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Friday, 4 March 2016
The twentieth anniversary edition of Infinite Jest will be coming out this year. I still haven't made it past page 100-ish. But a recent Guardian books podcast has inspired me to give it another go.
I remember the moment when I learned that David Foster Wallace had hung himself. September 12, 2008. For a long time, I'd had Infinite Jest on my reading list, but after learning that Wallace was dead, the novel became something else, my concept of it changed and adapted to this new knowledge. Somehow, to read Infinite Jest seemed to me at the time to be entering dangerous, perilous territory. Which probably says more about my own psychology than I should admit on this blog. But who doesn't fear death, even just a little bit?
Given that Infinite Jest is a proper fat book, I'm worried that my current reading project (to reread all of Kafka's works) might be complicated by taking on something else of grand magnitude.
Last weekend I started writing something about Kafka and Einstein and this led me to getting a copy of Max Brod's novel, Tycho Brahe's Path to God, which has a lengthy essay by Peter Fenves about Einstein's time in Prague (1911-12) and his relations with Max Brod.
I'm guessing that most people know that Max Brod was Kafka's friend and literary executor. Kafka died young of tuberculosis (age 40) and Brod, famously, set about editing and publishing Kafka's incomplete works. Thanks to Brod we are able to read (amongst other things) The Trial and Amerika.
Tuesday, 1 December 2015
National Novel Writing Month, the 2015 edition, is complete. I spent approximately sixty hours typing out a 53,593 word novel. According to my NaNoWriMo dashboard, I averaged 1786 words per day. The working title for my 2015 November novel was The End of Days. My reward for a month of labor at the writing desk was getting to sleep in this morning.
This morning I found a list of questions sent by the editor of an online magazine. She said that she hoped I'd be able to draft some answers to her questions as part of a feature the magazine is doing on long time National Novel Writing Month participants. A copy of the interview is on this year's NaNoWriMo page.
Sunday, 1 November 2015
For the next month I will be participating in National Novel Writing Month along with a few of my writing buddies, Russ Kremer (@Netizen06) of Crenellated Flotsam fame being one of them. (Hey, Russ!) One member of my writing group is a noveling newbie and wants to remain hidden in a mysterious cloud of anonymity. (Hey, Anonymous!)
I won't pretend that any of you care that I'll be writing a draft of a brand new novel this month. Like the world needs me to write another novel! But in case you check this space and wonder what I'm up to, well, I'm hard at work on the novel which I'm calling The End of Days.
This morning, I got off to an excellent start. The book certainly didn't start like I thought it would, but that's all part of the fun, seeing how the kid turns out when she comes into the world.
So there's not going to be any blogging during the month of November, not by me at any rate. I might have some time to post a few tweets. If you want to find out how things are developing, then follow my Twitter feed. Also, if you are writing a novel this November and want to connect, send me a tweet @theangler. If not, that's alright too.
See you in December.
Tuesday, 27 October 2015
We progress through an intensifying of the power generated by the physical satisfaction of natural man, whose two worst enemies are apathy and delirium; the apathy which spreads outward from the mechanical life, the delirium which results from the violent methods we use to escape. —from The Unquiet Grave by Cyril Connolly, p. 34
I started reading The Abortion by Richard Brautigan which really is about a couple who go to Tijuana to obtain a medical procedure to end a pregnancy. But the book starts with a description of a library of the 99%. The library of failed books. Books contributed by their authors to be collected with other unpublishable books, books that the capitalist publishing world has no use for. As I read, I thought about the Underground Library in the draft of my choose-your-own-adventure version of Into the Labyrinth. This library was run by a group of volunteer librarians and they acted as the guardians of unwanted literature, of books that publishers had no use for, or through the lack of ambition of their authors never found a champion in the publishing world. A catalog of unpublished (unpublishable) literature. What is endearing about the collection of books in Brautigan's novel is that the paper offerings are not at all literary. The works brought to the library are the products of the common person writing about what interests them the most, a reflection of the genuine obsessions of a human being not saddled with the responsibility of producing something to be subjected to the judgement of others.
Also I found a nice article archived on the brautigan pages called "Why Richard Brautigan Should Be the Patron Saint of 'zines" by Erik Miller which talks about Brautigan's novel The Abortion and the underground books described therein.
Wednesday, 21 October 2015
Flying cars?
Reading In Watermelon Sugar by Brautigan. Allison Green, in her book, didn't write about Brautigan's process, about how he went about his work, but I imagine that he had his daily routine. Perhaps not a page count, but (possibly) each day he would write the next short chapter. He might spend an hour or so doodling in his notebook, combining words, testing out arrangements that had never been attempted before, trying to find what is original. Then from these notes, he'd type up what he encountered in his imagination, what discoveries he made on the page. The invention of a daily quantum. Stories like a string of beads handing on a thread. What is the method of Brautigan? Each writer finds his own way forward.
What seems true about In Watermelon Sugar is that Brautigan, or the unnamed narrator, is present. He is aware of what's in front of him. While the effect of the narration is dreamlike, the stuff that makes up the dream is the stuff of daily life, sensory data.
Tuesday, 20 October 2015
Tomorrow is the day when Marty and Doc Brown arrive in the future in Back to the Future II. Which means that tomorrow when I wake up there will be flying cars.
Last night, I finished reading Allison Green's The Ghosts Who Travel With Me, a kind of travelogue / diary / memoir riffing off Green's lifetime of reading Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan. I read Trout Fishing in America at the beginning of September and decided that if there was a book that existed which I could read a hundred times, it was Trout Fishing in America. What I envied / admired most about Brautigan's writing was his lyricism. His attention is on the language, the sentences, the sound of the words. He writes musically and with a musical brain. For the longest time I've had a copy of Brautigan's other book, Watermelon Sugar, on my shelf. Time to read it.
Saturday, 17 October 2015
In the aftermath of the US loss to Mexico at the Rose Bowl last Saturday and their follow-up performance, coming up short against Costa Rica, Klinsmann's stock is falling and the American soccer fan could use a dose of hope.
Perhaps this sense of lost hope prompted some soul searching and the asking of deep questions like: am I living the life I chose to live or someone else's that just happens to look like me? and, where does all the time go when it's not around here? Giving expression to such existential examination leads to blogs whose subject is a record of successive obsessions.
As you'll have no doubt noticed, my obsessions are diverse and varied, not confined to the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard, but extending to popular culture institutions like the long-running British TV show Doctor Who. A stint at the garage for an emergency tire replacement afforded me the free time to read in-depth about the artificiality of the Whoniverse.
And in last week's episode of Doctor Who, "Before the Flood," the write chose to name the bad guy after a legendary figure: the Fisher King.
Wednesday, 14 October 2015
Finished reading the first volume of Elena Ferrante's Neopolitan novel which began with a brief section titled "Eliminating All the Traces." These few pages at the beginning of this long novel set the stage. Lila, at the age of sixty-six, has disappeared without a trace, literally removing every artifact which would have signaled that she had, at one time, existed. Lenù, the narrator, sets out to thwart her friend's plan by writing the story of Lila's life. Thus begins My Brilliant Friend.
Saturday, 10 October 2015
Still trying to work out the difference between this blog and my Diary. Perhaps here, I should be brief and stick to the facts.
The USA will be taking the field against Mexico in the Rose Bowl later this evening. Even though I will watch from a distance, from the comfort of my couch on Long Island, I'm tempted to send my doubt, that other Donavan, to the Rose Bowl to cover this spectacle. I sent Donavan to the USA-Mexico match played at the Alamodome earlier this year. Dos a cero!
Contents. What did I do this last week? I pursued "the reward of art" which is intoxication. Or perhaps I could have just had a beer.
Saturday, 3 October 2015
Thinking aloud. Going back and reading over what I've written in the last couple of weeks for this blog has led me to wonder if these entries are more properly part of my Diary. Then what is the blog for? As I added more text to this unfolding web called The Complete Angler I thought I should come up with some way of charting or keeping track of the growth of this subterranean rhizome. This morning alone, I've added text to the various branches and if I continue, even I will lose track of what I've posted here. The blog then becomes a kind of table of contents. What would a blog entry which is also an entry in a table of contents look like? Why not just call it the Table of Contents? Which is what (Dis)contents was supposed to be.
Contents. In "the sporting life," the author contemplates Christina's foot and a photograph of Sylvia Plath holding her infant son Nicholas Hughes. Ben Lerner and Karl Ove Knausgaard each propose "a theory of the novel." In the Sandbox I reveal "the origin of the Spanish Leap." And in "A Quantum of Text" I compare one of David Markson's novels with a 1970s car chase film.
Monday, 28 September 2015
Yesterday, before resuming work on my current work-in-progress, The Spanish Leap, I thought it would be worth my time trying to sketch out what's going to happen in this last section of the book. Basically, instead of just winging it and hoping for the best, I figured that concocting a simple plot might help hold this soup of narrative together.
Coming up with plots isn't difficult. A plot is just a skeleton on which to hang the flesh of story. Deciding on the particulars can seem a daunting task, but it doesn't have to be. So when I was dreaming up what kind of mess my characters were getting themselves into, I took whatever came to mind first. The setup was this: my characters have climbed a large hill, Montjuic, in Barcelona and found a large mansion. Leonora suggests they knock on the door to see if anyone is home. Then what?
In early July, I walked up that hill with my son. He wanted to ride the cable car. At the top of the hill is a fancy hotel, a snack bar, and restaurant. When we got to the top of the hill, I snapped a few pictures, but my son decided that riding the cable car didn't look so fun now that we were this high up. I didn't argue.
That was the germ of the setup in my story. My son and I did not go up to the hotel and knock on the door. But I was curious what would happen if that palatial structure was somebody's residence and what might happen if we knocked on the door only to find that we were expected for dinner.
The plot for this final part of my Barcelona novel revolves around the dinner party and the mysterious host who is throwing the party. My narrator and Leonora meet a curious young man who believes that the dinner party is not going to be a pleasant experience. Later, when my characters meet the other prospective dinner guests, they begin to see why this dinner party might prove to be dangerous. The house, the host, and the dinner party are a puzzle, a kind of trap from which my characters have to escape.
Once I'd mapped out the rules of engagement and some of the necessary scenes, I could then return to the moment Leonora knocks on the door of the mansion.
Later yesterday afternoon while Alice and I were walking the dog, I explained why I thought I should couple my narratives with some simple plot. In my last book, The Architect, or Fear of Falling, I allowed the narrative to develop around the question of the identity of the Architect and what the Architect might want from the narrator. The climax involved a plane crash and a gun battle at the airport. But these events were just elements inserted into an otherwise mundane story. The "action elements" were inserted as a contrast to the predominately meditative narration of the main character.
When I started writing The Spanish Leap, the story felt like a continuation of the previous book. It's the same narrator, but now he's traveled to Barcelona instead of San Antonio. And here my narrator is again wandering around and things are happening. But why are these things happening? Are these events leading to anything? It was this question which led me to design a simple plot for the last third of the book.
As we walked along letting Daisy sniff the roadside, I told Alice about how I'd become disillusioned with writing strongly plotted novels. Every time I outlined a plot ahead of time, I would get bored with the story. I could only keep my interest if I didn't know what was going to happen. And not knowing what was going to happen often led me to write books where one damn thing followed by another. This actually works in short bursts. Take César Aira's books. He can write by the seat of his pants and cook up all these fanciful dishes which explode and then get tidied up in 110 pages. For The Architect and the first two-thirds of The Spanish Leap, I've been relying on Aira's method of the constant flight forward. While I think the method is working, what I'd like to do is experiment with stretching the skin of the constant flight forward over the scaffolding of a basic plot where the characters are presented with a problem which they have to solve to reach the resolution. That combination might just be what the doctor ordered.
Saturday, 26 September 2015
Bloveling. This morning, rather than beginning work straight away on my current work-in-progress, The Spanish Leap, I descended into my study to make some notes. Last night, I chanced across a passage in Cyril Connolly's The Unquiet Grave that sparked an idea about how to map out the plot of my Eden Quartet. While making those notes, I thought I should take a moment and see if I couldn't post this week's blog entries. I've fallen behind in actually posting the written entries to the site because my current plan is to integrate this blog, Donavan's Brain, with the rest of my textual web and making these links requires a lot of editorial work.
Several years ago, when I started writing Red Neck the framework was that "I" (the narrator) was writing a blovel, that is a blog-novel, a novel posted in installments on a blog. The blog was (is!) called Donavan's Brain. If memory serves me, I think I did post some of the installments to this blog, but producing an actual blovel wasn't really my goal. Red Neck is about a character writing a blovel, so the blovel itself was something of an implied fictional construct.
As I was adding in links from this blog to the larger unfolding text curated under the banner of The Complete Angler I was led to portions of Red Neck and I rediscovered what I'd written about blovels and bloveling. Why had I been so reluctant to post (publish?) the text of Red Neck to my web site? I suppose I still held onto some notion that a traditional / conventional small press would want to publish my work in a way that was recognized as legitimate. However, I'm wondering if "the future" will be puzzled by this notion of conventional print publishing. Why would an author need a publisher? Why not just post the work to the World Wide Web and let it be read by anyone who cares to? Will "the future" be as squeamish about self-publication as those of us who still write with one foot in the twentieth century?
One of the reasons I've returned to putting what I've written on this web site is that I'm guessing "the future" won't care if my works were first published by a traditional publishing house or appeared here. Or maybe I've stopped believe that there will a future and I'm going boldly in that dark night.
Friday, 25 September 2015
My Struggle. For the last month I've been thinking and writing a lot about time travel. Also, reading books where time travel is part of the reality of the fiction. Perhaps the reason I've been thinking about time travel so much is that if I was able to travel in time, then, in principle, I'd be able to control time. At the moment, time just keeps on marching into the future at sixty seconds per minute. In order to "accomplish my goals" I need a certain amount of free time. I used to get my free time in the morning before the rest of the world wakes up. But lately (maybe because I'm getting older?) my body's been indulging in a full eight hours of sleep rather than letting me get by with the usual six.
Ten years ago, it seemed that I had more free time than I do now. What's odd is that it feels like I'm doing less. I know that for the longest time my motto was "slow down, do less" but I didn't mean "write less, read less." The whole point of slowing down and doing less was so that I could write more, read more.
When Alice and I walked the dog together this morning, I shared these concerns with her. She said that she wanted to spend the evening reading. I'm on board with that, I said. Last night, I hardly had any time to read at all. "You baked a cake," she said.
Yes, baking cakes is important. But isn't reading and writing books just as important? Who says that man cannot live by fiction alone? Let the self-proclaimed literati eat cake!
This struggle to find the time to write comes at a moment in my writing life when I feel I finally know what I'm doing. I know what I'm working on and how to go about my business. No longer do I suffer from what Dr Pasavento called "completion anxiety." No, I've become quite good at finishing the books I start.
Another problem is that even though I do have moments of free time, often when those free moments come, I'm too physically or mentally tired to write. Because my paid work requires sustained mental effort (I'm thinking all day long about complex subjects which often involve mathematics at a level far beyond the comprehension of most mortals), coming home in the evening with the expectation of being creative and productive is not realistic. The evenings are for baking cakes and watching soccer.
I am a morning person by default. Even though I've just woken up, that is the time of the day when my mind is nimble and alert and most ready to perform its amazing imaginative feats. It's in those early morning hours when the world is quiet and the sun hasn't yet come up over the horizon that I can travel freely without ever leaving my writing desk.
Thursday, 24 September 2015
Last night I stopped by Callahan's for a half-liter for Secret Engine / RPAB Pils and I was pleased to see Franz, or should I say, the Franz. He hasn't been stopping in at the old watering hole as often as in the past and so I was happy to have the opportunity to catch up with him. When I asked him what he'd been doing with himself, Franz said he'd been traveling. I went to China, Japan, and Singapore, he said. I asked him if it was for business or pleasure. A little of both, he said.
I bought the next round and I mentioned to him that I was still keeping up with Russ and that Russ and I had decided to do National Novel Writing Month together. The Franz's eyes got wider and he began to chew his lower lip. NaNo? he asked. You guys are going NaNo again? Sure, for old time's sake, I said. You know me, I never miss an opportunity to spend a month speed typing.
Then we dropped in reminiscence mode. The Franz talked about the three years (a decade ago) that he, Russ, and I did NaNo together. That was so much fun, he said. I'd love to do it again, but I'm way to too busy. You should, I said. I can't, he said. We'll handicap you a few thousand words. Or maybe we work as a team to write a total of 150K words. You do what you can and Russ and I will do the rest. We'll give you whatever you need to make your 50K.
The Franz nodded and stroked his beard. Clearly, he found the idea tempting. I think about it, he said.
We kept on talking about this and that. Eventually, we drained our respective half-liter glasses, shook hands and went our separate ways. As I walked home from Callahan's I wondered what I was going to write in November. What sort of novel would it be? If Russ and now perhaps even the Franz were going to be typing along with me and pledging to trade novels in December, then I would definitely have to write something fresh and new.
Last summer, I made a few notes about a story set in Camden, Maine. Alice, Patrick, and I rented a house in Camden for a few weeks. The house we stayed in was amazing. It belonged to a retired school teacher and so was full of books. There was even a wooden writing desk in the front room where I could sit and work each morning. Camden seemed like the perfect setting for a novel: a picturesque little harbor village. I imagined a forty-something math professor and his dog passing a quiet summer in Camden. My old literature prof, E.C. Curtsinger, said that if you want your readers to sympathize with the character in your novel, then the character should have to suffer some kind of loss. Immediately, I thought maybe the math prof's wife had recently passed after some kind of illness. The situation made me uncomfortable since there's some irrational part of me which is superstitious about the things I do to my characters. I felt bad for this hypothetical, fictional math prof. I hadn't even written a single word of his story and I was already feeling guilty over killing off his wife. What sort of writer are you? I asked myself. Squeamish?
While wandering around Camden, I imagined my math prof and his dog. I saw him making the acquaintance of woman. The dog would smooth the way for the meeting somehow. The math prof and this solitary female would become friends. Then what? I didn't want to write a boring unbelievable romance about a man meeting a random woman. Not that I didn't want my math prof to have some fun, or to have some relief from suffering from the loss of his wife. The whole chance meeting with the woman in Camden seemed too predictable. What if the woman turned out to be a blood-sucking, fish-form (some kind of vampire-mermaid) that crept from the cold Atlantic to claim unsuspecting victims? I doodled some notes and shelved the idea.
Tuesday, 22 September 2015
Daleks, Nazis, Mein Kampf. When I was 15, I started reading the series of Doctor Who novelizations published by Pinnacle. (I think there were only ten or at most a dozen titles in the series. They were an American publication of the Target series which later became available in full in the US.) One of the books was Terry Nation's The Genesis of the Daleks. That particular serial was one of my favorites and when I read the novelization (penned by Terrance Dicks, of course), I started to think about Doctor Who not only in its visual form, but as existing as a text to be read. My father always teased me (gently) about my fanaticism for Doctor Who. I desperately wanted my father to like Doctor Who, but he wasn't into "sci-fi" he said. When I started reading the novelizations, I wondered if the books, the fact that they existed, might somehow legitimize Doctor Who in my father's estimation. If Doctor Who was more than a TV show, if it was also literature, then would it not be a subject worthy of serious contemplation?
In order to convince my bookish father that Doctor Who was worthy of my devotion and possibly a subject that might interest him, I wrote an essay / review of The Genesis of the Daleks, which was published in one of the many Doctor Who fanzines. A copy of this bit of juvenilia may still exist somewhere in a box, but the actual text of that essay isn't important. The point is that I took as my subject for the review the question of the morality of genocide and murder in the context of war. In that story, an evil mastermind, Davros, has created a race of tank-encased mutant soldiers whose only desire is to kill. Davros was the chief scientist of the race of Kaleds who were locked in a perpetual war of attrition against their enemies, the Thals. Davros does not look like the other Kaleds; he looks as if he should have died years ago, but he's being kept alive by technology and machines even as his body appears to be in an advanced state of decay. Somehow Davros is the leader of a group of elite Kaleds led by a Nyder. Nyder and the other elites are patterned after the Nazi SS. And so Davros himself stands in as Hilter figure. The parallels between Davros, Hitler, the Kaled elites, Nazi SS, are underscored by all the talk of racial purity and how the Thals are degenerate "mutos."
The climax of the story comes when the Doctor is in a position to destroy the Daleks. The incubation room for the Dalek hatchery is lined with explosives and wired for detonation. All the Doctor has to do it touch the two wires together and he would completely destroy the Daleks before they were unleashed on the universe. While this situation plays on a classic time-travel paradox, the moral question is clear: is genocide allowed under certain circumstances? Is genocide ever justified? In the Doctor's speech prior to making his decision about whether to commit genocide or not… rather than describing it, I'll quote it here:
The Doctor : "If someone who knew the future, pointed out a child to you and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives... could you then kill that child?"
Sarah Jane Smith : "We're talking about the Daleks. The most evil creatures ever invented. You must destroy them. You must complete your mission for the Time Lords!"
The Doctor : "Do I have the right? Simply touch one wire against the other and that's it. The Daleks cease to exist. Hundreds of millions of people, thousands of generations can live without fear... in peace, and never even know the word 'Dalek'."
Sarah Jane Smith : "Then why wait? If it was a disease or some sort of bacteria you were destroying, you wouldn't hesitate."
The Doctor : "But if I kill. Wipe out a whole intelligent life form, then I become like them. I'd be no better than the Daleks."
—from the BBC's Doctor Who Episode Guide
The Doctor decides in the next moment that he cannot justify genocide under any circumstances. Some acts are so morally reprehensible that to perform them, even for the best of reasons, is wrong. The parallels in the real world are obvious, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the fire bombing of countless other cities by conventional means, the Holocaust, the ethnic-cleansing campaigns in the Balkan wars, the Israeli effort to wipe out the Palestinians… the list goes on and on.
During "The Magician's Apprentice" a clip of the Doctor's speech on Skaro becomes the central question of the drama: does the Doctor have the moral right to go back to a point in time when Davros was a boy and kill him? The question of why a time-traveler just doesn't pop back in time and kill Hitler has come up many times in the history of the series. And here we are again, facing the same question.
I don't recall how I concluded the essay I wrote thirty years ago about the Doctor's moral choice and what his example teaches us about how to behave, but I know I wanted to convince my father that Doctor Who wasn't just a silly, sci-fi TV show; it was more than that, something capable of moral instruction, something that showed us how to be good. The Doctor's central question since the beginning of last season was "Am I a good man?" Perhaps we'll find out in the next episode just how good a man the Doctor is now.
Monday, 21 September 2015
Last night, we gathered in the front room where the TV is and put on the premiere episode of series 9 of Doctor Who, "The Magician's Apprentice." When the Doctor emerged from the cloud of smoke wearing Ray-Bans with a strapped on faux-Stratocaster, I just had to laugh. I laughed so hard that tears started streaming down my face. I haven't laughed like that in ages and it felt so good to laugh. I wanted to laugh and this silly show gave me and excuse and a moment of pleasure.
After series 8 ended and after the annual Christmas special was broadcast, I took a little break from the show. I didn't watch any reruns. I didn't read any Doctor Who Magazine, didn't even check the Doctor Who news website. This silence, or time of retreat (a period of meditation), wasn't a result of any disappointment in the show and how it was going, but just a necessary step in the process of keeping my fannish enthusiasm fresh. I really don't see how these uber-fans manage to keep up their unremitting attention on the show all year 'round. Actually, now that I write that sentence, I do understand. I remember when I was 15 years old and the only thing that mattered, really mattered to me, was Doctor Who. Perspective comes with age, I suppose. Thirty years later, my life is full of other things that really do matter to me, and the televised adventures of a certain Time Lord from Gallifrey are a welcome relief from the relentless ordinariness of the daily cycle.
On Friday, I listened to an episode of the Reality Bomb podcast. One of the hosts said that he'd had a rough month, that he'd been going through a particularly dark time in his life (or something along those lines). He didn't go into any details, but he did say that the antidote to his suffering was watching one of the classical Doctor Who serials, "The Sunmakers." (I remember well that story and its humor and social commentary.) The podcast host said that it was the humor of the episode that gave him relief. The antics of the Doctor were an excuse to laugh and laughter is good for the soul.
Now that Doctor Who is back on the screen with new episodes, I'm looking forward to the next three months leading up to the Christmas special. I can count on 46 minutes of relief and entertainment each Sunday evening.
Sunday, 20 September 2015
Last Wednesday, we (my family and I) went to the 3D theatrical showing of "Dark Water" and "Death in Heaven", the two episodes which comprised the series 8 finale for Doctor Who. After the screening of the episodes (edited together into a feature length film that worked seamlessly), there was a special screening of a prequel for series 9. The prequel was shot at Caerphilly Castle in Wales. A few years ago, we traveled to Wales for the Doctor Who tour of Cardiff which took us to many of the locations used for filming the series. After the tour of Cardiff, Alice, Patrick, and I spent an afternoon at Caerphilly. That castle has been used many times as a location for Doctor Who. Somehow, the fact that I have real experience and memories of Caerphilly (and other locations around Cardiff) imparts a feeling of being connected to the show. I might have thought that seeing real world locations in an otherwise fictional story would jar me out of a sense of being caught up, or fooled, by the fiction. But in reality, the opposite is the case: because I know these locations, have visited them, my sense of the world of the Doctor, his companions, his adventures, is expanded and solidified. The show becomes more real.
Last night, the first episode of series 9, "The Magician's Apprentice", was aired on TV. This evening, we have friends coming over, fellow Whovians, and we will all watch the series premiere together. For the past week or so, I've been re-watching the episodes of series 8 and a few select episodes from earlier in the series. This is by way of preparing for the new series which will be running for the next twelve weeks.
To cultivate my present interest in Doctor Who as a spectacle and an example of a never-ending story, I'll write down a few thoughts that have occurred to me about the show over the past few years and add them to Lost Time.
Saturday, 19 September 2015
The ongoing soccer drama, while it's excellent material for my much-imagined book on youth soccer, has been consuming most of my mental energy during the last week. Still, the creative wheels are turning, submerged ideas bubble to the surface of consciousness, and I'm obliged to make notes.
Tuesday, 15 September 2015
Last night, I was talking with my mother and I told her about the drama on the soccer field. "Soccer is always a drama," I said half-joking. Actually, things have been pretty quiet with my youth team for the past year. I have a good group of parents and some very nice boys. We get along and have fun which is the most important thing. I'm doing my bit to show them how to love the game. But last Sunday, a situation which has long been brewing (and I'm not talking about beer here) finally boiled over and spilled out onto the wick. Now there's a lot of smoke coming off the burner and alarms are going off. I can't write about the details on my blog, but "It will go in the novel," I said to my mother. She said, "Usually, it's the victors who write the history books." To which I replied, "This novel will be no history book; it's high comedy." Of course, the Board of Directors of my club are not amused at the moment, but I'm hoping that when the smoke clears, we can all sit down and have a pint of beer together and tell the story of the day I…
(to be continued)
Sunday, 13 September 2015
This last week, I got an email from NaNoWriMo.org, the official web site of National Novel Writing Month, a worthy event in which I was once very active. My first attempt at writing a novel of at least 50K words during the month of November was in 2004. That draft eventually became Lost in the Ruins which is part of my big novel, Recovering Eden. That year I had a number of writing "buddies". That's how I met Russ Kremer. He was writing Big Train Show that year. In December, Russ and I and a few other buddies exchanged novels and read each other's efforts. The drafts were certainly rough, but the process of writing as part of a group and knowing that you'd have a reader at the end of that exercise was not only fun, it gave some meaning to the ordeal. The following year, 2005, I wanted to try something different, something that wasn't narrated in the first person. The result was The Weighting Game, the story of an overweight physicist who gets a teaching job at a fundamentalist Christian Bible school. I think that might have been the year that Russ wrote The Reader's Emporium, a novel I very much enjoyed reading for its voice and humor. In 2005 I flew to Los Angeles for a conference. Russ was living in LA at the time, so he and I and, Franz, another of our writing buddies, met for dinner at a restaurant downtown. I flew to LA one more time in 2010 (I think) and Russ and I arranged to have dinner again and talk about the writing life.
If I start writing about each of years I participated in National Novel Writing Month and all the books I wrote over the years during the month of November this post would be 50K words. So I'll see if I can list the titles of my November novels from memory.
- Originally "Catherine", now Lost in the Ruins
- The Weighting Game
- The Trace Agency
- Crash Course
- Wasted
- Recovering Eden
- Without a Trace
- "Eden Quartet" (drafts for other parts of Recovering Eden)
- Red Neck
- "Eden Quartet" (more drafts for Recovering Eden)
- Lost Souls
The intent of NaNoWriMo is for participants to write a new and complete novel during the 30 days of November. For the last few years, I've been using November as a month of typing (including rewriting), a way of clearing out my system, and for catching up.
This year my plan was to return to the notebooks I wrote last summer and turn those into a novel. (I write by hand with a pen into paper notebooks, then I work from those handwritten notebooks to make a typewritten draft.) But yesterday, I had a moment of doubt about whether I should do this or not.
Russ and I keep in electronic contact, so I'd sent him a message sometime last week asking if he was going to do NaNo this year. Originally, it seemed that he was going to sit this one out, but then yesterday, I got a message from him saying that he was in, he'd do NaNo this year. So what we worked out was that we'd do NaNo together, then exchange our novels in December, "just like the good old days of a decade ago." Two old guys trying to recapture the fun of the past? Perhaps, but what's wrong with that?
What changed for me and my thinking about what I would write this coming November was now I would have a reader. I would be sending whatever I wrote to Russ, so I thought I should do more than just rewrite some stuff from last year's notebooks.
Friday, 11 September 2015
Embarrassing omissions. Yesterday, during our regular afternoon coffee break, I admitted to Johan (who recently read Cat's Cradle because I'd recommended it) that I had just read Slaughterhouse Five. You mean you've just reread it, said Johan clarifying. No, I said. I've just read it for the first time. Johan stared in disbelief. I've owned the book for about twenty years. I picked it up at a secondhand book store in New Orleans along with Slapstick, Player Piano, God Bless You, Mr Rosewater, and Wampeters, Foma and Granfallons. And that's also when I might have picked up Cat's Cradle, a book I read in grad school while baby-sitting a sick dilution refrigerator. (Boy, I could have used some Ice-9 then.)
My impulse was to let Johan believe that I'd read Slaughterhouse Five already so as to allow him to maintain the illusion that I've read everything. Isn't that what the true reader wants? To have read everything? Or is it just the vanity of the reader to want to be thought of as having read everything? (Why collect books if you're just going to have to get rid of them later in life? I remember when Fr Amos retired and he gave away his library just to be rid of the burden of it.)
When Alice reported to me the other day after balancing the checkbook that I've already spent over three thousand dollars on books this year, she suggested that I start making better use of the public library. Three thousand dollars! You're kidding me, I said. Sadly, no.
So last night during a torrential rain storm we drove to the library where I checked out A History of Bombing by Sven Lindqvist, The Unquiet Grave by Cyril Connolly, and The Rebirth of Nature by Rupert Sheldrake. The reason I'm even looking at Sheldrake's book is that in an interview some years ago with Michael Silverblatt, W.G. Sebald name-checked Sheldrake as a decent writer of prose. When I looked up Sheldrake, a biologist, on the web, I wasn't inspired. He's definitely operating outside the limits of what we think of a "normal science." But that's no reason not to read him. Especially if he writes well.
Labyrinths. When I opened A History of Bombing I was thrilled to see instructions for "how to read this book" which started with the line: "This book is a labyrinth with twenty-two entrances and no exit."
Recently, I've adopted a similar concept for this web site. Instead of the four entry points that I've provided on the main page for the last decade, I've expanded the entry points to sixteen, a nice four by four grid. (Ultimately, I'd like a four by four cube, for a total of sixty-four entry points, but let's see how sixteen goes first.)
Excited by the labyrinthine structure of Lindqvist's book, I dove in at one of the twenty-two entry points, "Hiroshima", and began reading. (The reason for that specific choice is that I traveled to Hiroshima in 2002 and stood at the location of the hypocenter and ever since have felt a connection to that place.) Why the peculiar arrangement? I wondered. Why not just have twenty-two chapters? Why all the page flipping? Is it just a gimmick? The reason I'm asking is because I'd like to understand the benefits o


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text:
Video: The great Star Trek debate
posted at 1:01 pm on February 28, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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We had our own palate-cleanser on Bloggers Row today when Tommy Christopher and I debated the nature of the Star Trek universe. Do any other series actually exist other than the original series, or do people really buy into all of the various versions of Trek? Why does Jean-Luc Picard claim that the Federation has gone beyond money while the Ferengi trade for gold-plated latinum? Does the Holodeck mean the end of civilization?
Most of all, should the upcoming "reboot" movie be retitled Trekformers?
Tommy notes with some justification that we seem to reverse political roles when it comes to Trek. All I can say is that we didn't see Tommy get this exercised during his three days of immersion in the conservative environment, so perhaps we're beginning to discover his inner Right-think.
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Breaking on Hot Air
It's come to this: Half of eighth-grade class refuses to pose for photo with Paul Ryan
I can't stand watching Star Trek anymore. Especially Next Generation. The whole Prime Directive is the root of all evil. We see its incarnation in Europe with its Tolerance Uber Alles mentality and soon to be demise. Star Trek sucks. And I used to be a die hard fan of the whole enterprise…to invoke a pun.
The only reason to watch an episode of Star Trek in any of its TV or movie incarnations was DeForest Kelley. He was a mountain of excellence in a valley of horse dung.
P. S. Chekhov is the anti-Christ and Christine Chappell is his bride.
Percy_Peabody on February 28, 2009 at 1:12 PM
Jewel on February 28, 2009 at 1:09 PM
Dude, the Prime Directive was just not to interfere with the fabric of a race's being by introducing warp drive and other technologies to races that havent stumbled upon it themselves. its not like cultural relativism…
ernesto on February 28, 2009 at 1:13 PM
Don't leave out Deep Space 9. That was a decent series. Well, mostly it was.
Why does Jean-Luc Picard claim that the Federation has gone beyond money while the Ferengi trade for gold-plated latinum?
When did the Ferengi join the Federation? HMMM?
I liked Star Trek – The Original Series when I was a kid. The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager just expanded the Universe but did nothing for the genre other than make better scenery and props. Like it or not, Shatner, Nimoy and Kelly could act and made us believe despite the low tech props. They were the draws not Roddenberry's Liberal Universe.
I'll take the Babylon 5 universe over Star Trek any time. Grittier, more like today's political picture. I really liked the decision to 'secede' rather than follow a megalomaniac President.
Of course, David Weber's Honor Harrington Universe is superior to anything on television. But that is only literature which means today's little minds won't be able to enjoy it.
SeniorD on February 28, 2009 at 1:23 PM
Sorry ernesto, but the whole prime directive is what multiculturalism is today. As if interacting and sharing one's own culture is somehow pollution.
Why does Jean-Luc Picard claim that the Federation has gone beyond money
In one of the Star Trek movies ("Live Long and Save the Whales"), Kirk says that the future doesn't use money.
I think he was just being cheap and trying to get out of paying for the pizza.
malclave on February 28, 2009 at 1:28 PM
I don't have a problem with star trek and deep space 9 could be a good show. But Babylon 5 was the best and I was pretty addicted to it. That show just get better and better.
Sorry ernesto, but the whole prime directive is what multiculturalism is today. As if interacting and sharing one's own culture is somehow pollution.
Jewel on February 28, 2009 at 1:24 PM
how? it really didnt center around giving people technology they werent ready for?
ernesto on February 28, 2009 at 1:31 PM
Ed, I have to be honest. I've haven't been watching your CPAC videos, but this one is HILARIOUS!!!
This Chris guy reminds me of fat, drunk, nerdy Denis Leary. You should have him on every week.
Lance Murdock on February 28, 2009 at 1:35 PM
I grew up on the original Star trek. Our own space program was in full swing at the time. It was all about achievement and looking forward to a time when many of man's problems were solved and we had turned our attention outward.
I liked Voyager although I'm not really sure why. I just did and that was good enough for me.
DS9- pfft
I like Star Trek – Enterprise because to me it had a lot to do with the actual development and newness of all the Star Trek technology. I might be wrong but one of the first episodes dealt with the fact that the original Enterprise was the first spacecraft to have a transporter. The transporter was invented by man and was not alien technology. The crew of the Enterprise were terrified to use it. The concept and experience of molecular deconstruction and reconstruction was entirely new and had not been tested well before being installed. The Captain was the first person to use it escape from a trap or something. AWESOME.
Guardian on February 28, 2009 at 1:37 PM
This Tommy
Chris guy reminds me of fat, drunk, nerdy Denis Leary. You should have him on every week.
Lance Murdock on February 28, 2009 at 1:39 PM
note: He dematerialized in mid-scream and was reassembled where he "left off"! :)
Guardian on February 28, 2009 at 1:39 PM
I just re-watched Star Trek – The Motion Picture the other day. It amazed me that they made another after that stagnant bore.
However, the following movies were so fantastic(no, not 5 and 7), that I'm really glad they went on.
This new movie? From the looks of it, it's going to be Dawson's Creek with starships. Simon Pegg would be the only reason I see it if I see it at all.
Well, okay, Uhura might lure me as well.
MadisonConservative on February 28, 2009 at 1:40 PM
Guardian on February 28, 2009 at 1:37 PM
I had no idea…thats awesome!
I too look forward to a time where we've solved most of our petty personal shyte and have made our way to the stars. i almost resent being born in a time where we still havent gotten our act together…
ernesto on February 28, 2009 at 1:41 PM
Battlestar G is still better.
Still, if Jeri Ryan wants to wear her 7of9 outfit over to my house and let me check out her Borg…uh…"implants"…I would have no problem with that.
i almost resent being born in a time where we still havent gotten our act together…
ernesto on February 28, 2009 at 1:41 PM
Eh, we'll get our crap together and reach the stars just in time to run into the Hirogen…or worse.
The Prime Directive as a plot concept has plenty of problems. In one episode they are bold explorers dealing with whatever comes their way, in the next they are afraid of getting involved because of the consequences. What's with that? For example, in the episode "Homeward," an erupting star is about to incinerate an entire planet and Picard complains and moans about the awful consequences of saving a few villagers. After all they'll now be responsible for them and setting them up on a new planet! Oh, the responsibility! Perhaps it would have just been better all around if we let the villagers fry. At least we won't have to make decisions for them and corrupt their culture with our ideas. Of course, in the next episode they are Interstellar ambulance drivers rushing a new vaccine to some pre-industrial planet.
Fred 2 on February 28, 2009 at 2:04 PM
Episode rerun last week, underage-but-a-pilot-of-a-starship-already Wesley Crusher and friend go 'skiing' in "a lot of fresh powder" on the Holodeck, and, when commanded by Picard to reappear, Wesley and friend fall out of the Holodeck into the hallway of the Enterprise, still covered in "snow" and throw a handful of the stuff at Picard and others.
So, they're OUT of the Holodeck but THEY STILL HAVE ALL THAT "SNOW"? How is that possible?
Mind you, I've never considered the whole Holodeck "reality" to be possible, anyway, same as with the "Doctor" in the later Series, who, though a purported hologram, can "hold," control and move physical items anywhere he opts, who is responded to by humans as a being with a solid mass (people hold him, lean on him, rebound off him, etc.).
Same on the Holodeck, where humans "interact" with supposed holograms that they then embrace, kiss, touch in general, as if the holograms had actual mass (holograms don't, they're LIGHT and perhaps PLASMA, or gas, neither of which are solids).
Anyway, I enjoy Star Trek, too, but the "science" in much of it ("Jeffries Tubes!" & "Proton Reactor!") is utter nonsense. I once sat through a viewing of an Episode with several physicists and one engineer and the laughter throughout was more hilarious than the nonsense on screen in these regards.
Lourdes on February 28, 2009 at 2:05 PM
re money…
I could buy the moneyless society in TNG when anyone can go up to a replicator and get pretty much anything he wanted. Money loses utility when you have a machine that will fulfill needs/wants.
JohnTant on February 28, 2009 at 2:12 PM
The Ferengi aren't in the Federation noob.
Ortzinator on February 28, 2009 at 2:12 PM
Trek was Roddenberry's "Wagontrain to the stars." The chemistry between the actors was there from the beginning and the first season had a gritty western quality. As much as they were trying to be hip and futuristic, Gene R. and company were creatures of their time.
By that I mean the optimism and can-do quality of Trek and other shows of the time. It's something I miss and the reason I don't bother with much of the new stuff today. A lot of today's fare is uncreative, dark, and nihilistic, a reflection of today's poisonous culture.
In spite of the vague, soft liberalism, Trek got most of it right in terms of story-telling and the purpose of story-telling.
Feedie on February 28, 2009 at 2:20 PM
And Allah keeps whining about being a beta male?
logis on February 28, 2009 at 2:20 PM
I am a conservative and I have loved all of Star Trek all of my life from grade school on. Roddenberry was a humanist who created a universe where mankind saved itself apart from God. It came on TV when America was tearing itself apart due to Viet Nam and Civil Rights. Do I believe Gene's view of mankind is possible this side of heaven? No I do not. But I can still appreciate the brilliance of his creativity. And, even as a grade-school girl, I knew that a shirtless Capt Kirk was a hunk-a-hunk-a burning love.
Sweetness0726 on February 28, 2009 at 2:32 PM
<The Prime Directive as a plot concept has plenty of problems. In one episode they are bold explorers dealing with whatever comes their way, in the next they are afraid of getting involved because of the consequences. What's with that? For example, in the episode "Homeward," an erupting star is about to incinerate an entire planet and Picard complains and moans about the awful consequences of saving a few villagers. After all they'll now be responsible for them and setting them up on a new planet! Oh, the responsibility! Perhaps it would have just been better all around if we let the villagers fry.
The democrats would have set them up on the welfare plantation and plaot to get them the right to vote
larvcom on February 28, 2009 at 2:39 PM
For example, in the episode "Homeward," an erupting star is about to incinerate an entire planet and Picard complains and moans about the awful consequences of saving a few villagers. After all they'll now be responsible for them and setting them up on a new planet! Oh, the responsibility! Perhaps it would have just been better all around if we let the villagers fry. At least we won't have to make decisions for them and corrupt their culture with our ideas.
Fred 2 on February 28, 2009 at 2:04 PM
This is the core of liberalism. Reality is irrelevant except in terms of how it effects one's feelings.
Saddam Hussein murders three million people? The liberal doesn't give a rat's ass because it doesn't hurt his ego in any way.
But America deposes Saddam, and everything changes. A handful of jerks make fun of some terrorist detainees? Horror of horrors; this is the END OF THE WORLD! Because the blood (OK, tears; whatever) is on my hands.
logis on February 28, 2009 at 2:41 PM
With Obama in charge, we're all about to find out exactly how a society with no money will work. "Klingons on the starbord bow, scrape 'em off, Jim!"
gordo on February 28, 2009 at 3:10 PM
First, Obama is Tuvok.
Second, DS9 rocked. Sure it had its flaws, but Captain Sisko actually becomes a metaphor for Christ and the whole thing ends up with an epic battle between good and evil. The fight against shapeshifters (who have infiltrated our society) echoes the war on terror.
It's not as sophisticated as Lost or BSG, but it laid the groundwork, when it wasn't indulging its Rat Pack fetish.
R.J. MacReady on February 28, 2009 at 3:42 PM
Not for nothing but the Federation was almost always at war with enemies. I am thinking about the show and it was pretty good when you look at some of the story lines.
a private little war where both the federation and the klingons funnel weapons to competing sides is one of the more relevant pieces of science fiction.
Feedie on February 28, 2009 at 2:20 PM
You got it exactly right. The original series (or as it's fondly known, "TOS"), had some absolutely brilliant stories.
Here in New England we have several stations still showing TOS. Fittingly enough, over the past 2 weeks they have been showing the classic episode "The Savage Curtain"-where Shatner gets to "meet" his hero, Abraham Lincoln.
Del Dolemonte on February 28, 2009 at 4:03 PM
My guilty pleasure was Voyager. And I very much enjoyed DS9, which seemed to have more than a few conservative undertones. TNG and Enterprise never did it for me.
But there's only one Star Trek. Only one Enterprise. No bloody A, no bloody B, just the classic NCC-1701. When men were men, women were underdressed, and everyone talked like starving Shakespearian actors on styrofoam stages.
Del Dolemonte on February 28, 2009 at 4:03 PM
One thing I notice is most of today's actors look like modeling school drop-outs. The casting couch hasn't been just-for-women for a long time. Actors on the old shows had more of an everyman look and there were natural beauties among the actresses (not to mention talent).
When Boston Legal was watchable (barely), I watched because of Shatner. He had a similar reputation anyway, and it was funny watching him play himself.
There is good and evil out there; TOS recognized this instinctively. TNG tried the pacifist approach and ditched it late in the first season. That's where it got its running legs. People want to see the eternal conflict, and the consequences and lessons in a good story. Liberal fantasies are boring and unrealistic.
Feedie on February 28, 2009 at 5:26 PM
As I said previously, TOS had cast members enabled viewers to willingly suspend their disbelief. TNG, DS9 and Voyager did not, the high tech backdrops, creation of new things (i.e. 'tetrion particles') simply gave the writers something to blame when they couldn't come up with valid reasons something didn't work.
Sure, I watched the various spin-offs, but got really annoyed. For example, in DS9 Sisko is seen sitting in the Captain's chair, issuing commands to the helmsman while simultaneously commanding a fleet of Starships. Also, the spacing between those ships is REAL tight. Can one imagine a Galaxy-class starship doing tight turns within the range of another? Stretches the imagination too far.
'sides, I prefer forming the images in my head as I read good Science-Fiction (like David Weber or John Ringo).
SeniorD on February 28, 2009 at 5:51 PM
Gold PRESSED latinum, Ed, not gold plated latinum.
radjah shelduck on February 28, 2009 at 6:28 PM
DS9 had great plot arcs and fun villians (Weyoun, Gul Dukat).
Gideon7 on February 28, 2009 at 6:35 PM
The Ferengi are NOT in the federation. And seriously, what effect does money have when food and all material wants are provided by a machine. You don't buy anything because you can replicate everything. Thats not socialism, thats just freaking awesome. However, TNG episode the Neutral Zone made me think someone on the writers team cried a bit when the Berlin wall fell.
Voyager was panned but was actually more like the original in philsophy then any of the others (unknown space and races, limited oversight, solid principals, The Final Frontier — less preachy then TNG), but I liked them all (DS-9 was my least favorite — who wants to see an outpost where people come and go, passive trek!)
Ferengi's aren't part of the Federation — but really the whole concept of being without money was foolish — trading holodeck time is currency or at least bartering which only proves that capitalism is forever enduring.
Holodecks are the logical conclusion to po n — I mean entertainment. Progression = reading books, listening to the radio, watching television, interacting holodecks.
Giligans Island — seriously, Janeway was second to only Kirk in bending the rules including the Prime Directive. Both were rugged individualism in space!
I grew up watching "Next Generation" and "Deep Space Nine." I was not fond of "Voyager" and I just couldn't get that interested in "Enterprise" in spite of the fact it starred Scott Bakula ("Quantum Leap" was another favorite of mine).
This may sound nutty, but I have long thought of the Star Trek universe as one where communism actually works. Think about it. There is apparently limitless energy and the ability to turn energy into any material good. Thus, there is no longer the conflict between unlimited wants and limited resources.
eaglescout1998 on February 28, 2009 at 7:19 PM
Enterprise, for me was a huge disappointment. Who wants to go backward in Star Trek — less tech for me was a deal breaker — I watched more for the tech then the story.
If you can replicate everything and you are afraid of corrupting other civilizations why exactly do you need Faster Than Light travel? Isn't it easier to stay home? The Next Generation never seemed to have a compelling excuse to do anything unless you believe that being a "Taxi Cab to the Stars" for diplomats is worth the effort.
Fred 2 on February 28, 2009 at 7:28 PM
Sisco was a terrible actor — the role could have been a good one, but he acted like he was trying to be a Black Kirk, if you …. know what…. I… mean!
Oh, and the gold in gold pressed latinum was worthless — it was just a substance that held the valuable latinum.
I am also not too sure how I will respond to this new movie. Rather than reboot the original series, I would prefer it jump forward a few hundred years.
I think that part of the problem with the franchise is they they've run out of unique stories to tell. Star Trek was a big cash cow for Paramount and they milked it for all it was worth. An interesting concept I thought of was a story in which the Federation are actually the antagonists.
eaglescout1998 on February 28, 2009 at 7:38 PM
eaglescout1998 on February 28, 2009 at 7:19 PM
Which is what provides the impetus for man to put down childish things and take to the stars. I think its time for DARPA to start working on those replicators, transporters, and warp drives.
ernesto on February 28, 2009 at 7:49 PM
eaglescout1998 on February 28, 2009 at 7:38 PM
That was done already. It was called Blake's 7. It showed what the Federation would really be like.
Al in St. Lou on February 28, 2009 at 9:52 PM
I just had the disturbing image of Al Pacino playing the captain of a Federation starship. Ahead Warp Factor 5 . . . who ha!
eaglescout1998 on February 28, 2009 at 11:08 PM
Even numbered Star Trek movies
Odd numbered Planet of the Apes movies
DS9 had great plot arcs and fun villians (Weyoun, Gul Dukat).
Gideon7 on February 28, 2009 at 6:35 PM
DS9 was my favorite too, though Avery Brooks' (Sisko) acting performances were spotty. DS9 had the best violence and intrigue.
And, yes, the villains were fun, especially Garak. You never knew what was up with that guy.
And DS9 was the first of the series to feature an enlisted man in the regular cast.
baldilocks on March 1, 2009 at 12:41 AM
eaglescout1998 on February 28, 2009 at 11:08 PM
Heh. The USS Scarface. "Arm photon torpedoes! Kahless, say hallo to my leeetle friends!"
I like the original series and it has nothing to do with politics or story telling. I like it because it was campy. I like it because the women wore revealing clothes and I like cleavage. It was on when I was a kid and we didn't have the Internet and we had to take what we could get. I wonder how many of you other guys agree but don't want to admit it.
The problem with Next Generation was that the word diagnostics was used every time something was going wrong.
deewhybee on March 1, 2009 at 2:12 AM
The problem with Next Generation was that the word diagnostics was used every time something was going wrong.
You may want to check the Heisenberg compensators. And while you're at it, reconfigure the deflector dish to emit an inverse tachyon pulse.
eaglescout1998 on March 1, 2009 at 4:31 AM
My collie says:
I agreed with the Ferengi when they expressed their outrage about one thing, viz. clothed females?! How ridiculous!
Which is why we don't put dogs in charge of things, collie.
CyberCipher on March 1, 2009 at 12:34 PM
The Federation is a socialist state, pure and simply. That's why I love DS9 because it started to show the boils under the uniform. Did anyone ever wonder why Starfleet best and brightest were defecting to the Maquis?
El Coqui on March 1, 2009 at 7:10 PM


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Good for Sarah! Thanks for the info.
Good for Sarah! Thanks for the info.
She actually appeared in the NYC Channel2 CBS 5pm News. She looked nice but spoke yet like a little girl. Voice coaches can deepen her voice. However, and unfortunately, she read the fluff piece on Michael Phelps without any pizzaz.
Phelps has the burden of winning the same number of medals as Spitz. Not easy. He will be the STAR of this Olympics if he wins 7 medals and there is talk of 8.. Sarah did not get into the drama which is unfolding., but she's in a position to improve. She has many chances before going back to school.
Really? Have you met her before? Or talked to her or something like that? (Not trying to be confrontational or anything, I am simply curious as to why you say so)She is a sweetheart , not arrogant or boastful,
Hmmm... That does actually sound a bit confrontational... I'm with Joe... I always got the feeling with Sarah that what you see is what you get. In other words, she is what you see: a nice girl.Originally Posted by Red Dog
I've never watched Hughes as a eligible skater before the olympics, so I really didn't/don't know her personality. I was just curious as to whether she really was nice, or just simply came across as a nice person from interviews, etc. Sorry if I offended anyone.
No offense taken on my part, Dog. I do not know Sarah personally, or any other elite skater. For me, figure skating is my retreat into never-never land where everybody is sweet and nice.
LOL...skating is like that for me too, Mathman. I like to imagine everyone is sweet as sugar....it makes it easier to root for them. But, seeing that most of us only know Sarah from interviews, news reports, etc. I can't see how she could be viewed as anything but a nice, down-to-earth girl. We have no evidence that would indicate she isn't a sweetheart.
I think there were some not-so-flattering rumours circulating concerning SH after her win at the Olympics (I use this word because I don't think there were confirmations) ...I forgot most of them, but I think one was about SH and COI (her wanting/demanding the spotlight, some negative comments from her, etc.) and she took a lot of heat from some people for that. Another was I think at some skating event where she blew off some people wanting autographs (maybe she had somewhere to go or something). Again, I say rumours because I don't know if these are true or not, but that said, I would venture to agree with you all and assume that she is very "down-to-earth" and approachable.We have no evidence that would indicate she isn't a sweetheart.
Can anyone in NYC give us a sort of report on her stories? I'd be curious to know...
I did just that yesterday, Reddog. It's 7 or 8 posts above this. Michael Phelps may be the American Hero by the end of the Swimming Events. Sarah is indeed a nice girl but she didn't get the drama involved in that. She willl eventually. Delivery is everything in Broadcasting. It's not for everyone. Give her a chance.Originally Posted by Red Dog
OK, I see your post.
Interesting. Her specialty isn't broadcasting/reporting, so I wouldn't expect her to deliver like a pro on the first attempt. But it sounds like she did a good job, considering what she is covering. Does she have correspondents or is she the only one reporting on the Olympics?Originally Posted by Joesitz
ETA: MM- I just saw your post count...2006...hmm...is that a sign of anything to come?
Last edited by R.D.; 08-06-2004 at 08:01 PM.
Here is a discussion from the USFSA site about the problems that Sarah and her dad had with the 2003 COI tour.Originally Posted by Red Dog
As I remember the flap about the 2002 tour, it wasn't so much Sarah as Alexei Yagudin. IIRC, Sarah was the headliner (i.e, the last to skate) at all of the shows that she participated in. THe last part of the tour, sarah dropped out to concentrate on the new season, and Michelle was given the favored spot. Yagudin gave an interview to a Russian publication grousing about the fact that he, not Michelle, was the Olympic champion, and he felt that he had been dissed by Tom Collins. (Yagudin and Collins has "issues" anyway, LOL.)
About singing autographs, I think Kristi (one of the most universally loved skaters of all time) has the reputation that if she agrees to be available to sign autographs for 1 hour, that means 60 minutes and you better not come late, LOL.
Ah, here it is...someone's post from that board:
There was a much longer thread on another forum that was much nastier than this one...people were quick to jump on Sarah for this mishap.I believe that part of the problem was that the Hugheses expected Sarah to be the headliner on the Tour, as she had been after the Olympic season. Collins did not want to commit to that, and that became an "unresolved issue". Another issue might have been the per-show rate. The $300,000 Sarah signed for in COI 2002 was for 30 shows at $10,000/show. Maybe Collins wanted Sarah to do more than 30 shows for COI 2003 with the same payout, which would have meant a lower per-show rate.
I recall that after the Olympics, Collins wanted to sign Sale/Pelletier, but they were demanding $25,000/show, and Collins refused to negotiate with them, saying that was far more than headliner Hughes was making.
"COI is like a big, happy family. No one is more important than anyone else, no one gets any special favors, and all the performers are stars of equal magnitude.
"But Michelle skates last."
All that stuff about Sarah wanting the spotlight, more money, whatever, was never credible. I think the last thing she wanted to do in the spring of 03 was skate. She wanted out of touring to enjoy her last few months of high school. But of course some haters back then had to turn it into all that nasty gossip which unfortunately keeps getting repeated.


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Would this be Armageddon II?
But listening to the pair, I couldn't help but be struck by the speed with which politicians can turn the stunning and scandalous into the rote and banal.
It wasn't that long ago that Gemma was staging a wild press conference outside his Providence office, accusing the incumbent and his associates of systematic voter fraud dating back to 2002.
There was talk of scared voters holed up in their attics with weapons; a claim that a high-ranking member of the state's House of Representatives had cross-dressed to cast a fraudulent ballot; all manner of shouting from the podium. And beneath the surface, sober — and unsubstantiated — charges that Cicilline's associates had recruited and paid for fraudulent votes.
This was radioactive stuff. And it nearly melted the hall when the two candidates debated the first time.
When they came together again, though, the feel was quite different. Sure, there was no studio audience to egg them on. But that was not all. When the debate moderator, WPRO's Bill Haberman, brought up the voter fraud charges, there was no real heat in the room.
To be certain, tactical considerations played a role. Gemma, apparently chastened by a political and media elite that lashed out at him for making unverifiable charges, made a conscious decision to back away from the voter fraud allegations. And Cicilline, of course, had no interest in lingering on the topic.
But the deadly weight of the talking point was in evidence, too. Gemma's main claim (I wouldn't have made these charges, I wouldn't have put my integrity on the line, if there was nothing there) and Cicilline's retort (these are ridiculous allegations distracting us from the real issues) were lifted from the first debate and delivered with all the passion of a Mitch McConnell appearance on Meet the Press.
Rhode Island's most explosive political circus in memory had, in a matter of days, fizzled. And not for want of new developments: in the wake of the press conference and the first debate, Gemma had added some meat to the bones — putting forth a former Cicilline campaign volunteer who alleged, in an on-the-record interview with the Providence Journal, that she'd helped pay for fraudulent votes during Cicilline's 2002 mayoral campaign.
Somehow, that just didn't come up.
Perhaps there is something heartening in our capacity to swallow and routinize these sorts of charges, to pivot to issues like jobs, taxes, and Medicare that matter more to voters. But it all seems, well, uncreative. Lifeless.
Perhaps I'm just making a base call for a more entertaining politics. If that's your thing, all hope is not lost. Cicilline and Gemma have one more debate scheduled, after the Phoenix goes to press, and perennial fringe candidate Chris Young is scheduled to participate.
This is a man who, in previous public appearances, has brought along a statue of the Virgin Mary, proposed marriage to his girlfriend, and crooned about class struggle — a scratchy tape recording, in hand, for musical accompaniment.
The circus, it appears, will be back. If only for a few minutes.
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Hey if anyone is interested in a really nice undersuit please contact http://www.fashionsthrutime.com She did mine for me for Dragon con. I feel they are very cost effective but not cheap. I think a few measurements need tweeking but overall I'm extremely happy with the work she did I feel it's the most accurate to this point. If you need help or anything let me know.
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Directed by David Yates
Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Ralph Fiennes, Tom Felton, Alan Rickman
The end's not near . . . it's here. After 10 years of bringing magic to the big screen, the eighth and final Harry Potter film hits theaters July 15. Picking up where Part 1 left off, Harry (Radcliffe), Ron (Grint) and Hermione (Watson) must race to find and destroy the last of Voldemort's Horcuxes, the objects that are helping keep the evil wizard alive.
But with Voldemort (Fiennes) now in possession of the Elder Wand—the most powerful of the Deathly Hallows—is it too late? It all leads up to an epic battle at Hogwarts that reunites characters new and old from the film series. "The battle was a real moment to literally bring everyone back that we've had in a lot of the films," says Bonnie Wright, who plays Ginny Weasley. "It was a very exciting and perfect way to really go out with a bang."
Click here for an interview with Oliver and James Phelps, the actors who play the Weasley twins.
Did You Know?
The movie series may be ending, but fans can enjoy Potter's magic in many new forms. Potterheads can visit Harry Potter: The Exhibition, currently at Discovery Times Square, in New York City, through September 5. It features props and costumes from throughout the film series, including wizard robes worn by all of the main characters; Harry, Ron and Hermione's Yule Ball attire; Gilderoy Lockhart's books; Lupin's boggart wardrobe; and much more.
Fans can also visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure, in Orlando, Florida. There, visitors can ride Potter-themed attractions and taste butterbeer.
And, starting in spring 2012, fans will be able to take a walking studio tour, in London, England, of many of the iconic sets used in all eight films, including the Great Hall.


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Flash Sales 101
Click to download the White Paper
Flash Sales 101
The new e-commerce model of flash sales–members-only Web sites offering exclusive deals on everything from luxury goods and fashion apparel to wine–has emerged into a multi-billion dollar business, and is showing no signs of slowing down.
In 2010, the four leading flash sales sites in the United States, HauteLook, ideeli, Gilt Groupe and Rue La La, were predicted to generate $900 million in revenues and double the number of visits to the category over the previous year," said Krista Garcia, eMarketer research analyst and author of the new report "Flash Sales: What Retailers Need to Know".
While flash sales are blazing a new trail in e-commerce marketing, this new business model requires a different approach to fulfillment–in order to deliver a unique customer experience–from the point of online purchase to how the merchandise is packaged and shipped and ultimately unboxed once received. This end-to-end process is part of the overall brand experience which is fueling the growth of the flash sales market.
Unlike traditional methods of warehousing and fulfillment, flash sales present a new set of opportunities and challenges, especially related to inventory management.
"Flash sales demand incredibly fast turnaround time for a vast number of items," said Joal Savino, Executive Vice President of Mercedes Distribution Center. "Because of this, receiving is intense as there are large volumes of unique items, each of which must be identified, barcoded, located and properly packaged, and logged into a ware- house management system."
In order to keep pace with the high volume of transactions on a daily basis, online retailers and flash sales entrepreneurs need to rethink how stock is organized. Traditional warehouse methods cannot be applied, and often adversely impact profitability and customer service.
Technology and automation such as scanners, intelligent conveyer systems and a flexible warehouse management system (WMS) can only go so far. A new approach and mindset is required to optimize inventory and keep pace with the explosive growth opportunities flash sales present.
Inventory Management: Taking Care of Business in a Flash
To support flash sales fulfillment, the following should be considered to optimize inventory:
Inventory control
Inventory for flash sales is very volatile. There are often many unique stock keeping units (SKUs), and little depth, leaving no room for errors. With little depth, every piece must be accurately accounted for. Each mistake results in a shorted order and dissatisfied customer. The goal of flash sales is to liquidate all inventory, hence extra stock translates into lost sales opportunities.
Much of the flash sales inventory originates from overstock, returns, and buyouts. Stock often arrives in terrible condition and accompanied by inaccurate or missing packing lists.
A WMS must be able to create unexpected SKUs on-the-fly, and have a module to accurately reconcile physical receivings to a packing list or purchase order.
In most flash sales environments, product that is received may be at the end of its seasonal cycle, providing a limited window to inventory and sell the merchandise. There is little time for delays. The WMS must be able to track arriving stock from the time it hits the receiving dock until ready for sale. Being EDI compliant is a must to speed receiving and minimize errors.
The tight sales schedule and limited stock also means that samples for shoots and write-ups must not only be pulled immediately, but quickly returned to stock for the sale. There are typically no surplus units that can be disposed of for sampling. A WMS must be flexible enough to accurately track samples.
It is unproductive to put stock into dense or deep storage. Because of the fast turnaround of flash sales, in most cases, stock will never be placed in a permanent location. Locations will be reused quickly, so the warehouse needs flexible storage systems that can handle different types of products with no equipment conversion or set up.
With inventory on certain items in the one or two unit range, a single location must be able to accommodate multiple SKUs. As part of the constant depletion and receiving process, the storage systems and WMS must be able to easily handle consolidation of inventory. Entire blocks of pick locations must be consolidated and made available for new stock. New stock should be contiguous to streamline the picking effort when each sale begins.
Physical Inventory
Flash sales require a new way to audit inventory. Annual physical inventories are no longer valid. Because stock in flash sales environments turns over many more times per year than the typical mail order or e-commerce operation, there is increased potential for clerical errors, miscounts, and stocking errors. Continuous cycle counting is mandatory, and any system must be able to count on-the-fly, adjusting for open orders.
Because flash sales involve older and recycled stock, receiving is a labor intensive process. Quality control is essential to ensure a positive customer experience, mitigating the occurrence of shipping rejected goods. An experienced, trained staff is critical.
Much of the inventory must be untagged, retagged, re folded, rehung, rebagged and reboxed. The many items received, but not on purchase orders or packing lists, must be quickly identified and made available for sale; a process that requires a high level of expertise and commitment. Finally, inventory reconciliations and control require skilled personnel.
Flash Sales Require a New Approach
Similar to airports and other complex, business-critical operation, flash sales have their own unique deadlines, and every day there are new challenges. The rigors of the business require around-the-clock management and specialization in flash sales fulfillment.
As organizations embrace flash sales - either as an extension of existing distribution channels or a stand alone online business model, new processes, techniques and technologies are required to manage inventory, optimize revenue and deliver a unique customer service experience.
Categories: Resources & White Papers


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Okay, here's a dumb question? If this has been discussed previously, I apologize.
As I was cleaning out a few hives that did not overwinter because I did not leave enough stores, I wondered? Why do we harvest in the fall? Why not harvest, what they don't need, in the spring? Does subzero temperatures and time affect the honey quality?


text: Cant seem to find a thread detailing the procedures for this and the Chilton manual for the truck is too vague (does not differentiate 4X4). Can anyone provide what is required to drop the pan, and also what is the best type replacement pan gasket to use? All help is appreciated!


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Re: Your First CTF (CTF for newbies)
Also, don't know if he has been caught up in the problems on the east coast of US.
General discussion of ethical hacking concepts, experiences, ideas and certs.
waynegs wrote:Has anyone received information on week 2 of the training?
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