Whatchu talkin' about, Mark Twain?

"Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination."
- Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger

Gangsta.

It's surprising how timeless certain ideas can be. As a writer, this immortality is both dis- and encouraging: On the one hand, it seems that all the wisdom has been found, wrought, digested, and regurgitated in "Inspirational Quote-a-Day" calendars. But on the other hand, we have these wonderfully knowledgeable guides to teach us things they learned the hard way. And who are we to balk at that? Especially since we can then take those lessons and build on them, make them relevant to ourselves and modern society. After all, Twain couldn't have anticipated what social media would do to happiness quotients, or how the Internet would render sanity an unnecessary prerequisite to amassing thousands of readers (or Twitter followers, but I contend that no one on Twitter is truly sane). (P.S. Follow me on Twitter!)

But Twain was obviously getting at something with this sanity/happiness thing, and the fact that we pluck this one sentence out of a book and put it on t-shirts and coffee mugs speaks to one of two things: either we're rocking the bookworm fashion, or we are able to read between the lines and apply this lesson to our own lives.

Do me a favor and think some more about the Twain quote.

"Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination."

What was your initial reaction? More than likely you considered it, recalling the adage "ignorance is bliss," and then what? Did you dismiss it? After all, it makes madness sound like not such a bad way to spend a life, but you probably don't consider yourself truly insane. Or do you? How do we define insanity in various contexts? How much does this idea apply to something in your own life? Should we all just give up now?

I read an article today titled "30 Lessons Learned by 30." Despite being six years from the dreaded 30 (I hear it's not that bad!), I found myself immediately applying these one-liner lessons to my own life, evaluating how well I perform them on a daily basis, making mental notes to try harder to prioritize relationships, to be grateful and giving and loving, not to judge others. It's easy to roll your eyes at such well-meaning advice, to resist acknowledging that an entire life's lesson fits so easily into ten words. But understanding that lesson requires some background knowledge, some empathy with the situation. It's hard to argue with maxims like "Honesty is the best policy in relationships. The truth will come out eventually" -- but if you don't have any experience with dishonesty in relationships, then this means nothing to you. It is through life experience that we're able to boil down lessons into easy-to-digest tidbits. It's the reason cliches work and refuse to die: at some point, we realize they're all true.

This is also why grandmothers have so many things embroidered on pillows and hand-painted on adorable signs hanging around their house. Aging brings an understanding of and trust in digestible wisdom. And it's why young people, no matter how smart they are, will always be stupid: we simply don't have the years to back up what we claim to know. Experience trumps every other form of knowledge, always. Take it from a (still relatively stupid) young person who would love nothing more than to write a book that establishes a cliche that winds up on a coffee mug. It's the American dream, I tell ya.

I should mention that the opening quote was said by the main character of the unfinished and posthumously published novel The Mysterious Stranger. That character happens to be the nephew of Satan, and he spends the book ruminating on "the damned human race." It's heady stuff. The character goes on to say:

"No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those. The few that imagine themselves kings or gods are happy, the rest are no happier than the sane. Of course, no man is entirely in his right mind at any time, but I have been referring to the extreme cases. I have taken from this man that trumpery thing which the race regards as a Mind; I have replaced his tin life with a silver-gilt fiction; you see the result - and you criticize! I said I would make him permanently happy, and I have done it. I have made him happy by the only means possible to his race - and you are not satisfied!" He heaved a discouraged sigh, and said, "It seems to me that this race is hard to please."

No kidding, dude.

Twenty-somethings: Choosing a Lifestyle

So many lifestyle choices, so little time.

A quotation from New York Times columnist David Brooks as the commencement speaker for the Brandeis University 2011 graduating class:

"If you are like most college grads, you will spend the next decade of your lives moving from city to city, school to school and from job to job experimenting with different careers and lifestyles," he said. "While you do this, by the way, your parents will slowly go crazy. Everything will be contingent and uncertain."

As Brooks adeptly points out, our generation -- that is, the people born basically in the 80's and now spanning the powerful 21 to 31 demographic -- is behaving differently. Part of it is a necessary reaction to the economy and the job market; we must be willing to move for jobs. We become transient. I, who was raised by transients who wandered a full 3,000 miles from their birthplace, have resolutely made myself a home in Chicago. I extol its wonders -- lovely parks, Midwest attitude, North Ave Whole Foods -- while continually discovering new joys (Lake Shore Drive running path) and setbacks (pee smell that permeates the loop in the summer). It's a big city and I'm young/hyperactive and I like it here.

I know in my heart I probably won't stay in Chicago forever. There's too much of the world to see. I may leave for a few years and then return for good -- I'd like that, actually -- but I belong to the generational mindset that home is where I charge my cell phone. It's that attitude that has allowed my peers and classmates to fling themselves around the world -- Amsterdam, London, the Ukraine, not to mention Atlanta and LA and Portland and so forth. This, our twenties, is the time for adventure and experimentation.

With my location settled for now, and as I hazily hobble toward some sort of career path as a grad student, Brooks would probably agree that I can focus on experimenting with lifestyles. It's like trying on costumes. Do I want to be a jock or a bookworm? Should I spend my lunch hour socializing or exercising? What statement does my hairstyle make? In what clubs and boards and music ensembles will my time investment be worthwhile? Is there a job I'd want where a tribal neck tattoo would be inappropriate; and if so, how about an eagle and the U.S. flag emblazoned across my back? These, I submit, are the important lifestyle decisions of the typical (that is to say, self-absorbed American) twenty-something: It's about how you spend your time and what image you're projecting to the world and how true a snapshot that is of who you really are. It's why we're all so obsessed with Facebook and Twitter; social media is another foundation for building and maintaining a reputation. It's like being in high school again, but with slightly less naïveté and hopefully better hair.

Why not?

This year I have two cousins graduating from high school, five siblings graduating from various elementary-age grades (my twin brothers just finished kindergarten!), and a handful of friends finishing up Bachelor's and Master's degrees. Meanwhile even more of us are still trudging along, sorting through term papers and auditions and manuscripts, the terminal diploma months or years or decades away.

But the toil is the equivalent of the journey, especially if that journey (studying writing) has no set destination ("writing the great American novel" is so twentieth century). So all there is left to do is apologize to our parents, promise them we're happy and well-adjusted and thriving no matter what lifestyle we're attempting this week, and ask them to pretty please mail just one more check. Last one, I promise.

--
P.S. Completely unrelated, but you should check out my side-project with my buddy Kevin Rinz titled New Age Whitman. The summer blog/Twitter (@NewAgeWhitman) will culminate in a raucous drinking event in August. I'm really excited for the power trip that is ordering interns to reconstruct the eastern seaboard using empty Bud light cans. Follow along in the fun!

How far can I take meta if I blog about Scre4m?

I'm not a big horror movie fan. My roommate is, and so I find myself stumbling into a Saturday afternoon viewing of a slasher flick with more regularity than ever before. It's pleasant; just yesterday we watched Crispin Glover slice up the standard set of collegians in a forest somewhere. (The most memorable thing from that one was his strange, backwoods hick accent.)

Despite my lack of enthusiasm for the genre in general, I have always been a huge fan of the Scream movies. The second and third installments lacked a bit of the bravado and originality of the first, but I loved the concept. They're horror films made for the horror film nerds. Though I am not a horror film nerd, per se, I am a nerd in other ways, and I dig the self-referential nature of the movies. The humor in the recognition of parody makes the gruesome death scenes worth it, and the archetypal characters are designed to allow you to see the fun in human death -- not an easy feat when considered objectively. Why the hell do we enjoy watching people killed on film? That's sick, people. Just sick.

That said, I was totally on board when Scre4m was announced. The first Scream movie came out in 1996 and spent approximately seven years on a recorded VHS tape in my room, watched and rewound an average of twice a month for the duration. So hell yes we were going to Scre4m on opening weekend. It would be like a return to childhood. A classic formulaic plotline, executed perfectly. (I have an admittedly eager/gushy opinion of Wes Craven.)

So tonight my friend Shara and I went to see it and I'll tell you, dear Reader, we were not disappointed. Scre4m is a masterpiece. It may even be better than the first movie, but that may be because now the franchise is such a powerhouse in the genre -- in Hollywood in general -- that it can afford the most impressive cast including originals Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette as well as bit roles for the pseudo-famous and modern hot young actresses Anna Paquin, Kristen Bell, Hayden Panettiere, and Emma Roberts. The big budget nature, which usually kills horror movies because they're blown so out of proportion (providing material for the decidedly less witty and more base-humor-dependent Scary Movie series), is instead spent on making the newest Scream sequel the perfect archetype. It's like Wes Craven is actually attempting to make the exact model on which we should base all future horror movies. He does everything right -- tension-building, semi-memorable characters whose deaths don't break our hearts, and breaking the rules that are set up within the structure of the movie to glorious effect. (The scene with Kristen Bell and Anna Paquin is, by far, my very favorite. I mean, shit you guys. It's genius.)

Seeing Scre4m in a theater on a Sunday night felt like being back in high school. The bored and haggard concessions kid, the trendy urbanites spending their parents' money on candy and video games, the groups of freshly driver's-licensed teens walking in pods of five or more. And of course, the archetypal, self-referential horror movie, where we watch characters do exactly what we're doing right now. It's all about killing the horror film nerds who are sitting there, watching a horror movie. Holy crap that's us you guys!!!! SO META.

And there's the heart of the matter. The great thing about the 2011 version that may push it beyond the 1996 original is the presence today of the word to describe this entire phenomenon: meta. Courteney Cox's character even uses the term in the movie, tacking on a line about how it's "what the kids are calling it" or something like that. Urban Dictionary defines "meta" as such, and gives an example:

"A term, especially in art, used to characterize something that is characteristically self-referential."

"So I just saw this film about these people making a movie, and the movie they were making was about the film industry..."

"Dude, that's so meta. Stop before my brain explodes."

It's like the concept and this horror franchise were made for each other. And the use of technology -- cell phones, texting, even live web streaming -- is perfectly in line with how this generation is living. No one was tweeting the Woodsboro murders in this one, but it's a safe bet that will be integrated into the script for Number Five.

The films are scary, as one of the characters points out, because it could happen. The audience are the potential victims. There's even a scene in Scre4m where a bunch of teenagers throw a party knowing that it's a likely target for the killer because that's what comes next in the horror film stereotype: a bloodbath at a party. You don't have to be a bad person in order to be killed by a psychopath, the movies tell us -- you just have to have the bad luck to attend the same high school or live in the same town. Of course you can help your situation if you remain a virgin. And don't run up the stairs when running out the front door is even an option. It's common sense, people.

As soon as this movie about horror movie fans being slaughtered was complete, Shara and I laughed about the fact that we had to go into a dark parking garage -- something that doesn't go so well for one of the characters in the movie we'd just seen. As I dropped her off a block away from her apartment, I wished her a safe walk -- not out of the ordinary for midnight on a busy street in Chicago, but with a bit more paranoia on the edge of my voice. I drove home alone, car doors locked, mulling over the movie and deciding how to best describe why I'd enjoyed it so much.

I parked my car behind my building and walked up the stairs to the back door of my third floor apartment, scanning my surroundings as I took out my keys. I'm always taken aback when I see a neighbor on their porch or something I don't notice right away, but no one was out. I realized then that I was missing the key that opened the back door. I stood there in the dark, shuffling around in my pockets, not wanting to wake up my roommates but feeling, you know, a bit on edge. Time to not be outside anymore. But I was locked out. What great timing, my grim imagination said.

Luckily my roommate was awake to let me in. I went straight to my computer to overshare my life on social media, as my generation is wont to do, first on Facebook and then on my blog. I'm not normally one to write reviews, but this felt right. It felt meta. I mean, the point of these Scream movies is to take the suspense to the next level, and the chosen vehicle is this millennial concept. It's original because it breaks new ground and scares us in the exact same way it's always scared us, but we still didn't see it coming. We're outsmarted, and it's one of the rare times that feels good. By writing about it, I become part of the story.

It's successful because you can't walk out of that movie and not see the potential for your own situation to suddenly turn into your own fatality. It's haunting. As I sit in my room typing this, it's raining outside. Middle of the night. My door is cracked so my cat doesn't wake me up when she tries to get in at 3am. It also means someone could enter my room silently. I locked the back door and found my key. It's actually sort of comforting to talk to the world via my blog like this though. With all this meta, horror-movie-watchers-being-killed-stuff flying around in my brain, at least you guys know I haven't been murd

@MayorEmanuel's Twitter Picaresque

The story's a few weeks old now, but The Atlantic published the most complete and impressive piece on the @MayorEmanuel phenomenon of the last few months. They also happened to break the identity of the Twitter feed's owner -- Punk Planet founder Dan Sinker.

The entire article is worth the read, but what really sets it apart is the analysis of how Sinker used Twitter to create a whole new method of storytelling. Atlantic editor Alexis Madrigal compares the 1,942 tweets (about 30,000 words) to a real-time picaresque novel, noting how the immediacy of the content allowed the reader to experience the raw composing process: "Writing happens in fits and starts, so the finished product should look that way, too. And that's the thing, with a Twitter narrative, your lines come stamped with a time and the kind of software used to send the message. You can't conceal the process of writing, so you have to learn to love that transparency."

Twitter was the only place this could have happened. We'll talk about @MayorEmanuel for awhile, but those who didn't experience it first-hand, as it was unfolding, won't have the same visceral attachment. Madrigal again: "@MayorEmanuel is a new genre that is native to Twitter. When you try to turn his adventures into traditional short stories or poems, they lose the crucial element of time. The episode where the mayor gets stuck in the sewer pipes of City Hall just does not work when the 15 tweets aren't spaced out over 7 hours. It's all over too fast to be satisfying. There's no suspense." It was that real-time storyline that made @MayorEmanuel not just a funny side story to the election, but a revolutionary discovery in modern storytelling.

At the end of the article, Madrigal posts some of the "goodbye" tweets from @MayorEmanuel's many fans, and one expresses pity for those who weren't there to experience the phenomenon: "@ourmaninchicago: I genuinely feel sorry for anyone who didn't watch @MayorEmanuel unfold." The sentiment, no doubt, is widely shared, and indicative of the uncharted frontier we've found. The experience was surreal, a chance to watch (along with tens of thousands of others) a real-time fiction manifest itself in one Firefox tab, while the other tabs were tuned to reality. Everything was linked, everything was happening at once, and we all watched it together. I'd even go so far as to say that @MayorEmanuel had a positive influence on the Chicago mayoral election by focusing more attention on it, particularly in regards to young people. It was amusement, but it also served a public service.

Twitter can create a forum to watch a brand new, incredibly engaging form of storytelling -- a type of writing that is truly contained in the 21st century. It is a formula that can without doubt be recreated. Now the question is...who will write the next great Twitter picaresque?

The (Twitter) Discourse

copyright DailyPic @ flickr (http://flickr.com/photos/dailypic/)

We talk in education classes about a "discourse," or the idea that a community creates its own tailored language, complete with standard conventions, jargon, even inside jokes. Every group has a discourse: academia, Chicago south side urbanites, Big Island locals, Wall Street veterans, junior high science teachers, even the Northwestern University Marching Band, to name a few. Each group speaks a lexicon that is understood by its members, often to the exclusion of outsiders. (NUMB makes a rather strong case, actually.)

One of the goals of education, specifically when teaching writing, is to introduce students to many different kinds of discourses. The hope is that we go beyond what the student already knows and literally expand their world by showing them the lenses belonging to people who are different from them. Usually this begins with the simple task of making sure everyone is on the same page with standard English -- and often that's where we sputter. A communication barrier exists between a student and a teacher that cannot speak the same language, or cannot recognize what creates the differences. That's where creative and compassionate teaching comes in.

But there is so much to teach. We want students of language to appreciate the many ways that language is used, from stuffy academic journals to newspaper articles to cryptic blogs to Facebook wall posts to grocery lists. We want them to know why and how all of this content is created and used; who's doing it and for what reasons. Literacy -- fluency in a discourse -- cannot exist without that understanding of audience, purpose and especially subject.

My latest attempt at learning a new discourse is Twitter. I was familiar with the basic premise -- 140 character max, the concept and usage of the "re-tweet," even the many opportunities for #hashtaghumor. As a n00b of the discourse, I've tread carefully -- I don't want to look silly in front of my new pals, or new connections to old pals. I've learned that pushing the "re-tweet" button, for example, does not allow you to add your own comment; to do so, you have to copy-paste, throw in an @[source of original Tweet], and so forth. These things become natural to us the more we participate in a given discourse. In no time, I'll be throwing hash tags around like nobody's business, holding inherently disjointed conversations with my fellow Tweeters (Twitterers? Twitters? Twits? I still have things to learn).

The hardest part, really, is taking the leap and attempting to join a new community. The learning curve can be intimidating, the fear of failure or embarrassment paralyzing. It's one of the reasons that it's so hard to get students unfamiliar with the academic discourse to trust that they can handle the material. If the community they come from doesn't value canonical authors, the likelihood that the student will care about James Joyce or Shakespeare is pretty much nil. They're irrelevant, even trivial, in the practical life of the student. And it's hard to learn a new discourse -- there's always the fear of not passing, of your peers and teachers seeing through your act and knowing you're a phony.

I finally understand why some of my teachers were so great, and some so disappointing.

This non-traditional, five-paragraph (plus a stinger) essay brought to you by almost 20 years of sometimes great, sometimes terrible, sometimes public, sometimes private, often dull, always under-funded schooling.

Caving to the Twitterverse

Narcissism incarnate.

I was working as an intern at PC Magazine when Twitter really took hold of the media in 2007. Almost everyone around me that was hip and technologically savvy -- so, you know, pretty much everyone at Ziff Davis -- jumped on the bandwagon. I did not.

I was a naysayer, a non-believer. Everything was moving too fast for me to keep up. It was a trend, a fad, a way for narcissists to project more of themselves into the world, regardless of whether we want to read about their every thought or breakfast decision. It'd go away once people realized that it was basically useless, a haven for the self-obsessed. Does this sound familiar?

Well, I underestimated American society. And, also, I was wrong.

Twitter is a great tool, particularly for a journalist. Writers spend the time we aren't writing wondering whether anyone is reading what we're writing, and scheming new ways to catch new and more eyes, to create some reverberation in the massive expanse of the media void. It operates on the same premise as Facebook in that it's completely composed of what people put into it of themselves. And what we've put into it -- breaking news, pop culture, cupcake trucks -- is astounding. Twitter may have started as an overshare device, but it's becoming a cultural necessity.

As I embark on a concerted effort to get published more regularly as a freelance writer, my plan is to use Twitter as a professional resource, an RSS feed of links and (hopefully coherent, relevant and engaging) thoughts. I will forever be overshadowed by Kanye West, but hey, follow me @britpetersen. I could use the company.