Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Floofdoctrinate (floofinition) – to teach pet fundamentals or rudiments; to imbue with a partisan point of view or principle that favor housepets.
In use: “People argue that cats are better than dogs in floofdoctrinating humans about what is wanted and accepted.”
It seems like pop-music styles are shifting.
Well, duh? How different was the music from the forties to the fifties to the sixties to the seventies until now? We went from gospel, the blues, rockabilly, and rock and roll to bubblegum, soul, R&B, folk and folk-rock, the British invasion, hard rock, psychedelic rock, acid rock, heavy metal, synth rock, techno-pop, country and western, young country, alternative country, classic country, hip-hop, rap, adult contemporary, soft rock, and every manner of hybrid of these styles.
Those are just a few that streamed through my coffee-less brain (just having the first sip…now…ah.) Today, music seems to be more about sounds, focusing on vocals, with catchy rhymes and repetition, while telling a story For example, my song today is “Jackie Chan” (2018) by Tiësto and Dzeko. Preme and Post Malone provide the vocals.
What intrigues me about it are lyrics such as these:
She said she too young, don’t want no man
So she gon’ call her friends, now that’s a plan
I just ordered sushi from Japan
Know your bitch wanna kick it, Jackie Chan
h/t to lyricsmode.
Not knowing what’s being sung, I sang alternative lyrics.
She said she too young, don’t want no man
So she gon’ call her friends, now that’s a plan
I got to go and use the can
I stand up to take a pee like Jackie Chan
Sometimes, encouraged by the delivery, I just go stream-of-thought freestyle on the whole thing, rhyming on man/plan/can/sand/band/land/hand, etc.
Yes, it’s different, catchy, interesting, intriguing. That’s what’s not new about popular music, and how pop-music in all its forms finds and keeps audiences. A hook is found, and a form is born.
Decided to make a change in my novel in progress. This is Book Four, An Undying Quest, in the Incomplete Series.
I’m not certain but I overwrote the existing file without creating a backup. Worse, I’d decided to make this change without first backing up my work, violating my cardinal rule – backup, backup, backup, and save often.
Realizing my error immediately, I went into recovery mode. The results were depressing. No ASD files, no WKP files, or TMP files were found as a match for the initial version. No previous versions found. The file wasn’t found on One Drive.
Unbelievable. Three hundred fifty pages of the revised novel were lost.
Back to square two. I have the beta draft in its raw form. I’d started revising on October 18th, so it’s only a few weeks of work, and about half the novel.
Now I’ll walk and bash myself for being hasty and thoughtless, and take some deep breaths. It’s not the world’s end, or civilization’s end, or anything like that. It’s just a foolish setback. I’ll just need to reset myself, go back, and begin again, with some bitter lessons learned.
Done editing for today. Cheers
As I was walking together, I developed a new game concept. I’d come across a small traffic jam. Traffic jams are rare in our little town. Most are small. Parades and school letting out are the usual problems.
But other places have traffic jams, which helped me develop (meaning, daydream about) my Traffic Jam game. Like Clue, the players move, but in this case, they move from corner to corner and street to street, collecting information and making guesses about what’s going on. In Traffic Jam, it would be stated as, “Don, in a gray Mini, stopping to make a right hand turn from the left hand lane.”
That’s all I got.
Floofucate (floofintion) – give intellectual, moral, and social instruction about having housepets or being a housepet.
In use: “He’d never had a cat before, but the kitten soon floofucated him about cat rules.”
“Back in the U.S.S.R” by the Beatles (1968) is today’s theme music. I thought it was appropriate to give a nod to a nation that no longer exists, one who built walls to keep their nation safe while building up a huge military and cutting their social safety nets and education, a nation whose primary concern became driven by the ruling party, who did everything they could to remain in power, control and intimidate their citizens.
It’s a pretty good song.
Today’s editing was like surgery. I wrote Book Four, An Undying Quest, in a coffee-stoked and idea-infused blaze. Feeding me, the muses took me in different directions simultaneously. One over-arching arc was eventually uncovered as definitive. Excising paragraphs, merging, and clarifying the one great arc and staying true to the final concept and story involved a lot of reading, thinking, and revising.
Thank god for coffee. Terrific day of writing editing like crazy. Time to call it a day.
I might go get a doughnut.
We’ve voted in our house, and agree that we should have a secret hour – that extra one that doesn’t show up anywhere but in your sleep – every night. (Amusingly, it’s called setting the clocks back to conceal the deal the Feds made with the Time Fairies.)
The vote was unanimous and not a surprise that the cats all voted for it. We had to wake them up to vote. As Papi summarized, “If it’s food or sleeping, I’m all for it.”
We know better than to actually advocate for a secret hour every night. There are dangers associated with having the Time Fairies come each night to give you the extra hour. One, your time isn’t infinite. Those hours come from somewhere.
Two, and more worrying, for every hour they give you, the Time Fairies own you more.
Most worrying of all, the Time Fairies are thin-skinned and petty. They’re wont to go for revenge at the slightest perceived insult. You must be careful not to piss them off. I’m sure you’ve seen some of their victims, listless as they wander around, craving sleep that will not come, not able to die because it’s not their time, but without the energy to do anything, because the Time Fairies own their time.
I have this analytical side that I can’t turn off. I often use it to overthink. You should see me trying to decide what to eat at a restaurant as I measure choice, mood, health, calories, fat in the food and fat in myself, and my weight and physical condition, against the satisfaction and pleasure found in eating while weighing what sort of event it is and how much I should be willing to indulge myself.
My analytical side is coolly, cruelly sharp. It sees and speaks whether I want it to or not. I try to pretend it’s wrong, but it’s generally right. It’s wearying.
Thinking about this today, on this cold fall morning, I think about Occam’s Razor, the sense that, maybe the simplest answer is correct. Maybe I’m a good writer but one that isn’t really good enough to be a professional writer.
I’m lured, though, by authors’ words, quotes like, “A professional is just an amateur who never gave up.” I’m lured by anecdotes where a writer was rejected for five years and then was finally published and scored the success that I seek as a writer, hell, as a person, as validation and reward. I remember how many times Theodor Geisel, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Stephen King were rejected, but that they didn’t give up, because they believed, man.
I know, too, that writers will tell you that they’re rarely satisfied with their own work. We are perverse.
I’m reminded, we’re always trying to be a better writer and story-teller, so who can say what I’ll be like in five years? There’s always improvement to be had, right? Write and read, right?
I write for myself, and I enjoy my own story-telling, but my analyst whispers, “So?”
I write for myself, but I suspect that the writing process, my writing habits and routines, are enablers, and that I’m addicted to that process and to the hope that this will all come to something.
My analyst shrugs. “So? You think this is news? Don’t you think that others go through this? Really?”
I write for myself, but I immerse myself so completely, I focus so intensely, that my life outside of my writing efforts is a shell. By writing efforts, I mean the creative process of conceiving, imagining, writing, polishing, editing and revising. I despise the business end, yet, perversely, without the business end, how much of this would I be putting myself and my family through this?
Yes, that’s how writers often are, I remember reading. Look what Stephen King put himself through.
That doesn’t help.
My analyst smirks.
Thoughts of giving up hit a hard internal wall. “Give up writing and trying? No. Sorry. Won’t happen.”
That reaction makes me wonder if my stubborn determination isn’t a facade for mental illness and emotional issues, perhaps giving me a rational for being aloof and leaving emotions and issues untouched, that I’m hustling myself to give me purpose so that my life might end up having meaning, so that I can eventually shout at others, “See? I was right.”
One of the problems with Occam’s Razor in my mind is that it’s difficult to test and verify that the simplest answer is true. I think, though, wouldn’t it be easiest to take a break, to stop writing for a period, take a time-out to see what develops?
It’s so tempting. I’d probably go through withdrawal. Withdrawal from anything has nasty side-effects. I’d probably be cranky and bitter, and spend some time and energy being bitter and resentful despite all the psychological tricks I’d employ to be happy and balanced.
Eventually, I’d emerge as a slightly different version of myself, model one million and one. Free of entertaining my writing mechanisms and the immersion I end up demanding of myself when I write, I’d probably become friendlier, more relaxed, and sociable. As I need the purpose, structure, and direction that my writing provides me, I’d hunt for a replacement and probably become more engaged in community volunteer activities.
I can spin this into so many different directions at this point. I can take on any of the directions, step away and put on my writer’s cap and my analyst’s cap to encourage me in any direction that I choose. I can find justification in any one of them, along with hope, and reasons for taking and sustaining that direction.
Thoughts of surrendering my writing ambitions terrify me, because I might be wrong, but also because I might be wrong. I think, all that wasted time and energy, but I think, yes, but you wouldn’t have known, if you hadn’t tried.
I think, there’s probably another path, like, okay, treat writing like a nine-to-five Monday-through-Friday existence. Take the weekends off. It’s easy to say, everyone needs time to recharge. And time away might give me fresh perspectives. (And I think, look at you, intellectualizing these processes and putting them into convenient silos.)
That could well be true. In the end, I’m amused to discover, I’m afraid of who I am, who I might be, and who I might not be. Who isn’t, right? I can imagine words that I can read, suggestions given about what to do, encouragement not to give up.
It’s all games. Some embrace those games and work it out better than others. Isn’t that what life, the time between when we’re born into a physical existence and then die and leave that state, what it’s all about, to find which version of the game you’ll play and how fervently, how ardently, you’ll play it?
The analyst’s side whispers to me. “Ah, you’ve fallen into your monthly dark cycle. You know you get like this. Endure, endure. Don’t make any decisions about anything now. Circumstances are accumulating to make this period a heavy one this time.”
Reflecting on all of this, I sip my first taste of the day’s coffee and think, why post this? Why share it with the public? To garner pity? To announce to others, you are not alone? To draw attention to myself?
Posting it — hah, sharing it – feels like a compulsion. I’ve written to understand what I think. That’s completed. Sharing it feels like an act of desperation.
Sharing it also feels like an act of therapy. Sharing it feels like a cry for help.
Sharing it feels like another person trying to understand their life, sort feelings, and work through existence. Perhaps I’m just showing off, telling others, see? See how I can think and write? See how complex I am? My analyst whispers, “Yes, and you’re also exposing your shortcomings, vulnerabilities, and ego.”
It’s all madness, overthinking madness. From it, I emerge again, resolved and unresolved, conflicted but certain and doubtful, Michael, version one million and two.
Meet the new me.
