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 |  "Putting on the Game Face" |
  This blog is a doorway into the mind of Percy Goodfellow. Don't be shocked at the lost boys of Namby-Pamby Land and the women they cavort with. Watch as his caricatures blunder about the space between audacious hope and the wake-up calls of tomorrow. Behold their scrawl on the CRT, like graffitti on a subway wall. Examine it through your own lens...Step up my friends, and separate the pepper from the rat poop. Welcome to my abode...the armpit of yesterday, the blinking of an eye and a plank to the edge of Eternity. Note: This blog is my journal. I've no interest in persuading anyone to adopt my views. What I write is whatever happens to interest me when I start pounding the keys. |
Formatting My Novel Habit of Despair My first computer was a Vic-20….You had to write your own software. You wrote it in basic. That actually went on for a long time….writing your own software, of typing it in from a computer magazine. Files were saved on a cassette disk tape recorder. Several years later in the military we were issued IBM laptops. In the box was the software….an operating system (MS DOS) and a copy of GW Basic. In the back of the GW Basic manual was an inventory program. I got some smart people together and we figured out how the example worked and adapted it to our needs. Why I mention all this is because I have just been working with the latest copy of Microsoft Word 2010 and it is staggering how sophisticated that program has become. In the early days they talked about “Integrated Software.” Word 2010 takes integrated software to a whole new level. When I got out of the service I want to technical school and studied for a couple of years to become a diesel and heavy equipment technician. While there I took a word course, a data base course and a spreadsheet course. They were each a semester in length and I marveled at the time how thick the books were to just introduce a student to the complexities of these programs. Thus, in reading Word 2010 for Dummies I struggled this past week trying to figure out how to format my novel the way it was recommended in my Dummies Book on Romance Novel Writing. Finally I am close to figuring it all out. I actually got the first 5 chapters to print in the right format with headers and footers and page numbers. What an agony. I am not totally ignorant when it comes to computers but I am not all that adept either. I would like to say a large part of the problem is getting older but I have never really been that skilled at anything. Maybe having remedial writing skills precludes a weak mind from concurrently having remedial computer skills…. However without those Dummies Books I would be up the proverbial creek. For me I just have to quit when the frustration reaches a certain point, get some sleep and then attack it again the next day. Persistence seems to be the key. It’s like my bio-processor chunks away when I’m asleep and upon awakening presents me with a few new options to try. As I plug away the light eventually comes on and progress builds on progress. I have always been a lousy student because only well after the test on current material was taken did my brain eventually figure out what was going down. I wish they had had Dummies books when I was in school. They are just well written enough to get a moron like me into a subject enough to start getting the pieces to fall into place. |
| Moving along in LIfe Well, I finished the second edit and now have the novella complete and cleaned up. What I don’t have is a word count and I think I will do that today. Right now the whole thing is disjointed on my Portfolio and located in two files. It is written with the narrator in first person which I got rid of in the second edition that is stored off line. I don’t think I will put the revised final versions on line as the purpose for doing so in the first place was to elicit comments. Since I get a lot of view but no comments I think posting the final product is counterproductive. I suppose I could put a lock on it….This would have it available in the event a publisher took an interest and wanted to take a quick glance….I could sent the access code and that would be convenient however I don’t think there is a strong likelihood of this happening. Another reason is to have it stored off line in case of a system crash on my laptop. Since I already have off line auto backup taking place, I don’t find this a very compelling reason either. I think I will refrain from posting a finished work unless I can think of some other reason to do so. There are requirements that we face and there are requirements…. Somebody wrote there are three types…. Piddley, significant and overwhelming…. An example of a piddley requirement is writing this blog entry. A significant one is learning how to link the chapters together in my new Microsoft Word 2010 word processing program and printing out a complete copy, properly formatted and with headers and footers. An overwhelming task is writing a novel. Just getting HOD finished was a significant milestone in my writing experience. Now I have a novella to go along with my stage play. Interestingly enough it is the poetry I write that I believe has the most artistic merit…. Ain’t that a kick in the butt…? I have a particular aptitude and talent but it isn’t a passion. My passions are building cars and trucks, writing drama and prose and what I’m equipped by nature to best do is writing poetry. Is that a set-up for disappointment or what? My wife and I are watching episodes of Deadwood and I recommend the series to anybody who likes to write. If you decide to watch it look at the character development and how the dialog is treated. There are stellar examples of just about every literary technique imaginable….from distinct character types, to unique patterns in dialog to monologues and a story line that is compelling and riveting. If I had Habit of Despair to do over I would use it as a model for structure, components and form. I will definitely use it as an example in my next novel. By example I mean developing a living outline that insures I address all the points I mentioned above. I am beginning to think that once the outline is done the author needs to do a character analysis that includes every aspect of who they are….I have seen some good examples (Dawn? Myra…?) and might go back and try and pull out some examples of these templates. My tractor is in a heated garage and yesterday when I went to plow it wouldn’t crank. I checked the fuel going into the injector pump by cracking the lines and there was no flow….neither was there flow to the fuel filter. I have concluded the problem is probably in the fuel pump as I don’t hear any click when I turn on the ignition….It’s snowing again here and will have to do something before we get snowed in. Another piddley requirement in a sea of things designed to keep a writer from his work. It’s a wonder anything ever gets written. |
| The Resonance of Cursing Sometimes I just can’t get something out of my mind…..It might be a catchy tune, some song lyrics…a line from a book or play or today….A line spoken by a character. My wife and I are watching Deadwood and one of the Antagonists is a character named Swearington. He owns a saloon and Brothel and in a lawless community, and for all his warts he is the one who holds the social fabric of the mining camp together. Another character is a Chinaman who disposes of bodies in his pigsty and also is the local dope distributor…..This Chinaman can’t speak but a few words of English and communicates with Swearington by drawing pictures. Now one of Swearington’s favorite words is “Cocksucker!” and that is one of the few words the Chinaman understands..that and Swearington which he pronounces “Swington. Hold that thought…. Now when I am working on my stove and sometimes get a blast of smoke. When that happens I am prone to swearing and lately I have taken to miming the Chinaman…..saying, “SWINGTON! SWINGTON! COCKSUCKER!” Today when I let out this expletive the dogs came running up from the woods and stood wagging their tails…..for some reason they really like the resonance of that curse. After getting the stove going I took them for a walk. My Black lab has relatively short legs and the snow is deep but she loves to chase squirrels. My Golden Doodle is huge with long legs and she is an apprentice squirrel chaser working under the tutelage of Chloe the lab. Anyway when they get after one there is no getting them back….they are gone and that’s OK because in the winter my farmstead does not see a lot of traffic….I mean in the summer it used to get 5 cars a day however that is now up to about 10. In the winter it is way below that. We don’t have any school aged children along our road and when the county did the plowing we might on a lucky week see the plow truck one time. I swear the place was like the Donner Pass…. Anyway the Township got mad at the lousey service we were getting from the county and hired an independent subcontractor…..He is the guy that sells me logs that I make into firewood….and he plows our road as soon as it snows….Who said it doesn’t pay to have friends…..Not anyone who ever lived in Chicago. Anyway I was walking the girls when they took off on one of their typical two hour romps….where they come home covered in burrs after rolling in dead things and my wife goes ballistic and blames their undisciplined behavior on me. I got mad and started hollering…”Swington! Swington! Cocksucker! Cocksucker.” Those crazy dogs heard my profanity and came back to me on the run and walked dutifully by my side all the way home… Ain’t that the damndest thing you ever heard? |
| Musings Today I got an E-mail from a publisher wanting to see the first 3 Chapters of Habit of Despair. I suppose this is a step in the right direction however, I am not going to get my hopes up. I am sure there are many writers at Writing.com that have been asked to do the same thing and it came to naught. Anyway, I consider it a milestone of sorts….I guess the next one is being asked to submit the whole manuscript. I only submitted to one publisher so I guess that isn’t too bad. I think the first three chapters are pretty good. It’s a pretty good story actually and I don’t really feel I did it justice. It reminds me in some regards of the Mini-Series, Deadwood and Pillars of the Earth. I don’t think my antagonists are that evil or that my protagonists are all that good, however my wife says the antagonists are pretty bad. I cleaned up to Chapter 12 today and am putting the chapters into a separate word processing file. I bought a couple of Word 2010 books and am really amazed at the capability of the program. In the Dummies book is a chapter on Writers and how you go about linking the chapters together rather than trying to cram them into a humongous single document file…..I haven’t tried it but it shows how to write an outline that links the chapters and when you print it brings them up in the same format with age numbers….Doesn’t look that difficult. I bought another Word 2010 book that didn’t even mention how to do the linking thing….. Perhaps it was included in an earlier edition and this one just covers the new stuff. Just goes to show you can never have enough good references. The grammar and spell checker in Word 2010 is amazing. I am pulling files back off Writing.com and running them though and there are all kinds of new mistakes showing up. It’s a good program and something to consider as a candidate for a Writing program. I took a college course on Word several years ago and it was a semester long….and it just gave an overview of the integrated word processing, graphics, spread sheet and data base capabilities. I had a reader tell me she had read the whole novel and recommended that I go to straight 3rd person….She said the First Person didn’t fly on the narrator….I had already come to the same conclusion and was changing it on the second draft. That was her only comment….I guess if it held her interest long enough to read the whole thing that is saying something. What amazes me most is that whole is greater than the sum of the parts….Whether or not it is successful it is fun for me to read how the chapters flow together when I am used to just seeing them as a collection of parts. It’s the same feeling I get putting a car together and seeing it come together or assembling an engine and hearing it roar to life. I seem to be attracting the same readers to this blog…..I hope my readers have fun with it… the reason I do it is more for my benefit than anyone else’s. The more diversity a writer has in their writing the better the quality of the work…..Sometimes you have to get away from a project and do a couple of contests or write some short stories….Yes it makes it harder to get back into the harness but once you do you realize how important a breather can be. |
Making Book I have a machine that cuts perforations in the edge of 8-9 sheets of paper at a time and allows me to bind them with a plastic sleeve. In other words it essentially allows me to bind a manuscript into something similar to a book. I am always amazed when I do the first draft of a novel to see how differently it reads from calling the chapters up one at a time onto the screen . The first thing that happens is that there is no five minute pause while you close one file and call up the next. This allows a writer to experience what a reader is going to experience as they effortlessly turn a page. I love to read the stuff I write, and I’m sure this is not a conceit but rather something all writers feel reading their own work. My wife however keeps my feet well grounded. “Just because you like it Percy, doesn’t mean the whole world will. “ Still I would write even if I were the only one that ever read it. This is one of the reasons I bother with this blog. In a few minutes my wife will be coming in here and telling me it is time to begin watching season two of “Deadwood.” Season one was the damndest thing I ever saw. I couldn’t believe how graphic the sex scenes were…..They weren’t overwhelming like you see in a “Blue Movie” but they were graphic enough to get the picture. Actually I thought they were just the right blend and see the pioneering work of this series becoming the norm in the near future for a legitimate adult, production. The story line is about ten parts narrative and one part sex. Whoever planned the series has been reading my blog.  Linda says for me to find a place to stop and I guess this is as good a time as any. I would much rather watch Deadwood lying in bed with her than writing this boring blog. |
Interpreting the ”Views” Statistic I am confident that somewhere here at writing.com is a great explanation for the Statistic, “Views.” If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it more often that Views are in my opinion one of the most valid measures of a writer’s work the site has. No doubt many would argue that “Reviews” are the most valuable and the Site puts a lot of weight behind reviews however, I don’t find them too useful. This isn’t to say that occasionally I don’t get one that is useful (Myra McBains) but even a thoughtful one is the expression of but one person’s opinion. Views however represent both the members (writers for the most part) and non-members (readers for the most part) Now it should be evident that I am making some generalizations and assumptions and if anyone wishes to correct me I won’t be offended. After all this is only my opinion. Having said all this allow me to express how I relate views to the quality of my work. Now please keep in mind that this rule of thumb is based upon my work and those who choose to read it….I write several new static items a week and people tend to hate my stuff or like it but in either case choose to click on it to be amused or entertained or driven to apoplexy. What seems like a reasonable breakout for me won’t be the same for those who write more or less and don’t elicit the intensity and range of emotions that I do. So here goes… 1. If I get 20 vies or less I consider my Portfolio Offering (PO) ….(note that I have defined the acronym in terms other than its more common interpretation) well below standard. 2. If the PO is less that 40 I feel the readers yawned. 3. If the PO is > 40 but < 60, it was a successful attempt at prose/poetry or whatever. 4. If the Po is >60 but < 100 I feel real good about it. 5. If the PO is > 100 but <150 I’m beginning to get excited. 6. And if it is >150 I treat myself to a meal at Red Lobster. (The flounder is excellent) Now if something has a high PO I read it several times and try and figure out why it got the interest. This is not always self-evident because we are often poor judges of our own work. If the PO is very low I do the same thing to discover what it was about the work that elicited such ambivalence. Both of these flags are useful….one to show what worked for me and one to show what didn’t. There is one final aspect of this and that is duration….I would say that a six month window is about right….To be sure the views continue to accumulate after this point but I get the sense that the significance is less meaningful beyond that window. |
| Cooking up Sensual Prose Today’s blog is a very special treat for all my loyal readers. If you've been checking in from time to time in the hopes of learning something you always wondered about, then today you've hit the Lotto. Today I will tell you where the “Sweet Spot” is in writing sensual prose. I know for a certaint;y that this knowledge is not generally known at Writing.com because I see a lot of swings and misses. Indeed I say this not to assert any superiority on my part but rather as having been a victim of a strike out or two myself. What sets me apart is that I have also hit a home run. While my batting average in writing erotica is probably in the 180,s when I wrote Pageant it was a home run and is currently running at over 270 views. For those of you that were not athletically inclined in grammer school the sweet spot on a baseball (softball) bat is about a third of the length down from the tip. When the batter connects with the pitch and the ball at the exact point in his/her swing where the arc of the bat and the strength of the batter are focused and the ball connects with the bat at the “Sweet Spot” the chances are good the batter is going to hit a home run. However even in the game this is not a common occruance. So where do you ask is the sweet spot in writing sensual prose? (I'm so glad you did.) Well first of all it depends on the genre. With romance it is about 7 parts story and I part graphic. With Porn it is 7 parts graphic and 1 part story. For sensual prose it is about 6 parts story and 2 parts graphic…For GC/XGC it is 5/6 parts graphic and two/three parts story. For Erotica it is 5 parts story and 3 parts graphic" For a quickie submission is 4 parts story, 4 parts graphic. Assuming that the male sensual prose writer’s "Wanger" is 8 inches long (Is that being optomistic?) and a woman’s "You Know What" can accommodate this fearsome appendage... you can find the sweet spot by measuring up from the base to the story lines factor. There! that was easy wasn’t it? Unfortunately it isn't that simple because baseball and softball have many more variables than the sweet spot on the bat but I think that all writers should have a sense for where that spot is….still there is more to consider as you are so wisely thinking, albiet with a shaking of the head. The game of baseball and softball has a duration. So does a typical episode of sex. That duration is about twenty minutes. I know some men have more stamina and others are sprinters…some women come quickly and others need more time to get into the mood, however having said that I will use a statistical term and venture to guess that the standard deviation is ten minutes. We often hear reference to this statistic when an average is given followed by the caveat "Plus or Minus…" In this case ten minutes. So a sexual experience, in about seventy percent of the cases, is between 10 and 30 minutes in duration. Thus the writer needs to consider this in writing sensual prose. If the bedroom door closes with a click in the novel that is clearly unsatisfactory as is a marathon bout that goes on for over an hour in scene time or actual reading time. This should be obvious but there are some elegantly written marathon love scenes that appear from time to time on Writing.com that are much too lengthy to resonate. So then what is the rule of thumb….For those who know me it may be conceded that I love a rule of thumb or a Ball Park Stupid Wild Ass Guess (SWAG). Anyway here it is. Scene time is exactly that…a reader gets a sense for scene time…It might be less and it might be more than actual reading time but whichever is the lesser, the duration should be around twenty minutes. Into this window are mixed the proportions of story and graphic contact. Like sex the scene starts slow builds to climax and tapers off. In Romance the story predominates the mix and in Porn the story barely holds the structure together….and there you have it. Please! Please! I’m embarrassed and not used to such thunderous applause. I hope this thoroughly scientific analysis has been helpful. |
| Advice for Weekly Quickie Contestants…(and anyone else.) 1. Read the prompt but don’t let it put a fence around imagination….even if it gets you disqualified. There’s lots of fresh air outside the box. 2. Write an entry that in the first cut runs about 1700 words. (About twice the number required.) 3. When you finish go back and strip out every form of modifier whether it be word, phrase, clause or whatever….if it modifies get rid of it. Take a good look at the remaining nouns and verbs and see if in these now unadorned sentences you have picked the best possible ones....words that say exactly what you mean. Then run a word count. Say you are down to 1200 words. 4. Next get rid of everything word, sentence or paragraph that does not move the story along. Say you are down to 900 words. 5. Now prioritize the sentences and try to consolidate and see if you can’t eliminate the bottom ten percent. Say now you are down to 600 words. 6. Now begin adding in a sprinkling of modifiers that have a telling effect. 7. Now you are at 700. 8. Finally beef up the erotica and use the remaining words to give the sensual prose some punch. |
Deadwood My wife bought the Deadwood Series that played on HBO for several seasons and I thought it was extremely well done. First of all were the voices of the characters. Unless I make a concerted effort on the second draft my characters initially lack the distinctive voices that I work at adding in on the second draft. On the first draft the story line is everything and getting to tale into some semblance of order….I write quickly and it shows in the dialog. Once the first draft is complete, character development, exposition and dialog receive special attention. One of the Authors who I think does a great job on dialog is Janet Evanovich. Anybody who attempts to write a novel ought to read her Stephanie Plumb novels for dialog and humor. Shakespeare knew the importance of comic relief and I have never read anything that was not improved by liberal doses….Writers tend to be so anal and take themselves so seriously…light up! That’s one of the things that jumps out in Deadwood….The humor as well as character development and dialog. Anyway Linda and I watch a few episodes every night on one of these el cheapo video players. We wear earphones and I can actually make out most of the dialog. Another fascinating aspect of the series is the treatment of sex. What is portrayed is as graphic as anything you will ever see outside a porn movie. This is serious drama and I expect to see more of the same in the future. They have broken ground in using sex to take a good thing to a whole new level. This is something that gives a good example of the lengths to which the envelop is being pushed back in a legitimate literary form. I encourage writers to view Deadwood and see what I’m talking about. |
| Interesting Developments Right now a group of talented erotica writers are talking about sensual prose as a means or end. (See the Quickie Contest Forum) The question is should the erotica stand alone or should it supplement a story line. Six months ago the submissions would have indicated a stand alone answer. This is not to say they were pornographic but rather that they were designed to “excite” They were written to resonate with that compelling sexual need without getting “In the Face” of the reader. More recently there has been a trend to use the erotica enhance a storyline that was designed to carry the overall structure along. Different writers have expressed different views….with one being more traditional and the other more progressive. What is interesting is that the anchor of definition seems to be pornography. I suppose this is because most everyone knows exactly what that is and knowing that it is possible to back off the known and soften the raw graphic impact into something more palatable to many readers and writers. One writer expressed the view that the graphic component should be about one part and 5 with the story line component. This view seems to have some support among the writers who have commented….Now whether the ratio of weights is 5 to 1 as being discussed or 1 to 5 as it was six months ago is something to be assessed in looking at the nature of the submissions over the next six months. Rather than having this decided in some arbirtary fashion by the writers it is my hope that it will be decided by the readers and that “Views” will be the arbiter. I think it is possible to classify a story by assigning weights to these two components and then seeing how many views the piece got in a six month period. What this would do is help indicate to writers where the "sweet spot" is in the readership at larges attraction to the genre…There is definitely an interest in erotica and I am tempted to classify my own stories and run some statistics….The problem is that most of mine (quality aside) don’t approach the “Porn” threshold of 5 graphic, 1 storyline that we see in mainstream pornographic literature. The question that should intrigue writers is where that sweet spot is because a sensual touch can take a rather uninspiring piece of prose to a whole new level. |
| Two Hundred View plus Threshold I have said it before but it bears repeating….VIEWs are the best statistic the site offers. If you don’t get many on a piece then move on….if you get a whole lot go back and take a closer look at what you did right. It would be nice to know what the average number of views are that a piece gets here on Writing.com. As a writer we can see the number that something in our portfolio gets but we don’t really know beyond ourselves how many views another author's works are getting….I can see why this might be considered privileged, however, it would be interesting to see the views that other writer's get. Now maybe there is somewhere I'm not aware of to find this out. If true, I'd be indebted to know where. What I think would be cool is to have works that receive more than 200 views in a year rank ordered by views and when they were written…highest and .most current being on top…I would like to read these instead of random reads, or merit badge reads or newbie reads or any other type of category currently being offered. Views are to Writing.com what sales are to a book publishing house and I don’t think any author would be offended by having their works that exceed the 200 view mark highlighted. Further it would be useful for an author to know what the mean views of his works are and what the standard deviation is. If the work comes in below average it tells the author that from a reader perspective the work didn’t do too well and if it spikes it is worth taking a second look to see why. |
| Place Holders Sometimes I feel creative and crank out a bunch of crap. Other time I don’t feel like writing at all and force myself….some of my best stuff has come as a result of forcing. Most of the time I have a fairly good idea of the quality that is being produced. The first time through I try and keep the keys hopping but at the same time try and make it as good as I can. The Muse usually feeds me some pretty fair stuff and the problem is keeping up….Sometimes the ideas come so fast from the fire hose that it is impossible to worry about quality and it’s a mad effort to just keep up…When this happens I resort to “Place holders” for ideas. A Place Holder is a paragraph that catches the thread of the idea and some chunks of the fabric the muse casts in my direction. The concept is that later I will come back and there will be enough there to recall from the context the germ of the idea. It is better to proceed at a leisurely pace and paint the entire picture while it is fresh in mind but that is not always possible. The next best thing is using a place holder. If you don’t have an anchor point for the thread of the notion the muse leaves with you it is probably going to be forgotten. For example this next chapter will have a scene with Isabella…She will be thinking about her husband and how she plans to deal with the False Believer Issue (FBI). She is worried on one level (a tactical concern) about a question that most women would find troubling….her husbands fidelity….But she is also caught up in an Operational concern (The FBI) that is part of a Strategic issue….The Jewish Issue. See an earlier blog for the three levels of writing. Then there is a scene with Brother Bernardo and Consuelo….There scheme to corrupt the King is proceeding well and it is time to show the reader how a typical Novitiate is compromised and how that fits into the grand scheme of things. Finally there will be an example of parts of the corruption process that have yet to be covered….This will lay the groundwork for Benvolio and Maria and their efforts to save Teresa. Writing the Battle scene was a difficult undertaking as was the Corruption of King Ferdinand. I will leave it to the reader to assess the relative success but the Chapter I am currently facing will no doubt be every bit as much a challenge. |
Perplexing Questions and Lousey Answers I am such a jerk that my muse never sticks around for very long. Its like a revolving door on muses….one leaves and another moves in… The latest resident muse has been by before and has this really strange sense of humor….When he starts in I write like heck and he makes me laugh and suddenly I’m not taking myself quite so seriously. My wife says I’m extremely anal and whenever I get interested in something I really get interested….and she tells me to lighten up….Well the Good Humor Muse has been around the past couple of weeks and making fun of me and getting me to write things so I won’t take myself quite so seriously. The problem is that when I start writing what amuses me my anal friends think I’m laughing at them….They get mad and quit speaking to me….which is probably for the best because I really do need to concentrate on my novel… I am at a part where King Ferdinand is going to get compromised and the chapter starts when the King and Brother Bernardo are together and the King is giving confession….Now I am not Catholic and have no idea what a confession is really like except for what I have seen in the movies. So I went on line to some of the religious sites to get some scripture verses that pertain to human weakness…..I figure the priest would quote paragraph and line in the advice he gives to his petitioners….So I got about six quotes and drafted up a first cut…it was an interesting experience trying to visualize how these two character would interface. The King is interested in an agenda of state and the Friar is interested in an agenda to make the Catholic Church the One True Faith and both are seriously deficient in the weakness they have for the fair sex. They know the others weakness and the other knows their weakness and so the dialog they share is both evasive and hypocritical. Sex is a very powerful human drive and when it is suppressed it will find expression….This expression can seek take a normal, a perverted outlet or be canalized into a non sexual outlet. In my novel it finds expression in all three. Of the three the scariest is Zealotry as demonstrated when the Catholic Church had the power of the Inquisition it used ruthlessly to influence behavior and consolidate its power. In some cases we see religious leaders using it like Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul….but historically this has not always been the case….For ever sterling and saintly example there are many more who used their power in a less than stellar fashion….Its sort of like incest…..Ruling classes have used it in the past thinking that it amplifies both good and bad….That getting one exceptional human unit is worth the price of some genetically damaged units. Is a Mother Teresa or Saint Paul worth the minions of Priests who abused their powers for personal gain? The answer to me is no…..A celibate priesthood is an invitation to abuse so why does the church keep sending priests out into a lethal environment knowing that so many will fail and bring heartache and anguish to so many? A perplexing question for which I have no ready answers…. |
| Handing out Milk-bones Let me start tonight with something that has nothing to do with what I intend to blog about. This is a warning not to use the editor on this site any more than absolutely necessary. It is just a matter of time before you spend an hour or more inputting something and it suddenly nudges, flickers, turns blue and everything you have written disappears into the ether. Instead call up your word processor and do all your initial imputing into that and then copy it into the site editor. Now you’ve been warned. I try and stay attuned to my environment….At the end of the day I try and take a little time and reflect on what has happened. I didn’t always do this and if God, or the Spirit or my wife or kids tried to get in touch with me then I wasn’t always very well attuned and I suspect that 95% of the things that were really important went right over my head. Today for example….My wife was running around trying to get ready for work….I was hoping she might ….forget that… I wanted to write a chapter in my book….A friend of mine got served divorce papers, and it was a day that started out with the furnace going out, and two flat tires to contend with…and then I had errands to run to deliver some things I had promised. So I took a deep breath and waited around until my wife quite fluttering around, and headed off to Marshfield. I kissed her goodbye and told her to call if she needed any moral support….for some reason that is important to her….The goodbye kiss and telling her to call and let me know how her day went….Then I packed the two dogs into the car with the plasma cutter and drove into town….At Pfeiffer’s garage I took a look at how my S-10/1946 Studebaker pickup is coming on getting grafted together. One of the female mechanics went out and gave Chloe and Honey a milk-bone…Honey who is a seventy pound Golden Doodle burst through the door and parts to the plasma cutter went flying every which way…in the snow….Then we loaded up the frame for the Studebaker on the trailer and the left rear tire blew and had to be fixed….then we got home and the left front tire on the Ford Ranger was about flat and I went to a closer shop to get that repaired. The owner went over and gave some milk bones to the dogs and we went to the drive in window at McDonalds and I got the dogs each a McDouble and the girl gave them each a milk-bone… Now I know this is lengthy but if you are paying attention you will see that there is a pattern developing here. Nobody is paying attention to me but three people have taken time from their jobs to give a milk-bone to my dogs. I don’t have time for anything but my agenda, and three strangers are being nice to my dogs. Now is this a message or what….But as I got to thinking there was an even profounder message that came to mind. My friend got handed a big time crisis….I got handed some chicken poop crisis in a couple of leaky tires….Could it be that if our lives are not filled with a constant set of little distracters that the spirit uses to get our attention that our Muse will get really ticked and hand us a big one….I am so anal and focused that I’m often oblivious to everything else….The ability to focus has allowed me to do some amazing things but ninety-five percent of a lot of other important things have gone right over my head…Some of the bill payers have been expensive and when they flash across the video of my recollection I cringe…. Maybe I ought to start passing out a few milk bones myself. |
| Who not to Vote For I try and refrain from political commentary however sometimes I feel compelled to do so. This usually takes the form of telling potential voters what they should not do rather than what they should. The world is full of those who know all the answers and if you want to know what they have to say I invite you to listen to any of them. For my part I caution against voting for those who have political philosophies that have proven historically to be abject failures. The earliest system was the autocratic….In this one everyone did what the biggest baddest MF told them what to do. Good, bad or indifferent..., what the BBMF said to do was what the tribe did. The Greeks came along with the idea of Good….and said, Hey! The brute in charge doesn't always come up with the optimal course of action and maybe we ought to listen to a leader that optimizes the best interests of everyone. Plato picked up on this….well sort of….and came up with a society made up of the Gold, Silver and Bronze citizens. The Gold were those who would look out for the best interests of society, I.e. the aristocrats, the silver were golden wannabees that proved themselves worty of promotion, in the different vocations, ie Kinghthood, and the rest were everybody else in aloose order of merit which included, merchants, professional people, soldiers, workers and everyone else. Now we all know how this turned out….The aristocrats came to view their power as a God given right. Instead of using their power for the public good they used it to perserve their hereditary powers of self interest and control. The people got screwed. The silver viewed their powers in the various professions and guilds as a means for gathering and preserving wealth and passing it on to their offspring and the masses were left with what was left. Eventually the masses tired of putting up with this unfair nonsense and Plato’s failed experiment was trashed or reformed. In France there was revolt and in Britian a modicum of Reform. Another great social experiment was giving power to the Church….Now this seemed like a good idea, after all Jesus was a nice guy, until it was discovered that there is no zealot like a religious zealot….And Christians showed the world the doctrine of Be my Follower or I’ll kill you. This was followed by the Inquisition in Spain which convinced anyone awake at the time that the Church was not a group you wanted holding power over your head. Then the intellectual elitists got their turn and gave us Communism and its little brother Socialism…If ever there were forms of government that emasculated the people and took hypocrisy to an all time high it was these failed forms that continue to prosper today. Somewhere in between the Bronze got its turn and we had the industrial revolution and the idea was born that working men and women and children were a type of raw material like a lump of coal or iron nodule. We all know what happened here. The rich replaced the aristocrats as the social elite and continued the long history of exploiting the people. Today the personnel office of major companies and corporations is still called the Department of Human Resources. A few hundered years ago our founding fathers, who had the opportunity to see most of these ideas put to practice, went back to square 1 and dusted off one the Greek ideas…It was called Democracy. The Greeks claimed it was the most inefficient and vexing of all forms of Government but concluded at length that it was ten times better than the second runner up. Our constitution was written which tried to reconcile the historical players onto a level playing field….There was a branch of the people, and a branch for the muckety-mucks. Representatives and a leader were chosen by secret ballot and a pack of watchdog judges appointed to make sure the rules were followed. But the final arbiter was, is and always will be the people of the United States. Now this brings us to who not to vote for…..Do not vote for religious candidates. Do not vote for career politicians. Do not vote for educators (Intellectual elitists). Do not vote for lobbyists or political appointees. Do not vote for the unemployed. Do not vote for lawyers. Do vote for people who have actually worked in the manufacture or management of goods and services, those who understand how to apply theory to reality. These are the ones who make far and away the best candidates but even in such cases limit their tenure to one or at the most two terms in office. If you don’t understand why not to vote for Politicians, Political Appointees, Lobbiests, Educators, Prophets the Unemployed or lawyers, then I'm wasting my breath and will shut the frack up. |
| Tricked into Believing I think this is really cool….we all know it but its not something we think about very much…. Reality to our processor is not just the feed of sensory data into the front side or call it the awareness side of the CRT….This is certainly reality to the processor but there is another means for inputting sensory imagery. This is via the back side or call it the imaginative side of the CRT. We can close our eyes tight and envision something and the image of it originates in memory travels down a bio-fiber-optic cable into the back side of our awareness which is called imagination. One can also stimulate imagination by processing a string of symbolic cues know as alpha characters, arranged into words and words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into chapters and chapters into books and books into volumes and volumes into libraries and on and on. When we read, these symbols are fed into a preprocessor and flashed up onto the back side of the CRT. When we sleep there is also neural activity taking place and the brain has a capacity of crunching slowly along on the most perplexing and worrisome of problems searching within itself for solutions….when we awaken we retain a vestige of these dreams which are soon forgotten…..but are they really? They seem to lie just beneath the surface and if we reacquire the problem it seems much easier to solve having been pre crunched the night before than if we try and do it from a conscious mind cold start. The point is that there is a front side and a back side to our awareness….The front side takes direct sensory input and flashes it to mind, but it is also possible to use imagination flashing on the back side to accomplish the same thing…. The processor the screen connects to doesn’t know the difference between the front and the back. If you imagine something real hard the processor believes it just as much as if you actually experience it. This is an amazing capability that mankind has, which allows us to avoid a bad thing without having to experience it firsthand. What an advantage that has given humanoids over the other life forms that walk this planet. Why do you suppose our creator gave us this dual capacity….The answer is because he wanted our life form to endure in an extremely lethal environment…that the life span of men was cut much shorter than intended because of the hostility of his surroundings. That if mankind could anticipate and avoid danger the life form could survive longer and the spirit would not be forever having to move somewhere else |
| Pain Now anyone following on and off will realize that all the writing on the origins of life and creation begs the question of how our creator planned on interfacing with his creation. What I’m referring to is this. If you create something there is a supposition that it has been created for some purpose. For example a car is built and the builder interfaces at the steering wheel, the pedals and looking through the windshield. For example if a painting is created the painter interfaces by standing back and admiring it hanging on the wall. So it seems reasonable that early on the creator interfaced with the creation in some way…. Assuming that the creator crawled inside, there must have been one or more mechanisms of interface for influencing the function of the creation. i.e. a means for influencing its locomotion. Now perhaps the creator grew tired of the creation and upon becoming bored stepped outside and walked away. Maybe he tired of looking at it and left it hanging and departed. If this is the case then there is no interface with the creator because he is no longer around….This is a distinct possibility and a likelihood postulated by the God is Dead proponents. On the other hand maybe the spirit so permeates the creation that the creation exists solely as a means to carry it along….continuously shedding life forms and entering into others in others, using this creation as a receptacle for the higher purpose of its existance. Like the creator makes a jacket to keep warm, puts it on and thereafter no longer really takes note of it….Unless it gets too hot and it's shed or too cold and one with more insulation is required. If the creator is comfortable with the creation it could be that he hardly notices unless a default condition comes to pass beyond the normal operating range of the functions utility. Now lets look closer at this…..Something outside the normal operating range of function…..Of course there would be a sensor to pick this up and the sensor would send a signal….What would that signal be? Of course it would be pain or discomfort….The creator would be watching the discomfort indicator, and when it began to peg would want to steer the creation back into a comfort zone. As system termination loomed the spirit would make every effort to correct the anomoly or begin making preparations to leave the host. Now this has implications wouldn’t you say? Indeed it does because in my view pain is a thread that connects us with the spirit….No pain and the spirit pays little heed to the containment vessel…..Much pain and steers away from catastrophy looking for a safe haven to recover and repair, or in worst case, makes ready to depart. The vessel was designed to operate inside a narrow range of conditions and as the limits are reached on a vital function, seek a new direction or bail out to contingency. Thus if you want to interface with the creator, and we assume the creators still resides within... then pain is the frequency wherein we communicate with God… Yes of course…..God might relish the pleasure and comforts of his creation but if you want to get his attention you must get on the frequency of pain…. Now what does this tell us….that we spend most of our lives in comfort…much more so than most life forms or even those humanoids that came before us…..Our ancestors knew pain much more intimately than we do and communed with the spirit of nature on a much more agonizing and miserable basis….but today in the absence of such acute pain God pays us little heed and we think he is Dead. Maybe he is but then again maybe he isn’t. |
| Audio vs. Video We all know that when we look at something that light from the object goes into our eyes and is fed straight into our brains (Processor). We also know this is true for sounds, smells, tastes and tactile stimulus. However what you have not probably thought a great deal about is how the brain (processor) deals with alpha characters (26), arranged in various patterns into words. What is obvious is that these impulses do not go directly into the processor. Instead of being flashed up onto the front side of the awareness screen, they are sent to the back or imaginative side of the screen….Thus sensory inputs can be viewed as actual or contrived. When reading a book, Alfa-characters, words and sentences are fed down a neural USB cable into a pre-filter which differentiates and converts them into visual, audio, scent, taste or tactile inputs. For example if we read the words, “The young girl, smelled the rose, felt the bloom and put the bitter stem between her teeth…then the pre-filter must create an image of a young girl, search the smell file for roses, search the texture file of softness, and the taste file for bitter. These must then be integrated and fed to the back side of the awareness screen where they are displayed in our imaginations. Whew! Was that so hard? Now this brings us to the “So What?” question. The reason this is important is because the pre-filters to our imaginations are all not of the same design, circuitry and elegance of manufacture. For some pre-filters most of the fiber optic strands are devoted to visual images…others have more strands devoted to audio inputs and what is left over is meagerly allocated to texture, smell and taste. Thus a reader is going to view a written product depending upon the brand of their pre-filter….If it’s a Microsoft, it will provide have a different quality of resolution than an Apple… depending on how the fiber optics are wired into the function philosophy of the design criteria. As a consequence two people can read the same book and take from the experience a different perspective on quality. It isn’t all in how the book is written. It is also on how the data was processed into the reader’s imagination. Now if you don’t believe this I can prove it very easily. In my port under "One Acts" (Enchantment) is one about an erotic encounter between two wood sprites. If you have a visual preprocessor you will hate this story. If you have a processor with dual feeds that gives you muted, visual and audio in stereo, it isn’t going to light your fire or snuff your wick. If you have an audio pre-processor you are going to love it. This assumes of course that you like sensually written literature to begin with. |
| Chapter, Scene, Moment and Second. After sleeping on the Chapter, scenes and moments, its time to write the. seconds…These are the bite sized chunks….What should become evident to those following along is that something amazing has happened. The story has moved beyond the scope of a single chapter. Scene 1 has expanded into a Chapter, Scene 2 and 3 into a chapter, and Scene 4 into a chapter. I am going to have nine chapters written before Ricardo sets out for Basque land. This gives me three 3 chapters where the original idea was to only have one. Until It was broken down in this fine a detail all I realized was that this was going to be a difficult chapter to write and found himself procrastinating on starting…..Now I realize that the reason was because I was trying to cram a hundred pounds of story line into a twenty-five pound sack. Everything here moves the story along and I am beginning to wonder how long this Book is going to get. In the first draft Don Ricardo de Castillo I had 18 chapters….After grafting on the new front end plus the two more I have here, I’ll have about twenty-five…I won’t worry about too long as long as all the parts are necessary….However, I need to keep this thing from expanding totally out of control. The good news is that it won’t sag in the middle. It will be pretty intense from beginning to end. Chapter 7 The Big Picture Scene 1 The Battle Moment 1: Benvolio and Carlos providing background on their lives. Second A: Talk about the Battle Second B: Benvolio tells his story Second C: Carlos tells his story Moment 2: The Battle at the Forest Edge Second A: Circling the Wagons Second B: The Attack Second C: Breaking Contact. Moment 3: The Prisoner Second A: The Prisoner is identified. Second B: Carlos pleads his case. Second C: The Prisoner is hanged. Scene 2 Compromise of the King Moment 1: Confession with Antonio…Louisa scrubbing floor. Second A: Antonio takes the kings confession. Second B: Antonio takes King to Penance room Second C: King catches Priest trying to molest Louisa Moment 2: Encounter with Louisa Second A: Louisa thanks king for rescue. Second B: Continues to scrub floor. Second C: King and Louisa make love. Scene 3 Cardinal Mendoza and Isabella Moment 1: Isabela's World Second 1: Isabela thinks about meeting Second 2: Considers the False Christian issue. Second 3: Resolves to come up with something short of Inqusition. Moment 2: Solution to the False Believer Issue Second 1: Cardinal Mendoza Second 2: The Catacism Solution Second 3: Implemention of solution Moment 3: Relationship with her husband Second 1: They make a good team Second 2: How she loves him Second 3: How he bears watcing Scene 4: Moment 1: How things go down in the Convent. (Theory) Second 1: How the convent is organized. Second 2: How the Initiates are processed…. Second 3: How the Initiates are Indoctrined… Second 4: How the Initiates are used. Moment 2: A practical Example Second 1: A girl is brought in. Second 2: Orientation and choices… Second 3: Indoctrination and compromised Second 4: Put to work for the Cause. |
| Momentum Block I don’t suffer from writers block….my problem is momentum block. There are times when I just have to struggle to summon the energy. I get overwhelmed by the complexity and daunted by the task of writing a chapter. When this happens I go back to the outline of the novel and as a first step rough out the scenes. Then for each scene I write the moments and then I fill the moments with words. I have said this before but it bears repeating because it enables me to take my limited energies and apply them to a task that is doable. As I sit looking at the chapter outline with the scenes and moments I can focus on the micro and somewhere in that list is something I can write about. For example in Chapter 7. Chapter 7 The Big Picture Scene 1 The Battle Moment 1: Benvolio and Carlos providing background on their lives. Moment 2: The Battle at the Forest Edge Moment 3: A Prisoner is brought before them afterwards Scene 2 Compromise of the King Moment 1: Confession with Antonio Moment 2: Encounter with Louisa Scene 3 Cardinal Mendoza and Isabella Moment 1: Isabela's World Moment 2: Solution to the False Believer Issue Moment 3: Relationship with her husband Scene 4: Moment 1: How things go down in the Convent. (Theory) Moment 2: A practical Example Now the reader should be able to see that each scene and moment still contains a great deal of complexity. To deal witht his the writer breaks the moments down into seconds….These are even greater subdivisions and what I call bit size chunks that can be written with relative ease. I’ll talk more of these tomorrow and show how they expand the outline. |
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Love it! Especially the safety measures for us homo sapiens...
