Goertz Thoughts

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Prepping for Novel November

NaNoWriMo is dead. It has a lot to do with their stance on AI (their website doesn't exist anymore, but here is an author that has their take on it). It really upset a lot of people, including members of Savio's Writer's Guild club. The use of AI is one of the few things that you can do to get removed from our club; it's in the bylaws (I included an AI generated image in a story pitch I presented last year before the rule was made and students were less than pleased). The Writer's Guild is continuing to celebrate November anyway. In the spirit of NaNoWriMo, many of our members (not all. Despite the name, the club is home to all sorts of creatives: artists, gamers, composers, as well as authors) will be attempting to write 50,000 word pieces during Novel November. It's a tough task. I've never done it before, but I will also give it a shot. The closest I ever got to a novel was in sophomore year English class. I wrote an 80 page novella. I don't remembe...

Don't Take Candy from Babies

It's been 8 years since my last Halloween post , so I guess it's time to update my complaint. To sum up: trick-or-treating is for children. If you're not a child, buy your own candy. To be clear, I'm not anti-fun and I'm not anti costume. Case in point: What I am against is co-opting something that is meant for children and taking it for adults/teens (Disney adults is a gray area. It's okay to like Disney, but taking up all the space in the lines at the parks is rude). For the record, I am also against: Adults sitting in costumed Santa laps Adult Easter egg hunts Adults playing on playgrounds during the day while children wait for their turn on the swings with tears in their eyes (most of these scenarios involve crying children in my imagination). I think Halloween is a great time for celebration. It's the nature of the celebrations that change. For my 40th birthday, did I rent a bounce house? No, I rented a movie theater and we watched Stardust. Is Christm...

5 Reasons You Should Read Brandon Sanderson

You may have seen several students with enameled character pins on their blazers or backpacks. They may be from Brandon Sanderson's Dragonsteel website . Today, I'd like to convince you to read everything written by my favorite author, Brandon Sanderson. Here are 5 reasons. (Formatting is a little off. I don't know why) The print that I have was given to me by my friend Jesse Sky . You won't soon run out of things to read. While some authors make their fans wait years ( decades? ) for new books, Brandon cannot stop writing. During Covid, he secretly wrote 5 novels! Below is a sampling of some of his works. Cosmere - his main series of interconnected novels. They take place on different planets, but many characters cross over. Stormlight Archive - 5 novels, 2 novellas Mistborn - 7 novels, 3 novellas Elantris - 1 novel, 2 novellas 8 other assorted novels/novellas Here's my suggested reading order (to avoid spoilers). If you pick up a random book, you will be confuse...

10 Movies You Should See Before You Graduate

This post is inspired by a listicle about 50 movies you should see before you die. I don't know who wrote the list, but every other movie was a "psychological thriller". No one needs to see "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". This is my list. I really do think that you should see these movies (hopefully you already have). Some because they are just really enjoyable. Some because there are a lot of references that people will make in college/life that you might miss (the same reason we read Shakespeare ). I don't watch movies that are too sad, so you won't see many of those on this list. I am not a cinephile, so these won't necessarily be the "best" movies. A few notes: I found it impossible to rank these, so they're in alphabetical order. There are many movies that you should be aware of, even if you don't see them. I suggest taking a look at AFI's list . This article started out 2 years ago as "25 Movies You Should ...

Things That You Might Not Know if You are Younger Than Me #4: Listening to Music

Nowadays, it's so easy to find music. You can just google any song (although it's probably better to use Spotify, YouTube Music, or another service. It can avoid some tricky copyright issues). However, it was not always so. Spotify didn't come to the US until 2011. Let me share with you some of the ways that I listened to music throughout my life. Older media: Vinyl records are making a comeback recently. I listened to them because they were cheap (I don't care about audio fidelity; I can't hear a difference). We also had some old 8 tracks laying around. Lots of John Denver and Peter, Paul, and Mary . My mom was a little young to be a hippie, but she liked their music. Tapes: Tapes were great: cheap (you would sometimes get them for free in Happy Meals), lightweight, portable, and most cars had a tape deck that you could play them in. You could also listen to them while exercising, thanks to Walkman . One cool feature was the ability to make mixtapes. Using a tape...

Things That You Might Not Know if You are Younger Than Me #3: Strange Masses

When I was growing up, Sunday Mass was different. Not necessarily wrong (except in some instances), but definitely not what you are used to. I'm not talking about pre-conciliar Latin Mass (I'm not that old). I grew up in the 80s and 90s. During that time, the church in the US was still experimenting with new forms of liturgy. Architecture I went to St. William growing up. It's not the St. William that you know. For one thing, it was about a half mile further down McNeil Road. For another, it didn't look like a Catholic Church. It was built in 1981, if I remember correctly Inside, it was also weird. Here's a series of pictures from Christmas/Easter over several years. See if you can spot what's missing. Nice hat, mom! Did you (not) see it? There's no crucifix! I guess that was "too depressing"? (There was usually a cross, off to the side, but no corpus) Life Teen Mass These days, a Life Teen mass usually just means a Sunday evening Mass with rock mu...