A Cautionary Debate

Currently, there is a debate going on in the NASCAR world of whether the sport needs more cautions to make the racing exciting, and why there are fewer cautions. As far as why the races are not exciting for the fans I think is summed up best by Jimmie Johnson. He said, basically, that you need to be a half second or at the least a third of a second faster than the other driver to pass. If you're .1 or .2 faster, you can't make the pass. NASCAR has, for the most part, been running the same car since 2007, almost five years old. While not as bad as how long IndyCar ran their same car, it is pretty apparent that the teams have pretty much figured out these cars.

NASCAR has gone a long way in recent years with making the point system easier to understand, and the Chase a little more exciting for those in the 10-20 ranks in points. As with ABC and ESPN having a terrible airing of the first 2012 IndyCar race, it is possible that a race, for fans at home, can be boring solely because the broadcast station is doing a piss poor job. However, for those who watch DirecTV's HotPass, the reality is that the racing really is more boring.

Peter Dinklage: A Huge Actor

Much like the black-face of old, dwarves and small people have only gotten comedic roles that are typically at their own expense. For one actor in particular, his ability for great acting makes the audience forget his height and focus only on his character. Perhaps one of the most notable big actors who is small is Warwick Davis. He is most famous for his role as Willow, and most recently the Harry Potter movies, but I also remember him from The 10th Kingdom.

This has lead to Peter Dinklage who has become a huge star winning a Golden Globe award for his role in Game of Thrones. I did not start watching Game of Thrones until season 2 had started, and all I had heard about Peter's role was how awesome the character was. I soon found out indeed how awesome he is. He plays a dwarf, but his character is written and acted with such depth and personal history that for much of his scenes, I forget how tall he is.

As for Peter, himself, I had seen him previously in the hilarious UK film Death at a Funeral. In Game of Thrones, I find that Peter's character is perhaps my favorite. It is a testament to Peter Dinklage of his acting ability to play a role so well. It is my hope that in what he does will open doors for other actors such as himself to get roles that are written not for comedy, especially at their expense, but roles that have depth and character. I think Peter himself feels the same way considering his acceptance speech at the Golden Globes to bring awareness to another small person, Martin Henderson, who was injured when someone threw him. That kind of behavior treats them as less than human, and Peter Dinklage, through his acting, has shown audiences that they can act bigger and better than someone twice his height.

This is War!

It is an information war, it is a war for our lives, a war for our future, a war for those have died needlessly, and it is a war that every person, no matter their color, creed, religion, sex, or ideology, should stand together for freedom. Not just for Americans, but for everyone around the world. Freedom must be upheld in one place before it can spread. Our Founding Fathers took less shit from their government and rose up to declare independence, not just for them, but so that all people of the world might know a free life.

They tried the peaceful route, they tried to petition the government, they tried to find any other way but war. It was not up to the Founding Fathers that there should be war, it was the oppressive tyrannical government that wanted war. They refused to give up their power. And today, our oppressors refuse to give up power. Whether they are Clinton taking our guns away, or Bush taking our civil liberties away, or Barry Satoro who has declared war on the American people, we do not want war. They want war. They want war with other countries, and they want war with anyone who loves freedom.

White-Wash Explained

How to spot a white-wash on television: They propose a theory about a certain topic. This is followed by numerous problems or falsehoods in the "official" story. It is concluded with one issue that supposedly "debunks" the theory. However, most audience members will thus forget all of the problems that were brought up. None of those problems with the story are ever explained.

Writing a Scene

I came across this minor problem that started as a major problem, and the epiphany I had allowed me to get past my writer's block. To be brief, I could not get past a scene which was pretty basic. I was at Point A, and I had all of these ideas for where Point B, C, and D would be. The problem was connecting the dots. The epiphany I had was "just focus on the scene." I had a lot of ideas of what the character would go through, how the other people in his life would play a role, shape and change his life. This is all well and good, but it detracts from the scene. A lot of it goes back to film making in which scene after scene makes up a movie, and events may happen outside of the current scene. The key is to focus on this one scene.

Female Characters

By and large, I write female characters as being strong and independent. I write the males as the same typically, but just as two alpha males clash, the male and female characters can clash in the same way. Much like the structure of a sentence, two independent sentences can have a lot in common, but it takes something like a conjunction. It allows two strong characters to have a middle ground where there can be cooperation and mutual respect.

Whether the character is male or female, to have a character that is helpless or weak conveys a sense of "dead weight." That is not to say that a character can change from being weak and helpless to being a strong and independent character. The archetypal "damsel in distress" serves no purpose in a story other than a reward for a hero. Simply stepping outside of that and looking for another reward for the hero negates the need for the weak character, who presumably is stagnant in its shallowness.

I have had women characters who are expert snipers, genius level intelligence, trained in martial arts, programmed to be more human than human, or overcome tragedy with the strength and will to fight. Everyone is good at something; I choose to exemplify, in my characters, what any human can do.