Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
An usual choice for me today, this song isn’t my favorite from this band, and I don’t consider it their best. It was very different from their preceding work, and I thought of it as a sell-out at its debut. The lyrics draw me more than anything. It’s a bit sad, though, but the refrain, “But I don’t ever want to feel the way I felt that day,” is an empowering theme to sing to yourself when you’ve made a decision, if you’re a romantic.
Red Hot Chili Peppers, ‘Under the Bridge’, 1992.
I’ve never had a Snow. Have you? I’ve only learned of it today.
Snow is one of the biggest selling beers in the world. A lager, it’s brewed and sold in China. Some say it’s the best-selling beer but others argue that Snow breweries include multiple ranges of beers, and that if you let Budweiser include all its variations as a single brand, Bud is selling more. Impressively, perhaps, Snow was only introduced in 1993. It’s climbed fast but then, it has state sponsorship to grow and it’s offered in a unique market: China.
As I only rarely drink lagers, I don’t believe I’m missing much by not tasting Beer, a belief that’s flat-out wrong. I don’t know what the beer will taste like. I’m assuming that such a mass-produced lager isn’t going to open my eyes and make me weep with joy at its taste. I could be wrong, though. I understand from reviews of Snow, it has a low alcoholic content and has a mild flavor, tasting like an mass-produced American beer. Those aren’t attributes I seek in a beer.
I learned about Snow courtesy of the big news. Asahi, the Japanese company that brews beers, is buying five beer brands from Anheuser-Busch InBev, the giant beer octopus. Anheuser-Busch, of course, is the American brewer. We know them from their beers like Anheuser-Busch. A-B is owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev, a name that flows like an IPA off the tongue. InBev, of course, is the giant international brewing company. Anheuser-Busch InBev acquired SABMiller in 2015. SABMiller brews Fosters, the Australian lager, and Miller, the American lager.
All of this is marginally depressing. I decry larger and larger acquisitions. I’ve been sucked up into the guts of Tyco and IBM and slightly smaller but still large corporations through acquisitions. Each time, they enthused about how they loved our corporate culture and wanted to change their company culture to incorporate our culture, which is absolute bullshit. Taste it once, you don’t need to taste it again. Then the feasting began. Eventually all that was left of the acquired company’s culture is a few picked over bones, like the name and a handful of employees.
I also decry malls, for kind of the same reasons. Fly to any city and go to the malls and the variations between them are smaller than a pubic hair. They really only change when you go into the fringes of the poor and wealthy. Try it sometime.
These beer mergers and acquisitions would depress me more if I weren’t in the humble Rogue Valley, home of sensational breweries pumping out interesting and tasteful variations on lagers, pilsners, porters, stouts, porters, IPAs, ales and the like. I also live not far from Bend, with its happening beer scene, and awesome Portland. What worries me most is that such acquisitions are often harbingers of things to come. What keeps me sane is that there are many home and craft brewers who keep taking the decision to take their creations public.
A toast to those bold souls. May they ever brew on.
“Did you see the black widow?” my wife asked.
Not much of a question. Two lived by the front door for a while, one by the garage side door, one by the garage door and another out back around the patio. “Which one?”
“The one in the garbage can.”
“No.”
“I don’t know how you missed her. She’s right there on the top. She’s huge.”
I went out to check. It was cold and daylight. She barely moved, contrary to black widow habits when exposed to light. She wasn’t huge. I thought her on the smaller side. She was on the front lip, in a little trough. I don’t understand the trash can’s little trough’s purpose but that’s where she took up residence. Not much space for a web. I imagine insect traffic is pretty low there.
I blew on her to see what she did. She flicked a few legs in annoyance. I closed the lid.
It stayed like that for a few days. The weather grew colder. Snow fell. We saw the low twenties. Her legs grew drawn in. I wondered if she was dead, but maybe she was curled up for warmth. I blew on her. She barely stirred.
She was gone this morning when I took out a bag of kitty litter potatoes for deposit. I looked around for her but it was raining, a warmer day, at thirty-seven, but still cold in spider land. Maybe she made her way into the house. Perhaps she just descended into the trash can or one of the bags.
I don’t know. I wonder about her. I worry a little bit. Black widows seem to lead lonely lives. Maybe there’s a private social aspect that I don’t know about.
Sorry I didn’t take a photo of her. I could post it here and you could let me know if you see her. If you do think you see her, tell her I said, “Hi.”
She’ll know what you mean.
I probably posted this one before. Since it came out in 1988, it’s become one of my go-to songs for lifting my spirits and reinforcing my determination. But crank it up, sing along with Steve Winwood, snap your fingers, clap your hands, scare the cats and do a little dancing. You know, just roll with it, baby.
Oh, yes. This is so true. I’d never heard this referenced as a style guide before. For me, it’s the bible, the background info to the characters, settings, plots and worlds. I’m pleased to learn others must keep a spelling and grammar guide as well. Cool post, and well worth reading.
Today, I wanted to talk about style guides. No, not the Chicago Manual of Style. I’m talking about self-generated style guides that serve as a bible for your universe(s). I’ve been working with the Human Legion recently, and I’ve spent some time organizing world buildings notes spanning multiple authors. Different authors, writing different series, but in the same universe.
The solution, for me, was apparent — compile the notes and make a style guide to ensure consistency. This was easier said than done. Let’s talk about how to make one, what it can do, and potential information to keep within it.
A style guide, for those of you unfamiliar, is a tool to create consistency throughout a story, world, or universe. It is tremendously helpful to an editor, because it will show them invented words, character information, and world background. We’ve talked about World Builder’s Disease before, a style guide…
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I’ve been further defining the ideopat.
The ideapat is used as part of a telepathic process among the Travail Avresti Forus and Seth, and the Travail Favrashi Forus and Seth in my novel in progress, ‘Long Summer’.
It’s more than telepathy. Calling it ‘telepathy’ demeans its full range. I felt, in order to be logical and consistent about its use in the arcs, character development and plot, I needed to further define and understand the ideopat.
First, within the ideopat is the phena. Phena is derived from phenomon. The phena is the emotional piece of the ideopat. To help understand it, I think of how drops of waters come together to form torrents. This is generally how the phena comes across on the ideopat. It’s a perception of separate processes and impressions aggregating into an over-arching view.
Generally; exceptions exist. In this way, I think of vision and human differences with their vision. The classic example for me is the ability to see a fastball and the ball’s movement through the air. Not everyone has that ability but some do, and that makes them special.
Good; that was a decent start.
After deeper thinking, I found this video a friend had posted on Facebook.
You can argue, as many have, about whether this is a vortex, and point out that some of the planets are in the wrong orbits, and whether this is true, but it stimulated my thinking. That’s why I’m sharing this. Seeing it, I thought, yes! This gives me greater insight into the ideopat and its structure and motion. There’s a position of recurring motion on one level that doesn’t take in the greater points of view about what’s happening within the ideopat. Beautiful.
The Forus and Seth can also use the ideopat to experience the world through one another’s. After some thought about the development of the skill and individual abilities, I decided that they would need to provide this aspect with a name. Eventually, I came up with sensta as the visual and auditory flows within the phena. As Travail Kidder mature, the sensta is the first aspect of the phena they experience. Their reaction to it guides their further development and direction. Some are overwhelmed. When that happens, they’re trained in how to close the sensta. Of course, closing the sensta to them closes the phena and the ideopat. So they can’t be Forus or Seth but must be named and become something else in the society.
Then I recognized that those for those with the wherewithal to know, the pentha is like an atmosphere, with richly developed layers.
That’s a brief insight into the pentha. In my notes, it takes up a few pages.
The pentha is just one piece. Next up was the ideopat’s true telepathic aspect. The Travail refer to this as the
Now, among this, a very few can perceive the mutex and the saiki. The mutex are the combined threads that make up the flows which become the exopatheia and phena. (Note: the Travail call the threads the sper.) For those who can perceive this level of the ideopat, it’s like seeing the results after white light passes through a prism. What others can only experience the pentha as the white light, they see the resulting rainbow. The greater the ability for them to perceive and segregate the mutex and spers, the more powerful their telepathic abilities. For the normal Forus and Seth, they don’t perceive the mutex and spers but know one another through exposure, repetition and ultimately, familiarity with others’ ‘telepathic voice’.
But one step past all of this, on the very highest level of ability, those that can see sense and see past the pentha, exopatheia and mutex, and find the individual spers and follow them back to the actual person where they originate. This psychic representation is called the saiki. This is so far beyond the skill levels of most that a majority of Travail Forus and Seth don’t believe they exist, that those who thought they’d seen them in the past must have been imagining them. So the saiki is dismissed.
But Travail Avresti Forus Ker has developed the ability to perceive the saiki. He’s not only seeing the saiki of the Travail Forus, but also the Seth and the rest of the Travail, not just his race (the Avresti), but the other races as well. He’s even perceiving the saiki for the Humans and then for the Monad.
And most interesting and frightening for him, he can see the saiki of death. That makes him wonder: is there a saiki for life as well?
And then things really start getting interesting for him.
After that, I set about writing the limitations and further defining the exceptions.
Most of today’s writing session was devoted to fleshing this out and documenting it. I only actually wrote a thousand words in the novel. A few hours have passed. I still had half a cup of mocha remaining when I stopped writing. Just finished that as I wrote this post.
It’s been a good day of writing like crazy.
This leaped into my head out of the heavens yesterday morning as I was going about shaving and dressing. It needs to be dislodged so post it here. Don’t hate me if it affects you as it did me through the last twenty-four hours.
I learned the lyrics as a child when the movement was released. They’re easy lyrics to remember.
Hard to forget.
I just want to take this time to thank everyone who reads, subscribers and shares my site. I appreciate all the support and encouragement.I would love to read everyone’s blog, but I don’t always get a chance to read and follow everyone’s blog. So today I want to offer a networking opportunity and a chance […]
Okay, today’s theme music selection is posted as defensive measure.
I have an ear bug. It’s my wife’s fault. She played this song on her computer the other day. It’s stuck in me, providing background music to every activity. An old remedy claims that only two ways to end the suffering of a song stuck in your head exist. The preferred way is to sing the song out loud so others hear it, or play it for them. If they start singing it, it will move out of you and infect another.
So here it is, the song infection I’ve suffered the last several days, Dolly Parton singing ‘Here You Come Again’ from 1977.
I haven’t been out to sample the holiday shopping crowds. Shopping and crowds are anathema to my sense of peace and social tolerance toward others. My small town yesterday demonstrated again and again how people change during this season. A flip was switched. Cashiers seemed to already be eyeing customers as threats to their patience. The rules for driving seemed to be eroding. My impression of their thinking evolved from their actions.
“One way? No problem, I’m just going a short distance, and I need that parking space. I’m in a hurry!”
“Two lanes? They can move over. There’s plenty of room for them to go around me. I’m special.”
“Stop signs – I rolled through. Close enough.”
“Turn signals? I’m barely aware of where I’m going, and you want me to think of turn signals?”
“Hurry, hurry, let’s get home, quickly, quickly, faster, faster. Get on his tail. That’ll make him go faster.”
This is what was happening in our small, mellow town. Holidays and precipitation seem to unhinge people’s thinking. I don’t know what was going on in one woman’s head as she drove down the twenty-five mile an hour residential street at what I guessed was thirty-five to forty, her head down and her phone up, texting away.
I think this song is the theme for many. I hope it’s not harrying your mind. Here’s Al Hirt on the trumpet solo and Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Flight of the Bumblebee”, as used for the theme music for the television show, ‘The Green Hornet’.
Michael Seidel, writer 