Building Castles on the Beach

I've been distracted lately and haven't been able to write full blog posts. I like to write complete, coherent essays for each post instead of a list of nonlinear or unconnected thoughts or ramblings. I also don't think of this blog as a journal where I can just tell you what happened today. But recently I haven't found the time or, really, the inspiration to write a complete post. Case in point: School has been out for over a week and I still don't know what to write about it. It was a strange year at my job, what with me taking off the equivalent of a summer vacation in the middle of the school year to be a stay-at-home dad, not to mention a tiring and frustrating year due to the country's current view that teachers are lazy, ungrateful water-flies . I hope to be able to make something of it soon, so I can post an end-of-year review. I somehow have found the time to add a couple of tabs at the top of this page. Check out the new About Me tab. Fascinating ...

It's about a boy dancing or something. Tonight my fifteen-year-old daughter is out with a friend to attend the musical Billy Elliot at the world famous Denver Center for the Performing Arts. And perhaps this sounds like a non sequitur, but this makes me feel like a better father. A few points of explanation: If you've been paying special attention to the information about my family in this blog, you will know that I have two daughters,15 and 11, who live with their mother in Greeley, which is about an hour's drive north of where I live in the Denver area. I don't see them nearly enough. I haven't mentioned them much in this blog. Most of the personal family posting is about my new son because he pretty much has consumed my life for the past six months. Plus, my girls occasionally read this stuff and I hate to embarrass them. (That last part is patently untrue, but the fact is our living situation is a ticklish subject and it's difficult to write about ...

Today I want to direct your attention to my latest book review over on my Shelfari to your left. Just hover over the book and see my review. I read the YA Sci-Fi tale called The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex. It's a pleasant read and a tad silly, but when I read these kinds of books I always find myself thinking that I could write this if I wanted to. Also, I've added a gadget from Playlist.com at the very bottom of my blog page. I decided for now to forgo the automatic startup of the music because I think it's a bit annoying when I open a blog and someone else's idea of good music infiltrates my ears, but if you want to open yourself up to one of the loveliest sounds on earth, scroll down and click play to consider Elizabeth Fraser's divine voice with some tunes from the Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil. You're welcome. Lastly, I've posted a new piece of fiction on my author site brentwescott.com . It's a story I originally wrote and publis...

I recently reread Hamlet in order  to teach it to my class. As I was reading the play this time (I have read it before), I was struck by some language that seems especially apt. You have seen or heard most of these words before, but they have fallen out of favor in our effort to dumb ourselves down to as few vocabulary words as possible. As a fan of British English, I want to celebrate these expressions in an effort to promote their use among the general populace of English speakers. Of course, some of this is just poetic language, but we could all add a dose of poetry into our everyday patois. Language from the sequel, Hamlet 2 : "Writing is hard." "He may not, as unvalu'd persons do/ Carve for himself" (I.iii.19-20) Laertes is explaining to his sister, Ophelia, that Hamlet is of royal blood and isn't able to choose for himself who he will marry. I like the image of having to carve out a single option from the morass of choices we all face. I'm g...

Blogger lost the entire post I wrote yesterday. My mistake for wanting to revise it later before posting. Because then Blogger shut down and stole my writing. I hope they feel good about themselves, the cutpurses. (That insult, by the way, is an allusion to what my post was all about. And you might never know what it was because I hate recreating writing ideas from scratch.) So instead of reading more here, you should check out an old post you've not read before. Or check out my author website for some fiction. www.brentwescott.com UPDATE: Two hours later, my lost post has returned. I suppose I must have shamed Blogger into returning my stolen merchandise. I'm glad I didn't start to rewrite it. Still, who knows what's will happen in the next two hours.

This card opens the movie The Breakfast Club . It's practically a perfect movie and one that, along with Catcher in the Rye , should be studied by every high school student before they graduate. But deconstructing John Hughes's films, or J.D. Salinger's prose for that matter, is not the subject of this post. When I was 17, I knew everything. I knew what was funny and interesting and right and wrong. I was cool and creative and knew exactly what I was going to do with my life. Immune to the consultations of those who would spit on me, I was quite aware of what I was going through. Now I'm 40, and I know very little. I am none of those things any more. I don't know what life will bring any more than I know the price of tea in China. No need to worry that I'm in the midst of a midlife crisis, though. I just get nostalgic every year in May and hark back to a time when, as complicated as it seemed then, change was easy and everything seemed possible. So I lik...

Announcements! Announcements! Annou-ounnce-ments! A terrible death to die. A terrible death to die. A terrible death to be talked to death. A terrible death to die! I learned that when I was eight or nine, at the only scout camp I ever went to. I only made it to Webelo. But I remember that chant. We were all supposed to yell it out whenever someone said they had an announcement. I still yell it in my head every single time anyone ever says that, ever. There must have been a lot of announcements at that camp. That said, I have two announcements to make. (Go ahead and chant. I'll wait.) I have made live two new websites bearing my name. The first is www.brentwescott.com . I am officially my own URL. Go ahead and Google me. I might not be first on the list yet, but I'm there somewhere. www.brentwescott.com is my author website. It's true. I am an author. I've even written a novel. The title is Trendy Poseurs Go Home . It began as my Master's thesis in grad ...