Numb

by Gabriel Novo on May 16, 2013 · 7 comments

in Personal

There’s a lot of misinformation about the treatment of cancer, what to expect, and the aftermath.  Much of it is from movies, television, and those “feel good” charity commercials.  They all want you to believe we’re in this fight together and that a support system will magically appear around you when the shit hits the fan.  I wish that had been the case.

Let’s be honest, there’s no Dr. Wilson from House M.D. coming to shower you with infinite compassion and a crack team of doctors.  What you get is a brutally efficient system of treatment that, in my case, happened so quickly I didn’t even have time to understand what I was undergoing.  Diagnosed on a Monday, surgery the next week, and my 1st chemo the very next day.  You may remember how well that turned out, with a severe reaction to Rituxan and a single nurse keeping her cool while half a dozen others stared at me as I convulsed.  Good times.

Some people were nice, but many were either ignorant of the process or indifferent to it, sometimes cruelly so.  I still vividly remember the nurse who tugged on my power port like it was bolted to my chest with rivets instead of just skin.  The way she jammed a syringe of morphine so quickly into my port, in spite of my protests, that I almost threw up on her shoes.  No blissful euphoria there only a terrible twisting of my stomach and dizzying bout of nausea.  Pumped full of painkillers I still couldn’t sleep as she stomped in and out of my room on her hourly checks, ignoring the fact that me and my wife (cramped in a chair next to me) were trying to get some meager semblance of sleep.  These were just a few lovely moments from the ordeal of my treatment.

[click to continue…]

{ 7 comments }

Taking a Break from the Big F

by Gabriel Novo on April 20, 2013 · 2 comments

in Personal

Social media has infiltrated our lives more than any other Internet phenomenon.  It’s on our computers (both at work and home), it’s on our phones, and it’ll soon be on our glasses.  Ubiquitous is an understatement.

Portions of social media have been very useful to me, such as building creative relationships through Twitter, but others have been time wasting distractions like the big blue monster to my right.

When I first joined Facebook I was working in the UK, making friends, and building my business network.  LinkedIn was kinda crap and Facebook still had a cool vibe to it, so I jumped in.  For many years it was the best way to keep in touch with my overseas and out-of-state pals.

Lately, it has morphed into a Pavlovian clicking experiment where I spend my hours doing little more than “liking” inane bullshit.  Creating material to share on the site took a backseat and I turned into a pure consumer.  After the shitstorm that was 2012, I knew that wasting my time like this was a slow death sentence.  Something had to change.

[click to continue…]

{ 2 comments }

Cursing as an Art Form

by Gabriel Novo on February 18, 2013 · 4 comments

in Movies, Popular Articles, Writing

Flickr - Stock78 - stockicideIf you’ve ever met me in person or followed me on Twitter then you know I’m a fan of the occasional expletive.  Some days I salt my conversations more liberally than others, but I’m always guaranteed at least one nugget of joy.

I’ve never understood the societal aversion to cursing.  Language is a rich experience and to limit yourself with arbitrary boundaries only dilutes the experience.  There are those who think the words are naughty and should be forbidden to all.  There are others who think it signifies a lack of intelligence.

Curse words are like any other tool and when used properly can achieve breathtaking results.  Here are some examples of what I believe are solid executions of profanity which not only enrich the story they’re telling, but elevate it to a level it would never achieve without swearing.

[click to continue…]

{ 4 comments }

Going to try Unitasking

February 4, 2013 Personal

When it comes to creative projects I often suffer from analysis paralysis, with so many options to choose from I end up doing none of them. My goal is to do one thing for 30 days straight or until it’s completed, whichever comes first.  By removing the need to choose I hope I’m removing the [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

6 Months in Remission

February 1, 2013 Personal

As of today, it has officially been 6 months since my doctor told me I was in remission.  There have been no life altering epiphanies or secret wisdoms revealed to me, only a hard-won smile from having kicked cancer square in the beanbag. There is so much about this disease that you never see on [...]

8 comments Read the full article →

One Year of Movies: 2012 in Review

January 21, 2013 Movies

This little experiment, which started in January of last year, was born of a curiosity regarding my favorite obsession, movies.  How many hours of my life were spent enjoying films and which genres did I watch the most?  What other interesting tidbits could I garner from an accurate catalogue of my own viewing habits?  Thus [...]

6 comments Read the full article →

Doctor Who (2005) and Torchwood Viewing Order

January 7, 2013 Popular Articles

Being a huge fan of both shows I tend to recommend them as a single entity when my friends are looking for a new series to watch.  Of course, I then immediately have to explain how best to intertwine the viewings. After having this conversation for the umpteenth time I decided to put together an [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

Doctor Who: Companion Fatigue

December 28, 2012 Television

In this article I’ll be discussing plot points for The Angels Take Manhattan and the series in general.  You have been warned.  There Be Spoilers Here! The handoff from Tennant to Smith was explosive (literally) and reinvigorating. The writers wanted to make a very clear delineation between the eras through the internal destruction of the [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

How OneNote forced me to turn off UAC

December 15, 2012 Nerd

OneNote has been an invaluable tool for me as both a writer and an IT consultant.  It has let me organize my projects, create a searchable repository of my story ideas, and made collecting data from the internet a breeze.  I’ve been using the product since 2008 and it’s one of the few essential programs [...]

0 comments Read the full article →

Reboots and Remakes: What Works, What Doesn’t

November 5, 2012 Movies

Hollywood is not a business built on risk.  They like bankable stars in four quadrant films in order to maximize the return on their investment.  Plots are formulaic to meet the general public’s entertainment needs, plugging into their sitcom derived expectations of a happy ending.  Focus groups are used to taste test the product before [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

Art is Everywhere

October 15, 2012 Art

When a writer creates his medium is rather straightforward.  The finished product may may be a movie or a graphic novel or even a radio play, but the starting point is always a blank page.  Artists, on the other hand, have much more freedom to create and their medium is virtually anything.  Performance artists use [...]

5 comments Read the full article →