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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
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Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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| Ah, yes, the traditional end to a 30DBC month. PROMPT September 30th Congratulations on making it to the last day of the competition! What was your favorite prompt from the last month? What was the most rewarding aspect of participating in the competition? Did you learn anything about yourself or your fellow bloggers? Do I even have a favorite prompt? Unlike some previous months, I enjoyed writing to most of these prompts. I only recall one or two which presented issues for me, like the bit about spare time. I suppose I'll pick the "favorite seasonal thing" prompt from a few days ago, because it prompted me to write about one of my favorite subjects: beer. The most rewarding aspect, and I don't remember exactly how I've responded to this question before but I suspect I'm going to be repeating myself here, is seeing the variety of other peoples' responses to the same prompts. We're all coming from a different place, so we all have our own takes on things. While it's nice to find people who agree with me, it helps me grow and think when someone has an entirely different worldview. Did I learn anything? Sure. I always learn something. Sometimes I forget it immediately; at this point I need repetition to drill something into my head. I know I didn't comment on every entry I read, and I didn't read every entry, but the ones I saw demonstrated thoughtfulness and care in their answers -- whereas I'm aware I'm often sarcastic and sometimes prefer to inspire laughter than delve deep into the philosophy of some prompts. But that's okay, as far as I'm concerned. So I guess that's what I learned about myself, or, rather, confirmed: that I like being the comedian. I suppose I should try for even more comedy, but you know, sometimes I just want to be serious. This may confuse people, though, and make them think that I'm trying to be funny when I'm not. But that's not nearly as bad as not being funny when I'm trying to be. That shit's downright embarrassing, like when you drop your pants for sex and the woman points and giggles. Or is that just me? Probably just me. Anyway, I expect to be around next month too, just doing different things. Maybe I'll attempt some 30DBC Unofficial Month prompts. Almost certainly I'll take a stab at "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+]. Probably it'll mostly be me riffing off of interesting (or stupid) articles that are lurking in my Blog Fodder folder.Oh, and I'll resume handing out Merit Badges in mini-contests. After spraying out a bunch of them early this month, it's been a few weeks again, so be on the lookout for those. Anyway, it's been a good blogging month -- thanks to all of you for reading, commenting, and running the 30DBC. See you tomorrow! |
| Alright, this is not something I would ever normally do, but I sign up for these challenges specifically to do things I wouldn't normally do. PROMPT September 29th List the top ten things you most desire in life and the top ten things you are most grateful for. The Top Ten Things I Most Desire In Life 10. A reliable car 9. Cats 8. Travel 7. A home with a comfortable bed and good appliances 6. A reliable internet connection 5. A gaming laptop 4. Games for said laptop 3. Friends 2. Booze 1. Money Okay, maybe #7 is cheating, but without stuff in it a house is just a house, not a home, so I assert that I can specify at least some of its contents. And now... The Top Ten Things I Am Most Grateful For 10. ... 1. (see above list) Some might be wondering where "happiness" is on that list. Happiness isn't a thing. Happiness is what can emerge when what you want and what you have are the same. As has been said before, happiness isn't about having what you want, but about wanting what you have. Which is not to say I'm ecstatic all the time or anything; I do have this pesky tendency towards depression. Besides, it hasn't been a high priority for me for a while, since I figured out that I was going to either live or not, regardless of whether I'm "happy." But the thing is, I do have what I want. Mostly. I mean, I'm not completely complacent. The "travel" thing is kind of a sore spot for me right now, what with restrictions and all. And there are always little things I want, like, for instance, the new Jim Butcher book which I'm given to understand comes out tomorrow. You'll also note that "love" isn't on the list. I'm entirely too cynical and jaded to put it on there. It's just not a high priority for me; previous attempts have ended badly, and you know what they say about doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. So I guess my lists are very material-oriented. I'm okay with that. I made peace long ago with being materialistic. I suppose other things like health and, well, being alive should be on there as well, and they are important to me in that without being alive and reasonably healthy, I couldn't want or enjoy anything. So those should be read as the implication anchoring everything else. |
| I'm pretty damn possessive of my possessions. PROMPT September 28th If you were forced to eliminate every physical possession from your life with the exception of what could fit into a single backpack, what would you put in it? 1) My laptop, its power cord, mouse, mousepad. Can't live without these things. Why do I have a mouse when I have a laptop? Because I can't stand using the damn trackpad, and besides, how can I game with the trackpad? 2) A metric assload of $100 bills so I can buy more stuff. No, I do not consider this cheating. Money is a possession, and while most of it's just numbers on some bank's balance sheet, I can convert it to a physical possession during business hours. 3) A .45 caliber handgun for when I find the sonofabitch who "forced" me to give up the rest of my possessions, which include somewhat valuable houses that won't fit into any backpack I've ever heard of. I mean, I'm not a violent person, but that could change in the above scenario. I guess that last one is kind of cheating because I don't currently own a .45, but that's the first thing I'd buy with some of the money. 4) My passport so I can leave the country after retiring the person from (3). Seriously, though, the only plausible scenario wherein I could see this sort of thing happening would be an imminent natural disaster, like a hurricane or tornado. We don't get many of either in the Virginia Piedmont, but it happens. It's rare enough that I haven't been arsed to put together a dedicated bug-out bag, which is really something I should work on doing, you know, just in case. Wouldn't really need the cash, because of cards and such, but the laptop is truly essential. And no, there wouldn't actually be a gun involved unless the reason was a zombie invasion, which happens even less often than hurricanes or tornadoes. The passport is for real, though, because it would suck to lose everything and also not have a means to leave the country if I have to. My wallet would go in there, too, except that it's probably in my pocket. Same with my Android. Unless civilization has completely collapsed, I wouldn't even bother with toiletries or clothing or whatever -- those things are readily available, though I'd miss a few of my T-shirts. If civilization has completely collapsed, though, not much use for the laptop or smartphone, either. And why would anyone assume I'd survive such an event? I'm not the survivalist type. And without a functioning CPAP, I'm not long for the world anyway. If the point of this exercise is to get us to think about what physical possessions are truly essential in our lives, I guess what that comes down to for me is: money. It's just so damn versatile. But I do like the laptop. |
| Oh, yeah! Hung-over prompts time! PROMPT September 27th We are nearing the end of the month, and as always, I need your help to fill the Challenge War Chest with new prompts! In your entry today, write three of your own blogging prompts and then use one of them to complete your entry. So, let's see. Blog prompts. Many of this month's prompts have been quite thought-provoking, and I'm not sure I can top them in my current condition. Fortunately, I don't have to top them, just come up with different ones. In that spirit... 1) What are your favorite procrastination techniques? 2) Tell us about your favorite food. Include all the sensory description you can: smell, sight, etc. Why do you eat it even though you know it's bad for you? 3) Talk about a time someone gave you a compliment, but you felt you didn't deserve it. Yeah, I know, they're kinda salty. If you had my hangover right now you'd be pickled too. Because this entry is later than my usual entries, I figure it's appropriate to tackle #1. What are your favorite procrastination techniques? Oh, there are so many. So, so many. I guess the most important procrastination technique is "forgetfulness." When I know I have something important to do by a deadline, I distract myself by doing something else until I forget what it is or when it's due. Then I wake up in the middle of the night screaming because I suddenly remember what it was, how essential it was for my well-being, and that it was due last week. Another good one is cleaning. Now, I hate cleaning with an all-consuming passion, but occasionally I get saddled with something I want to do even less. This is a good way to actually get me to straighten some things up, because I tell myself cleaning doesn't require a lot of brain power and I can use the time to think about the thing whose deadline is rapidly approaching. Usually this means I half-ass the cleaning and half-ass the... whatever the other project is. Then there are the times I convince myself that in order to do project A, first I need to tackle project B. But project B requires the results of project C, which in turn requires me to complete project D. The biggest problem here is that project D is heavily dependent on project A being complete. I call this Recursion to Infinity Procrastination, or RIP, which will be etched on the tombstones of my unfinished projects. Occasionally, procrastination isn't all bad, and I manage to get other things done, like when I'm stuck on a story so I decide to do some reviewing instead. At least then I get reviews done. Most of the time, though, I just waste time until the adrenaline kicks in so I can't wait any longer. If you're expecting me to be all sunshine and light here and give tips for not procrastinating, remember 1) who you're reading here and 2) the hangover bit from above. Hopefully, though, this has been at least a teensy bit amusing for you readers, because I'm suffering for my art here, and my art is supposed to be comedy. |
| Hey, this one's pretty easy for me. PROMPT September 26th It’s apple-picking season where I live and I’m so excited! Write about your favorite seasonal activities. What is something that only comes once a year, but you always look forward to? I'm not a fan of Christmas trappings, and New Year's just brings fresh horrors. Thanksgiving does little for me, because my family is mostly gone and I won't cook a turkey for just myself. Halloween is kinda fun with all the spooky stuff, but it's not really a big deal for me, either. My birthday would be kinda cool, but it's in February, and I hate February. Easter isn't something I celebrate, and Pesach means schlepping to my few remaining family in New York City (not this year, though) and trying to find a parking spot in Manhattan on a holiday weekend. You'd think that being a would-be comedy writer, April Fools' Day would be my holiday, but I tend to spend it in my room under the covers, lest someone mistakenly assume that it would be funny to play a prank on me (it would not). Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor day -- all just another day for me because I'm retired. But there's one thing I look forward to every year, and -- you guessed it -- it involves beer. I speak, of course, of Oktoberfest (which is really celebrated in late September because Germans are weird). (I can say that because my dad's side of the family was German.) So it's going on right now, and the one thing I look forward to every year is getting to drink Oktoberfest beer, aka festbier, aka Märzen lager. The story behind why Oktoberfest beer is named after the month of March is an interesting one, but I can't be arsed to look it up right now. As I recall, there was a period when Germany, or rather the nation-states that would later become Germany, forbade the brewing of beer between, like, April and August, or thereabouts. This had to do with refrigerators having not been invented yet. So they'd brew some beer in March and let it sit in barrels in caves or some shit until it was time for Oktoberfest (which itself started out as a wedding celebration for royalty). Like I said, not looking it up, so I might have some of the details wrong, but that's the gist of it. Anyway, point is, these days Märzen lager starts hitting shelves around late August, and I drink the hell out of that shit. My favorite is a local one, an Imperial version called Hansel and Kettle that's high-octane and delicious. The "Imperial" style name is borrowed from Russian Imperial Stout, which isn't actually Russian but British, and that's a whole 'nother story that I won't get into right now. It mostly just indicates that a beer has a higher ABV than usual, and that other ingredients have been balanced out to compensate. But I'll try any festbier, if I'm at a taphouse or whatever, and they usually have a consistent quality to them because the recipe doesn't allow for too many variations. Another thing that lights up what's otherwise a crappy season for me -- I know a lot of people like fall, but I despise cooler weather and prefer the sweltering heat of summer and, especially, its mild nights here -- is pumpkin beer. But pumpkin beer varies wildly in quality. Some don't even use much pumpkin, just the ever-present fall staple of pumpkin spice. Some are way to sweet for my taste. Others are entirely too much pumpkin, not enough spice. But when I get a good one (Pumking from Southern Tier, out of New York State, another Imperial variant, is my favorite), I drink it. Still, it could go away and it wouldn't affect me much, as long as I get my Oktoberfest. I have a vague desire to go to actual Germany for the celebration sometime, but it's usually really crowded there, and I don't do well with crowds, beer or no beer. Still, for the experience, it might be worth it. So that's the big thing I look forward to. As the weather continues to turn against me, and Märzen becomes but a memory, I'll probably be drinking more Russian Imperial Stout. But that's not seasonal. Festbier is. I'm told that the title of this entry translates to "It is tapped!" which traditionally opens the festivities in Munich. But I don't know much German, so hopefully it's not actually something rude. |
| I find it unlikely that I'll be remembered much at all. PROMPT September 25th What specific character traits do you want to be remembered for? If I am remembered, I'll have no say in the matter. What I want, therefore, is unimportant. Hell, I'm not even sure what my character traits are. I'm too close to the matter. When I was in high school, a guidance counselor accosted me after lunch one day. He said something like, "I just wanted to tell you, I was watching you at lunch. You were hanging out with the nerds, then you went over to the theater kids and talked to them. And then you talked to the jocks, the misfits, people in the band, and the minority kids. You seem to get along with everyone, all the different groups." I hadn't really thought about it like that, and it didn't make a lot of sense to me, but after that, I noticed that yeah, not everyone could talk to just anyone. This was before The Breakfast Club came out, though, and after watching that movie, a few years after the guidance counselor incident, I think I finally understood, at least a little. See, that movie never made a lot of sense to me, and I'm not just talking about how Ally Sheedy was fucking hot even before her supposed "transformation." It was that the movie made me realize that most people just hang out in their little cliques, but I never really had one, at least as far as I could tell. I just thought everyone was, you know... pretty much just a human. Which is, of course, not to say that there weren't people I thought were assholes. Or that some people didn't think I was. It's just that I've always been willing to give anyone a chance, regardless of perceived social status or interests. It's something, I think, that has served me well as a writer -- knowing people from different backgrounds has helped me with characterization and whatnot. But more importantly, it's helped me to put myself in another's shoes, whether those shoes were Reeboks (those were big in the 80s as I recall), sandals, dress shoes, or used footwear from Goodwill. There is a downside to it, though, which is that I've never really fit in to any one group. The closest I come is when I'm in a brewery, surrounded by other beer drinkers. The next closest is at SF/Fantasy conventions, which I haven't been to in a while, but the people there tend to be accepting of differences anyway -- so long as you don't diss their favorite movies/TV shows/comics/books/whatever. But when you don't pick a "team," people are more wary of trusting you. After all, how do the science geeks know that you won't defect to the band nerds? As an aside, everyone's a nerd. Everyone. We all have things we're passionate about, be it sports, music, politics, comics or whatever. Someone decided long ago that some interests have more value than others, and those with lesser-valued interests get branded as outcasts. Sports fans lost any right to look down on fantasy cosplayers, though, when they started painting their faces and wearing weird shit to watch their games. Everyone's a nerd about something. So, if I were able to choose, I suppose that's what I'd want to be remembered for: accepting. It's certainly not absolute; there are some things I can never accept, like people who deliberately harm others, or who are blatantly racist. But if you're not hurting anyone, it doesn't matter to me. And my own interests are so varied that usually, I can find common ground. Ask me again tomorrow and I'll probably say something else, but this is what came to mind today. |
| Today's prompt reminds me of an old joke. PROMPT September 24th If I gave you $5000 and told you that you had to spend it today, what would you buy? (Have fun with this one  )Telling the joke from memory since I can't be arsed to look it up. A rich dude was dating three women. One day, he decided it was time to settle down and pick one, so he gave each of them $5000 to see what they'd do with it. A week later, the first one comes back with a bunch of boxes. "I spent the $5000 on things I know you'd love. Power tools, lawn furniture, a barbecue grill and supplies, a giant TV, that sort of thing. I wanted to show you how much I care about your desires." The second woman shows up all different-looking. "I spent the $5000 on a complete makeover, hairstyle, new dresses, and such, because I wanted to show that I want to keep myself looking good for you." The third one comes back and slaps $10,000 on the table in front of him. "I invested the $5000 in the stock market and doubled the money in a week, because I wanted to show you how good I am with money." Well, the guy thought about it, considering the various merits of each of their activities, and he thought about it some more, and then thought about it even more, and he married the one with the biggest tits. Now, I don't want power tools or any of that crap (at least beyond what's needed for a particular project), and I don't care all that much about looks. So those are right out for the purposes of today's prompt. I don't suppose I could simply invest the $5000? No? Argh. Well, the prompt did say "spend," so I'm guessing no, but if someone actually gave me $5000 (I take PayPal), I'd put it in the stock market. I could do all that in one day, easy. None of this "doubling it in a week" nonsense, either; that's not investing but speculating, and speculation is gambling. Not that I haven't done it. Just not with a whole lot of money. Speaking of gambling, another option would be to hop on a plane, take it to Vegas and play high-stakes blackjack. Yes, blackjack -- I don't like poker, and roulette is too random. With blackjack, I have a system. Sometimes, the system even works. But no, gambling isn't the same as spending. While I'm in Vegas, though, I could always find some hookers and blow, and... nah, I'm not really into hookers and/or blow, so that's not going to happen. But if it did, I could definitely do that in one day. One thing I'd consider is one of those all-inclusive vacations, one that requires the money up-front. Spend it today, take the vacation whenever (preferably after there's a vaccine). But I think I have a better idea. This stuff is listed at about $5400 right now. I could pony up the extra $400. Or, if that's not allowed by the rules, well, I'm pretty sure there are other premium whiskeys for less than $5k. Hell, if I wanted to poke around a bit more on the internet I could find the Yamazaki for less; that was just the first result I found. Okay, no, it was the second, but the first was $10K so I'd have to wait until the money doubled in the stock market, which violates the conditions, so... nevermind. Assuming I could find it for, say, $4000 (which I've seen it at before in the past), I'd spend the other $1000 on beer. Or maybe an assortment of beer, wine, gin, and tequila. No other whiskey, though; after drinking the Yamazaki, I think sullying my lips with any other whiskey would be dishonorable. Yes, even Pappy van Winkle. Thanks to websites, I could do all that in a day... ...oh, but wait. Virginia has stupid, idiotic laws about buying liquor online. Beer and wine, sure, with some limitations, but here, the state sells the hard stuff and they don't like competition. And I'd be hard-pressed to find a beer that costs $5000. Getting a large quantity of cheaper beer is out, too, because not even I can go through it fast enough to drink it all before it gets skunked. I'd rather waste money than beer. Wine, on the other hand... I've seen bottles of wine go for five figures, and I'd bet there are some that sell for more than that. It wouldn't be too hard to find a rare vintage that costs in the neighborhood of $4-5 K. And I could still make up any difference with an assortment of other tasty beverages. I mean, sure, I *could* cart the cash down to the local animal shelter, or a charity for the homeless, but I don't think that would be considered spending it, either. So, wine it is. What? Was anyone really expecting me to settle on something that doesn't involve alcohol? |
| Superlatives can be difficult to remember. PROMPT September 23rd What is the most spontaneous thing you have ever done? In this case, there's an added level of difficulty: to me, something is either spontaneous, or it isn't. While I dislike the idea of binary thinking, this one's pretty clear: either I plan for something, or I don't. I suppose "least spontaneous" would make more sense, since perhaps you can think of something that you've planned longer than anything else. For me, that would probably be my professional engineering exam. Planned for it for, what, something like 15 years? On the other end of the scale you get what I did yesterday: I was sitting there messing around on WDC when the thought came to me, "My car just passed inspection and is in working order again. I've got nothing pressing to do here. I want to take a drive." And so I selected a random destination, got dressed and took off. Planning time: oh, maybe 20 minutes to generate the coordinates and get dressed for driving. That's probably as spontaneous as I get. If you count things that don't require any preparation at all, maybe you can count the times I've been like, "You know, I could sure use a beer right now," so I open the fridge and pop a cold one. Total time between thought and action: maybe 15 seconds, depending on where I am in the house. Less if I get the idea whilst standing in the kitchen. I guess I was assuming that the prompt is about going somewhere. Consider, then, an equation that takes into account the amount of planning and the distance to be traveled. Less planning, higher coefficient. Further distance, also higher coefficient. Call planning time P and distance to be traveled D, then the "most spontaneous" thing would be whatever has the highest value of S (for spontaneity) = D / P (because if P is in the denominator, then a lower P means a higher value of S). Now, in the Before Time, I have considered upping and taking off to Paris or something on no notice, because I could. I mean, I have an up to date passport, and they were still letting Americans in. But since I've never actually done that, we'll reserve that particular value of S for sometime in the future. I hope. I don't know, maybe D should be T, for time. After all, if I decide to drive to Los Angeles, it's about 36 hours of driving, or call it four days of perfectly reasonable 8-hour drive times. Paris is almost twice as far away from me as L.A., as the plane flies, but it's about, oh, call it 12 hours from my house, to airport, to the inevitable connecting airport, to de Gaulle, to, I dunno, say the Eiffel Tower because everyone knows it's in Paris. (I've always despised when movies have to show both an establishing shot and the full name of the city. It's like *pic of Eiffel Tower* "Paris, France" "REALLY? I HAD NO IDEA!!!" *pic of Sydney Opera House* "Sydney, Australia." "Fuck me, I thought that thing was in Toronto.") But I digress. The point is whether you consider distance or time, it's still in the numerator of the equation: more time or longer distance, divided by the planning time. Now that I think of it, sure, it should be time. That would put S in units of time / time, making S (Spontaneity) dimensionless. That makes sense from an engineering perspective, since there are no actual units of spontaneity. Otherwise it's distance / time, which could be confused for speed. So I'll go with the time a friend of mine called me (we did that sort of thing back then) and said, "Hey, we've got tickets to Dar  Williams in New Jersey, wanna go?" So I threw my shit together, took off, met my friend and her friend, and we all drove up to northern Jersey together. Total travel time, maybe 9 hours. Prep time, 30 minutes. S=9/0.5=18. There, that's my record so far (at least that I can remember). That's just getting there, though. I'm not counting being at the concert, meeting Dar, or the drive back (which I was asleep for most of anyway).It's unlikely I'd ever beat it myself, because I have cats and at a minimum I'd have to arrange for someone to care for them when I'm away for more than half a day or so. Anyone who can beat S=18, let me know. That is, if you're still here after all the math. |
| Ah, yes, the old "save game" scenario. PROMPT September 22nd If you could live the next 24 hours and then erase it and start over just once, what would you do? Drugs. Okay, no, probably not. I'm going to make some assumptions here -- this is obviously an entirely speculative scenario, and there aren't enough details. Basically, I'm figuring it's like saving a video game, proceeding with the game, and then reloading the save. Or, perhaps, the Groundhog Day situation.  I would have memory of what happened. (Otherwise, what's the point?) No one else would have any memory of what happened. No consequences upon reload. No objects come back upon reload (that is, no profit from, for example, robbing a bank).Sometimes when I'm playing Skyrim, I do this sort of thing on purpose (usually the save point is just in case my character bites it). I'll save a game, then go into a town and pick fights with the guards, just to see if my character is strong enough to take on an entire town's worth of guards. Or to see how much I can get away with stealing from a shop, or finally taking out my frustrations on a particularly annoying but important NPC. Of course, that's just a game, with no real-world consequences anyway (except that I've once again successfully procrastinated chores). Reset or not, I have no desire to commit mass murder (or even, you know, non-mass murder), or steal a bunch of stuff that I'm not going to get to keep anyway, or even beat anyone up. Has nothing to do with the penalties if caught, just don't wanna. That leaves experiences. Ever have a place you wanted to explore, but there are all kinds of "do not enter" signs up? Like, for instance, Area 51. Now, that one in particular wouldn't do me much good because I'd get shot before I even got ten paces inside the fence, but you know... that sort of thing. A bell tower or something. They never let anyone up in those things, and I always like to see the view from up high. Wouldn't risk getting caught under normal circumstances, but with the reset thing? I might give it a shot. There is, however, one thing I'd definitely do. Today's Tuesday. If I know I'm going to relive Tuesday, I'd pay really, really close attention to what the various stock markets are doing on Tuesday. Then, after the "reload," I'd place enormous bets, using margin, on the stocks I know are going to go way up, and short the ones I know are going to crash. Yep, I'd totally do that... but the problem is, the stock market follows chaos theory. That is, even minuscule differences in starting conditions can have outsized effects on events. So if I shorted a stock on Tuesday 2 that I didn't on Tuesday 1, that very well might be enough to change the course of trading that day. But, you know. Probably not. My input would truly be minuscule, so it'd be worth taking the chance. So you see? I don't even need to rob a bank to get rich. I just need to see the future. |
| What, me worry? PROMPT September 21st One thing outside of my control that I need to stop worrying about is... I'm... not really the worrying type. As the prompt suggests, there are things in my control and things that aren't. If a situation is, at least in part, in my control, then I tend to do something about it. If it's not, then I figure out a way to deal with it -- usually by imagining the worst possible outcome, mentally preparing for that, and then being relieved when it turns out to be not as bad as I expected. Of course, like everyone else, I have certain concerns. No point worrying about them, though. It's a waste of brain power, when that brain power could be used to play video games or get distracted with booze. I'm sure there are a lot of things on everyone's mind right now: pandemic, economic struggles, upcoming election in the US, social issues, the impending end of Western civilization, and all the other joy that 2020 has brought us. Hell, I was just reading where archaeologists found a bunch of sarcophagi in Egypt. I mean, I'm a rational guy, but unearthing cursed mummies in 2020 sounds like a Really Bad Idea, and these archaeologists probably should have watched more horror movies before proceeding.Point is, there's not a damn thing I can do, and if there were, I'd be doing it instead of turning it over and over in my mind. It's not like I can fly to Egypt and ask the archaeologists what the hell they were thinking, and even if I could, it wouldn't do any good. In case it's not obvious, I'm joking about the mummy curse thing; it's a worn-out horror trope, which makes it ripe for comedy. Jokes are what keep me from worrying. I haven't found many situations yet that I couldn't joke about. Hell, I was getting treated for a heart attack, watching my ticker beat on the screen, millimeters away from possible death, and all I could say was, "Huh... it's not made of stone after all." If you can't control the situation -- and much of the time, you can't -- you can control your response to it. I recognize that worry is one of those emotions that's really hard to address, but just because I can't control something doesn't mean I'm going to let it control me. Usually, though, it's not about control, but about just letting go. I don't accept that everything's in some higher being's hands, or has a purpose. Also, there's no telling what the future will bring; could a situation come up where I do start to worry? It's possible. It's just not happening right now, and I'm certainly not going to worry about getting worried. |
| Yay! MadLibs! PROMPT September 20th Complete this sentence: The next time I ___________, I will __________. The temptation is there to plug in random verbs, so I found a random verb generator and cranked it up. The next time I settle, I will whisper. The next time I put, I will hope. The next time I revise, I will award. The next time I teach, I will travel. The next time I interpret, I will assist. Hm. Maybe if there were an option to limit to intransitive verbs. But, you know, I don't build these things; I just wreck 'em. So I also tried a sentence generator, pulling entire verb phrases out of the randomly generated sentence. For example, my first result was: "She had a difficult time owning up to her own crazy self." Plug in the phrases and: The next time I have a difficult time, I will own up to my own crazy self. This is fun, if maybe a little too on the nose. Let's try more: The next time I should have been a time and a place, I will be it. The next time I crash on the shore, I will be a lovely sight. The next time I play with Legos, I will be at camp. Okay, so not all of them work. Still fun, though. Oooh, found another one where you can specify more parts of speech. The next time I abhor Hades, I will disengage mousse. (I changed the verb tenses, but that's about it) The next time I immobilize medication, I will cache vise. Nah... maybe not. The links I used are here: https://randomwordgenerator.com/sentence.php http://watchout4snakes.com/wo4snakes/random/randomphrase Be careful with that second one. I don't fully trust it. There's also one I found that didn't quite do what I was looking for, but someone might be able to do something with it: https://www.michaelfogleman.com/phrases/ Anyway, yeah, some of these are nonsense, but nonsense can be fun. Hell, poems -- entire novels -- have been written with nonsense, and people drool all over them looking for meaning (I'm talking about YOU, Ulysses.) Because that's what we do... we look for patterns. Usually this serves us well, especially if we're being stalked by a lioness. Sometimes it leads to impressive accomplishments. Other times, it's just cool -- people looked up at the stars and decided they made little connect-the-dots sketches, and named them, and so we have the constellations. And then, sometimes, things get weird, like with pareidolia -- seeing a face in a mesa on Mars, or Jesus on a piece of toast. But then, that's also how we get a "man" (or in some cultures, a rabbit) in the moon. According to Wiki (look, I can't be arsed to check every reference, especially when I'm just playing like I am today), Pareidolia "can be considered a subcategory of apophenia . So of course I had to be reminded what apophenia was, and at that entry I found this:Apophenia... is the tendency to mistakenly perceive connections and meaning between unrelated things. And this: In contrast to an epiphany, an apophany (i.e., an instance of apophenia) does not provide insight into the nature of reality nor its interconnectedness, but is a "process of repetitively and monotonously experiencing abnormal meanings in the entire surrounding experiential field". Such meanings are entirely self-referential, solipsistic, and paranoid—"being observed, spoken about, the object of eavesdropping, followed by strangers". As that article explains, taken to an extreme, it's a disorder or an indication of a disorder. And it can certainly lead to fallacies. But... that's what I do as a writer: I find or imagine connections between disparate things. Hell, a metaphor can be considered an apophany by this definition. Metaphors are what humans do. It's what we're good at. Like... when airplanes were invented, we called their fixed appendages "wings," even though they're not exactly the same as the flappy wings of the birds which inspired them. It's important to not take these connections too far, to mistake symbol for referent. This sort of thing is, however, what creativity in writing is all about - at least to me. And I mean, hell, isn't a realistic painting just a case of intentional pareidolia? Take La Gioconda, for example, better known as Mona Lisa -- da Vinci intended it to represent a woman's face, and that's what we see. We don't actually see a person, of course, just a bunch of paint splotches, but our minds are tricked into seeing some long-dead Italian. Randomness can lead to imagined connections, and imagined connections are the heart of creativity. So... The next time I write a story or poem, I will be more conscious of apophenia. |
| I'm sure some things are worth fighting for. PROMPT September 19th Respond to this quote: “Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” -Ruth Bader Ginsburg I just don't know if I care about a goddamn thing enough to fight for it. I'm sure I used to care. I have a vague memory about caring, and having that sucked out of me like dirt into a vacuum cleaner. I mean, sure, there are things I like, such as music, booze, movies, science, reading, writing, games, my cats, a few people. Even some of those abstractions people love to talk about, but can't seem to define, like justice and freedom and all that rot. But do I care enough to "fight?" What exactly does that mean? Protests? Petitions? Civil disobedience? Dueling pistols? Boxing? Wrestling? Nah, sorry, can't be arsed. Best I can do is write. But that's not the real problem, here. I'm sure that if I were in a better mood right now, I could come up with something I'd fight for. It's the other part of the quote that drives me to drink. I don't have the slightest idea what "do it in a way that will lead others to join you" means. All my life, I've heard the adage "one person can change the world." Well, that's demonstrably untrue. Sure, one person can kick a pebble down the mountain, but unless it hits other pebbles and loosens bigger rocks until half the mountain disappears in an avalanche, there's been no measurable change. First, you have to climb that mountain, and, like I said... can't be arsed. And I wouldn't want the responsibility of getting something started like that. I have a hard enough time convincing myself to do something; how much harder would it be if I tried to convince others? Especially since I'm hardly anyone's role model. And then people would have expectations of me, expectations that will chafe until I slink off and go my own way as I usually do. Nope. Everyone has their own things they're good at, and this is most definitely not one of mine. Nor do I want it to be. Let the people who still care do the fighting. At this point, I think it's a lost cause; we've been on a downhill slide since 1969, and it's only recently that this slide has accelerated. The pebbles are shifting, slamming into larger rocks, and before too much longer, it'll all come crashing down. Me? I'm going to ride the biggest rock I can find just as long as I can, with a determined grin on my face and the hot wind in my hair. Don't join me. The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote. - Ambassador Kosh |
| Some prompts, I just have a hard time relating to. PROMPT September 18th When you have an unexpected hour of free time, how do you fill it? Sleep. At least, that would have been one of my answers back when free time was a precious commodity for me. The other answer, on those ultra-rare occasions when I wasn't dead tired, was reading. Seeing this prompt, though, reminded me of how great it feels to not have pressing obligations all the time. It was like my chest was constantly in a vise, and when I retired, those clamps finally loosened up. I had so much going on, so many things I had to do and things I wanted to do but couldn't bear to go without, so something had to give, and that something was sleep. So when I got a chance, sleep was my preferred recreational and restorative activity. Still is, really. It's magical: you need to make time pass, so you fall asleep and then suddenly, boom, it's time to do... whatever it is you needed to do. I've heard some people say that they wish they didn't have to sleep. Think of all the things you could get done! More time to be productive! More opportunity to serve your masters! Don't you want to do more, more, more?! No, thanks. Anyway, this sort of thing doesn't apply to me now. I do exactly what I want to do most of the time, so as far as I'm concerned, it's all free time -- visits to dentists and whatnot notwithstanding. Though I could argue that while I, like most people, dislike trips to the dentist, I dislike tooth problems more, so I want to do that, too. I've got one of those coming up in a couple of weeks. Root canal. Not my first root-io, either, so I know the drill. (Yes, that's a pun.) It's not painful like you hear about; it's more... well, they numb you thoroughly and you're sitting in a dentist chair for two hours while they do unspeakable things to the insides of your tooth, and the occasional tiny wisp of smoke drifts from your wide-open mouth across your field of vision. Even that wouldn't be so bad if you didn't occasionally smell it. So even if you wanted to, you couldn't actually sleep through it. But it's incredibly, mind-twistingly boring. (You can consider that a pun, too, if you want.) That's the worst part of it. You're sitting still for a couple of hours and you can't do anything, not sleep, not talk, not read, not watch a movie, not play a game... just stare at the ceiling and try not to think of what's really happening to the once-living tissue inside of your tooth. I mean, I'm sure it's no picnic for the dentist or her assistants, but at least they can think about the BMW they can buy with what you're paying them. I expect they don't put you completely out because there's no real reason to, and there's always a risk with general anesthetic. But you'd think at least, by now, they'd have it so you could put on some kind of VR headset and watch Little Shop of Horrors during the whole ordeal. Okay, maybe that's a bad choice of movie. Still. Afterward, I won't be able to eat or drink anything for a while, so I'll do the one thing that I know will make the time pass until the anesthetic wears off: Sleep. |
| Sometimes I wonder if I've learned any life lessons at all. PROMPT September 17th What life lessons have you had to learn the hard way? Wait... there's an easy way? Dammit, I've been doing it wrong! I have a bit of a stubborn streak. While I'm flexible enough to change when new data comes in, I want to discover the information for myself. That is to say, hypothetically here, if I'd spent my childhood in an underground bunker, and people kept telling me the sky was blue, I'd only believe them provisionally -- better if I could escape and see it for myself. This has benefits as well as downsides. As a benefit, it keeps me curious, always wanting to know more. For instance, you might ask, as kids do, why said sky is blue. Turns out it's from preferential scattering of light in the atmosphere, the same effect that gives a rising or setting sun a more reddish hue. The details are important, but no need to get into them; the point is, I had to figure this out for myself by reading and learning about physics. But what's especially bad for me is that this means that some of life's unwritten rules, those social forces that guide behavior, don't really sit well with me. I prefer my rules to be written. To take a simple example, it turns out that when you're visiting someone, you bring a gift. There, now it's written down, and I can follow it. But it took me a while to figure that one out. All my life, I've wanted to know "why." When it comes to science, like the blue sky thing, that's actually pretty easy to figure out (and it was even B.I., before internet). But when it comes to social situations, the "why" almost always escapes me. This is probably why I don't get invited to parties. Well, this, and the puns. But mostly this. Like, in the Before Times, a handshake was considered a proper greeting. I thought I knew the rules: firm grip, eye contact, whatever. Not that eye contact is easy for me, but I fake it by looking at the person's nose. But then I went to shake someone's hand (as a teenager), and got corrected, "No, you wait for the female to invite the handshake." Okay, so it's different with men and women. Why? I don't get it. I try to follow the rules anyway, most of the time, to try to make a good impression. I just don't know all of them. There are science textbooks. There are no "being part of polite society" textbooks. Oh, sure, Miss Manners and all that, but most of what's in those texts makes no sense to me. Don't get me wrong; I try to be considerate of others' feelings. But subtle cues always seem to escape me. Anyway, some minor life lessons I've picked up the hard way:  Never go grocery shopping hungry. Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy just about everything else. Any internet argument that goes on long enough devolves into a discussion of epistemology. It's okay to suck. You get better. Making one's bed is a gigantic waste of time. Never choose lodging solely on the basis of proximity to the brewpub. Always carry a backup of essential items. Especially maps/GPS. When a cat displays the soft fur of its belly? It's a trap.I'm sure there are dozens more, if not hundreds, but that sampling should at least give you an idea of my mindset. I'm sure some people know some of these things intuitively, but like I said, I have to work on it. And I'll probably be working on it until the day I croak. |
| This is going to be a tough one. I don't do "happy." PROMPT September 16th What is your happiest memory? Describe it in vivid detail! It should surprise no one that all of my happy memories involve drinking. Oh, I'm sure that there were some from my childhood floating around in there somewhere, but that was so long ago that the memories can't be trusted. So I'll tell you about the second time I managed to drink a shot of Pappy Van Winkle. Pappy is a bourbon. But to simply call it bourbon is like calling Eta Carinae a star. ...that's not very helpful, is it? If you're going to use a simile, it should be one that most people are familiar with. "A wolf is like a dog" can work, but "E. coli is similar to salmonella" probably doesn't help a reader very much at all. Let's try this again. Pappy is a bourbon the way the Bikini Atoll hydrogen bomb was an explosion. It's not easy to find. Rumor has it that small quantities appear in the liquor stores around here at whatever time they get their deliveries, and it sells out within seconds. I've never managed to show up at just the right time. It's also, as you might imagine, not cheap. The first time I tried it, I found it in -- and keep in mind here that like most (but certainly not all) bourbon, it's made in Kentucky, a state that borders my own -- a bar in Livermore, a town in central California. I tried it, and the sky opened up and an angelic choir sang Hallelujah. The Handel one, not the Cohen one. That's a good memory. But a better memory for me is actually the second time I tried it, because when drinking, it's not always about the beverage itself, but the other things going on in time and space proximity. To clarify, that first time, in Livermore, I'd already been having a good day, so it was just another great thing to happen on a great day. The second time, I was staying at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, DC. I've mentioned that visit before. I was attending a conference -- the details of which are entirely irrelevant -- and that evening, an optional part of the agenda was to go see a Nationals game. I'm not a fan of baseball; I'm a fan of beer, so that evening I did what I usually do when traveling, which is to visit local breweries and sample their wares. Three of them were kind of within walking distance, so that's what I did. Now, understand that while I like beer, part of the process for me involves trying beer I don't like. This provides contrast and context. As a great philosopher once said, "If everything was cool, and nothing sucked, how would we know what was cool?" Still, usually, on these visits, I can find one or two beers that I really like, a bunch that are okay, and a couple of dogs. These breweries were a barking kennel. By the time I was done, the sun was setting, so, to avoid walking past the White House after dark (bad neighborhood, you know), I took an Uber back to the hotel. Once I got there, I sat down at the bar. After that disappointment, I needed a positive drinking experience. "What can I get you?" These timeless words, uttered by bartenders everywhere (at least ones who speak English), are like music to me. I started to feel better already. I looked over the fancy drinks menu. Pricey, as you'd expect, but not too out of line considering it's the goddamn Ritz-Carlton. I settled on an Islay malt scotch. Smoky, peaty, reminiscent of fine leather, oak, and perfectly toasted bread. Whilst savoring this sweet nectar of the Gaelic gods, I struck up a conversation with a nice lady who happened to be sitting at the bar near me. No, it wasn't like that. I'm done with that crap. Just another whisky drinker to talk to. But old habits die hard, and lizard brain went, "pRetTy lAdy aT bAr. mUst imPreSs prEttY laDy." So I ordered another scotch, this one a wee bit pricier. When the bartender served that to me, I noted, "You know, I was expecting a place like the Ritz-Carlton to have Pappy Van Winkle." Bartender goes, "Oh, we do. It's in the safe." Yes. This bar has a safe to hold all their really good stuff. Lady and I followed him as he opened an honest-to-gods metal safe with one of those spoked wheels like in the movies. Opening it was like opening the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones, but not from the Nazis' point of view. No face-melting, that is, just bright light streaming out, backlighting a collection of green and amber bottles. I blinked, taking in the beautiful sight. The price list, located on the inside of the open door to the safe, was where my gaze went next. Already regretting that annoying primal urge to show off, I steeled myself to be shocked at the numbers. But you know? They weren't all that bad. I've seen more expensive collections in Vegas. I guess DC can't count on people celebrating their poker winnings by buying the good stuff. The only thing that surprised me was that Pappy was not the most expensive nectar listed. Fortunately, Pappy was the one I'd mentioned, so that was the one I felt obligated to purchase. And I did, and savored that couple of precious ounces of golden dew over the next half hour, continuing to talk to whatever her name was (she was waiting for her husband to come back from the baseball game, another reason why I was only interested in conversation). The point is, I guess, that the reason I'm calling this my happiest memory -- ask me tomorrow and I'll probably come up with a different one -- is the contrast. From drinking decidedly mediocre beer and walking around muggy, hazy DC in the summer heat, wiping sweat from my face at every third step, to sitting in an air-conditioned bar sipping some of the best whisky in the world, unexpectedly, and having a pleasant chat with a fellow drinker of the good stuff. So yeah, that was a good day: avoiding baseball, discovering beers I didn't like, and then capping it all off with the good stuff. And forever being able to brag about having stayed, once, at the Ritz-Carlton. |
| Wait, September's halfway over already? PROMPT September 15th Have you picked up any new hobbies or interests since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March? Short answer: No. Long answer: Nope. Rambling answer: This period is notable for having removed, not added, things to my life. These removals include, but are not limited to:  Travel Haircuts Gym workouts Movies (but see below) Massages Barstools (as per the entry from 12 September) Visits with friendsA few of the hobbies/interests I had before the beginning of 2020 continue, though. The most recent one is Duolingo, started last August, and I suppose I can credit the pandemic for my not missing a day of French lessons in over a year. I've learned quite a bit, but still consider myself a novice. J'apprends le français lentement, et j'espère continuer. Obviously, I'm still writing. And watching shows and movies online, and playing the occasional video game. Oh, and drinking, of course -- the only thing I can say has increased in frequency during this shitstorm of a year, as detailed in an earlier entry. Movies -- other than streamed ones -- are kind of a sore point for me, as with travel. The closest thing to a New Year's resolution I made was I decided that 2020 was going to be the year I was to branch out and see more, and more varied, movies in the theater, because there's one convenient to my house that also serves beer. And I started out doing just that, but then... well, you know. The theater itself was shuttered completely for a good five months, and has only recently reopened, with severe restrictions for safety. I've been going about once a week since it reopened. The moral of this story is, as always, don't make resolutions. Even if it's something you like to do. Especially if it's something you like to do. I'm not saying that a global pandemic hit, sickening millions and killing hundreds of thousands of people, just to fuck with my weekly cinema visits, but it sure feels that way sometimes. I've also mentioned before that I didn't drive for six months. As in, I didn't even start my car. This, predictably, led to a service call. But on Sunday, I picked a random destination (I mean that literally; it was a randomly chosen spot within a 30-mile radius) and drove there and back. Not that I didn't go anywhere for six months, but between walking and Uber, I didn't really need to drive. Even doctor appointments are within walking distance. One time I went to a dentist that was really too far away for me to walk, but again, that's where rideshare comes in. Besides, there are breweries near the dentist, and they were open. Oh, if you're still with me, you're probably wondering about groceries if I didn't drive. My preferred grocery store is near the theater, definitely walkable -- but not on the return trip while schlepping cases of Crack Zero and bags full of groceries. But I've been getting groceries delivered since before the pandemic, for various reasons, and that's continued, too. One good thing to come out of all of this: used to be I'd get the occasional craving for fast food, and run out to indulge it. After six months without Taco Bell, though, I might have -- might have -- kicked that habit for good. I certainly have other unhealthy habits, but that one always bugged me. My father used to say, "It's an ill wind that nobody blows good," but he was referring to the oboe. I think the point of the original saying is that something good can come out of even the worst of times. I guess he was familiar with the original because he survived the Great Depression, a world war, and the last major pandemic. Yes, the 1918 one. He was just an infant then, but still. (Obviously he's not around anymore, in case you didn't know that from earlier entries.) So, no, I haven't picked up anything new during this. I'm just biding my time until I can travel again. |
| Waking up to find it was all just a dream is the cheapest ever way to end a story. PROMPT September 14th You just woke up to discover you had dozed off in your 3rd grade class... how would you react realizing your entire life since then was just a dream? I mean, I guess it worked for Lewis Carroll. But it's not the kind of thing the rest of us can get away with. I have trouble sleeping when I know I have an alarm set. I've been known to sleep right through alarms. I'm not on a regular work schedule, so I no longer wake up at the same time every weekday, and that compounds the issue. If I have, say, a doctor appointment at 9:30 then I have the alarm set for 8:00 or whatever, even if I go to bed at midnight (way too early for me), when it goes off, I get up and slog to the shower. Along the way, I notice something: the light is dim, or some of the clutter on my nightstand is missing. That's when I realize I'm dreaming. To prove to myself that it's a dream, I will myself to rise up through the ceiling. Once I do that, I wake up for real and check the time. Whew - only 6 am. Still plenty of time to catch some more Zs before I have to wake up. I wake up again, and it's 9:45. Oh shit, I've missed the appointment! Wait... no. It's dark. I'm still dreaming. Levitate. Yep, dreaming. Then the alarm goes off, and there's someone in the room with me who's not a cat. Sigh. Dreaming. Finally I wake up and it's 7:55, and I haven't gotten any decent sleep and I can't levitate so I know I'm not dreaming. Five minutes isn't anywhere near enough, so I get up and take a shower -- during which the alarm goes off because like an idiot I forgot to turn the blasted thing off. I say "alarm" but I just use my phone these days. The point of all of this is to relate that the whole "butterfly dreaming I'm a man" conundrum never made sense to me. Even if my mind starts out thinking a dream is reality, eventually there's some discontinuity that makes me realize I'm dreaming. Rarely, I can use that to my advantage and have a lucid dream, like my own personal holodeck. Usually, I just wake up, or at least I think I do. Reality is persistent. That's how we know it's reality. So if I woke up one day from a nap in a classroom and I'm eight years old, my first reaction would probably be that this is just another nightmare, and pretty soon I'll wake up for real, safely NOT in Miss Martin's classroom. Miss Martin was one of those bachelor teachers of the old mold, with the pointy glasses and seventeen cats at home. Think Dolores Umbridge, but in green instead of pink. Possibly she was gay, but more likely she spent her adult life teaching assholes like Kid Me and decided that having children was not for her. Her like will never be seen again in our time, and that's a shame, but I have no good memories of that school year. This whole thing kind of reminds me of the great ST:TNG episode "The Inner Light." In it, Picard falls into a deep coma on the bridge, and wakes up to find he's living a life on a pastoral planet. He lives the rest of a very long life on that planet, with a wife and kids, and the show expertly compresses something like fifty Earth years into less than an hour of runtime. I mean, really, if you watch no other Trek, that one's worth it by itself. Point is, spoiler alert, he finally wakes up back on the Enterprise and he's in his whatever decade Picard was supposed to be on TNG. Forties, I'd guess. But he's retained all the memories of this other life, even though it was, for all intents and purposes, a dream. The exact mechanics of this involves hand-waving some alien technology, which is kind of a specialty of Trek, but the salient character point here is that to him, it was not a dream. And so I would hope it would be for me in the purely hypothetical situation outlined in the prompt above: that I would have memories of this life, know what was coming. I mean, in the episode it turned out that everything he experienced in his mind were based on things that happened long ago, but the parallels remain. That is, assuming that this new reality turned out to be persistent and not, in fact, a nightmare. Consequently, as soon as Apple became publicly traded, I'd dump every last meager dollar fourteen-year-old me had into it. And then with my luck, it would go bankrupt in that timeline. |
| Today's 30DBC prompt is delayed, and I would like to get back to what I do best (drinking), so I'm just going to rant a bit until I see the prompt. So my thing these days has been going back through episodes of Star Trek that, in some cases, I haven't seen in decades. Right now, that means the Animated Series. I did this sort of thing a few years ago with Doctor Who, which has been around slightly longer, so some of my observations still apply. This is not just for funsies, either. A writer needs to... well, write, first and foremost, but also read and watch what other writers have done. Trek has lasted as long as it has for reasons, and I'm trying to tease out what these reasons are. It certainly wasn't consistent quality. I mean, yes, absolutely, some of the episodes of the original series, and even some of the animated episodes, were excellent. Most were not. And yet, it's still around. What I can figure from this so far is: character matters. That is, maybe you have crap stories, but as long as you keep your characters true to themselves, those can be sort of forgotten. Also, worldbuilding matters. In the case of Trek, it's not just one world but an entire galaxy's worth. DW, on the other hand, spans "all of time and space," and hoo boy I can't imagine trying to plan all of that, or even keep it consistent over nearly 60 years. The writers solve this by not worrying too much about consistency. After all, when you indulge in time fuckery, continuity can go right out the window. Anyway. Just some random thoughts until the prompt shows up. Which just happened. PROMPT September 13th Write about friendships that are more like family. What makes a great friend? Okay, this is one of my hot-button topics. I'd tell you to buckle your seatbelts, but neither the Enterprise nor the TARDIS has those. You've heard the expression "blood is thicker than water." Most people, I think, take that to mean something equivalent to "family first." Specifically, "genetic relatives first." This is bullshit. First of all, the full expression, as noted by this site and others, is: “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” That particular link goes on to explain: "This actually means that blood shed in battle bonds soldiers more strongly than simple genetics. Although we commonly use it to suggest the strength of family ties, it doesn’t refer to family at all."I'll leave it to more religious readers to specify chapter and verse. I can't be arsed. Somewhere in the NT. But whatever the source, the point is, we get it wrong. The site I linked gets it wrong, too. "It doesn't refer to family at all" is patently untrue. It does refer to family - and rejects family in favor of those with whom we share other bonds. So, when it comes to "friendships that are more like family," I take exception -- friendships, those relationships that we choose, are far more important, in my opinion, than accidents of birth. This is especially true when one's family is poisonous. I'm not saying mine was, but I see so many people with not just issues, but entire collections of National Geographic, who refuse to break ties with their relatives because "but they're family." So what? Which is not to say that you should only hang out with people who agree with you. No, you should only hang out with people who genuinely care about you -- and for that, DNA is irrelevant. A good friend won't always agree with you, nor should they -- and vice versa. A good friend will stick with you when times are bad, do stuff with you when times are good, and, most importantly, accept you for who you are while at the same time supporting you should you want to change. Family can do all that too, sure, but they don't always. I've mentioned before that I was adopted as an infant. My parents -- the people who raised me -- did the best they could, supported me almost to a fault. As a result, I've never had more than passing curiosity about my birth parents. No need; one set of family drama is more than enough, thank you. Ironically, the latest incarnation of Doctor Who, which I mentioned above, carries this idea. I say ironically, because I mentioned it before I got the prompt, but it ended up fitting so well. And Trek? Well, Trek has always been about the bonds between people who found themselves on a starship together, family notwithstanding. To put family on a pedestal, to buy into that myth that "blood is thicker than water," is to hold the wide range of diversity of culture, expression, ability, and opinion as a lower priority than the accidental bonds of close kinship, and I think that might be one of the things wrong with the world today. As the Vulcans say, "infinite diversity in infinite combinations." Sure, it's a fictional alien race in a fictional SF series that was sometimes really, really cringeworthy, but what is fiction if not aspirational? An actual, living human being came up with that idea, and I assert that it's a good one. Your opinion, of course, may be different. But that's part of diversity. |
| Today's prompt is kinda what journaling is supposed to be all about, right? PROMPT September 12th Write about something you need to get off your chest. What’s pressing on your mind? Other than the bloody obvious, stare-in-your-mask-wearing-face bullshit that's consumed us all since somewhere around the beginning of the year, I'm drawing blanks. I guess that's a good thing. Life, for me, could be -- and inevitably, at some point, will be -- so much worse. Don't you just love realism? Oh, sure, some may call it pessimism, but I know better. Yes, I miss being able to travel, but I'm pretty sure that's going to happen at some point (provided, of course, the aforementioned turn for the worse delays itself for just another year or two). What I miss even more is being able to sit at a bar. I don't mean just being able to go to a place that sells drinks, sit at a socially-distanced table, and have a few. I've had opportunity to do that. I mean sitting on one of a row of barstools, contemplating the neat lines of fine beverages behind the bartender, and slowly consuming one of them. Fun fact: Virginia doesn't have bars. I mean, sure, there are places like what I've just described, but thanks to arcane Prohibition-era laws that have not changed, we have no establishments whose sole purpose is to provide a variety of adult beverages. What we have are:  Restaurants with a bar inside. Craft breweries / cideries selling their own product exclusively. Wineries also selling their own product. State-run liquor stores (fermented beverages can be sold in supermarkets and convenience stores, but not distilled ones).Of course, this doesn't stop me from going in to a restaurant and pretending it's a bar. They've got the barstools and the liquor lineup, which is more than I can say for Utah. Or... they did before the pandemic; right now, no one's letting anyone sit at a bar. They do try to push food on you, though; the law I mentioned before says something like at least half of an establishment's revenue must come from food service, or they lose their license. Somehow, though, we get by. Things always change, and even in the past 20 years a lot of the more restrictive rules have been relaxed. Like, I can now order beer for delivery. This was mostly a pandemic-related innovation, and we'll see if it continues. I mean, one of the main purposes of liquor laws is ostensibly to discourage drunk driving, and what better way to do that than by delivering the product to one's own house? That said, I'm not sure they really want to discourage drunk driving; it's too much of a revenue generator. So, like I said, I get by. I'm really not looking forward to the colder weather, and not being able to sit outside to order drinks at a restaurant, but I'll muddle through somehow.  Mini-Contest Results! Surprise! Everyone's a winner today. Because yesterday was my account anniversary, I'm handing out gifts in the form of Merit Badges to everyone who commented yesterday. I won't be making this a regular event, though; this was a special occasion. And it'll probably be at least two weeks before I do another Mini-Contest, to avoid having to deal with CR time restrictions. But I suspect I'll do another "normal" one towards the end of the month. The following commenters will get their MBs later because I've given them one recently: ⭐Princette♥PengthuluWrites  , Apondia  , and WakeUpAndLive️~🚬🚭2024  . Everyone else who commented yesterday will get theirs soon. Thanks for reading! |
| Whew. I feared today's prompt would be about... well, something else. Mini-Contest below! You could win a Merit Badge. PROMPT September 11th Write about your favorite childhood game or toy. Teen years count as childhood, right? At least some of them do. I don't remember much about my pre-teen toys or games, though I do know my parents taught me important games like chess, checkers, and poker. I think I was maybe 12 or 13 when I got my first rocket, a gift from an aunt. It was a cardboard and plastic thing with a Star Trek theme (I told you I've always been a fan), and, most importantly for Kid Me, you could put a solid-fuel engine into the thing and launch the sucker into the trees. Sure, the tree thing was inadvertent. We had about a ten-acre field, plenty of room for launch and recovery, but somehow, something like 1 out of every 3 launches ended up with me climbing a goddamned tree. This is why I'm not Elon Musk. The Star Trek-themed rocket was only the first of many. The basic design of most of them was similar: a long cardboard tube, nose cone, fins. Some were even multi-stage. Some had clear plastic payload chambers, and I should raise a memorial to all the beetles, worms, and mice that underwent several Gs of acceleration in the name of science. One even had a camera built into the nose cone -- a 110 mm film camera, as this was long before the days of digital photography. At perigee, the thing would automatically snap a blurry picture of the launch field and use it to determine which tree it would land in. Most model rockets take some time and various degrees of skill to build. Glue (several types), sandpaper, balsa sealer for the fins, different color paints, decals, that sort of thing. Some were easier to build than others; hell, some of them were extraordinarily complex. Once built and dry, you could shove in an engine, install an electric igniter, hook it up to a battery, and launch it. I didn't have much else to do in those days, what with living out in the sticks and it being a few years yet before home computers became a thing, so I built well over a hundred rockets. Some of them are probably still in the trees. In those several years, though, there was one model that was forever beyond my reach, both in terms of price and, I was sure, complexity of build, and that was the scaled-down Saturn V. But I have never really lost my love for rocketry, even though, these days, I don't have a place to launch them. It's the building part that intrigues me. Every once in a while, I'll get it in my head to put a rocket together just for the craft of it. And a few years ago, I finally got my hands on a Saturn V. Unfortunately, the paint scheme foiled me. The thing's completely built, but for half the paint and the decals. I keep thinking one of these days I'll revisit it, touch up the parts that got fucked up because I'm not so great at masking, and put the decals on. Hell, I wanted to do it for the Apollo 11 50th anniversary, but never seemed to get around to it. Still sitting there, though. Waiting. One day... Merit Badge Mini-Contest! Today is an important day. No, not just because of that, but because it happens to be my 16th anniversary here on Writing.com. So no prompt for comments today -- just comment below and you might get a badge tomorrow. As usual, deadline is the end of the day today, September 11, WDC time. If you must have a prompt, you could talk about model rockets or how awesome I am, or how awesome my model rockets are even though I don't have any pictures of them up. But really, I just want to encourage comments, so anything goes, today. That's right - it's my birthday, but I'm the one giving a present. (Don't worry if I've given you a Merit Badge in the last couple of weeks; if applicable, I'll remind myself to send it out later for CR credit.) |
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