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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. |
| Mamby Pamby Land There is a GEICO commercial that starts out with this arrogant all knowing narrator with slicked back oily hair, who has a variety of lead-ins one of which is “….did the little pig go wee, wee wee all the way home?“ My favorite though is the one with the opening line… “And does a Drill Sergeant make a good therapist?“ In the main body that follows there is this pitiful looking man laying on a couch discussing a trauma in his life and a ex drill sergeant therapist, who throws the box of Kleenex at him and says words to the effect that “… maybe you could become something if you quit living in “Mamby Pamby” land.” My Mamby-Pamby land is a bed where I sit with my laptop in the morning and write…All writers have one and they sometimes spend too much time there…(You can tell when you read dialog and would swear the writer never listened to a real conversation.).Even where they are up and about on jobs, or doing the necessary chores in life their bodies frequently run on auto and in spirit they are back in Mamby-Pamby land in the shelter of a palm tree, warm blowing winds and in the company of gentle spirits who are forever young and tell them how wonderful they are. My wife hates it when I 'm visiting there and not paying attention to her. She makes me pull over and let her drive when she sees me drifting off. The reason this commercial makes us chuckle is because those who never got a chance to meet a drill sergeant probably think the real world and Mamby-Pamby land are the same place. Many are economically sheltered from the cold, cruel and heartless place the world really is. My Wife is brilliant, works hard and makes plenty of money…..My daughters are extremely smart, good looking and breezed through the education system without breaking sweat….They have husbands with good paying jobs are industrious and live in Mamby-Pamby land. They take my grandsons to soccer practice where they don’t keep score, everybody gets to play and at the end everybody gets a trophy. They go to camps in the summer where everybody holds hands and sings cum-by-yah….What was once “Know thyself” got down graded a couple thousand years later to “To thy own self be true,” then further watered down into “Be thyself and finally at the bottom of the bucket into “Do your own thing.” Then one day we wake up on a therapists couch to realize that “Mamby-Pamby Land” is a dream world, an escape from the Real World called life. A world where we have to be whatever it takes to get by. If that means working at McDonalds, being the greeter at Wall Mart, driving a delivery truck or dancing the pole dance then "Tough Grits." Everybody can’t live in Mamby-Pamby land….somebody has to do the work and swim in that undercurrent of pain and suffering that runs beneath the world we call our daily lives. Somebody has to stoke the dark furnace numbed to the hopes and dreams of what might have been. To the disenfranchised, the bark of a drill sergeant is gently and amusing , compared to the snarl of a wolf clawing at the door….A sound that many are all too familiar with. And you know what…the answer isn’t throwing money at the problem….”Let them eat cake!” isn’t the answer.“ That comment helped spark the French Revolution and is about to bring Mamby-Pamby Land crashing down about our shoulders. |
| Coloring in the Assumptions In writing my novella Don Tomas de Castillo I need to make some assumptions about my reader's understanding of economics at least how they applied to Fifteenth century Spain....Let me define an assumption because people use them all the time and they allow us to operate in the absence of all the facts: Definition: An assumption is a fact that hasn't happened yet (futurity) or one the reader isn't too clear about...(It exists however, either through ignorace or being withheld the reader treats it a concept, or suspends disbelief, using experience in lieu of a fact....until proven incorrect i.e. A Dragon breaths fire. A priest honors his vows.) Since we all know assumptions can spell trouble I need to nake sure I weave some of these economic principles shown below into the context of the story. Percy Goodfellow on Economics: As it relates to the Novella Don Tomas de Castillo: To understand what was happening in the story one must understand what is taking place in the world. The world is driven by greed. Greed is the human desire to acquire what is needed to satisfy basic needs and exercise influence over others. The engine of greed is economics and the home of economics is the marketplace. In the marketplace you have goods and services being bought and sold. The medium of exchange is called money....money is power. There are three ways to get money/power. These are taking, creating, and earning. The big players are the Monarchy, the nobility, and the church. The lesser players are the soldiers, merchants, manufactures, farmers, accountants, lawyers, teachers, doctors and workers and everyone else. Taking The source of the Monarchy’s power is taxation The nobles through rents and extortion. The church through rents and tithes.. Creating The merchants through trade The manufactures through implements The Farmers through food. The financiers through capital…(Bankers, Lenders, Investors, speculators) Earning (By wages/fees.) Soldiers through violence. (Some additional through spoils of war...plunder) Lawyers/judges through adjudication Teachers through teaching Doctors through healing. Workers fthrough labor. |
Traditional Review Format I have decided in doing a traditional writing.com review to use the following format. Macro: General Observations and impressions: Observation 1 Observation 2 Observation 3 What I liked: Things that stood out or seemed particulary well done. Observation 1 Observation 2 Observation 3 Evaluation Criteria 1) Wow Factor: The WOW! factor is the energy and excitement generated by the work. An objectiveVvalue (OV)would be about 40% of the evaluation. 2) Story Line: Is there a stroy line and how much of the treatment does it share with the erotica. In an Erotica vignette there should be a balance between the two say fifty/fifty as opposed to a mainline work which is about 95 story/5 erotica. An OV ov 20% of eval. 3) Structure: Here the reviewer looks at the integration of erotica through out the piece rather that having the erotica appended on the end of a story line....Also considered is the integration of dialog, exposition and action. An OV of 20%. 4) Streamlining :Looks at the flow...is it gramatically correct, words spelled right as will as overuse of adjectives, clauses and phrases that detracts of clouds the imagery of the words. It also looks at resonance for little hics and hitches...sometimes called speed bumps....Anything that impeads the flow of the data into a the bio processor of the reader. An OV of 20%. |
| Lick and a Kiss Review. This type of review is very popular here at writing.com. It is very informal and the Reviewer picks one aspect of what has been read that strikes them as most significant and points it out. It is an abbreviated sort of Macro Review and can be useful. When you get one of these you need to ask yourself…assuming the reviewer actually read your work (And wasn’t trolling for Gps) this was the single aspect of the work that caught their attention…. Now it could well be and often is that it resonated with some personal aspect of their life experience. Say in the story a dog dies and the reader recently had a similar experience and they do a little venting….This doesn’t do much for the writer except to respond with something positive and brief…ie Thanks for your comment…glad it resonated with you the same as it did with me….or something like that.. Then again someone might actually like a particular line…or they might express an emotional response…ie I hated it when you killed off Myrna….she was the only thing about the story I really liked… Another type of response is the grammatical….You need a beginning quote before the line….---My love is like a butterfly,” he said. I write these one line reviews in a journal on a page for each category. By themselves they don’t mean much but if you find that a page starts filling up while the others stay blank that might be something to think about. A traditional structured review can be time consuming and often the writer just blows it off with a two second blink….You might have spent an hour on it and they brush over it in a heartbeat…. Because this response in not uncommon I use the Lick and Kiss review with many first time writers. I try and make the observation a quality one that represents the single thing that is best or where the most improvement could be gained. Then I wait and see if they send an answer or better yet do a reciprocal review in kind…. If “yes,” I wait awhile and do another a bit more comprehensive….In this way you meet some interesting people and strike up some friendships, without wasting a lot of time. If I get any kind of a negative response I make a note to make sure I don’t do any more reviews on that writer’s work. |
| Red Lobster Today we went to Madison. We ate at the Red Lobster. What a treat that was. After a delicious garden salad, Linda had the fried shrimp and rice and I had the flounder and French fries. It was a delight. Afterwards we went into the Barnes and Noble and I ordered a Dummies book on Romance Novel Writing. I already have the book on Fiction Writing and found it very useful. One of the most enjoyable aspects of writing for me is going back and doing an edit and refinement of the first draft. By that time most of the hard work is done and it seems like every addition makes the story that much better. I finished the “Whole Enchilada” which is really an abridged version of the Don Tomas saga, “Habit of Deceit.” It runs 9K words…. I have a final to do for HSP on “Love on the Farm.“ I hope that gives me another great idea for a novella…like the last one did…I did a first cut which would meet the requirement but started liking one of the characters more than the protagonist. That happens to me a lot but when I get that feeling it is usually worth following up on…its another example of the spirit at work. Once I get the HSP final out of the way I’ll integrate my research into the Don Tomas novella. If I have 9K in the abridged version it should be no problem getting to 30K in the novella. Its been a long day and Linda is turning off the light…I think that’s a hint. More tomorrow. |
| Panning Out One of the statistics I see here at writing.com that I think is the most telling is views. Sometimes I go back through my port and see which items have gotten the most. It used to be “The Librarian” which I think got around 150 that was the record for a long time and then “The Pageant” blew it away with 250. Then there is poetry….when I get 75 or more on a poem I think that is pretty good for me. My best is around 114. I often wonder what it is and can only conclude that if people like something they tell others who read it as well. That makes sense. A lot of others here like reviews and while they are always worth noting and looking at they don’t do a lot for me. I am experimenting with some other formats but the response hasn’t been exactly overwhelming. Sometimes an event takes place that is totally unexpected….For example last quarter there was a final exam from HSP requiring a piece on the Inqusition….That led to my serial on Tomas de Castillo. That turned into the first Novella I have completed in a first cut….It was a totally unexpected outcome. Now I have to clean it up and expand it with some historical material and character development. When I write a piece I try and get the characters to talking. I don’t try and descibe them right away…I used to do stage plays with varying degrees of success. It was important to have a character in mind when writing dialogue however you never knew how a casting director was going to see the character…another thing was set design. In a novel that is important in a stage play less so. Now I am pretty set in my ways so I do the first cut like a stage play and then try and flush it out with setting exposition, story line and character development. It will be interesting to see in the next couple of months how the stuff I am currently working on is panning out. |
Finished with the First Cut Well, I finished the thread of my novel last night and this morning. It still has a way to go because I decided to write the human story first and then integrate the research. A rather unorthodox way of doing it but it should work out OK. Actually its easier in this case…using place holders for the facts and then adding them in later. The whole effort was unorthodox. It started out as a final for the HSP where the idea for something larger began to germinate. Then the Nano came along and I expanded the context into an integrated outline. Then came the sizzle class and the Erotic components got field tested in “The Whole Enchilada.” Then I found a good historical text written by my favorite author Raphael Sabatini….In this I decided to model my protagonist after Tomas Torquemada…as I finished the research Torquemada became too grim a character and I had to dump him and no longer needed to kill of Teresa, one of my favorite characters….With that the last chapter wrote itself and the struggle of the past two weeks evaporated. Then on top of it all I was doing some blogs on “Spirit” and began to realize that a host of external forces were at work pressing in from all sides…Now it’s done in its essential form and I will be in the clean-up and polish mode for the next month. By then I should have a completed work to start marketing. My cousin stopped by earlier and dropped off his handgun. He just got through a divorce and has moved back in with his parents. He has returned to Wisconsin from Florida and his feet were soaking and his clothes ill suited for the climate this time of year. I gave him a pair of my deceased father’s old boots and some long johns. Hopefully that will keep him from freezing to death. Linda, my wife called from Marshfield where she is a cardiac nurse on the weekends….One of her patients died and that is always a downer…I will have to spend some quality time with her because such an event taken with all the burdensome rest of her job will have her in a sad mood. Sometimes I feel like a drug that she needs to get over the vicissitudes and back to her jolly old self. |
Tombstone I must be on the right track. Things are starting to flow better. Today I will leave the last 5 Chapters denuded a bit…(All relating to Teresa’s death has been edited out)…concentrate on finishing it up….at least in draft….but you know what? I bet I find an excuse to do something else. It’s not that I can’t write it….I wish that were the excuse. It’s just that I’m procrastinating and I don’t for the life of me know why. Here is what I need to do….I need to change the name of my Portagonist and delete all mention of Torquemada. Then find some obscure historical figure and use his identity (Not his name) to hardwire the novel into the past. That way it becomes animated with the “Great Spirit.” Then I go back through and begin adding in all that cool research stuff….with moderation of course so it firms up the story without weighing it down. Finally I will have to decide if a revenge chapter will be included or let everyone live happily ever after. Concurrently I keep going back and tweaking the “Whole Enchilada.“ Now that there is no word constraint I can add in some of the background and exposition I am often criticized for not showing. Which brings us back to writing sensual prose….The whole idea for the novel came from the class I took last quarter and a requirement to write a piece on the Inquisition. This whole experience with the ending of the Novel has been weird. Being connected externally to a larger piece of the cosmic puzzle is not something most people want to admit…. Yes I know what the church goers say but sometimes I get the feeling that even they don’t believe it….that they’re afraid not to. People talk about their muses but I wonder how real to them these spirits really are. Do they believe at a gut level in them or is this just some sort of artsy notion that is cool and popular to talk about? People like to read about historical events because it connects them to something. Imagine how it is that we are alive at this point in space in time and all those who came before us are dead….They lived lives very similar to ours….they were born, grew up, loved, raised families, grew old and died….Over and over again and you know what? We’re next. Where did all those people go….what happened to the sparkle in their eyes. I am the treasurer of a rural cemetery that goes back before the Civil war to when this state was still a territory. There is one marble monument (Must have been expensive) that marks the passing of a six year old girl. On a foggy morning as I drive by I can almost see the farm families gathered about her grave, clinging to one another in sadness. |
| I know you must be thinking dear readers that I am obsessed with this matter of the Spirit. I apologize but I just can’t seem to shake it. Nowhere as it been more evident than in the last week as I tried to finish the last two chapters of my Novella….Habit of Despair (AKA Don Tomas de Torquemada.) I have been assailed by forces that are not internal to my thinking (Ideas) but are rather external, (Spirits)…please indulge me while I explain First off is the ending itself…I thought I had that all resolved but forget that…When I tried to end it my brain went into grid lock….no it wasn’t writers cramp it was grid lock….Something outside of me would not let me write the ending I was contemplating…. At first I thought I had gotten on the wrong track by killing off Teresa but it wasn’t that….or maybe that was the start of it….Maybe I didn’t have to do that after all….What I mean is that if my Protagonist is Frey Tomas de Torquemada then I definitely have to “Out” her in order to create a life crisis that returns him to the cloth and makes him the force he became…. However, something keeps whispering….”Your protagonist isn’t Torquemada….You had it “righter “to begin with….it’s somebody else. Concurrent with this gridlock I finished reading one of my favorite Author’s (Raphael Sabatini) novel Torquemada….(Note: If you want to read the greatest Romance Novel ever written read his “Scaramouch.“) The more I read the more I became convinced that this guy was so bad there was no redemption….Torquemada was an absolute fanatic religious nut case who would have been very much at home in the Third Reich…What in God’s name was I trying to do pretending he was anything but what he was…the worst sort of insane religious mad man. The whole Inquisition was insanity….A classic example of the murderous propensities of religious zealots…Christians, Jews and Muslims. However In finishing the Book Torquemada (It wasn’t a novel it was more of a scholarly research work.) A solution presented itself….I needed to find a different person to model my protagonist after… make a course correction that will keep me from having to kill Teresa and bring this novel to a happier but still inexorable conclusion. |
| Sizzle Quickie I have just concluded the Sizzle class and pulled it together into a final assignment. For those not familiar with the Sizzle class it is a module from the House of Sensual Prose (HSP) taught by SoCalScribe. The teaching point of the class is to develop the ability to spread sensual writing throughout a manuscript and not wait for an intimate scene and then start from scratch…At least that is my interpretation. I have an interest in the subject because I’m convinced that erotica when done tastefully takes a genre story to the next level and thus is something that that all writers should try and improve at. It is much more difficult than one might think and writers here at Writing.com ought to take advantage of the opportunities provided by HSP. Anyway having completed the 5 week course the last requirement was the final where the 5 episodes needed to be integrated into a whole. This created an insurmountable problem for me to overcome because each of the parts were essentially stand alone vignettes which were also entered into the Weekly Quickie Contest. Despite the fact that they had the same characters and each assignment contained a different objective, they all were expected to build on the proceeding assignment, satisfy the teaching point, and culminate in a full-blown act of intercourse. Let me say before going on that I applaud the stand-alone erotica vignette both as a learning vehicle and a unique form of Erotic literature…Anything that will help writers make their genres more than a bloodless piece of prose that is too timid or ashamed to look beyond the bedroom door, is an effort that has my enthusiastic support. However, the concentration of erotica in the Stand Alone Vignette, is much too rich to fly in a traditional literary genre. I say this because just as sex is of short duration in the overall life experience so should it be in a larger and more traditional work of literature. Here at writing.com I have read some marathon examples in concentrated and prolonged sexuality and while some of these are well written they begins to wear thin the longer they continue. My rule of thumb is something in the range of 2-5 percent of a larger work is reasonable for the main course independent of any sexual tension which is another matter altogether. The analogy I like to use is the cooking one…Erotica is the spice and the genre story is the main course….You don’t want to make chili that is forty-percent peppers and spices. Thus in trying to integrate the 5 vignettes from their local form into a traditional sounding Short Story was an overwhelming task for me. Some of the other writers that did not fully commit in each of the assignments to the intercourse requirement will no doubt succeed in a more convincing fashion than I did…and I must say that the quality of the erotica that has emerged from this class is some of the best erotica I have seen written on this site. |
| Sensual Prose All erotica or sensual prose or Romantica (All the same to me) starts out as written symbols called Alpha Characters arranged into words that are grouped into sentences combined into paragraphs into serials or chapters or vignettes or short stories. The reason I start here is because once it enters my processor it takes to different paths in route to the video screen of my imagination. It can take an auditory or a visual path. With some writers the erotica has an almost lyrical and sensuous quality and has its effect through an ambience or resonating quality….It is mellow and puts the reader in a mood of opulence allowing them to experience the touching and kinetic power of the merging of skin textures and the delightful feelings of emotional warmth and glow. The other takes a visual path and shows the reader the graphic beauty, the vista of the sensual experience (That is if the lights aren’t turned off) and the beholder gets to see the details of the human form and thrill to the intimate details of each other’s body and see first-hand the wonder of discover develop and unfold before their eyes. In any event both tracks lead to the imagination and if the writer is gifted the reader gets to experience in stereo the blending of inputs arriving via an auditory cable and a visual one. Keep in mind these inputs are being sourced by written symbols and not pictures, movies or overheard conversations. They are being input into the eyes (Perhaps the ears if the written word is being read and played on an audio tape) but the source is a queue of symbols written on a page or a CRT. . Readers love to use their imaginations because as a displayer of images the imagination is unsurpassed in the elegance of the imagery it renders….Audio or Video, imagination interprets and displays those inputs with a vividness and beauty that is unrivaled…Sure one can go to the movies and see lovely images and special effects and hear poetry read that comes to life or go to a symphony and thrill to the composition of human genius, but alone and in bed, or your favorite armchair, nothing beats the written word and the wonder of the imagination to display it. I am not a religious zealot by any standard but I find it profound that the Bible starts….In the beginning was the word and the word was God. What sets man apart from all else is her imagination. It is a unique ability that sets womankind apart from the other life forms. We can game play in our imaginations experiences that have never happened…and experience things before they take place. In this manner we can desensitize ourselves to the physiological shock of an upcoming trauma and work through it where without that advanced programming we might would most certainly have been overwhelmed. What an advantage that must have been in the evolution of our species. I heard the car drive up and I need to go for now….more tomorrow. |
Origins of the Universe I have received such an outpouring of interest as a consequence of this blog that I am moved to explain more since there is so much ignorance about regarding our true origins.. I am finding that what is self evident to me is not generally known to most of my readers causing me to pause and explain things a bit. Actually there is much to explain and I'll not run out of blog material any time soon. Still I suspect my readers will eventually become bored with the cosmic message as they did with the treaist on Good and Problem Solving....Then I'll have to find a new subject with a broader interest. Feel free to tell me when you have heard enough. Once upon a time, the universe collapsed inward upon itself until all the matter therein became compressed into an infinitiely small space that became so dense that atoms squeezed tightly about together that the heat meter pegged off the scale and there was a big bang. At that instant the universe exploded outward into the huge and empty expanse it had once occupied and the consequences of this can still be seen today. In this cataclysmic expansion of matter the universe was once more filled with elements in the form of solids, liquids and gasses and as they traveled outward began to cool and settle into the forms we are familiar with. Into each galaxy stars were born as particles were sucked into gigantic black holes and spat out the back side with incredible velocities..Once these particles reached the speed of light squared they ignited into thermonuclear furnaces. Whereupon they decelerated like a huge cosmic break had been applied and globs of molten, gasous and solid matter was cast off into chunks that began to orbit about them. On these planets these forms of matter began to cool and into their present shapes, however the nuclear engine continued to burn hot and those in proximity cooled slower that those which were further away. In a narrow band of temperature somewhere between too hot and too cold That Which Had Once Been (TWHOB) prior to the big bang, screwed open the portal to the dimension in which she had retired and sniffed about…The harshness of the surroundings were harsh indeed and he slammed the hatch closed, glad to be still in existence and made preparations to explore the new surroundings, beyond….It did this not by venturing out in body but by sending out devices that would report back on the external conditions. These devices were what we call today, "life forms" that were complex by our standards but within the technology of TWHOB that assembled and them loose to gather information. These life forms accomplished their purpose sending back a pleathora of data so great it would have filled several telephone books. When the TWHOB had all the picture they cared to see they turned off the server and went back to lives. Outside these life forms, instead of drying up and blowing away took hold and began to thrive and evolve despite the fact that they had fullfilled their intended purpose. So if one today wonders at the purpose of life be advised that we are long past serving our intended purpose and remain but the residue of what we were originally created to accomplish. When the conditions outside became such that they were less threatening to the TWHOB they peeked out and took another look...this new world outside their dimensiion was unlike anything they had ever imagined and they were still singularly ill suited to the new conditions imposed by the Universe. They withdrew back into their dimension and have not ventured forth since leaving the residue to evolve into the llife we know it today. This was an unintended outcome to which our creators showed a sublime ambivalence….Life was not intended to survive its intended purpose yet it somehow managed and not only that, evolved and flourished. The energy (sun) that animated these containment vessels (life) came to exist despite the harsh conditions (Counterforce’s) that were arrayed in opposition. As a life form came into existence it was eroded from with and buffeted from without however it cheated death reproducing itself before reaching the end of its service life. When TWHOB took a look outside again, a millenia later you can imagine her surprise to see an abundance of life thriving, reproducing and wandering aimlessly about with no idea as to its origins and original purpose. Note: The Outdoor wood stove burned out last night and it is getting cold. I must replenish the fuel and go and gather more or my wife will become angry and call me a pontificating slacker. More tomorrow. |
Back to Lightbulbs Now this is a very simplistic analogy because it is missing some key components that the designer of life had to contend with….Not only did the bulb have to glow but it had to move about on legs and also had to have arms and hands and fingers to manipulate and sustain itself. Further it had to respirate, digest, and purge waste and to handle all these boring and repetitive functions and not distract the spirit with details such as beating hearts, reproduction, and sensory and emotional operations. To take care of these mundane functions she also had to design a computer to regulate all this. This computer started out as a purely utilitarian device designed to orchestrate the functions of the life form but in some of the advanced life forms it developed a module for recreation and amusement…it evolved a sense of humor and a sense of joy and while it was initially programmed using negative and reactive logic it looped back in its evolution, as life so often does, bringing a positive outlook and function to what started out negative. So life forms as they evolved came to reconcile the driving force of the spirit with the counter forces as they interacted on the containment vessel called life…I hope this discussion isn’t boring you…It is important to understand the basics before moving onto some of the ramifications that followed. Anyway as I mentioned early, once the spirit created this containment vessel it entered therein and has remained a part ever since….As the light bulb reaches the end of its utility the spirit withdraws and joins the spirit in other bulbs, and thus has somewhere to go when the containment vessel finally "Gives up the light." Now here is the point I want the reader to take away. As the bulb burns with the power of the universe, is beset within by impurities, is buffed from without by counterforce’s it goes out. If the bulb wants to extend the duration of its existence it turns itself off from time to time (gets some sleep) maintains itself with prudence (Holds vacuum, regulates power flow, sheds plenty of light) and does not indulge in risky behavior that allows the counter forces of life to end prematurely its existence. When a life form wakes up from a nap, awareness comes on and the maintenance modules continue unabated but below the level of awareness intruding only when something is wrong and the life form must be steered in some direction of remediation. Oh..Ohhh, This blog is going to turn out like the one I was doing on fixing old trucks…There is going to be a huge drop in interest and I am going to be forced to describe something more interesting or face a dramatic downturn in readership….To keep this from happening I will turn my attention now to writing and how that works so that those aspiring to becoming published and best selling authors can have the path illuminated and be rewarded for their patience in following along. |
| The Light Bulb Analogy I do hope my blog isn’t disturbing anyone….better that you laugh and call me a fool than be disturbed or perhaps even annoyed. Maybe if I talk about writing it will provide a common ground and you will find my ranting less intrusive. Yes writing, sigh, what a wonderful thing that is. When the sprit (God) created the vessels in which he placed a small piece of himself he chose a distributed data base rather than a huge mainframe. He did this because the Universe can be a chaotic and dangerous place and feared a catastrophic event killing his awareness in one fell swoop. So instead of living in one grand palace he chose instead many small cottages. You, a reader of this blog, are one of those cottages. Think of yourself as a light bulb….yes that is a fine analogy…a light bulb. It is exactly what the sprit was thinking when he created the first living thing as he pushed the pencil or stroked the keys acting on an idea he had to cheat death and realize immortality. Instead of one big light like the sun he would create instead many little light bulbs. Now consider this light bulb she designed. It was made of the elements…some silicon, some aluminum a twist of tungsten, some copper wires, you get the picture…It was not designed to last forever…indeed not for as we all know light bulbs are prone to failure. They can burn out from within or are carelessly broken or dropped . Anyway this light bulb is what the spirit called life. Now most who are familiar with how a light bulb works are going to be bored for a moment but allow me to bring everyone up to speed. The way it works is that a silicon (glass) globe is blown into an orb and into this is placed a thin pedestal that contains a filament and this filament is connected by wires to an external power source and the orb is sealed and drawn to vacuum so there are no impurities inside to shorten the life of the filament….then energy is applied externally and the light comes on. Now the light bulb would burn forever were it not impurities in the components as well as those that over time find their way into the globe. Sorry to leave you hanging...my wife needs some help with the turkey |
| I believe that God is a force for good. This requires a definition of good and I just happen to have one. Good is a thought or act that improves a condition over doing nothing at all. If we do nothing nature provides the default...if we act in the name of good we are an instrument of change in the hands of God. Now before the Organized Religion zealots begin jumping up and down let me throw a little cold water on their party. Christians, Moslems, and Hindu’s and all the rest have been chasing their derriers around in circles for the last 3K years and are no closer to finding the spirit than they were when they started. We have made organized religion the custodians of our sprit and they haven’t done jack with it…Nada! Zero! While science has marched forward and thrown open the doors to the universe these supposed stewards have been asleep at the switch. They have tried to define God in a bunch of ritual mumbo jumbo that makes about as much sense as a rap star posturing on a street corner….and if you don’t accept their absurd interpretations you get branded a heretic or atheist….God is out there and everybody with a modicum of sensitivity knows it and yet we accept these half- baked explanations as the gospel… I belong to a church and contribute financially and believe that organized religion does more good than harm….But I do not believe that any of them have a corner on who God really is and if we could ever get past the chains of bogus dogma and take a fresh and unbiased look we might glimpse the Almighty in ways we never dreamed possible. God is the illumination of truth unconstrained by ignorance. It's a beginning sports fans. |
| Spiritual Force So its proof you want….is it? Well put this in your toot, toot, tooteler and toot it….I’ll give you proof …pay heed… Before modern science was all the rage alchemists puttered about their secret laboratories trying to make gold out of earth, fire, water and air. (A dirisive laugfhter rises from the peanut gallery….another tomato arches through the air….Is this your proof Percy?….you dim witted idiot…Undeterred I sigh, breath deeply and continue) These alchemists saw force in these four media and in their struggle for knowledge, sought to apply these forces to changing the elements…. Today we call these forces, elemental, electrical, hydraulic and gas. (As my detractor rises to hurl another missle a cooler head stays his hand…Hmmmm he tells his collegue…it won’t hurt to listen….give this fraud some rope.) As I work on my trucks in my shop there are three energy equations I'm familiar with…They are Ohm’s for electricity, Pascal’s for hydraulics and Bernullie 's for Air… I work with these forces on a daily basis. The forth is elemental that Einstine fiddled with and I make no claim to a nuclear reactor tucked away in the corner of the garage. Further I interpret “Fire” to be analogous to electrical energy. I do this because any fool knows that you need “fire and fuel” to make an internal combustion engine run. Fire is the electrical spark from hell that results when a force field collapses. If you look at these four equations you will see certain similarities. They all have three variables, they are all linear, they all have a force component, a containment field and a counter force. While they differ as to the contaimment structure and the media therein, they are amazingly similar….Force is force is force is force. Duh! In electricity (fire) the containment field is a wire and a conductive metal….In hydraulics it is a fluid in a pipe, in gas it is a tube filled with air and in elemental…it is nuclear energy contained in a universe filled with all manner of dark things. They all say the same thing….Force=Containment*Resistance "Oh my Gawd!" Comes a gasp from a tier two intellect. With renewed confidence I push out my chest…”And that’s not all…. " A hush settles over the room. "And if you want to know what spiritual force is I can tell you!" You can hear a pin drop. "God is the illumination of truth unconstrained by ignorance." * force=force=force=force=FORCE. Footnote Electricity: Ohm’s law: Voltage (Pressure)= Amperage (flow)*Resistance(Resistance) Hydraulics: Pascal: Input Force = system flow pressure* lift surface area and weight. Air: Bernullie: Force= pressure*lift surface area and weight (Resistance) Elemental Einstine: Energy=Mass*Speed of Light2 |
| The Great Secret of Life Where was I…? Ah yes, on cycles and symbols. Every time a writer completes a work he closes a loop….completes a cycle. When he/she finishes there is a containment structure and into this structure goes a piece of his/her spirit….That’s right a written work is a creative process and it is animated by the spirit of the writer. It takes on a life of its own just as a living thing is born, lives a while and then returns to the dust from whence it came so a literary work is born, goes on for a while and then returns to the dust from whence it came. What we write influences the life forms that read it and it energizes and animates and affects the course of their life cycle. In our lifetimes it has been discovered that all living things have cells and inside each of these cells is the blueprint of the life form's genome. Billions of zillions of copies of these blueprints walk, (crawl…slink?) about this planet as people, dogs, giraffes, viruses and amoebas, to mention a few. Who do you suppose wrote these blueprints….God you answer…some unknowable sprit….some traveler from outer space?...something hidden inside one of those dimensions currently being theorized…was the code a fragment ripped from the body of some huge corpus at the “Big Bang?” Was it a cosmic seed buffeted by the winds of the Universe? Beats the heck out of me…I have no clue who wrote the code of life that keeps replicating on this planet and adapting and continuously changing its form…What I do know is that some “Thing” did…A novel doesn’t write itself….Eternity isn’t long enough for a legion of monkeys banging typewriters to happen on the right code and the perfect conditions for life to take hold and begin evolving…It takes more than the right combination of soup in a primordial pool....It takes a nurtureer...that's why we have mothers. Just as a writer arranges symbols into a work of literature and that literature springs to life in a receptive and fertile imagination so life does the same thing…while I don't know who wrote the code of life I will speculate….The writer of the code was out to cheat death….He/She wrote the specifications for a containment vessel (A cell with a capacity to replicate, adapt and evolve) imbued it with the energy of the cosmos and set it adrift in defiance of the counter forces that arose in opposition…The writer crawled inside and has been holed up there in ever since. A piece of the writer/creator is in every life form and as the elements cry out in agony... as the energy animates the form... the creator cheats death and cries out in the joy of immorality…As the energy destroys from within and the elemental powers erode and crush from without.. the life form replicates and before death can have its final victory a new generation is born. Well blog buddies….you can tell your grandchildren that you heard it first proclaimed on writing.com…That you were cruising the internet when the great revelation was posted on an obscure blog in Percy’s portfolio. “Where’s the proof you frackin moron?" comes a cry from the peanut gallery followed by an overripe tomato. "Be patient you doubter…" I reply…."I've answers and will be sharing more tomorrow." |
| Symbols A word is an arrangement of symbols along a queue. In writing the English language there are twenty-six (26…my favorite number) to choose from. These words form or assist in the forming of images and these images are strung together into concepts and these concepts become thoughts and thoughts ideas and these ideas aggregate into bodies of knowledge which are the building blocks of chapters that make up books and the books volumes …. (You might choose a different arrangement in the elements I have just described) but I’m sure you get the idea, just keep in mind it all starts with a symbol. It is my view that the answers to all the questions we have about life are scattered about us and as we go blithely, helter-skelter, persuing the needs Maslow helped us order…we are surrounded by eternal truths that are so common that we just don’t see them anymore….In other words the more we deal with the trees the more invisible the forest becomes. For example take the cycle of the seasons…We see spring as a time for renewal, summer as a time of growth, fall as a time for harvest and winter as a time for struggle. As we live each part that is what we see. Even though we go through the cycle of seasons, say ninety times in the course of a lifetime at any moment we are caught up in a phase of the cycle and an event that captures our attention. In nature there are many cycles…energy flows in a cycle, our life is a cycle, the week is a cycle, women have a cycle, the weather has a cycle, the tides have a cycle. Am I boring you? At any point in time we are somewhere in the loop of many concurrent cycles that circle our awareness like electrons spinning about an atom. We are continously in a state of motion, twisted, buffeted and turned by these cycles that take us around in circles and then start us back at the beginning all over again. I know you’re wondering where all this is leading…what do cycles have to do with words and symbols. People have been walking around on this planet long enough to begin to leave a record of their experience….In the beginning that record was language or spoken words….sounds were the symbols but sounds were not as efficient a way of recording experiences as a new invention…the written word…While sounds could be passed on in living anthologies of stories and histories, the invention of writing provided a method that was much less vulnerable to break-ups in a social cycle…The written word could survive catastrophes to be rediscovered while the spoken word was soon lost in the vicissitudes of nature and the times… Hold this thought if you are able or inclined to do so….I am suddenly overwhelmed by the demands in a phase in one of life’s recurring cycles….be glad you’re spared the sound, graphics and fumes…If you get the drift....’ll be back tomorrow… |
| Resonance Review Last month I got a review from DRsmith and he did one on a poem I had written called Sheba. It was a structured poem with a beats per line constraint as well as a rhyme scheme. Now most who follow this blog must know by now that when I’m not writing I’m working out in the shop on my trucks. In the automotive repair field there are a lot of cool diagnostic tools…There are volt meters for measuring electrical pressure, amp meters for measuring electrical flow, devices for measuring continuity of a circuit, and on and on and on. When DR gave me this review I felt like I was in the presence of a veteran mechanic…not a wrench turner but a word smith who specialized in poetic systems . To use a mechanical analogy he had a tool in his kit that I call a resonance meter. He hooked one lead to the front of my poem and the other to the back and each line started scrolling on the CRT providing a reading on resonance…sort of like a heart monitor and he called these blips, “Speed Bumps.” Now I knew exactly what he was doing and referring to….The resonance meter a poet uses is in their ear and they nod their heads programming in the meter and compare it with the beats of the line…if the flow is uninterrupted they go onto the next….Good poets do this so routinely they don’t have to give it a second thought… Many prose writers however, don’t have that same ear for resonance… Some don’t even know it exists. When I suggest changing this word or that, many writers think I’m being critical of their word choice. Since they appear to be tone deaf, they think I’m trying to impose my style of writing and it makes them mad… even though they don’t always admit it. I think most prose writers at writing.com ought to take a poetry course….Both free form and structured and try and develop an ear for resonance and then apply that to their writing. Once a prose writer learns to do this I guarantee they will go back to some of their earlier works and cringe. Then they might reflect….this is a stretch….and connect…maybe what Percy was hammering me about wasn’t word choice….maybe it was resonance….duh! |
| Avoiding the Issue I have let all this thinking about reviewing, and class assignments and contests distract me from my central focus….Don Tomas de Torquemada. Often when I get to a point in a novel where I must do something distasteful I find myself caught up in “More important Matters.” Don Torquemada was a historical character who ran the Inquisition in Spain for Ferdinand and Isabella…It is said he was Isabella’s confessor….He was a Franciscan priest and must have been a holy terror because he nothing much good has been written about his persecution of Jews, moors and heretics….Actually all his persecutions where confined to Conversos…my research shows….those who converted to “The One Faith” and then reneged. Those were the ones that he went after…I mentioned in an earlier Blog that the word “Torque...” which refers to twisting motion was probably some pundits reference to the screw machines used in the torture that took place…I am only guessing but its fascinating to me that a common engineering term might have its source in this sort of gallows reference. In my story Don Torquemada starts out a pretty normal sort of person so I needed an event that would distort his character in a big sort of way turning him into the holy terror he’s referred to in the historical record….The Murder of Teresa the woman he loves will be that event. She is a very warm and loving young woman….maybe not the brightest star in the sky but a really sweet girl. Then things are really going to get ugly and the reader is going to be led into the storm. So I guess I will have to put on some wet weather gear and start getting wet. |
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Love it! Especially the safety measures for us homo sapiens...
