Month: May 2020

Monday’s Theme Music

This is Memorial Day in the USA. As we remember the ones who gave their lives in wars to preserve our freedoms and celebrate their lives, I watch with wonder at others thumbing their noses at the efforts to keep them safe.

“Tyranny,” they shout. “My body, my choice.”

Tyranny

“You’re trampling on our rights.”

Just Mary

Watching the social distancing and mask-wearing guidelines collapse in Missouri (via video) yesterday (well, they did have hand sanitizer and were taking people’s temperature, so I’m sure it’s all good…), an old Steve Miller Band song, “Serenade”, came to mind.

Wake up, wake up
Wake up and look around you
We’re lost in space
And the time is our own

h/t to Genius.com

That’s my choice for this Memorial Day’s theme music.

 

 

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Jigsaw Puzzle #10 of 2020-Fini!

Huzzah! (Can you tell that I’ve been watching “The Great” on Hulu?)

As I mentioned on FB last night, jigsaw puzzle #10 of 2020 is finally finished. As we started it on April 29, it required almost a month for us to put it together. My wife will admit guilt about it; the puzzle didn’t call to her. She didn’t work on it much (okay, almost at all). It called to me, but we also had other things to do, and it was a challenging diversion, which, yeah, is the best kind: challenging and entertaining.

Per house policy, this one will be kept on display on the dining table where it was put together for a few days before we tear it apart, box it up, and turn to another. Several are in the wings as jigsaw puzzle #11. Which will win? My wife is leaning toward the Coca-Cola dream garage. The house says the outcome is stacked against me. The cats agree, so it’ll probably be that puzzle.

While the fanbelts hanging on the walls and, well, everything, was a puzzle to put together (yeah, sorry), the bottom two corners stimulated our frustrations the most. When only the left corner and directly below the car is when my wife charged in to help. Quoting her, “This is my favorite part of doing jigsaws. You just keep sticking pieces in until one works.”

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Dissecting A Diversion

I was ready to start a new chapter, and went back to where I’d stopped yesterday.

Main character was on a zeppelin. I decided I needed to get him there, so I moved back in time. Yeah, my process is very non-linear. I’d written what I saw the day before, and that meant he was on a zeppelin, taking a trip. Now I needed to get the hero and team there. I decided to pick up the action where he first encountered the zeppelin. I began visualizing that moment. The zepp is tall. How tall? How big? To the Google!

Wikipedia was a bitcoin mine about zeppelins. A company had built some and had been giving tours, but folded. The company was based at Moffett Field. Well, shoot, used to live there!

I needed technical information on the zeppelin. How many engines did it have? What’s its payload, crew size, etc. Remembering my time on Moffett, I recalled the U.S.S. Akron. Well, let me search and read.

From the Akron, I went to the Macon, and on through the history of German, British, and U.S. military and civilian zeppelins, designs, and disasters. Nevil Shute helped design R100 and R101 for the British military. A side path was followed to a summary about his autobiography, Slide Rule. Clicks uncovered information about hybrid air vehicles (HAV), dynastats, rotastats,  Long Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle (LEMV), the Airlander 10, and the Flying Bum.

This novel is set in a future dystopia so I needed to wrap my head around how HAVs may progress from now to then. Then, what limitations would be encountered, and how they would address those.

Hours had elapsed. I’d taken bathroom breaks, replenished fluids, and stretched and walked around. I hadn’t written, although I’d collected a stack of information as building materials. It was almost four by then, so…well, I needed a break. I’d do a Sudoku, and then write. But, by the time I finished the puzzle fifteen minutes later, well…I went on to my jigsaw puzzle in progress.

And that is how a novel doesn’t get written.

Got my coffee. Time to try to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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J. Floof Band

J. Floof Band (floofinition) – American floof rock (flock) band originally from Floofster, Massafloofsetts, who hit their commercial peak in the 1980s.

In use: “The J. Floof Band broke into floofstream consciousness with “Flooframe” and “Centerfloof”, but seemed to drift away as suddenly as they rose.”

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Time for slide back Sunday.

With time slipping away (fewer markers out there to force me to pay attention), I often find that another day has fled. Muddering about it, I thought about how day flows into night and night flows into day, distinguished by weather and light changes, sleep cycles, eating, and clothing changes.

Out of that came a 1965 song by the Kinks, “All Day and All of the Night”, which amused me. (Easily amused? That’s me. Check.) Trawling the Youtube uncovered a 1965 television appearance where they played it. Seeing that black and white footage, hearing that sound quality, admiring their haircuts definitely slides me back to a more relaxed time (primarily because I was just a wee shithead at that point).

Here we go.

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Another Elizabeth Said

From a short and interestinginterview in Seattle Times. I agree with her assessment; I’m amazed how many would-be novelists say they’ve written a hundred pages but don’t know what to do next, so they quit.

 

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Judging

I’m watching Hulu. I don’t pay to be advert free. The same commercials are often played. The one in play now is a Carl’s Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger. Breathe in the bacon, breathe out the bacon, is the basic play, while showing a cheeseburger close up. All I can think of when I watch it is, fifteen hundred mg of sodium (65% RDA), 34 grams of fat, 740 calories, and fifteen grams of sugar. Have some soda and fries with that.

Yeah, I’m fucking old, thinking about health over flavor and judging people who make that stuff, and the ones who eat it.

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Chipgate

A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that “44 percent of Republicans believe that Bill Gates is plotting to use a mass COVID-19 vaccination campaign as a pretext to implant microchips in billions of people and monitor their movements.”

I said, what? Is this the BillGatesgate? Or is it called chipgate?

I hope it’s not chipgate. Chipgate should be about ridiculous chip flavors being inflicted on the salty, greasy crunchiness that are potato chips. If I want a maple doughnut, I’ll eat a doughnut, not potato chips.

Note to self: get doughnuts.

Other polling results include the Chuck Norris kick to the head that only 26 percent of Republicans were able to “correctly identify” a false and “widely debunked” conspiracy theory. More than 80 percent of Democrats realize that Bill Gates isn’t microchipping people. I pause, though, to think, 20 percent of Democrats believe this crazy idea.

Hmm, I wonder. What’s old Bill up to, chipping us like that? Is he trying to take control of us to stop the spread of crazy ideas about him?

That they’re spreading the idea via social media explodes my head with irony. Many people have cell phones almost glued to their hands. “Where’s my phone?” is a common question people ask themselves. “Why did I put my phone?” “Where did I leave my phone?” “Has anyone seen my phone?” It’s like another child. Or do they not own iPhones and other smartphones with GPS, or cars with navigation systems or net connectivity? Are they using VPN at home, not accepting cookies, and wiping their tracks from the net?

I’ll bet over eighty percent of you said, “What?”

No surprise, then, that madhatters are out there insisting that no mask is a good mask, mocking the maskers for being sheeple. Meanwhile, over half of the social media posts demanding that the U.S. re-opens for business can be traced back to bots. Well, if it worked once, then it’ll work a zillion times, right? Sure; bludgeon people with the same information again and again and they’ll start believing it.

I mean, it worked for invading Iraq as part of the response to 9/11, ‘her emails’ to smear Clinton, show us the birth certificate trumpshit, and the whole, ‘the poor wealthy need a big tax break, cause trickle-down’ nonsense.

Now, excuse me, but a doughnut awaits. I just read that eating a doughnut a day will help you live longer, keep you mentally sharp, and improve your sex life.

Can you believe it?

 

 

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