No Hollywood. No South Beach. Sorry, y’all. This is the last shot for this C’s team. You’re stuck with them – and me – for the next seven months.

(I hope.)

And then I saw the pictures. The destruction of a town, limbs torn from trees, houses cleared like a hand clears away spilled salt, families torn apart. The crying little girls, searching for answers where there were no answers. There weren’t even any questions. The destruction had been so total that no one could figure out what to ask.

And then I thought, “Shit, dude. Where are my kids?”

“I need a hug.”

Because this is what it’s like being a father. I relate to everything. Every child could be my child. Every horrible story could be my horrible story.

COULD BE, I keep telling myself.

But COULD BE always turns into LUCKY IT WASN’T.

There’s no way of explaining the knot in my stomach I get when I read these stories. Except to say that I’m glad those knots show up, because more than anything they remind me how much I love and how much I’m loved.

If they weren’t there, I’d be afraid I didn’t care anymore.

Connections were sparse. We barely knew our neighbors.

Now we do.

Our new house is situated away from the main traffic vein; the houses are directly across from each other. And, according to a fantastic study conducted in 1969, it should be no surprise that we’re closer to our neighbors than we ever had been in our old neighborhood.

It’s social science.

According to a study on the livability of cities by Donald Appleyard, a former Professor of Urban Design, “just the mere presence of cars, with their implied aspects of danger, noise and pollution, crushes the quality of life in neighborhoods.”

From “Research: Mapping the Impact of Traffic on the Livability of Streets” (from Information Aesthetics):

…One chart conveys the social interactions on the 3 different streets, with each line denoting a unique connection between one person on the street and another. There are much fewer lines on the heavily traffic street as opposed to the moderate or the light traffic street, which clearly has a lot more interconnections. This chart also includes clusters of little dots that indicate where people physically gather. So it shows how on the heavily traffic street, there are a much smaller number of dots and there are only a handful of places where people would gather on their street.

Traffic forms a wall in between people, and proximity plays just as much a part in being good neighbors as personality. The same could be said about a bunch of things, I’d assume. Mall design. Festival planning. Most importantly: office arrangement. The closer and more open the environment – free from traffic, clutter and walls – the better the interaction between employees.

We all need our space. But we also need to feel close to something.

I love basketball. Love it. It’s the best. Absolutely the greatest sport ever created.

I love basketball history. I love everything from Mikan to Shaq, West to Paul. And I love reading books about basketball history.

I love great writing. I worship at the altar of Steinbeck, always searching for beautiful prose. And for that reason, I’ve always found a lot of enjoyment in Free Darko – basketball writing with a literary slant.

With a joy for the game unlike any other. With passion. With soul.

The Free Darko collective’s first book (FreeDarko Presents: The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac) was sublime. But combine that with the history of America’s most beautiful game, illuminate it with Jacob “Big Baby Belafonte” Weinstein’s illustrations, and you’ve got a masterpiece.

That’s all. I promised to keep it short.

Sometimes the treats are homemade. Other times, they’re prepackaged with preservatives and archaic logos, their origination betrayed by “made in South Dakota” rustic charm.

And that’s just what we get from vendors. Factor in a couple of potlucks, a Christmas party, and a holiday “treat day” countdown, and there’s no wonder I roll home every night.

I like carrots too. But I certainly never see those landing on the break room counter. What, are they all being saved for the Easter bunny?

I can be found in the Twenty-Something category. That’s what happens when there’s no central topic – you get lumped into a category you’ve already grown out of.

But until there’s a “Nothing” category, here I am. Go check out the site. It’s pretty awesome.

And then I got to work. I started to type. Something hit me.

I’ve already talked about this.

”Intrusive. Awkward. Banal. Antisepticised and stretched taut with rubber.

Have you ever chewed on your fingernails? You know the taste you get, like a grinded piece of old plastic, dark and deep yet earthy and natural?

Mix that taste with cinnamon, then scrape at your eyelid.

That, to me, is the dentist.”

That’s from June of 2007. From this site. From my mind.

With over 1,000 posts in the backlog of Black Marks on Wood Pulp, I’m finding it increasingly harder to find topics I haven’t already written about. And at work, after only three years of writing copy, I’m discovering a newfound mental block, where the only ideas I can come up with are old ideas.

It’s not writer’s block – that would assume I can’t think of anything at all. It’s more like writer’s blockage, with thousands of previously written ideas are flooding back at once, blocking the progress of anything new or creative.

When this happens to us – in any form of creative work – it’s easy to give up. To say, “Oh, all of my ideas are dry,” and move along with something trivial, or accept a less than stellar idea in the name of Getting Work Done. We are led down the simple path. The path to hackdom.

But it’s important to realize that, indeed, thoughts are rarely original. Except in the case of new forms of media, everything’s been done. Creativity isn’t coming up with new ideas – it’s taking the existing ideas and mixing them in a way you don’t expect.

There’s a quote from director Jim Jarmusch (which I discovered just a few weeks ago on Please Feed the Animals) that sums this up:

”Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.

Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic.

Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it.

In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: ‘It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.’”

So I can write about going to the dentist again. Or, I can write about writing about the dentist. Or, I can forgo the dentist completely and talk about what would happen if I didn’t go. I can write an ad for a dentist. I can look for anagrams. Describe my walk from the car to the dental office in the same vein as an executioner’s walk. Speak from the vantage point of my teeth.

It doesn’t matter if it’s been done. It matter if it’s done well.

In the meantime, you can check us out on Facebook. Kind of. Through the “Blog Networks” add on, you can become a fan/friend/follower/whatever of Black Marks on Wood Pulp.

So do it, to it. Join the BMOWP Blog Network. I think that link works – it’s hard to tell, Facebook sucks most of the time.

With that, a quick note. I have been sitting on two domains – mrvilhauer.com and coreyvilhauer.com – for a few months now. I’ve finally gotten around to activating them and sending them here.

So go ahead. Now you have three ways to get a hold of me! HOORAY!

More real BMOWP goodness to come. Eventually. I think.

Some comedians depend on physical humor. Some search for political twists or pop culture foibles. Some just try to be cute.

George Carlin was simply real.

He took the inconsistencies of language and turned them upside-down. He made logical and crucial observations on life in our country and made us realize that, at times, no jokes were needed – at times our country could be screwed up enough as it was.

He made words funny. Not jokes. But words. A linguist, a talker, a thinker. He was smart before it was cool, counter culture before it became a way of life. You could tell that he spent every minute of every day thinking. Thinking about life. Thinking about words. Thinking.

Imagine that – a comedian that made you think.

It was more than the seven that got him arrested. Every word was genius, every thought well-crafted. From tame to curmudgeon, he was the best voice on the comedy stage. And, in his own words, he lived by the creed that it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

I’d say we’d miss him. But his words and his personality transcend his death. His influence on million – including myself – lives on even in his absence. And best of all, he’s left us enough material to last us decades.

Goodbye, Rufus. Good luck crossing that final line.

“By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.” – George Carlin