Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

Weekend

Weekends flash by these days, seems you blink and they are gone.

Did a good fighter practice on Saturday last week, a good number of people showed up and I was bruised and tired by the end of it (a good time was had by all!)

Did Mother’s day stuff Sunday, I made Deb a nice gluten enriched waffle breakfast. She gets that kind of stuff very seldom these days since I’m breakfast guy. Next we went car shopping, our ten+ year old Rav4 got rear ended a week or so ago and we had to replace it. Deb was the only person in it and thank providence that she was not badly hurt (so far as we know, she’s still sore.)

We looked at a few light trucks and vans, then settled on a white Honda Odyssey. It’s bigger, has some miles but at least it’s paid for. It’s also in very good shape. We took it home Monday. E’ is thrilled because it  has a TV, non working because of the DTV conversion, but I suspect I can tinker with it and get  some use out of it. The doors freak me out, it has two van type side doors that open automatically. I thought electric windows were a luxury!

This weekend was quiet. I did a bit of yard work, we cleaned house and I went to the Anon protest in Clearwater. I rode my bike as apposed to driving. It’s all of three and a half miles so, why not?

Nothing much was going on, the Anons were sitting around – all three of them! It’s gotten very hot around these parts and nothing much is going on in the Clearwater area. The numbers are up some months, down others.  I spent some time chatting with one of the Clearwater PD guys and we looked at a bunch of Scientology literature.

Nothing much else is going on. E’ made honer roll at school and he looks to be on track to graduate.  Operation “Burger flip” is still rolling slowly along and I need to get back onto the submission train. Mr. PH and i have another writing challenge, “A totalitarian dystopia that uses social networking tools to control population” was the theme as I recall. This dovetails  nicely into a concept I’ve been mulling over  - based on the doggerel ”they make the trains run on time.”

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Why I can’t get over “The Road.”

Cormac McCarthy’s been around for a while but quite frankly, I’ve never read any of his stuff. I was aware of “All the Pretty Horses” but I never read the novel or saw the film (hey! I have a twelve-year -old in the house and that limits us to little more violent than “The Transformers.”)

I picked up a paperback copy of The Road at the grocery store. I literally read the thing in one sitting. Not because it’s short (It really is,) because it’s riveting and I don’t say that very often or lightly.

What is it about?

Ten years before the novel begins, some kind of calamity befalls the Earth. A father and son are homeless.They push their pitiful belongings in a decrepit shopping cart, heading south because they “can’t survive another winter.” The landscape is bleak and gray, ash covers everything and McCarthy reveals in stunningly tight prose that apparently there very little is left alive. The world is wrapped in a gray cold winter that has gone on for the last decade. “Cattle has become extinct” muses the unnamed father as he struggles to protect his son from a very hostile world.

There is little food. What remains is decade old canned goods, nearly depleted.  The pair trudge through cold burned-out husks of cities, long abandoned. There are people around, the most successful are groups of cannibals who  prey on the weak or the careless. They sweep scavengers off the road and force them to march from place to place, serving as mobile larders.  Others are kept precariously alive so that their limbs can be harvested. Fearing this fate, the unnamed protagonist’s wife commits suicide just before the two set out on their journey.  The father,not quite coming to grips with his grief  allows  it to transform into a dogged mission to protect his son.

The prose in the novel is terse and sometimes misspelled. The word “cant” is often used to replace the contraction “can’t.” It’s as if McCarthy is allowing us a peek at an old, moldering journal by someone who is long since dead and gone. In a world that few of his readers can really conceptualize.

This is not an end of the world novel. The world of “The Road” has already ended.  It ended  long before father and son set out to find a better place. Readers are left with the feeling that, despite all the struggle, despite the death of all but a handful of people, the end of all humanity has finally happened and each survivor has to come to grips with their own choices. Then  they must make peace with themselves before their own inevitable end. The father does this by focusing on his son, by creating a world-view that is only about his son’s survival.

This seems to be the subtext of the novel – or at least the part which resonated most strongly.   It’s a book on parenting (strangely enough), the father understanding that his existence is is only about seeing his child to safety. This task is to the exclusion of all else, even morality and ethics. The father is a good man at heart, but he becomes transformed into a ruthless – even cruel person by his task. The unnamed mother’s suicide too is transformed into a sacrifice, so that her husband would not have to protect her as well. It’ an extraordinary  tale of bravery in the face of inevitable and utter disaster. (Of course as a couple of people have pointed out that McCarthy may not have meant for Mom’s suicide to be a heroic act. I’m against suicide as a matter of principle so perhaps I’m mirroring my own feelings in this novel – as the author surely intended!)

If you read this book, do it by candlelight on a cold winters night and keep a window open. The chill you feel will not be from the cold!

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Muttering and munging .

OK, Deb is about to do one of her “you haven’t posted in several days!” (I love you too dear!)

July passed into September and the hurricane season started in Ernest. Gustoph passed by us with a wide margin but we felt the effects of it just the same. It smashed into Louisiana and if it hadn’t been for Katrina three years ago (almost to the day!) this would have been [cue echo chamber] The Storm of the Century!
Gustoph was the storm of the year so far, Hanna is out by the Bahamas rapidly falling apart, Ike is in the Atlantic, a monster of a storm and Josephine is forming just off Africa. It’s been a busy season so far and I’m feeling like we are in the shooting gallery again. Let’s move out of this lousy state! Sheeze!

I watched the Republican convention last couple of nights. Republican Vice President Candidate Sarah Palin, the Alaskan Governor gave a speech Wednesday , a pretty good one although it had as much substance as a deflated Helium balloon. Not that I expect much, When GW was running for president in 00 he didn’t mention he was planning to invade Iraqi. I wish he’d TOLD us that! Al Gore would have not made his boring movie!

Sara Palin is a good speaker but she didn’t really SAY anything! Just rhetoric and more rhetoric. She fibbed about her record a bit, didn’t mention that she supports a group that advocates Alaska seceding from the UNION! (!!) She generally sounded like an Alpha-Bitch to me. Not that I have anything against Alpha-Bitches but I don’t think I want a right-wing fruit-bat Alpha-Bitch as Veep.

Last night, MaCain did his big acceptance speech and it was as devoid of content as his running mate’s (and she’s a better speaker!) As a matter of fact I could have sworn that it was his running mate’s speech, some of it word-for-word. One of the biggest applauses came after he intoned “DRILL OFFSHORE AND DRILL NOW!” This seemed to be his answer to high gas prices…high gas prices! We have some of the lowest prices in the freaking world! When I was last in Japan, I noticed the price for regular was around 500 yen a liter. A Gallon = 3.785 Liters! That was like fifteen dollars a gallon and I was wondering why everyone’s cars were running close to empty all the time.

This is the same bone head logic that has much of our corn crop being made into motor fuel. This is like powering a water pump with a waterwheel from a lake that is supplied by the same pump. It will work for a while but eventually you run out of water and the whole thing crashes. Come up with a solar powered device that makes gas out of pond-scum or switch grass, something we have plenty of and I’ll listen but leave our freaking corn alone!

Deb got her fall-class kennel-cough which put her out for a day. I have a touch of it now but it will likely brush past me.

Last night I rode my bike to the “writing–spot “ in Scientology City.

It’s a nice 25 min ride and I can stay off the main roads most of the way.

I’ve finally broken my writer’s block on novel II. It’s been frustrating but I decided to allow the characters to drive the story and quit forcing it. It won’t turn out exactly like I wanted but what does? Right now are heroes are arguing about using an orbiting hotel facility nested in a freaking huge and very old space habitat. The hotel turns out to be part of an old ballistic transportation system that was rendered inoperable long ago as a result of an alien invasion and subsequent quarantine of the Solar system. Why the human race is quarantined, what is about to happen to the Earth, what are the aliens, what do they want. why does the transportation system suddenly activate and what does one of our heroes do with a marble sized MacGuffin when they get captured are some of the reasons I’ve been blocked for a while.

But I did find the Obama for President office in town!

Oh yes, Hanna is passing by and will make a soggy weekend in the Carolinas. Ike is lining up to hit Florid and we were put on “first alert” today.

The Christmases season is soon amirite?

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Signs and portents part II

I write a wee bit, some of you may have noticed. One of my favorite places to write (outside of my home-office.) is a certain Starbucks coffee house. The one in Downtown Clearwater Florida to be specific. deep inside the Scientology campus. A stone’s throw from Flag and a block away from the infamous Fort Harrison Hotel and the Super Power building.

I’ve been going here on and off for some time, years perhaps. I write and I watch the Sea-Org people march back and forth between classes, late into the night.

There used to be a steady flow of Flag staff in and out of the Starbucks, On stats-day they would line up at the counter. Most of them looked like they were in a big hurry. I nodded at them but never really tried to talk to them. Sea Org members have little time to chitchat.

This is not happening anymore. The last few weeks have been very quiet. No one lines up at the counter. I don’t see any Flag staff relaxing in the shops couches or Delphi kids doing their homework. I don’t see teens hanging out in the veranda. It’s been oddly quiet in there. I see people, not locals. lots and lots of people from other counties, I hear Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Japanese being spoken. There is Japanese lady that come in sometimes with a small child. she looks lost and homesick, they have Starbucks stores all over Japan now. Perhaps it helps.
But the Flag staff are conspicuous in their absence.

So I did what I usually do when posed with a mystery, I asked.

“What religion are you?” said the person behind the counter nervously,
“I’m not one of those guys, I can tell you that” I said, indicating the hordes of Sea Org people in their uniforms walking by.
The person behind the counter relaxed a bit, “well, have you heard of this group Anonymous?”
“I’ve heard of them.” I said.
“They did some protesting over here a few weeks ago.” Said the counter person.
“So I understand,” I said.
“Well, ‘they’ (indicating the Sea Org people outside)” came in here and asked us not to serve the Anonymus people, we told them no.”
“Hmmm,” I said, “ what are they doing now, boycotting you?”
“We think so “ said counter person. “They seem to be going to another place, they don’t have very much money and the other places are cheaper.”
I thanked the counter person for the information and left, not too surprised to tell the truth.

Starbuck’s is one of the only places downtown that has not sported “No Anonymous” signs in its windows. Personally I intend to go there more often now. I have little tolerance for discrimination and that’s what the No Anon signs are. I don’t care if you agree or disagree with the protests. Actions speak louder than words and those Anon people have impressed me with their passion as well as their platform. In all the protests I’ve witnessed, I have not seen any of them get out of line.

Starbuck’s has impressed me too, with their solidarity, not to the Anons but to what is right. The management of Starbucks knows instinctively something that most of the Scientology run businesses seem to have forgotten. That people need to speak out from time to time, that free speech and free expression are something tha’s been fought for in this country, and it’s being fought for once again, in the streets of Clearwater Florida.

They have forgotten, bit not everyone has.

And as long as that is so, there is hope.

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