Why Do I Blog?

    
The main reason I continue to publish this daily blog is to force myself to write every day, even on those days when I would rather be doing something other than write.

Harlan Ellison once said, "People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it."

Anther reason for blogging is to challenge myself to keep on keepin' on, and to prove to myself that advancing age is not (or perhaps is) affecting my ability to think, and then to explain those thoughts by way of the written word.

Even though I am aware that the blog has few readers, that fact is of little import. I read it, each and every day, and I judge what is presented both subjectively and objectively.

Subjectively, I find that most of what I write is brilliant while I am writing it and then is mysteriously transformed overnight into disgusting crap.

Objectively, it's even worse than that.

At times I think that I should dig up some of my old unpublished stories that are rotting away in the depths of digital limbo, rewrite them, polish them until they gleam, and then post them to the blog. But I just never get around to doing so. And that might for the best. Or maybe not.

Why not give Flash Fiction a try?

Okay.

_____

Portents

By Gene Chambers

Richie," his mother asked, "why is Carol being such a stranger lately?"

Richie said nothing as he pushed some peas away from his mashed potatoes and trailed his fork through a congealing puddle of gravy.

His little sister said, "Carol dumped him."

"Oh no," Thelma said. "When, Richie? Why?"

Richie remained silent; stared down at the untasted food on his plate.

Thelma Richards addressed her daughter, "Why did she do that, Lily?"

Lily, munching a mouthful of fried chicken, said, "Carol's dating a Junior now, a big, mean football player; got no time for itty-bitty Freshmen like Richie."

Richie pushed his plate away and opened his battered notebook.

He turned to a page of doodles and scrawled phrases.

Richie vigorously erased the scribbled "wimp, nerd, wussie..." and drew in its place a bold, black swastika.

Thelma said, "Lily, don't talk with your mouth full."

"You asked me," Lily sputtered.

"Brat," Richie whispered.

"Zit-Face," Lily screeched.


Richie glared at her, bared his teeth,and growled.

"You kids stop," Thelma said.

Richie erased Sad Sack; drew a Skull and Crossbones.

"Mother," Lily said, "can we get a puppy?"

Richie drew a cartoon dog, thorn-crowned and crucified. He rapidly sketched hulking Roman soldiers clubbing the dog's corpse.

"We don't have much luck with pets, Lily," said Thelma. "Remember Dusty, and Stormy, and poor little Cootie?"

Richie smirked at Lily, his eyes squinted, nose wrinkled, and teeth still bared. He resumed creating graffiti.

Lily sniffed and said, "If Daddy was here..."

"Now Lily," Thelma said, "Don't start that again. Daddy's gone, and we're better off for that.

Richie ripped out the sheet, crumpled it, and threw it at the waste can.

Missed.

He stood up, retrieved the errant missile, dropped it into the can, and tromped it down five times.

Then he turned and stomped out of the room.



Copyright 2013 Gene Chambers

_____

WORD FOR TODAY

risible
Adjective
Such as to provoke laughter.
Synonyms
ludicrous - ridiculous - laughable - comical - funny

_____


Historical Clip

Elizabeth Blackwell

On January 23, 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell was granted a medical degree from Geneva College in New York, becoming the first female to be officially recognized as a physician in U.S. history.

_____


BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY


Gail O'grady

Born Jan. 23, 1963
Age:  49 years old

Gail Ann O'Grady is an American television actress. She is best known for her roles as Donna Abandando on NYPD Blue and as Helen Pryor on American Dreams. She was a series regular on the The CW Comedy Drama series Hellcats, playing the mother of the Marti Perkins, called Wanda Perkins, before Hellcats was subsequently cancelled in May 2011.

Ernie Kovacs

Born Jan 23, 1919
Died Jan 13, 1962

Ernie Kovacs was an American comedian, actor, and writer, appearing on such iconic and diverse shows as Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Saturday Night Live, The Uncle Floyd Show, Captain Kangaroo, Sesame Street, and The Electric Company,

Some of his most well-known films were: Operation Mad Ball, Wake Me When It's Over, and Our Man in Havana. He garnered critical acclaim for roles such as the perennially inebriated writer in Bell, Book and Candle and as the cartoonishly evil head of a railroad company in It Happened to Jane, where he had his head shaved and his remaining hair dyed grey for the role.

In 1960, he played the off-center base commander Charlie Stark in the comedy Wake Me When It's Over. His own personal favorite was said to have been the offbeat Five Golden Hours (1961), in which he portrayed a larcenous professional mourner who meets his match in a professional widow played by Cyd Charisse. Kovacs' last film, In North to Alaska (1961), John Wayne's character's hair flies off with the first punch of a fight with Kovacs as a con artist.

Sail a Crooked Ship, was released shortly before his death.

Mariska Hargitay

Born Jan 23, 1964
Age:   48 years old

Mariska Hargitay, (born Mariska Magdolna Hargitay) is an American actress, best known for her role as New York City sex crimes Detective Olivia Benson on the NBC television drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a role that has earned her multiple awards and nominations, including an Emmy and Golden Globe.

The daughter of actress Jayne Mansfield and actor/bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay, Hargitay is a former beauty queen who made her film debut in the 1985 horror-comedy film Ghoulies, and her major television debut in the 1986 adventure drama series Downtown. She appeared in numerous roles in film and television shows throughout the late 1980s and 1990s before being cast as Olivia Benson, a role that led to her founding the Joyful Heart Foundation, which provides support to women who have been sexually abused.

Randolph Scott

Born Jan. 23, 1898
Died: Mar. 2, 1987

Randolph Scott was an American film actor whose career spanned from 1928 to 1962. As a leading man for all but the first three years of his cinematic career, Scott appeared in a variety of genres, including social dramas, crime dramas, comedies, musicals, adventure tales, war films, and even a few horror and fantasy films. However, his most enduring image is that of the tall-in-the-saddle Western hero. Out of his more than 100 film appearances more than 60 were in Westerns; thus, "of all the major stars whose name was associated with the Western, Scott most closely identified with it."

Some of his films were: Seven Men from Now (1956)  The Tall T (1956)  Decision at Sundown (1957)  Buchanan Rides Alone (1958) Westbound (1958)  Ride Lonesome (1959) Comanche Station (1960)

In 1962 Scott made his final film appearance in Ride the High Country, a film now regarded as a classic.


__________

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.
--Truman Capote

Whatever . . .

Whenever my attention to the task at hand--whether severely or ever so slightly--wavers and wanders then wanes, I turn for diversion to my Kindle PC and read a chapter or two from the novel 'Lord Jim.' Not to learn from its pages how to write literature. No, not to discern from the author's words the process of composing text for a modern novel that will be both understood and appreciated by today's readers. No. Joseph Conrad employed far too many adjectives and adverbs, and too many over-used figures of speech, too many abstruse similes and metaphors. (Or so I've been told)

As, (italics mine) for example, in:

She held on straight for the Red Sea under a serene sky, under a sky scorching and unclouded, enveloped in a fulgor of sunshine that killed all thought, oppressed the heart, withered all impulses of strength and energy. And under the sinister splendour of that sky the sea, blue and profound, remained still, without a stir, without a ripple, without a wrinkle--viscous, stagnant, dead. The Patna, with a slight hiss, passed over the plain, luminous and smooth, unrolled a ribbon of smoke across the sky, left behind her on the water a white ribbon of foam that vanished at once, like the phantom of a track drawn upon a lifeless sea by the phantom of a steamer.

It seems that the temper of the times determines the perceived quality of a published work.

Is a writer, aiming for publication, ever free to write whatever and however he or she wants to write? I think not.

Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad

A used hardcover copy for a penny.

. . .

Uh oh! -- I forgot; I was going to heed a famous author's advice to improve the quality of my blog by making each day's entry a miniature story, with beginning, middle, and end. Oh well, as with a weight loss diet, I can always start doing so tomorrow.

. . .

I read over at The Writer's Almanac that Andrew Bell illustrated 160 plates for the first edition of the Britannica, including illustrations of female pelvises and fetuses for the "Midwifery" entry, which shocked King George III so much that he demanded they be ripped out of every copy of the encyclopedia.

Now, I'd say that's a pretty good illustration of why an actively ruling Monarchy is not the most desirable as a form of government. In fact, life's experience shows the folly of allowing any form of government to grow unchecked. They all grow larger and larger, and grow more and more powerful, feeding mercilessly off the people, until the finally just get too big for their britches. And have to be taken down a notch or two.

And on and on groans and grumbles the crusty old curmudgeon.

. . .

The more I speak and hear spoken aloud the guttural word 'blog' the more I dislike it. Perhaps I should stop using the word and refer to it instead as my web journal... or something like that.

. . .

I finally got around to officially effecting the change of address for my Amateur Radio license from Jacksonville to Tucson. I'm not sure how soon the change will be made in the FCC database though. I'll keep checking until I see the correct address.

. . .

Even Mark Twain put to good use the practice of salting his writing with multiple grains of adjectives and adverbs, even the -ly ones. For instance, in his autobiography he wrote: "John Robards was eternally and indestructibly amiable. I may even say devilishly amiable; fiendishly amiable; exasperatingly amiable."

That's what can be accomplished by incorporating -ly adverbs into a statement the author sees as being enhanced by using those particular parts of speech.

So there . . .

. . .

New Word

pleonasm
redundancy;
The use of more words than necessary to express an idea

__________

Commaless Musings And 'ly' Adverbs

Sometimes (more-so now than in earlier years) the serendipitously implanted idea of my being a 'talented' writer appears to me to be nothing more than a persistent fantasy floating on the surface of my consciousness somewhere above that wholly submerged and temporarily preserved myriad of flotsam and jetsam that imaginatively claims to be my unified and biologically human... self.

It is true that I am able to select from an apparently disintegrating plethora of weakly remembered words and arrange them into cohesive sentences and insert these symbolic indicators into seemingly sensible paragraphs that eventually form themselves into a semblance of some sort of sequential and ostensibly substantial story. I have done so too many times within my overly extended span of wasted years.

And one long-harbored and significant suspicion has now become a solid and clear and definite fact.

To me.

I have nothing worthwhile to say.

So . . .

Each of my attempts to construct a substantial poem or a consequential short story is fated to be a futile (empty) effort.

And the dream of my writing an original full-length novel is ludicrous.

Without a valid talent personal failure is assured.


But yet I can still blog. And therein without the interference of editorial fiat I can without guilt eschew unnecessary commas and employ as many ly adverbs as I please.

Right?

Why Do I Write?

.

What purpose do I have in this day-by-day entering of my thoughts in this blog?

The only purpose I can think of is that I wish to simply write down my thoughts and feelings as they occur to me. It's a type of diary. Or a personal log, or a journal of sorts. If at any point in the writing or in the reading, some observation seems at all profound or meaningful, then that's fine with me. If not, that's fine too.

My purpose is to write . . .

. . .

I recently read a Wired interview with Steve Jobs on modern technology and how the web will affect peoples' lives. At one point Steve said, "It's certainly not going to be like the first time somebody saw a television."

Which set me to reminiscing...

The first time I saw a television set was in 1950 (or perhaps '51) when I was 11 or 12 years old. I remember it well... while I was attending a classmates birthday party, the host's mother turned on their new television set and sat us all down to watch and listen to Buffalo Bob call out, "Hey kids... what time is it?" And the loud answering outcry was,
"Howdy Doody time!"

I was astounded. A movie theater right in their own home. True it was a small 6 or 9 inch dark-green screen and the show was in black-and-white, but it was right there on a table in the Orville Moore's family living room. Amazing!

When the show eventually presented a back-to-back pair of filmed movies of cowboys Ken Maynard and Hoot Gibson in big white sombreros riding galloping horses with the dust-raising posses chasing the fleeing bad guys in black hats and shooting loud booming guns and the rousing music sounding so loud in the background... well, the experience was so new and so different that it truly did send chills coursing up and down my spine... and boy-oh-boy, I was absolutely stunned.

I remember it well . . .

Steve Jobs, in that same interview, said, "We're born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It's been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much -- if at all.
--Steve Jobs
Feb. 1996

. . .

The sudden storm that erupted here in East Tucson a couple days ago left a tremendous amount of detritus in the swimming pool and on the deck. The wind was strong and long-lasting. And it took me almost an hour the next morning to skim the pool's surface and sweep off the deck. I took some pictures of the scattered, submerged, and floating debris...

The pool and deck

. . .

Surface of the water

Hey! I'm not complaining. Skimming the pool, while Eva stands faithful guard, barking against any covert invasion of lizards or ground squirrels (or humming birds) is a calming and relaxing endeavor, probably because I don't have to do it... I just want to.

. . .

That's all for now.

Toodles.

.

Re: Fact Or Fiction

Question . . .

Why have I decided to discontinue the series of Higher Power scenes?

After thinking about it, I have come to suspect that good fiction is more than thinly disguised fact. Sometimes I am right and sometimes I am wrong with subjective conjectures such as that.

If I had originally entered the three scenes as pure fiction, without prefacing it with the revelation that the story is based on fact, I might have been able to continue a while longer. But as it is, I am too unsure of myself. The subject matter is internally frightening. And I am tempted to change the true circumstances and results within the story itself. I have, in actual fact, already done so.

It just seems to be 'not right' for some reason.

I will probably eventually delete those three entries from the blog, but I will save them for a complete re-write later, perhaps as a submission to my Writers group, and maybe incorporate the ideas into another fictional form..

I should now stop discussing the details before the whole things just somehow morphs into the category of 'old-news' -- to be cast aside for something new.

And this blog will once again be a receptacle in which to toss whatever aberrations my mind conjures up. Like it used to be. As I wished it to be.

"Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!"
--Edna St. Vincent Millay

Surfin' The Net

Why does an old guy like me spend so much time hopping from one website to another, hour after hour, day after day? Perhaps it is merely to satisfy curiosity. Or possibly it is an effort to gain new knowledge. But if so, of what importance is this new information? Will it not simply be lost in just a short time? Lost with my death?

Not necessarily. For I blog, you see.

And conceivably my blog will survive after I am no more than burnt ash and bone dust. My blog entries will continue on in a fashion similar to the old way, the published book-in-print way, the method men and women once used to preserve their thoughts and ideas regarding the events and circumstances unique to their particular era.

I 'surf the net' and learn new things and then I record my own interpretation of formerly unfamiliar concepts: my scribbled squibs of personal thought, my jots & tittles as it were.

And who's to say that one of those squiggles will not be viewed at some future time by some evolved entity and act as a serendipitous stepping-stone across the mindless river of unconcerned happenstance and lead to some undiscovered land of hope and opportunity for the then prevailing race of thinking beings?

We may mourn the passing of the old and scorn the streamlined modes of the new but giving up in disgust is surely nothing more than emotion-driven foolishness.

One should use what is available.

So on and on I surf and learn and record the essence of that which is me.

Why not?

When I clicked on the link to an article at a well-known and highly respected online National Magazine, a large and colorful box 'flashed' onto the face of my monitor asking if I would mind taking a brief reader-feedback survey. Having often enjoyed some of the material in this publication, I figured I'd help them out with a thoughtful and deeply insightful response.

But the survey turned out to be one of those dumbed-down fill-in-the-circle multiple choice forms, one of those O Good, O Fair, O Poor, O Bad, O It-Really-Stinks type of things.

First question: How would you rate today's visit?

Good Lord!

Why would they ask me that question in a pop-up that completely concealed the first few paragraphs of the very first page? Before I'd had a chance to read a single word?

I decided not to take the survey after all, and also to skip reading the article. So in disgust I just clicked back to the Arts & Letters Daily icon on my desktop.

The next piece I turned to was a short biography of the noted writer, Philip K. Dick.What did I learn from this blog entry? Well, for one thing, this guy Dick was one of those Scientology nut-cases. And a practitioner of Zen and Buddhism. He was a frequent drug abuser, a poor excuse for a parent, had attempted suicide several times, and had once been reduced to eating horse meat.

Mr. Dick noted in an interview back in 1969 that he preferred to write Science Fiction because its "audience is not hamstrung by middle-class prejudices and will listen to genuinely new ideas."

"Horse meat!"

When I was young and on the road I once bummed a Camel and a light and then wheedled a quarter from a passing citizen on a narrow sidewalk in downtown Birmingham Alabama and took it into a hole-in-the-wall diner. On a cracked blackboard was scrawled, "Horse Meat Burgers, 3 For A Quarter." Since I had not eaten for two days, I ordered 3 burgers and a glass of water.

The food tasted swell. Three super-thick meat patties covered with mounds of steaming hot grease-grilled sweet onions between the halves of three gigantic fresh-baked buns. Delicious!

As I walked out the diner door I grinned and shrugged my shoulders in apology to the waitress, the one who had blue-gray smoke curling up into her squinty wrinkled eyes from the long Pall Mall cigarette that hung from her bottom lip... because I didn't have any money, not even a nickel, to leave her as a token tip.

I'm not sure what Philip K. Dick's biographer meant by saying he was "reduced to eating horse meat." There is nothing distasteful about horse meat. Not when one is truly hungry.

I stumbled across a Youtube X-Rated Parody of The Exorcist. Even though it made me laugh, many people will find it profane, vulgar, sacrilegious and not at all funny. You would be well advised to skip this one.

You have been warned.

Do not click this link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va_3ITDZHEU

Another new word has entered my vocabulary.

lucubration [look yoo brey shuhn]

--noun

1. laborious work, study, thought, etc., esp. at night.

2. the result of such activity, as a learned speech or dissertation.

3. Often, lucubrations. any literary effort, esp. of a pretentious or solemn nature.

Surely this is a word I will never use. But it's an interesting word. It has many possibilities.

I have been working on an essay detailing my thoughts on fear. It is nearly finished but still needs something. I'm not sure what that is but as soon as I find out I'll wrap it all up and post it here first. As soon as I finish my lucubration. Maybe as soon as tomorrow. We'll see.

Until then . . .

This video clearly and concisely explains the brain