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| DO YOu have 2 birthdays in the year? lol If you are having another one, hope it is/was happy |
| ANNIVERSARY! DUH. lol hope it is/was great. |
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| Alex Trebek has passed. I long ago renounced the purblind, prideful sentiment that reads, "I would not have had it any other way." The model of this man's life is one worthy to pursue. Trebek was a world traveler; a philanthropist of long standing, largely unsung of; ardent supporter of the anime sano; civil and diligent in public and private. It would be wrong of me to list the lesser men who survive him. He would not have had it, I believe. More though, he was beyond compare. |
| ON Microstyle Mary Chapin Carpenter composed a tribute to Cajun dance music, "Down at the Twist and Shout". This line is worth a look: "Out in the middle of a big dance floor ..." Carpenter had a choice of pronouns, of course -- "a" or "the". The singer's choice is "a", for its more plain enunciation. The singer was the lyricist. She may have perceived a choice between the generic and the specific reference. Among pronouns, "the" tends to iconify a noun -- and so to exclude examples that, e.g., are not big. Perhaps any dance floor allowing for the space to cast off one's ordinary inhibitions can be called "big". Even if as the singer, Carpenter the lyricist allowed for that view. In the consideration of pronouns, in the distinction of degree and kind, in the unobtrusive mention to pin down a vague detail, in these and more lay the character of composition I idiosyncratically call "microstyle". It is said in mathematics, two things equal to a third thing are equal to one another. Mathematicians need rigid rules. Writers need elbow room. Two words synonomous with a third are not always so synonomous mutually. I don't have an example handy, so watch my other hand for a minute. That last paragraph was a dense patch of woods. So I put a clearing, a bit of "elbow room", in the middle. It would have been my fault, had anybody gotten lost. We'll talk metaphor another time. Meanwhile, I've found my example. Of synonyms "wooden", "arboreal" and "forested", the last is the narrowest. One thinks of trees, the best context of the word. Prompted by "arboreal", one thinks also of primates, not and all-too human. "Wooden" ... I sometimes speak from distraction, from abstraction. I sometimes rap on my brother's head for luck. Choose your best words. |
C losing on the finish, a declaration. I am down for the count. I am down for the election workers, many of them volunteers, braving COVID and extremism to do the most right thing. I am down for the administrators, working under a microscope and keeping all hands clean and above the table. I am down for every State's Secretary who asserts the sovereignty of their people in the face of the bullying of the nation's ill-begotten would-be dictator. I am down for the independent judiciary, upholding law over political power. In my last best opportunity to say so without irony, I am down for Truth, for Justice, and for, manifest, proven and resilient, the American Way. |
| I've been writing all day. I may be feeling a little keypunch-drunk. This one's for 🌕 HuntersMoon, LinnAnn -book writer, Beholden and, among all else, you Schnujo is Late to Lannister: When they split the grade crossing at Charleston, they took the automobile traffic underneath. Diesel engines don't bend in the middle. The heaviest rains of the year used to fill the Charleston Underpass like a foxhole in the jungle. They fixed the drainage before I got here, but the picture of a railroad bridge floating on a lake between asphalt beaches is enough to make a ten year-old laugh all the way out the museum doors. -- Meric, draft copy from the Runoffs |
T his is a Note from yesterday, re-written. The original had too many mentions of "I". They are all gone, now, every one of them. The piece is now third-person, very close. The Omelet House is Old Las Vegas. The surrounding neighborhood is residential and professional. Lawyers to the left, doctors to the right. Old money in big piles behind the high walls of the Scotch Eighties, old money in smaller piles on the adjacent square miles. Sited middlin' within the city limits in the Sixties half of a cozy strip mall, the place closes in the mid-afternoon. Omelets, not omelettes. Not quiche, not shallowly disdaining quiche. It use to be on the menu, among more savory choices, maybe still is. A single diner takes his seat with a trade paperback, Kipling's first Jungle Book. It needs a few minutes to turn up a fluffy tasty egg meal. The Bugsy Siegel, of Italian roast beef, mozzarella and sour cream, is death on a plate, and the way to go if we must. Order by number, sixteen, like you've been here a few times. The waiter expresses polite interest. No, he's only seen the movie. One of them. It is not a strange thing in this homey place to read aloud from a beguiling classic. The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, and where he has made him his home, Not even the Head Wolf may enter, not even the Council may come. Found revered in a fairy tale and the Fourth Amendment, the ideal is rightly called universal. The waiter is single. He has two nieces. He accepts the book, to read to them at bedtime. It's a separate transaction, he is paid a fair cash tip. Then it's off to the bookstore for another carry-with copy. Hardbound, the Collected Works stay on the shelf, safe at home. Feed the zeitgeist. |
I just told this story to a friend. I carried a trade paperback copy of Kipling's The Jungle Book into the Omelet House this morning. Two of the staff took note, so I read aloud from the Laws of the Jungle. Everybody has seen the movie, one of the three made so far. Nobody has read the book, with its grace notes of poetry. Sixth Verse, that I read aloud -- The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, and where he has made him his home, Not even the Head Wolf may enter, not even the Council may come. Delightful! Better yet, it rings with the Fourth Amendment. The Law begins with a preamble in verse. I gave the book to my waiter (and a cash tip, never fear), so that he could read to his nieces. I was headed to the bookstore, anyway, so I spent another five bucks to replace it. I left the repple in the truck. I keep a Collected Works, hardbound on-shelf. Feed the zeitgeist. |
| This may be my last. runoffscribe's O N S
A troubled daughter-father relationship. Review of "I Love You No Matter What - Chapter 1-10"  |
| runoffscribe's O N S
Review of "Introduction" Memoir noir. |
| Excerpted from recent email exchange: I have decided to cut my Portfolio back to ten items and to scale back to the minimum ... ... (It) occurred to me that I would be embarrassed if RAOK stepped in and wasted points on me. ... I learned about something literary agents call a "CP" -- a critique partner. And then about beta readers. And more. But it was only then that the odd thing happened. I began to figure out the Runoffs, and to add solid material. For the first time in my writing life, I can see the (way through). Reply (exc.): I hope you are telling everyone goodbye. Post a note on your newsfeed as well, like at least a day or 2 before you go. Sssssh! I'm not really here., please pass the word to RAOK. I am not in need of rescue. I'm not leaving. I'm only scaling back. But the Runoffs is not here, and that is where I will find myself. |
The Runoffs, up to date.
The "Concert" piece is a draft, complete at the end and the beginning. The abs need some work. I hope you like the shout-outs and the easter eggs. This chapter fits just ahead of the climax of the tale. (99) fits in just after the climax. Rather than "I'm not ...", the slug line should read Morphine and Siluria. She's a g-r-r-l for real. |
N ow and then, I fall in love with a cliche. The relationship changes us both. Two characters are trying to break into a proprietary OS: "What's that? What's it doing?" "That is a loy. It's a kind of probe, it can come off of a spellchecker, a search box ... " "A 'loy', you said?" "An old Irish word for a shovel. That's what you get when you make a geek take liberals arts. And it'll take us five times as long while they keep getting in the way. We have to spike the intermediate processes." "Not the requesting apps!" "Just the daemons. First, we kill all the loyers." A killer makes up his mind: I kick open the car door. His eyes in the mirror go wide. "Turn on the radio." I pull the tip of the silencer back from his shining scalp. "Huh?" "The radio, dammit. Turn it on." "C'mon, man. This never happened, I already forgot your face --" "Loud!" He moves by the spasm. As the plastic trim under my knuckles begins to vibrate, I lean close. "Now close your eyes." His shoulders heave in a sigh. In the mirror, I see his eyelids drop. It's something we all know, shooters like us, that it's better this way. The springs under the car are stiff. It doesn't wobble as I slip out, plant my feet on the macadam. I leave him waiting for the bullet. He'll figure it out when he gets older. |
O nce in a while, I trip over something that was underfoot all along. WinOS has always had undocumented features. These usually reside behind key combinations that Microsoft, for arcane reasons of its own, does not elucidate in tutorials or help files. But sometimes, having tiptoed three hundred three (thousand) or so taps at the old 101-keyboard ... I do a lot of Ctrl-C/V/X/Z. I'm no touch-typist. This morning, when I typoed Win-V, I found something I have been missing for years. The Windows clipboard. Those of us who go back to Win98, or even 3.1, may remember when the clipboard was just a click to the right. Hold the pelvic thrust. (Yes, that's a callback to the Rocky Horror ...) For a writer, with our recurring need to manipulate text up to the size of a small document, the clipboard is a block of Cubby~Cheering House Florent!holes (bad writer! *wrist slap* BAD!) that can save kilos of keystrokes and tens of typos. Windows' "hot" keys are, as most of us know, Ctrl, Win, Alt and Tab. That yields three hundred sixty-eight potential hot-key combos. Mix in the Shift key and you have just as many triple key combos. Ctrl-Alt, Ctrl-Tab ... I know. For now, I am pushing down hard on the lid of that one of Pandora's undocumented boxes. I mean to test all of the two-key combos. For those that yield results, I will the try the triple. You'll be the first (and last) to know if I hit upon the keys to doomsday. |
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That's about all of the song I know. 
I hope you have a great day.
