Left to my own devices

      It's that time of year again!   Pretty much on schedule (and a day after the Academy Awards ), I'm rolling out the 2011 Matt Awards . These are the annual awards I dole-out for films that have impressed & impacted me most during the previous year. This also marks the 15th installment of the Matt Awards ! So, without further ado, let's see what the top choices were in film for ol' Matty-Matt this past year.....

Someone crying has always been hard for me to take. Only in the most extreme circumstances -- when I suspect the tears of being faked, or that the person is deserving of them -- has my reaction been anything but icy toward the person bearing the tears. In fact, the presence of a crying person has often snapped me out of any foul mood I may have borne toward them (or the situation). Whether or not this is a proper reaction to such events is debatable, nevertheless it is my observed response. This occurred just a few days ago, in fact.

This week, it's actor Daren Kagasoff.  Enjoy.

The Chicago Tribune recently featured an article by Richard Asa about being "young" and trying to re-enter the dating scene after the death of a partner/spouse. I put "young" in quotation marks because the author would seem to define it as someone in their 20s and 30s. Apparently, 40-somethings on up are placed into some sort of  "it gets better" category for loss. Here's a salient excerpt from the article: It's not that the grief is less for older widows and widowers, but most of them have decades of fond memories. People widowed at a younger age are looking at a blank slate where future plans once existed. It can change you.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I am not a believer in the afterlife. It is a fairly certain disbelief, but not one carved in stone, as none of us really have proof one way or the other, so I admit to possibly being very wrong on the subject. At any rate, one of the reasons I've had an issue with the notion of an afterlife (at least, as it's been presented in most world religions) is that it seems to encompass all of eternity. That may seem lovely to some, but not to this fellow. As the First Doctor noted in the 1983 Five Doctors special, "Immortality is a curse, not a blessing." I mean, really, who wants to live forever?

I was conferring with a friend (and fellow aspiring writer) recently about how things have been progessing with our respective fiction writing. In short: slowly. We discussed what tends to inhibit our creative juices, and I was reminded of just how many roadblocks I erect in order to avoid sitting down and following-through with putting pen to paper (so to speak).