10:29 am - Sat 8.02.2008
Putting It Out There

(Just finished watching the latest episode of Swingtown, a summer show on CBS I've been enjoying quite a bit. But anyway...)

Yesterday I was reading something-or-other online. And while it clearly didn't make much of an impression, there was something in it about someone being a "humanist", and I remember thinking afterwards, "Did I write that long-winded Diaryland entry yesterday just to say, in so many words, 'I'm a humanist'?".

Cause I guess "Humanist" - As in "secular humanism", that phrase the Christian Right has worked so hard to demonize (If they didn't actually invent the phrase) - would describe my "belief system", inasmuch as I have one (Followed, in a distant second place, by "Something Vaguely Taoist").

But reading on CNN about the psycho on that Canadian Greyhound bus who killed and decapitated a fellow rider reminds me - "humans" are not exactly a bargain sometimes.

(It's been maybe twenty years since I last rode Greyhound, and clearly things have changed - All I ever worried about back then, riding Greyhound, was being stuck sitting next to someone stinky, or boring, or both; It would never have occurred to me to be afraid someone would stab me to death and cut my head off as I slept.)

I don't want to hash over the details of the story - you can track it down online if you want to know more - but for me, it set off any number of reactions.

1) It's very tempting to make bad jokes about it ("If that happened to me while riding Greyhound, I'd definitely want a refund..."), because to really "connect" to the horror of such a thing? Well, that's a place I'm not sure I want to go - even if I did have enough morbid curiosity to read the story in the first place...and the follow-ups.

2) But as an actor (particularly an odd-looking white character actor), this is the kind of stuff I might have to "connect to" emotionally, in ways that would be unthinkable to the average person - Someday I may end up playing "Stabby McStabberson" in the "Greyhound Bus Killer" episode of CSI- Winnepeg.

3) Leaving acting aside, it makes me wonder, as a person, how much of this kind of news anyone really needs in their life.

It's an ongoing debate I have with myself - I think I need to be "better informed" about the world at large, and not quite so self-absorbed, but does the "news", particularly this sort of news, really do that for me in any meaningful, helpful, way?

More often than not, the news just makes me feel afraid and anxious (Particularly stories about random acts of insane violence), and if anything, eager to retreat back to my normal self-absorption.

(Some people have opined how that focus of the news - on things to make you feel fearful - is by design, and I'm inclined to agree.)

Sorry if this is something you'd rather not be reading about/thinking about yourself, but it's been on my mind for the past day or so...

My IRA still feels pretty much like a "drop in the bucket" in terms of preparing for the future - This deposit gives me a balance of about $3100.

But as I've said before, "a 'drop in the bucket' is better than nothing in the bucket".

And as long as we're on the subject of my finances (And "drops in the bucket")...

The new blog has generated about $14 so far (Which reminds me - I need to update it sometime today).

(Again, thanks to all of you who have been checking it out, and clicking on the ad. Please keep up the good work, and get the word out on my behalf.)

I was writing about it in MySpace recently, saying that while I imagine at this point most people are just clicking and running, more as a favor to me than anything - and I really do appreciate that - I do hope, over time, that an actual audience will develop for the blog, that I'll be giving people something interesting and enjoyable, and maybe even (In the case of actors coming up) something helpful.

It's easy, in writing about this new blog (And becoming a "professional blogger"), or discussing my acting career, to get caught up in the money - The money I'm making, or not making, the money I want to make, etc.

And yes, money makes the world go round. It's undeniably - sometimes uncomfortably - important.

But it's not the be-all-and-end-all.

I want to act, and blog, and do whatever, because I want to connect to people. I want to entertain. And I want - need - to "express myself"

And the money just lets that happen.

As I think I put it on MySpace, "I want to find a way to make being me pay off".

But for that to happen, you have to take a chance. You have to "put yourself out there".

And here I am.

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