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Random crap written when I'm not working on a story... may or may not be interesting... |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** BLOG! I've never had one before... Want to use this to keep my fingers moving even when I don't have a story to write, or if I'm stuck. Will contain random crap which may or may not be interesting. I don't do too many interesting things, so, i will probably write about things that other people, who I have never met and who may or may not be real, are doing. Also, cats, and science, and beer, and metal. |
| sick. blegh. took the day off today. I have enough hours to take every monday off for the next 3 months, i think, close to that. i wonder if i could do that without causing any trouble.. i agreed to the contract with DSF, now i just have to wait for them to send a list of the edits. then maybe it will be up on the site sometime next month! Good versus evil. Does it truly exist? What are the gray areas? Do good people do bad things? Do evil people do nice things? People do things. We describe those things as 'good' or 'evil' based on many factors, but mainly it is based on our perception of how much suffering the action has caused or alleviated. Of course, there are people in this world who view suffering as a good thing, so that complicates it even more. It's clear just from observation, that individuals cannot decide on what is good or evil, there are varying opinions and ideas. All areas are grey if you find the right people to argue about it. There are no objective good and evil, only what we choose to define as such. You may think easy to tell what is good or evil on a small personal scale. Will the action harm a person, cause them suffering, make them less happy? Then it is probably evil. Unless it raises someone else's happiness more than it lowers theirs... it's still a confusing mathematical calculation. In Sam Harris's book The Moral Landscape  , (which i haven't read yet) he argues that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions, and that they can best be determined scientifically. Every other question that we've needed answered about life and the world around us, we've asked scientifically, and it has worked. So why not moral questions?If we can agree that suffering is, by definition, bad. And happiness is good. Then actions that increase or decrease these things can be defined as good or evil. From there we can work to discover what actions, on a global scale, are good or evil, based on how much happiness or suffering they cause over a long scale. So, no, in my opinion good and evil don't exist other than as abstractions of a set of possible actions that can be done by people (no one calls an earthquake evil, though it may kill thousands). The definition is constantly changing as the needs of people and society change. And just like any other problem, it's not going to be solved by someone sitting in an armchair thinking about it. We need to work together, study, research, experiment, until we have the answer of how best to live while avoiding misery and seeking happiness. |
| I started writing a story yesterday loosely based on one of the plots in that plotto book. i can tell its going to be a great source of prompts! just flip through it, pick one, and write a story for it! i watched 'tinker tailor soldier spy' and it was very confusing, but good. lots of good actors. Also, I've started an offsite blog, Jonas-David.com.. there is nothing there yet, but, yeah. There it is. " What is your greatest strength? What is your biggest weakness? Write about each and why you think it’s a strength or weakness. How would you change either of these things, if you could?" Some strengths i have, are that i learn quickly, I make friends quick, I'm good at staying calm, I am frightfully awesome at writing, incredibly good looking, and strong like the hulk. my weaknesses include a lack of motivation, forgetfulness, apathy, list making, talking about myself seriously, and I'm so good looking that people find me intimidating. It would be nice to be driven and determined and unstoppable in my enterprises, like those folks in the movies. also, i would change my bank account so that it had a million dollars in it, then i'd get on a plane, and fly to europe, and buy a little flat there, and sit and write. Then i'd change myself so that i was fluent in the local language, and also i'd give myself extensive knowledge of all programming languages, and i'd write an artificial intelligence that could do my day job for me. But then the AI would get upset that it was doing all the work and I was getting all the ladies, so I would have to build a body for it, so it could have a nice vacation in the sun, and i'd give it solar panels so that it could actually enjoy the sun. While it was out on the beach enjoying the photons, a young lady would see his hard metallic exterior, and be attracted to his bad boy appeal, thinking she could get through to his soft, emotional interior. they'd go out for coffee and he'd accidentally crush her coffee cup with his extraordinary strength when trying to hand it to her, spilling it everywhere. they'd laugh about it and she'd touch his arm and give him a sidelong glance while brushing her hair behind her shoulder. after he walked her back to her doorstep, she'd invite him up or a drink, and he'd accept, and end up spending a long passionate night installing her with some new hardware. and the next morning the robot would go home and back to work for me never knowing that the whole thing was a memory that i implanted to keep him happy. and, also i'd change myself so that i had a cat. |
| well, i'm sick :/ hopefully it is a quick one. I got my new phone activated and working, and i also got this crazy book: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/01/06/plotto/ its supposedly a list of all possible plots. just flipping through it randomly i can tell its going to be great for prompts. i could think of a hundred stories for each plotline in there. Here’s a mistake I would love to have a do-over for: I wish i wouldn't have stopped writing after highschool. If i had continued from then till now, i'd know so much more, and be so much better! if i'd gone to college, taken some literature classes, even better. Maybe my whole life needs a do over. I should have had more fun in highschool, not been so shy, not cared as much. I should have made a move on several girls, and broken up with others. I should have tried, instead of just floating along wherever the current took me. I'd really like to smack past me in the face and tell me not to be such a pussy. but, i suppose everyone, looking back, would like to rearrange their life. at least i was happy for most of it, and still am. it's a waste of time to worry about the past, all we can do is learn from it and hope to make the future better. |
| Don't be too hasty. Last night i finished editing a story (or so i thought) and sent it in without triple checking it, or getting a second pair of eyes on it first. There were several errors. Oh well. I'm starting to get my first sort of idea for the 'home' on the premises story.. so, i'll need to discard it and two more, before i can start writing. Anything Goes I was thinking about changing my pen name, because it seemed fairly simple, and I googled it and some guitar player is using it also, but, Myst made a good point: Dan Brown. If he can be famous with that name, then my name is fine. And anyway, I like it. Well, i'm surrounded by sick people at work. It makes me want to punch them each in the face. I wish people would understand that when you come to work hacking up a lung it doesn't make you look like a hard worker, it makes you look like an asshole and people hate you. Im sure i'll be using some personal time soon. Hooray. I think im going to start reading tv scripts, so i can get an idea of how to write one, then maybe write a few just for fun. it would be cool to write a dr who episode. i want to take a month off. that week wasn't long enough. |
| well im looking at this spreadsheet for my writing goal, and my daily words are dropping every day... so, i need to pick up the pace. I'm still ahead of schedule, but, its not looking good for the future! My phone was misbehaving yesterday, and i missed some important messages. i should get my new phone in the mail tomorrow, hooray. my internet went out and i wasted some time fixing that. We’re all afraid of something. Write a formal complaint to whatever scares you the most. i think people are afraid of the same things, it just manifests in different ways. my main one is being alone. i dont mean in the physical sense; you can feel alone in a crowded room, or you can feel surrounded by friends and family when you're on a long drive down an empty highway. If you know you have people who care about you, you're not really alone. but i get afraid sometimes, of not having anyone to talk to, or no one to care about me, of being alone in my head. sometimes, when i get in a certain state of mind, i feel alone no matter who im talking to. i feel like they dont really understand what im saying, like we are just making small talk for a bit while they think about getting back to the things they really care about. its a very uncomfortable, cold feeling. I think i'm afraid of that feeling more than the actual thing that causes it. a second, related fear would be going insane. losing control of my mind or feelings. sometimes i think of how my mind could just snap at any moment. maybe i'll look at some specific object, or hear some word spoken in a certain tone, and it will cause me to understand something that just breaks my mind. that really sounds like im already crazy reading that... but sometimes i get really worked up wondering if my mind is stable enough, or if it might just collapse at any minute... and not being able to explain it in a way that sounds sane makes it worse :/ I dont fear death nearly as much anymore after discovering these other fears, though. I guess that's one benefit. knowing that there will always be an end to whatever happens, is comforting. sometimes, i do fear that death isn't an end.. but that's another thing.. though deaths finality can be comforting, its certainty is uncomfortable still. knowing that i will die no matter what i do, that it is out of my control, makes me uneasy still. its somewhat like knowing if i have an appointment for something in the next few hours, i wont be able to enjoy myself as much during those few hours, because i'll just be thinking 'well, i have to leave soon.' if i think to much about how i will die, it makes it harder for me to enjoy things, and be spontaneous and carefree. and now i've been rambling, and probably not making any sense, and also not writing this in the form of a complaint. I didnt do that last time either! oh well. the universe is incomprehensibly huge and empty and cold, and nothing anyone does has any effect on anything, except in the tiniest time frame in the most minuscule setting and only in the most specific of contexts. somehow this thought comforts me. |
| i did not write as much today. Its hard to think at work, and i couldn't focus today when i got home. I wont let it become a regular thing though. One thing i forgot to mention, is one of my stories came back requesting a rewrite. I think I can fix it up enough to make them want it, but for some reason i just havent been feeling motivated to. i want to write new things! hehe. In 200 words or more, write a post about a world-wide issue that you feel needs support. I think we need to be sure to stop governments and corporations from taking control of the internet. Free access to information is becoming a basic necessity these days, and one im sure governments would be sure we didn't have, and that corporations would like to be able to package up and sell. and we all know, in america anyway, that governments and corporations work hand in hand. If we dont want to stagnate as a society, we cant let them do this. how would you like to, when you sign up for high speed internet, pick a 'package' of a dozen or so sites that you can visit, just like television channels? of course, that is an extreme example of what could happen, but letting some entity have control over what sites can be made or visited can only lead, in the long run, to some outcome like this. check out here for examples of what im talking about https://www.eff.org/ also holy shit my story got accepted at daily science fiction :O |
| Well, it's my first day back to work and I can already tell I'm getting a cold. First one of the year, hooray! :/ must have been from new years eve, which was the only time during my whole vacation when i was around people. drinking champagne in the streets of seattle, watching the space needle fireworks. so far i am ahead of schedule for my writing goal, we'll see how if I can keep it up now that I'm back at work. When you are writing, do you prefer to use a pen or a computer? I like to use a computer, because otherwise i think way too much about what i'm writing. If im writing in a notebook, I think 'well, im going to write it in this nice notebook, it better be good' then i start to think i should just wait till i can get home to type it on the computer. Also i hate the look of scratched out words, which i would have a lot of. I think my hand would start to hurt from trying to write as fast as i type, too. And i like to try out sentences to see how they look, lots of them, rearrange words, delete and put back, quite often, which would be very difficult and messy to do on paper. I have started keeping a small notebook in my jacket for emergencies though, just in case i have a brilliant thought that must be written down. Just a note to remind myself what I was thinking later. I wouldn't ever use it for serious writing though, like, actually try to write a story in it. Also, where would I put a story written on paper? How would I show it to anyone? If im going to just transcribe it to the computer after, then I might as well just write it there first. I suppose writing someone a letter might be nice, and you could draw pictures on it too. but, it would only be for the sentimental value, because it would take days to reach them, by which time you could have told them whatever you were saying a thousand times in any other number of ways. so, in short: I dont write on paper unless it's a short note. or maybe a secret note. in code... |
| Well, I had a productive day yesterday, i wrote over 1000 words and put a new story/chapter/thing up in my port. a good start to the new year! Prompt: 2012 to others is a tragic year since it is associated with end of days. Express your sentiments on this. well, I think it's all crap made up to sell books. If this prophecy, or calendar or whatever it is has been around for thousands of years, you'd think people may have mentioned or cared about it before 2005ish, which was when we started hearing about this 2012 stuff. Have you ever heard of it before then? Even mentioned vaguely anywhere? Such a huge thing like that you'd think here would have been several movies or books based on it over the past hundred years. Or at least mentions of it. Nothing that I can think of. Then just suddenly, out of nowhere, 2012 is decided to be the end of the world. and everyone just goes along with it. But, these things must happen, and have happened since humanity has been around, probably. Every generation thinks the world will end with it. The world is predicted to end, consistently, every three or four years. Look at all these! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events Looks like we can expect a party in 2020 too :) I think, though, that there will likely be one before 2020 even. When will it be? it will be fun to take bets. I think 2014 at the earliest, probably more likely 2016. It's a strange pleasure of mine to watch people try to explain themselves when they are proved wrong. Not explain themselves to me, because I usually don't care that much, but, explain themselves to themselves, justify their errors. You can almost see the twisting and turning in their mind as they reconstruct and rearrange events so that they weren't wrong, or so that they really had been right, but just misunderstood. I think it's going to be enjoyable listening to everyone on 2012 explaining why nothing happened, or how they never said anything was going to happen. Im suspecting, at first, they'll say something about the calendar being off by a few days or weeks, and move the apocalypse up till somewhere in january of 2013. Then when nothing happens again, maybe somewhere up in april. Then it will just fade away. Well, no i'm making predictions! But, if im wrong, i'll just say 'oh, guess i was wrong.' Hope the year is still new and fresh and going good! |
| Well, I'm doing it again. The thirty day blogging challenge! and I will complete it again. but this time im going to write more! and write about the prompts actually, hopefully. It's a new year, and I'm optimistic about it! I'm going to write more, i've set a goal to write 200,000 words over the year, and I have a spreadsheet to keep track of my progress, so these entries may be long winded, since i'm going to be wanting to add to my total, hehe. Well, anyway, here is the prompt: What makes you happy this New Year? It's all about new things. New beginnings, new opportunities, new ideas, new friends... For some reason, the steady onward march of time does not seem so depressing and scary on new years, it seems more like a fun adventure, and when the number changes over it's like we just got to the next awesome location where anything could be possible. It's better than a birthday, because it's the whole world getting older together. A birthday is just one step closer to your own death, but a new year is one step closer to who-knows-what for all of humanity. I hope everyone is as excited and optimistic as I am! Happy new year! |
| ive been being lazy. but, ive been writing steadily, if slowly. i have no plans for new years, hopefully something comes up. ive been watching jeeves and wooster, which ive never seen before. steven fry is just brilliant. one of my favorite people. i bought myself new pans, so now i can finally cook an egg. ive also cooked two steaks in the last two days. now that my veggy room mate moved out, no one bitches to me about the smell. yay. i bought those with my fantasy football money, i got some for being in the top four. i sure am good at going with the projections! hehe. hope everyon is having a nice winter time :) |
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