Thursday, April 28, 2011

Feeling Guilt

I write this as my wife is asleep. I just woke up myself, after sleeping for 13 hours. I wish that lead to me feeling well rested but it doesn’t. I’m not here to talk about the sleep I had or the rather weird dreams I had while out of it. I feel guilty. Before I tell you why I feel guilty, let me tell you a little about yesterday.

See the wife and I had some places to be early in the morning. So we ran around and got those things done, then had a big cheap breakfast at DQ and I wanted to walk around for a bit to get the food to settle down. I like to walk after eating a big meal. So I drove us to a plaza with a Wal-Mart and other stores in it, to make a long story short we went to a Dollar Tree and they had some books there, for a dollar. The one I picked up was a book about Scott Adams. Only for me to get home and pass out.

So in the last hour I read only two pages of the book. Could have read more, but something was bugging me, why had Scott Adams been in the news recently. I saw his name trending on Twitter and Yahoo but never once stopped to check it out. I was getting a sneaking suspicion it had to do with bragging about himself. Why? Well the first two pages so far is about how he had always been successful. So I looked up the news article and it turns out I was half way right. The other half was him saying something some would consider “sexually insensitive”, I’m not going to toss my hat into that ring, because I have read only one part of it and out of context.

So we get to the part that makes me feel guilty. He talked about his high IQ and the writer of the article says that in and of itself is a big no-no. My mind raced back to my last blog entry and I faced palmed mentally. Then I read that he thought that people that didn’t “get” what he was saying where just too stupid. So some of the guilt was lifted. When people don’t get what I am saying, it’s either that my fault or they have different views.

May I put one thing straight with you all? In the post before I wasn’t saying I had a high IQ to down anyone. I was saying it because I feel that there were other people deemed dumb by the school system who also may have had a high IQ. Also when I talk about that point in my life I feel the need to defend my intelligence. Understand, it has always been something put under the microscope.

I’m left wondering if I am even going to finish the book now or if I wasted a buck. I can’t stand people who think they are to smart for life and all those who oppose them are dumb as a sack of foul excretions. No matter how successful they are. So as far as reading this thing goes, I guess I will give it another try, but soon as it ventures back into personal greatness land, it’s going back on the shelf.

Still this isn’t what post I wanted to do for today. Nor have I caught up on the post I wish to do. It is rather early in the morning and I might just do another at some point today, but at the same time I am waiting to hear back about a job. I really don’t know how to keep a blog interesting. I’ve had people tell me that just as long as I am myself there will be people who find it interesting. Well I am myself and I don’t feel interesting at all. Not that I am fishing for someone to post on here that I am very interesting. I guess just all this time with myself I am board of myself.

It’s just I read other writers blogs and they are talking about writing and what not. I feel it’s wrong. I mean I have stuff out there in the world waiting to be judged by publishers and I don’t feel that it’s right to say anything. Not a moral right, but a made up legal right… Yeah I know it’s crazy, it feels like it’s illegal to talk about having stuff out there. Could be the years of singing confidentiality contracts at different jobs, could also be the track I have of talking a project to death.

See you will not find me talking about books and stories I am currently working on much. Sometimes I get so excited about an idea and then the next thing I know I have talked it to death. So the best way not to do that is to not talk about them as I am working on them, even to myself. Yes I have talked an idea to death with myself. I was in the shower when the idea passed away.

I will say this thought if your looking for writing news right now, I am waiting to hear back about one book I have written and one short story. The book is about zombies and the short story is about a serial killer. Oh and I have another short story that was rejected and I need to work on. Then tons, trust me here, tons of other projects. Not all just writing, podcast and animations as well.

So I will leave you all with a recent picture of me from my little sisters wedding. Why? Well for a writing blog I feel I have far to much text and not enough pictures. Thanks for reading!






Update: So I've read past the second page and I see where he was going with that. Lets see how the rest of the book is and I'll be sure to blog my thoughts and views on it. I just felt I should update you all on this fact. As a writer I should have known, don't judge when your only two pages in. So many books I've read had sucked for the first chapter or two and then picked up and become some of my favorites. As I recall when I first read Of Mice and Men I didn't care much for how the book started out, now it is one of my all time favorite books. So in my defense I'll admit I am not a morning person and I was trying to read this very first thing in the morning. Really I was, I picked it up after gathering myself from the weird dreams and flipped it open. Anyway I am going to get back to reading it.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

It's not so Elementary!

So today I want to clear something up. Some are saying I shouldn’t be saying that all of eastern Kentucky has a bad educational system. That is true, I can’t vouch for ever school in eastern Kentucky, I can only speak on behave of my experience in the Martin county school system. I’ll go on and add that from what I understand that the rest of the school system isn’t that good either in eastern Kentucky. I guess though I am asking people who grew up poor.

See even when I was very young I saw the class system that was given to the students based on their parents. I grew up poor, so even though I had a high IQ I was cast into the pile of children they deemed worthless. It was just odd that the students that went into that pile came from poor homes. Hell most of us deemed to dumb to teach, would ride the same bus to the same government housing I grew up in. So we where over looked and when we needed help, most of the time, the teacher didn’t have time to help us. Though they could help the other kids, the ones that mommy and daddy would drive 35 miles to the closest McD’s at the time and then drive 35 miles back to drop them off lunch. The ones when a school project was do they had computers to do their work with. I didn’t even have a computer until I was in high school! October of ’01! This stuff I am talking about, is way back when I was in elementary school, so like 1993.

At one point we moved to Virginia, where I attended Spotswood Elementary school for a few months. Now this is how I knew something was wrong when I moved back to Kentucky. See out there, the teachers worked with me. In fact they worked harder with me because I was so far behind the other students and in a few short weeks, I was at the same level as the rest of the kids in my class (even doing better then some). Now this is around the time I first wanted to be a writer, or at the very least tell stories to other people in a written and at the time illustrated form.

I had a teacher out there who’s name I can’t recall, but I called her Mrs. Americas, but she was so nice. We had a computer class, we had a gym class that did things, like climb ropes, I was only got into trouble once out there and that was a miss understanding. There was a kid that reminded me of Mark Summers and thus I called him that. I was friends with a kid named Mario, which I thought was cool, because I loved Super Mario. I would ladder be made fun of by a teacher in Kentucky for being friends with him. Why? Because I had drawn a picture of us playing after I had moved back. I had missed Mario very much, in ways I think he may have been my first real friend. So when this teacher made fun of me for having a black friend, I was crushed…

See after going to Spotswood for that short time, coming back to Kentucky was a true horror. I didn’t like how the teachers didn’t want to help me and how they would blame it on the over crowded class rooms of 30 kids (I think my class in Virginia had 35 maybe 40). How, when I did better then the rest of the kids in my class, even the well to do kids, I was punished for it? Sent to the principle’s office or when I got to the third grade put in a little corner all by myself for the rest of the year. Two teacher made fun of me for being friends with kids who where not white. The one I said before and then another one when I was the only kid who would talk to the new/only black kid at the grade school… Sadly he didn’t stay around long enough for me to even lock his name into my memory. He lived in the same government housing as I did and people there didn’t take to kindly to color folks moving in…

Things only got worse and I wasn’t the only victim of the bad schools and the really bad teachers. Now I am not saying all the teachers where bad. In fact there are a few good ones that always come to mind, some I can recall on and it brings a tear to my eye at how much they helped me.

See when I started the fourth grade, I couldn’t do math past add and subtract. Like I said before my third grade year, I was put in a corner almost from the start of the year, then switched to another class that they said was the same grade level as me, but my sister was in there and she was and has always been a year behind me. So I didn’t learn a think in third grade, other then how to spell building. That word is what got me into dirt and put in the corner. I could spell it when the teacher niece could not. But I am getting a little side tracked here.

So when I started the fourth grade, no real math skills, they wanted to put me into special ed. No this wasn’t the short bus type, no this was for kids who couldn’t learn the why they wanted us to learn. So slow kids, or as I would come to call them in recent years, broken kids. There was just one thing, the first teacher in the special ed class sucked. She didn’t want to do a thing. Then they brought in a woman who, worked with me. I embraced it, when others didn’t. I knew to embrace that, that was the type of education I was starting to get at Spotswood. The other kids didn’t know how to deal with it, some would tell me that they didn’t feel right asking for help. So I took advantage of it even more. She would try to teach me to read, which I picked up on so fast, thanks to her help. She thought me not only how to multiply numbers, but also divide them, stuff that other fourth graders at the time didn‘t even know!

Then one day, she told us that she had to leave, that they where sending her to help some other kids, older kids that where not as good as us. She gave us all a brown paper bag full of candy, hugged us with tears in her eyes. That was the last I saw of her. The old teacher came back and the only think I learnt the rest of that year was New York’s York wasn’t spell Yourk. That was do to a computer game. So my mind was left to rot. What I learnt that year was all I really learnt until I was in the seventh grade, that’s when I found out that you could learn from home.

Now I know you might be thinking, how could my parents ever let the school put me in a slow class? Truth be told, they didn’t want to and if I recall right neither did the principle. It was my teachers that did and the teacher that tricked me into begging to be put in there at first. I had to stay after school for math tutoring, one day. I say one day, because she learned how to trick me that fast. She told me that the kids who went into special ed got to take cool field trips; filed trips to see dinosaur fossils. That perked my interest and what else pushed me was the big ass packet of dinosaur things she gave me. Books, a build your own paper dinosaur, a record with songs about dinosaurs and more! So I went home and begged to be put in there, not knowing it was going to be a trap until the day I graduated high school. I really was trapped. I tested out of Special ed three times, all three times they said I had cheated on the test because I got a perfect school.

This could be where my anger came from, who knows. I know I hit teachers after coming back to Kentucky, I tossed trash cans at them for saying mean things about Mario. Hell I tossed a desk at a teacher when she told me I was so stupid I didn’t know it(second grade). She told me that I would die underground digging for coal.

Well this isn’t really what I wanted to talk about today. Then again, I don’t know much about keeping a blog and what I should and shouldn’t be posting on here. Maybe you didn’t want to know about this part of my life. For that I am sorry. I just have to point out that when I say, Eastern Kentucky has shit for education, why I feel that way. My experience was bad and I know lots more people who where beaten down. In fact third grade was so bad, that when First Time Dead 2 was printed I wanted to ship a copy to the dumb ass teacher who stuck me in that corner and told me I wouldn’t amount to anything in my life. Only thing is, I don’t want to know if she is alive anymore. Once I stopped seeing her fat ass out in public a few years ago I enjoyed public places a lot better.

No I really wanted to talk about how I went through tons of stuff today(yesterday), that I hadn't in years. How I found the first chapter book I ever read, I was going to have nice pictures and everything. Now all I left you all with is a rant. There is always next time folks.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Hello World

Hello out there, I’m David Maynard Jr. I’ve been told by my wife over and over for the last few months to make a blog. She goes on like:

“David you need a blog so you can keep people up to date on what you are doing.”

“David you need a website so you can keep people up to date on what you are doing.”

“Muffin Butt, you need a blog and website so you can keep people up to date on what you are doing.”

So I just look at here and tell her make me a fan page if you want. See I’ve done the blog thing before. Not my cup of tea. First off I never know what to talk about and I feel so egotistical for thinking that anyone would give two shits about what I have to say. Secondly I tend to, not have time for a blog. It may be I forget and never update, or just don’t update for some time and let it just sit. Trust me, type my name into google and search the annals of the internet and you’ll find a half a dozen blogs that I have started and never finished or kept up on. So that’s my list of reason… Well other then the fact I have such a shitty education that my spelling is horrific (keep this in mind). An Eastern Kentucky education is bad enough, a Martin County education is worse. So when it comes to typing up a blog, most of the time I like to do it fast. While the words are fresh in my mind, don’t think it over and post that sumbitch. See to me, and this could just be justifying laziness, I have no chance to censer myself this way. See if I do a blog I want my true self to be known. Like right now, I am thinking out each word as I type it into the word processor, where I may read back over it, correct errors and post it to the blog.
So, um, yeah.


I guess your starting to wonder why I have broken down to make this blog. Well something has come to my attention in the last year or so. That is people do care what I have to say, in a fictional sense. I’m a writer. Now recollect on the part I told you to keep in mind, now have a good laugh and let’s move on. I have a short story in one book. First Time Dead 2 (published by May December Publication ). My story is called Rude Awakening. Shockingly enough it has been getting some good reviews on this short little story and not just from friends and family. Strangers, people I don’t even know like my little story. So I hope to do more and not just short stories, but full length novels.

Also I do a podcast called Among the Dead. Now this is something I have been doing for a few years now off and on. It’s more of a hobby that people really enjoy. I write and voice act the zombie drama podcast. People from all over the world have contacted me and told me that they love it. And honestly it’s the fans that keep that one alive. That is also what keeps me from posting at time. I don’t want to disappoint. I don’t want to toss them another zombie clone.

So, here is the thing people like my fiction and I love that. I didn’t get by in school on looks or brains. I got by in school, because of no child left behind. Yet, the few times I was given a chance to show people what my imagination could do, teachers and peers alike enjoyed. I hope to do this for the rest of my life. I hope you will follow along-- Hell I hope there is something to follow along with. So if for some reason you want to be kept up to date on what I am doing, you found the spot. I’ll do my best to maintain this blog.