really partake. I mean, I loved the tacos at the Fremont Market and met a bunch of people at Reddit game night (and fell in love with a little game called Dominion). But in the end, we wanted a simpler life.

Seattle was good to us financially, too. Sure, we took out a 1900 dollar student loan (paid off 1 year later with our entire tax return) to put Kim through a couple of classes, but by the time we'd left we had a pretty good emergency fund, paid off the credit cards, and were rolling about 1200 bucks a month into our debt snowball. We both thought we were in a pretty good place to move back to northeast Ohio, where it would be cheaper and we'd have family within driving distance.

Of course, we were wrong. The issue wasn't the move, which cost about 1500 bucks, but the living on no income that got to us. We were no longer in a city, so Kim needed a car. We paid cash, because we'd learn to hate being in debt, but that cut down our savings even more.

We exhausted our credit cards, maxed out our line of credit, which we had just started to put a dent into, and basically spent every penny making life work.

Four months later, and we're just about where we feel comfortable. The move nearly broke us, but we're doing better. Staying afloat, paddling toward shore, but still in very, very deep water.

The future of KillOurDebt.com

In the coming weeks I'll be adding widgets and sidebars, explaining the breakdown of our debt situation. We're not soliciting donations just to help out, more like payments for cool content. Kim is an aspiring food writer and I dabble in short stories and poetry. We both enjoy hands-on projects that we get from DIY shows, blogs, and our own sense of style. We've learned a thing or two about money, our priorities, and where we'd like to be.

Basically, we'll be sharing our creative lives.

Aside from posts that examine the state of our debt, which will no doubt include some summary of the donations received, this is the only post where I'll mention donations, since that's the goal of the blog, but not the content.

If you enjoy something, we're already happy. If you donate, happier still. If you leave a comment, or link us, or tell a friend, happiest of all.

Thanks for reading.
- Michael.