What to write…

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Colleen

If a golfer loses the ability to putt during tournament play, he or she is said to have developed a case of the yips. In baseball, if a player can’t get a hit game after game after game, he is said to be in a slump.  And when a writer struggles with putting pen to paper — or more likely fingers to keys — they are said to have writer’s block.  Well ladies and gentlemen… I have a major case of writer’s block.

Man, writing a blog is hard work! My mind is asking itself a thousand questions.  What should I write about?  Should I write a story based on research or everyday happenings?  Do I make it emotional or rational?  How do I help the reader visualize the topic?  Is what I have to say even important enough to share with others?  After stumbling through these types of questions and not getting a clear response, it never fails that my mind falls into a cloudy state where even a lighthouse spotlight couldn’t see through the fog.  During these times, my mind is blank and I can’t come up with one simple idea that could set me on the right path.

How do professional bloggers do this?  I have one very enthusiastic and emotion-driven friend in Bellingham, Washington who has been writing a blog entitled “Aesthetic Voyage” for the last year and a half.  Every single day, this “liver of life” types up a story, a scene, or a conversation that he came across in his day while also attaching a photo that inspired his meanderings.  He even goes a step further and includes a song as well as a quote that moved him that day.  He does this 365 days a year.  How does he do it and how can each one be as inspirational as the next?

Then there is my consultant/author/speaker friend in Los Angeles whose words are focused on helping us change the way we look at the work that surrounds us.  Every week he posts a new, witty, logical, and well informed article on his blog that lets the reader ponder ways to improved not only their work life but to further their perceptions of their inner being.  The way he discusses each topic is articulate, clear, upbeat, researched and consistent.

These are two different types of bloggers with two different styles of writing.  What do they have in common?  Their heads both seem to be filled with clever ideas.  How do I open up my mind and become a little more like them?  Wait a second…I just wrote about blogging!  Perhaps these blogs were just the inspiration I needed to help the haze lift.  I think I am now prepared to begin my journey into the world of writing.

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The Heart of “The Hunger Games”

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Richard

The Hunger Games was a very entertaining movie. On its own legs as a movie, it fulfilled all the things I generally want out of a film I’m going to bother to see in a theater. While some have criticized the use of shaky-cam (and, honestly, it got a bit much here and there for me, as well), the use was effective and did the neat trick of minimizing the actual on-screen gore needed while maximizing the horror of the violence being done. I appreciate film-makers who use the visual tools of the medium that well.

And, to make a finer point, it did a great job of adapting a story that was very much designed for a completely different medium.

In an age where it’s just logical to assume that every hit book (or comic book, or video game, or blog or news article or internet meme or, God help us, board game) is going to get a movie made out of it eventually, it’s easy to forget just how incredibly different the mediums of print and movie actually are. Many people who are fans of a particular book or series of books go into the inevitable movie version expecting to have a similar, if not completely the same, experience that they had when reading the books, but really, that’s just not actually possible. Continue reading →

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Oh, the traffic conditions you’ll see!

Posted on April 15, 2012 by Richard

Freeways sometimes crack me up. More precisely, people on freeways crack me up. Traffic can drive people nuts, and the causes of traffic often require people to be nuts well before they’re on the road. Nevermind the occasional piss-poor driver weaving in and out of lanes like a pinball, eventually clipping a wall and causing a collision, and messing up the commutes of thousands of other people, there’s also the simple group insanity of 50,000 people using 50,000 cars to use a road designed for 10,000 cars at most.

Take the 134. An artery between Pasadena and the San Fernando Valley, it’s driven by a lot of people on their way to or from points along the 101 or the 5 or the 210 or the 2. It’s an alternate route to get to Hollywood without going through Downtown; it’s the major way to traverse Glendale and Eagle Rock and southern Burbank; it is the gateway to the north end of Griffith Park and the wonderful Los Angeles Zoo and Dr Sheldon Cooper’s favorite place in the whole world, Travel Town.
It’s the archetype of freeway architecture, all wide lanes and curing, almost flying interchange bridges. It curls along the bottom of the San Rafael Hills, giving a spectacular view all the way past Mt Washington and Montecito Heights, to the skyline of Downtown. On a clear day, you can see Century City. As freeway goes, it’s a good one.

It takes a lot to cause traffic on the 134. And by “it takes a lot”, I mean there are many and varied ways that traffic happens on this damn road. For instance, it might be, oh, let’s say, a fiery flaming torch of fire:

Other days, it might not take an inferno of doom. It might be something like, oh, who knows, maybe, say, a rainbow?

Seriously. Huge amounts of rain pour down over the whole area (which can often cause traffic as Los Angelinos are sometimes terrified by the concept of water falling from the sky), and what winds up actually causing traffic on the venerable 134 Freeway? A rainbow. I could not make this stuff up, more’s the pity.

To be fair, though, it was a faint double-rainbow, which is pretty awesome.

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Incoming

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Richard

Been a busy couple of weeks here at MoonHill Productions. Colleen and Junie have been busy building a documentary feature film as well as budgeting out our own next project. I’ve been writing two scripts and taking the first steps in expanding the business.

And, more to the point here, I’ve been exploring the joys of long-dose antibiotics and barium swallows (the most awesome type of radiologically-contrasting birds). Nothing all that serious, but plenty enough to make me miserable and incapable of figuring out how to get the automated post uploading to work.

In other words, the documentary is humming along, the fever has backed off, and a ton of new posts are in the pipe.

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Reprinted Post: A Doctor on Transvaginal Ultrasounds

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Richard
From John Scalzi’s blog “Whatever”, I give you an excellent piece written by an Anonymous Doctor:
—

Where Is The Physician Outrage?

Right. Here.

I’m speaking, of course, about the required-transvaginal-ultrasound thing that seems to be the flavor-of-the-month in politics.

I do not care what your personal politics are. I think we can all agree that my right to swing my fist ends where your face begins.

I do not feel that it is reactionary or even inaccurate to describe an unwanted, non-indicated transvaginal ultrasound as “rape”. If I insert ANY object into ANY orifice without informed consent, it is rape. And coercion of any kind negates consent, informed or otherwise.

In all of the discussion and all of the outrage and all of the Doonesbury comics, I find it interesting that we physicians are relatively silent.

After all, it’s our hands that will supposedly be used to insert medical equipment (tools of HEALING, for the sake of all that is good and holy) into the vaginas of coerced women.

Fellow physicians, once again we are being used as tools to screw people over. This time, it’s the politicians who want to use us to implement their morally reprehensible legislation. They want to use our ultrasound machines to invade women’s bodies, and they want our hands to be at the controls. Coerced and invaded women, you have a problem with that? Blame us evil doctors. We are such deliciously silent scapegoats.

It is our responsibility, as always, to protect our patients from things that would harm them. Therefore, as physicians, it is our duty to refuse to perform a medical procedure that is not medically indicated. Any medical procedure. Whatever the pseudo-justification.

It’s time for a little old-fashioned civil disobedience. Continue reading →

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