Moral Midgetry

Sorry it has been this long since I’ve posted. I’ve been a little busy packing and moving and then unpacking and then ignoring the blog. It’s been crazy.

Well, let’s see what happened while I was away. Valentine’s Day, The Ides of March, St. Patrick’s Day, the fourth anniversary of the War in Iraq (and Donald Rumsfeld said it wouldn’t last six months), A crazy astronaut lady drove cross-country to kidnap a romantic rival. Britney Spears got a haircut… and went crazy… -er. A Z-list celebrity of no real importance died, was equated to this country’s Princess Di (I heard more than one talking head say this), and the media then dry-humped her corpse to the grave.

Huh, gosh, with all that material available what should I write about?

Me?

Oh, okay.

I was recently having a discussion with a friend of mine about violence on television. He was against it while I came down firmly on the pro-violence side. His point was that there is an unnecessary amount on television these days and that people are being desensitized to it. He sited the new NBC show The Black Donnelley’s, which I haven’t seen, but according to him in the first five minutes someone was beaten with a baseball bat, someone else was shot or stabbed, and a goat was raped.

Fine, I’ll give you that the goat thing might have been a little over the top (although, he might have said that happened on 7th Heaven, I can’t remember). However, I will also argue that in exchange for certain television freedoms you will have to put up with lazy producers padding their shows with shock value. If it takes The Black Donnelley’s, 24, and 7th Heaven, to get me Lost, Rome, Heroes, and the updated Battlestar Galactica so be it.

How does this relate to me (other than my obvious couch potato-ness)? Recently, I had my first public book reading. A friend gathered a group together, some of whom I knew and some I didn’t, but all in attendance had read the book. The event went extremely well. Not everyone loved the book, which is to be expected, however one fellow (who I had never met before that night) compared it to The Catcher in the Rye. Now, he’s clearly insane, but what an amazing complement.

(This next part contains a little spoiler. So if you haven’t yet read my book, Irregardless [available on Amazon.com] you might not want to read further. And why are you reading this crap if you haven’t read the book?)

One of the biggest surprises to come out of the evening for me was that about half of the people in attendance were saddened, by the death of one of one of my characters, Janice, the Plant-Lady. Now to me, Janice was always a very minor character and, frankly, always going to die. I never even thought twice about it.

But some people were affected by it. I was even called “irresponsible” for thinking the audience might not care about this character’s death. Maybe I am. So, what I would like to know from you reading this is: Did you care about Janice the Plant-Lady’s death? Did it affect you in anyway? Do you even remember Janice the Plant-Lady? Should those who did care about the Plant Lady maybe focus more on plot and less on Z-list characters?

Let me know. Please respond to this thread. I’d love to get a discussion going on something other than the weather in Chicago.

Also, I’ll try to let less than a month and a half pass before I post again. Thanks for your patience.