Updates - Aug 2014

Distilled from facebook posts:

Music report. Fun jam night. Started off fighting the day's sad news, but we went out of our way to be festive. Jackson Patrick did a few, then a nice surprise when two of the Duggans (Jimmy? and Don) did a set, then Jesus came in on his night off so it was a Jackson & Jesus show, I did my thing, then Norm, Jackson & Trish, my 2nd set, ending with Jackson & Jesus again ... specifically ending with their sweet jam of "Redemption Song." Lots of good humor. With new strings on guitar, I think my voice was the best it has been, so a good night. My new tunes were "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright", "Homeward Bound" (not as good as it was at home), and just a last-minute cheer up silly gag song: "Breakfast in America" (not really tring to capture the voice, just something happy for people to sing along with), probably redeemed "Skateaway" which was all out of whack last week. Nice that Alan Hart came out; got to talk with Nora, Don, Trish, Dave, someone, someone and a sprig of rosemary. Good to have a place where everyone knows your name (hey that's catchy). AND we invented a new drink called "Godzilla" (originally the girls were laughing and calling it an "Adios Tokyo" so I leaned over and gave it the proper name). And yes I will learn the song. You know, for a few hours I had no headache, no anxiety, no dizziness, just felt good. You guys rock.
Aug 11, 2014 11:58:19pm

Things done today: promo photo for a fellow musician, wrote 4 "mock advertisement" scripts for a travel site contest, got to page 100 in a first novel I'm reading & doing analysis of, wrote a haiku (poem #174 for 2014), progress report for work, ebay lots, mail, practiced music, dealt with today's sad news through denial and minor chords, performed music, night out with friends, and see that once again the cats have more food in the house than I do. Not bad for a sleep-deprived one-eyed jack with serious aches.
Aug 12, 2014 12:35:04am

Just received some contributors copies in the mail. Love PRINTED things that you can actually feel. So, I had 3 poems in Trysts of Fate magazine -- thanks, Lee Ann (editor AND cover artist, nice one!) -- Lisa Hayle would appreciate the irony that these were paranormal romance (gone horribly wrong). All three were written one night while listening to Jackson Patrick play music at a place in Carlsbad. Also a short short story about a bus from another dimension in Drabble Harvest #2, Terrie Leigh Relf, editor. Is everyone on facebook these days or what?
Aug 15, 2014 1:59:48pm

Earliest Memory: Bar Harbor

This was from another writing prompt on HitRecord.org:

My earliest memory is being in Bar Harbor, Maine on a family vacation.  I was about 6.  My Dad took me down the beach to a lighthouse and we looked inside.  I remember the big spiral stairs circling up into a glare of sunlight.  Still inspiring ...

In fact, I told that tiny tale at his funeral a few years ago.  It was almost impossibly hard to get those few simple words out.  I have no interest in religion, but it seemed perfectly symbolic, that circle of light.  And there was something brave about saying it, in that moment.

It's really hard to return to that place now.

Have you ever been on TV or in a Movie?

Here's a piece that just came spilling out when I was answering a question on HitRecord.org -- it ended up sounding like an interview, but it was just me following prompts.

1) Have you ever been on TV or in a Movie?

Not until I was 37, when I was cast as one of the core group of fighting sailors in "Master and Commander."  You know what?  Coming from a world of computer work, I actually suffered from culture shock because everyone around me was so darn ... nice.  Psyched.  Pumped.  I'd never seen that kind of camaraderie, that kind of problem solving, organization, or sheer madness.  Or worked so hard.  A film set (on a good day!) is the most exciting place I can picture working.  Even those odd days where I'm just trying to stop a wall from being torn down and have no idea whose mustache is in my hand and my headset keeps picking up air traffic and a polka station ... it does get surreal sometimes.   I just want to get back there again!  But I really don't want to be in front of the camera.  I'm big & weird-looking.  My gig was a sailor from 1802.  Now I still work on films, but only behind the scenes; writer, sound guy, you name it.  Still a great place to be, and no pressure to be pretty.  Not much money starting off, honestly.  After one P.A. job, long 15-hour days, I was told I could have made three times as much if I had mentioned that I'd done stand-in work before, and I said, "But I don't want to just STAND there, I want to do something!"  So, pay cut.  So many jobs, so many people needed!

2) If not, would you ever want to be on TV or in a Movie? Why? (be specific)

Until then I'd never even thought about it, I guess I bought into the stories that everyone in Hollywood is a jerk.  Seemed like there was some made-up barrier or mystique to try and keep regular folks away.  Or I was just a dope.  Before that I was a writer, and the written word is simple.  I never had that mad bravery that an actor needs.  And I was pretty sure nobody wanted to look at me.  But you need to realize that no matter what you look like, there's SOME role where you might fit in, SOME casting person who might see you and say, "Where have YOU been hiding?  You're just what we need today.".  So, until I tried it I said NO.  Not for me.  In my case, I was wrong and lost about 18 years of possible experience in the field.

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The full piece is here, but this covers the main topic.

the Hardly Potter dream

Thank you brain.  It just dished up one of those dreams so perfect and strange and funny I woke up laughing.  Couldn't have come up with this stuff through any rational means ...

When Harry Potter first arrived at Hogwarts, he was given an entrance exam (which nobody else had to take).  Based on the results, he was sent to the not-so-famous school on the other side of the tracks, called Dumbledown's School.  Sign at the gate: "No owls allowed."  Among the administrators it was known as Dumbledown's School for Really Inconvenient People.  It was a series of really gothic  group homes with way too many towers.  Parts of the school were just unfinished graphics, and if the kids wandered in there, they would have to go home and wash the pixel dust from their hair.

During the limited school hours, the kids learned how to make Pop-Tarts and Spaghetti-O's, how to unfreeze ice cubes by smashing them with a hammer, and how to remove a dozen types of arcane stains from piles of laundry.

For most of the day they worked out in a peat pog, cutting up little slices of fuel for the big furnace downstairs.  If they found any bog people buried in the muck, there was a brief ceremony, and the body was sent to the school medical examiner, who was (of course), Quincy M.E. in a deep purple robe with sparkly bits on the cuffs.  Sadly, every case turned out to be a ritual strangulation, so Quincy was writing a treatise on decipher the ancient tattoos.

Instead of quidditch, each group home had a team of sorts, and they get together to toss cow pies.  Harry could catch a 40-yard whoozie like the best of them.  But being the best of "them" was never good enough for Harry.

One day, while Harry was out in the peat bog, complaining, Hagred came riding along doing whatever the heck Hagred does out in the woods.  He fell off the wagon and crushed Harry flat.    Harry was such a pancake, literally two-dimensional, they had to take him to Hogwarts to pump some 3d juice into him.  And that's how they found out about the "clerical error".

So that's how Harry really got into the famous school for wizards.  Snape claimed to know nothing about this, but was unusually prone to fits of dark laughter.

I don't know which faulty neurons fed me this one, but it made my day.

Meteor mayhem

Here's an unlikely scenario ... a small asteroid (about 45 meters across) passes a mere 17,000 miles (28,000 km) from Earth.  That's close in galactic terms, but it's still, you know, 17,000 miles away.  What makes last Friday special was that a few hours before that closest approach, this happened: one of the brightest meteor strikes on Earth in the past century.

What's fun about this is that there's no reason to think the two events are related.  All accounts have the meteor coming in from the opposite direction.  Of course, folks online spent days trying to twist things around to force a connection.

Maybe that meteor was orbiting the asteroid?  No.  That tiny roid probably couldn't hold a tennis ball in orbit at a few hundred miles.

Maybe that meteor broke off from the asteroid a gazillion years ago and is part of the same stream of debris?  No.  Moving the other way?

Maybe observers got the directions wrong?  Sure, start doubting the obvious.  Each object had a very clear direction, no error about it.

Yeah, but maybe there's a conspiracy to keep us from feeling threatened?  To get here, we have to doubt the obvious, make stuff up, and fall off a diving board.  Stop it.

Two things CAN happen without there being any connection.  Heck, the other day I had two big ebay orders, one from a guy name Xiang and one named Zhang, thousands of miles apart.  Aside from finding it odd, there's no sensible point to make about it.  In this case, think about it ... it's not like space rocks check their calendars: "Is there anyone else crashing into Earth today? No?  Okay, here I come!"

We can keep making wider and wider generalizations -- but both objects came from the Solar System! -- until we end up not saying anything at all.  Just record the events, learn what we can and move on.  Tons of debris enter the Earth's atmosphere every day.  Poof, fizzle, pop.  No big deal.  Some days are just a lot more strange.

Me & My Obscurity

"I guess I've been letting things get obscure around here.  Time to go on a fact-checking expedition."

One funny thing about journaling -- aside from its inherent pretentiousness -- is trying to explain any long gaps in time.  The above quote was one of my favorite wordings of this recurring excuse, covering a 6-month span where nothing was written, back in '99.  It went on to do a survey of jobs, people I knew at the time.  I'm not sure why any of that matters.

But sometimes, those old journal entries just crack me up.  Here's one from 9 Oct 1999, in the middle of a long boring bit about my current programming hell:

"about two weeks ago, there was a guy at the street fair selling freeze-dried lizards.  we bought a bunch, thinking the cats would find them amusing.  as soon as i ripped open the baggies, the things swelled up and came back to life, bigger than ferrets and much more stinky.  the things in this paragraph did not actually happen.  it's just that line of reality again, ever devious.  i've toyed with the idea of marking the dream blocks, maybe with a "d:", but i'm not a friggin hard drive.  and i know what was real.  why spoil the fun?"

Odds are, those journals (over 2,000 pages) were written to entertain my future self, but more and more they're also good for sorting out faulty memories.  Lately I've been harvesting them for writing prompts.  I may have to write the Day of the Freeze-Dried Lizards now!

The Chessboard of Life

The Chessboard of Life
by s.c.virtes
---
             
Alternations: back forth oblique,
day night right wrong
jumping one to the next --

Pawns to kings in
stacked series cover the space,
no variation to the schemes:
32 days and 32 nights
hide on the 8x8 square.

Then there may be a winner
or at least a paycheck
and the game begins anew.
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p#49, written 08/05/1986, published in Sidewalk's End (May 01)

Computer unspeak

In most cases, the phrase "computer speak" (sometimes as a single word) means technical jargon related to computers.  But as more websites use databases to generate their content, we're getting to the point where computers are trying to speak to us, and we see just how dumb they can be.

Here's a classic piece of computer-interpreted data:
"Burclover is not viable as a Christmas Tree."
or ...
"In the wintertime, Burclover has a Porous foliage porosity."

These came from TheGrowSpot, which is actually a good site.  But they could do without the huge clumsy paragraphs trying to describe their otherwise well-organized data in sentences.

Meanwhile, scammers have nearly invented their own worthless language to try and fool us into responding to their crap.  I just got a spam email titled: "Dynamite instead of wiener."  How's that supposed to work?  You have sex and the whole house explodes.  Unnatural deselection ... shades of porous porosity ... hell in a handbasket?

The Plow of Progress

"Life, it seemed to him, was a great search for -- he knew not what; and in the process of the ages one by one the true marks upon the ways had been shattered, or buried, or the meaning of the words had been slowly forgotten; one by one the signs had been turned awry, the true entrances had been thickly overgrown, the very way itself had been diverted from the heights to the depths, till at last the race of pilgrims had become hereditary stone-breakers and ditch-scourers on a track that led to destruction ... if it led anywhere at all."

- from Arthur Machen, "The House of Souls" (1922)
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25016/25016-8.txt

The Mere Sight of Land

"The effect which the sight of the smallest spot of land, or even a bare uninhabited rock, has in breaking the tedious monotony of a long sea voyage, is easier felt than described. After passing a long succession of weary hours, with no other objects of contemplation than a world of waters, bounded only by the extent of vision, where it unites with the world of clouds, the sight of land acts like a talisman, and instantaneously transports us into the fairy regions of imagination. We compare the spot we are viewing with one rendered inestimably dear to us, by the remembrance of its beloved objects, and the tender recollection of past happiness. We pass over, as points in time or space, the years or seas that separate us; and by a cherished delusion, find ourselves arrived at the moment of re-union, cheered by the embrace of friendship, or locked in the arms of love and beauty."

- from An account of a voyage [...] in His Majesty's Ship Calcutta, in the years 1802-3-4, by James Hingston Tuckey - Chapter 4

What is the Unfuture?

I know I've wrestled with that a bit over the years of doing (and not-doing) this blog.  My creative output is not about just one thing.  I can't write "just horror" or "nothing but sci-fi".  It sounds like life would be so much simpler if I could do that.  But I enjoy the outrageous diversity of the world.  I think everyone has multiple talents, and our society commits a crime of omission by making people think they can do only one thing, or even nothing at all. 

So, this blog is "what I'm into".  I ran an email newsletter a few years back called "Dark Windows" which I think captured it best: an outrageous medley of fiction, poetry, bits from dream journals, and memorable clips from old sources, both fiction and nonfiction.  Why the old sources?  I think it's important to recall that there's more to life than Today.  More than just Now.  Who we are, and our quest for knowledge, is a result of centuries of questions and attempts to answer, and centuries of entertainment and diversion.  Sometimes the clearest philosophical quotes come from fictional villains; and the wackiest fantasies come from bad science.  The lines between fact and fiction are worth exploring, and the lines between reality and delusion should be examined.  Now, I am a strong advocate of facts, and sorting out sense from nonsense.  But I also know we need places to escape to at the end of the day.

That is my mission statement for my Unfuture Chronicle, moving forward.  Why the name?  Because here we are, living in the future (the 21st century), but it seems like nothing has changed ... whenever I watch the news or drop in on a forum, I just hear the same bad arguments you would find in the Middle Ages.  We're in the future, but it's nothing like it was supposed to be.  All those giants of science fiction were right about the gadgets but wrong about humans as a whole.  It's the Unfuture.

I hope you enjoy the thoughts and diversions to come.

Totem

We went out to see Cirque du Soleil show "Totem" today.  A spectacular bit of fun, very colorful, one amazing acrobatics act after another.  For each prop or apparatus, they start simple and get more and more daring, until the acts of dexterity reach levels that don't even seem humanly possible.  Some fine misdirection, some great visual gags.  Amusing (and non-scary) clown bits in between.  The trapeze act was breathtaking: like the rest, you think you've seen some playful trapeze work before but no, this goes over the top; risky, wild and playful.  They could take hula hoops or glowing balls or a couple of sticks and make an act you can't believe you're seeing.  Wonderful costumes and makeup.  The stage itself was like a character, with an endless stream of images beamed down onto it, sometimes perfectly in sync with the motions of the people on it, plus movable parts and all kinds of trapdoors and openings. 

There was a live band performing the music -- at least at the end of the show (I didn't see them in the first act, maybe they lowered the reed barrier for act two?).  I admire the simplicity of just paying to get a top-notch performance, as opposed to something like the olympics where some of the same skills require millions of $$ in endorsements, product placement, and other baloney, just to be nitpicked and eliminated in the end.  There were no losers here, just performance, and that overall sense of circus wonder and thrills that reminded me of being a kid.  No real story, just lots of cross-cultural, multilingual and culturally abstract color and life.

ConDor

I had a good time down at our local ConDor convention last last weekend. After being in a funk for over a year, the poetry workshop sorta twisted my arm into writing my first new things in a while. Always nice to see Debbie Kolodji, Samantha Henderson, Deborah Flores, Sheila Finch, and the other usual suspects. Got to talk some astronomer with real astronomer David Lee Summers. Also had a nice talk with Denise Dumars about how the two of us used to get into opinionated debates back in the 80s in places like Scavenger's Newsletter ... before I ever suspected I'd end up in California; was nice to reminisce, and comically it turns out she's from the same CA town my wife grew up in.

There was a world religion conference at the other end of the same hotel, but I only felt at home when I turned a corner and saw the first person in Victorian costume. Such is normal.

Saucer blossoms for all!

The night we didn't see Tron (a dream)

Funny dream just now. We went out to the movies (Tron was playing), but after getting the tickets & popcorn and settling down, there was no movie, just a lecture on socialism. But even that was a lie. It was clearly just some new age babble, some darn cult looking for stooges. The audience put up with it, grumbling a bit and slurping their now-empty sodas with some disdain, but surprisingly okay with it. Then the cult guys in their silly cult outfits started passing around collection plates (old Jiffy Pop containers). When one got within reach, I grabbed it and threw it across the room, a wobbly aluminum frisbee leaving a trail of other people's pocket change.

"Hell no," I said. "You already stole our money, now get lost and show the movie."

Cult guy said, "We didn't take your money, the theater did. We're here to help you see the light. Our service is free."

I translated this for the crowd: "Well folks, that's all you need to know about socialism and cults that make you dress funny. Someone else took your money, and they'll help you for free, except that it'll cost you anyway. And I bet the doors are locked, too!"

It seems like my reveal struck a nerve. Ten minutes later the whole theater was on fire, and a week later City Hall banned movies from our town forever, citing some obscure precedent about how Hollywood is trying to subvert decency and family values, and how everyone knows there are no such things as cults. People dress funny and say uneducated things of their own free will.

Get yer tentacles here!

Here's an odd item ... The Book of Tentacles. It was my top-secret project of 2008 to 2009, edited with the help of Edward Cox over in the U.K. It's a fun romp, all kinds of stories, poems and sketches, from all kinds of genres, all centered on the theme of "tentacles."

The book is now available, and here's a rather cute website to tell you more. Enjoy.

Quantum beaches

"Quantum mechanics describes what a system might do in the future, whereas classical mechanics describes what it has done in the past." This is a quote attributed to Freeman Dyson in an early 1990's lecture. [CC, p.272]

Right or wrong, every now & then you hear a line that brings ideas together in a provocative way. One of the central quirks of quantum mechanics is that things are undecided until an observation is made, but it's not really clear what constitutes an observation. Surely there isn't a list of "valid devices for observation."

What if the elusive observer is universal? What if it is simply the arrival of the present moment? In other words, all quantum waves collapse at the present moment, making the past a deterministic record of what has happened. The waves crash on the quantum beach.

There are one other big idea here. One is the illusion(?) of the flow of time in one direction. This is now solved ... once the quantum waves have crashed, they are irreversible, there's no going back to an unobserved state. Water doesn't form itself into waves and rush off into the distance.

Food for thought.

Reference:
CC. Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen, "The Collapse of Chaos" (Viking Books, New York, 1994)

End of Dark Windows

I'm calling it quits for a while.  That's the short version.  A few thoughts:

I reached my goal of sending out 80,000 words of my work for free.  I got maybe 3 comments as a result, so I'm pulling out my hair trying to find something -- anything -- that gets noticed online.  But it has never been clearer that we're tiny fish in an ocean of stuff.  Shouting in the wake of sharks.  People have said that you have to just sign on to a thousand websites and just keep posting posting posting posting posting things.  And what?  Still no guarantee of anything, other than the time lost.  There would be no time left for life, or new work, or important work.

So, I'm taking a break.  I need to get new things written & done.  I'd like to put all 40 issues into a printed volume, I'm shopping it around.  In the meantime, there are PDFs of #1-20 available.  I may revisit Dark Windows a bit later on, since things tend to travel in circles in the creative world.

I'm also wrapping up "The Book of Tentacles" anthology, which is full of fun stories, and coming in June from SamsDotPublishing.com.  I think you'll get a kick out of it.

Thanks for reading & listening.  Cheers.

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2024 note: this was the intro to my newsletter Dark Windows #40, but since that since has been gone for years, I have added it to the flow of this blog.

Channel flipping, or something else?

It doesn't take much channel flipping to reinforce just how lame most supposedly factual TV shows are.

Late last night there was an episode of "The Universe" which was factually correct, but essentially just a narration on top of an endless series of graphics of whirling galaxies and zooming nebulae which were rarely related to the words actually being spoken.  The production process seems to have been: we're talking about galaxies, show some cool galaxy, cue a little whooshing sound ... oh, he mentioned a star, we have a picture of stars, right? can you make them move around a little?

Just now, the "Ghost Hunters" found nothing again.  Though they make a good case for how suggestible most people are.  Flip, flip.  And there were the "UFO Hunters" with their usual argument of: some guy says he saw X, something else might be Y; X and Y sometimes show up in the same sentence, therefore we've proven all kinds of crazy things, and you're a fool for not believing it.  This time it was a deformed skull.  It couldn't be the skull of a poor human with a deformity, no, it has to be an alien-human hybrid.  Instead of going to a forensic facial reconstruction guy, they go to a Hollywood special effects guy who makes the face look like a character from Alien Nation.

Frankly, it's getting to where the travel shows have more useful info than the history shows.  The so-called History Channel is full of junk like Ax Men and Gangland.  I suppose that if someone's log truck rolls over or someone gets shot, it's "history."  At least it was fun hearing about the Ax Men being busted for illegal river logging.  And "Stealing Lincoln's Body" was interesting even if it did drag on for two hours.

Sorry, I forgot it's all just a vessel for advertising!  April Fool's, I guess ...

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2024 note: this was the intro to my newsletter Dark Windows #39, but since that since has been gone for years, I have added it to the flow of this blog.

Also, the "History" Channel has only gotten worse. Ancient Aliens is on season fracking 20.

Food for thought: DNA is not the whole story

DNA is not the blueprint for life. Sorry. If you put a piece of DNA in a jar, it will do nothing. It's only part of the picture. In order to function, DNA needs to be in a compatible living cell where all the required chemicals are available. But if you take a fertile living cell and put it in a jar, under most conditions it will die. Each cell can only survive in a certain range of temperature, pH, gravity and pressure, and needs just the right nutrients to survive.

Does DNA contain the information to create its own optimum environment? No. It is only part of the blueprint of life, and it has a lot of dependencies. It is certainly where most of the information is stored, but there's a bigger picture to ponder.

DNA is badly misused in science fiction, especially in TV and movies where everything has to happen in a hurry. If we beamed a human genome to an alien civilization, would they be able to make human? No. But if we beamed them a complete scan of a cell, and how to nurture it, maybe (just maybe) there would be a chance of success.

Food for Thought: Sex and mutations

Sexual reproduction is a line of defense against mutations. If one parent has a damaged gene, the other parent (hopefully) has an undamaged gene. If all genes had equal weight, there would be a 50/50 chance of the offspring getting the undamaged gene. In reality, genes can be dominant or recessive, and other factors are probably at work.

The natural next question is how creatures started shooting genetic material at each other in the first place.

There are many events in the ocean of massive releases of genetic material. That some creatures found ways to get up close and make a more personal delivery does not surprise me.

I have seen pine trees release clouds of pollen at the touch of the wind. It boggles my mind that some of those spores might land on a receptive cone and start the long process that makes a seed. It seems like such a waste to have the rest of the cloud fall dead somewhere. It is also pretty wild that I can pick up seeds when I walk in the woods, and hold entire potential trees in my hand.

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Note: "Food for thought" is going to be an ongoing series of speculations and science commentary.