Monthly Archives: July 2019

Traveling A Road (More Or) Less Traveled

I said recently (within the last couple of posts, I don’t remember just exactly….not that it makes any difference either) that I was going through a period of soul searching and intent to review this site. Still intend to. Am…going to…soon(ish).

And then, I get distracted… I watched a TED talk about procrastination. Was totally convicted that it was talking about me as much as the speaker, and that my Instant Gratification Monkey was at least as present as his. It explained a lot about how I live and (don’t) work.

So, while I’m in the ongoing process of getting ready to prepare to initiate the beginning hints of an idea of what to list out to do to start working on gathering needed resources to create an environment conducive to overcoming inertia and actually do something…later, I find there’s a webpage/blog he has posted to. The Wait but Why site provides a GREAT rabbit hole for me to traverse (now going on 3+ hours…not counting manditory bio-breaks) in “preparing” to work on my own postings.

In the VERY beginning, I wondered why I was doing this and what the benefit would be (both for the writer and the reader). While this question still remains largly unanswered, stumbling across this site has provided a great deal of illumination. Much of what I am reading resonates in a profound way to my own path and progress. I would suggest that if you find my materials of any (reasonable) value, you may also find Tim’s work also useful. If, instead, you find it distracting and meaningless babbeling without merit, I’d also suggest you try a sample from his work to see if his POV is sufficiently different to be more appealing.

In some ways, it’s frightening to open a box that belongs to another only to find it holds some of the darkest secrets hidden in the innermost recesses of your OWN mind/heart/soul. And after I spend another couple of weeks going through his stuff, I can confidently begin the process of cleaning my own stuff with the knowledge that my madness is not (necessarily) unique.

Afterall, the old saying remains true…

All great minds run through the same gutter.

Phred

post 88 of n

Winning Debates Is As Easy As One…Two…FIVE!* THREE!†

Once upon a time last millenium, I took a class in high school on debate. I wasn’t very good (terrible, actually) and held the second afirmitive, backup position, so I didn’t (have to, thankfully) actually do much competitive debating before the judges and audience. Once (the ONLY time, really) where I was called upon to take one for the team resulted in a win, due mostly from the execution of a massive blunder by the other team. With a simple statement by one of their team’s sacrificial lambs, a victory was virtually assured and we were able to mop the floor with their remains.

What gaff could they have made that would result in a victory so overwhelming that even a team built from a couple of people randomly selected by simply opening a phone directory and pointing at a couple of numbers on the page were going to bring home the gold medal? It was when they gave the reference for one of the (admittantly excelent) points they made…

It came from the READER’S DIGEST!

DING! DING! DING! Launch the balloons, set off the fireworks, toss the confetti. A 10 second search of our materials to select the proper 3×5 index card and we could put everything else away and get ready to celebrate.

We had been taught (extensively and repeatedly) to NEVER source a quote from the Reader’s Digest (RD from here out). Never, ever, under penalty of death. Not because the RD was not a place to read credible material or that they were so horrible the National Enquirer was divinely inspired by compairison. The reason was simply that RD was a compilation of material sourced elseware. You would quite often find a copy sitting in the bathroom for light reading in moments of distraction. Every article contained a note as to where the original material was published, so that if you were interested or wanted a longer read (most articles were abridged in some fashion) you could go to the source and see “the rest of the story” (as Paul Harvey used to say).

We, too, had the RD reference in our stack of materials…but unlike the opponents, we ALSO had the original journal, so in our next 3 minute speaking turn, we simply stated that the material in the original source was better that the RD version. Point, set, match…US. Winner, winner, chicken dinner. With that action, my “professional” debate record ended at 1 win and no losses, a 1.000 batting average.

Now, it must be pointed out that this miracle occured forty-five (45) years ago. Information was more difficult to access and collect, and the technology used to keep hundreds of chunks of data under control involved archaic devices like books and libraries, microfilm readers, card catalogues, and the only voice-activated information source at the time: the librarian. I guess you could hold all the information in your pocket, if you insisted on wearing clothing at least 47 sizes too large and in dozens of layers to create enough pockets (cargo pants not being available at the time). Phones were attached to the wall with a cord and computers took up entire rooms (if not buildings) that you seldom (read: NEVER) had access to. Pencil and paper, combined with an “effective” filing system had to do. It did, and we survived the dark ages of information with only moderate scarring.

I would like to suggest, however, that there’s an even more damaging information source available today than what the RD ever was, and I bet most of you make use of it multiple times a day: GOOGLE.

Now, wait just a second, you say. Google isn’t remotely like RD in that it doesn’t cut up the original material and give you a taste of the data. It gives you links to the actual material for your viewing pleasure, so you go directly to the source. True, point taken and conceeded.

But, how often do you actually LOOK at the page header of the search you just did? I just did a search of “google” in my browser and got a page of information. Hidden (in plain sight) at the top in small print was this line: “About 11,420,000,000 results (0.56 seconds)” followed by a half-dozen articles. At the bottom, there were places to click on to view any of the next 9 pages (numbered 1-10). If you generously give each page 25 listings, how many pages do you have to look at to see 11 BILLION results? (I’ll wait a bit for you to do the math….ok, that’s long enough.) Short answer is a LOT.

When was the last time you drilled down more than a couple of pages to get “the answer” to your search inquiry? How many times did you get to the Goooooooooogle that listed 11-20? Ever go further in that page 50? 100? 1,000? (Full disclosure alert: my deepest dive only went about 350 pages and took a couple hours….) That doesn’t begin to remove even a gnat’s toenail from the stack.

And there is another problem lurking in the weeds. Even if the infermation you need is there (on one of the 4 billion pages), you may not find it. In tennis, you can win by playing a couple different ways. You can generate more power than your opponent. You can be more accurate in your placement or more efficient in your resource management, outlasting your enemy. Or you can use spin.

If the ball is moving in a straight line, it is easier to project where it will go and how to meet it with your racquet. Bend the ball, however, and the game changes dramatically (and if you think tennis is wicked, try ping pong…). By putting spin on the ball, you can make it go places it is IMPOSSIBLE to get to otherwise. Additionally, when it bounces, it can make a radical change in direction causing even more problems for the returning player.

And here’s the kicker: the spin on the internet seraches is totally invisible. Not only do you have no indication of what kind of spin is on the ball, you have no idea how much is even present. If you are asking a relatively neutral question of the search engines, you might get a response that has a relatively unbiased outcome, like how many days are there in the month of November (30, per my google search, but even here there were “About 3,160,000,000 results (0.59 seconds)” to get an answer…which I feel is not terribly spun out of place).

Ask a more charged question, and the algorithms used to choose which answers float to the bottom gets more problematic. Who writes the code can determine what answers get more credit. Hit a hot enough topic, and you might find only 1 answer in the top 30/300/3000 pages. It might not be the only answer (almost certainly) and it might not be the “correct” answer, but it’s the only one you will find without doing a huge amount of work.

Conspiricy? Not necessarily, more a problem of design. Even the resources I used in my debate days were tainted with spin, in that SOMEONE decided which books to put in the library and the librarian made choices in answering our (innocent) questions. There’s an old saying that the man with one watch knows what time it is, but if he has two he is never sure. “Information good -> more information better” is not necessarily correct. But to blindly accept the first piece of informaiton that comes along is even more likely to eventually turn and bite you in a tender part of your anatomy when you least suspect it.

So, if you are involved in a debate and choose to source your information from the interweb, may I suggest you (at least occationally) spend some time clicking on the last “o” in the Goooooooooogle at the bottom and move a few dozen pages in before you decide what your opinion is. You might get a chance to see a different point of view from the herd. And that may, indeed give you the chance to give a “not from RD” response to move into the winner’s circle.

Access to the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch doesn’t hurt, either…‡

Phred

post 87 of n

*[whispered comment: “Three, sire”]

† Quote from movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail

‡ Another reference…love that movie!

Knits And Gnats

Strange title, but there’s a madness to my method (or so I’m lead led to believe). There’s a silent letter in there somewhere, another reason English is so frustrating.

I spent a couple of days a couple of weeks ago reading EVERYTHING in this blog. Sort of a self-imposed penance for the nearly two year absence of effort. I wanted to remind myself what was out here, and why I thought it was a good idea (at least at the time) to put it out on a line for the world. An effort that was only partially successful, I suspect. There’s at least a few nuggets of value strewn throughout the waistland wasteland that is the debris of my mind. Some of it seems pointless in hindsight, but there must have been some kind of reason (maybe the pressure of the 3xweek quasi-commitment) at the time. To the extent that the author is lost in the content, my sincerest apologies have to go out to the random victims that were the collateral damage in these shots…though I doubt there was/is much serious long-term injury resulting.

I’m not generally one to do a great deal of post-posting editing, so apart from making two corrections (one spelling missed by the checker, and one that was a homonym with a completely incorrect meaning), the content stands and will continue as such. But I anticipate a few changes to the site overall that might mitigate the future damages somewhat.

Over the next n [approprite plural time unit], I intend to build and label all postings with a set of tags to help bring some clarity to site. This should help alert a potential reader of what content has some possible chunk of value and which are mostly (entirely) stream-of-consciousness babbeling. I’ll add a page with a discription of the tags and (possibly, unclear exactly how it will play out at this time) links to search for desired ones. At the very least, there will be a [favorites] tag to mark out the ones that I feel are at the top of the list.

Back to the title… There are letters in there that you just don’t hear. It doesn’t mean they’re not there, or not important, but are in the background, molding the shape of the idea hiding in the author’s mind. If you are not careful, the receiver’s picture will not match, and you will have failed to communicate (since mental image transplants is the soul/sole purpose of all communication). And in review, there’s a couple of gaps in the frequency of posts, the longest almost a full year. Silent letters…but not absent ones.

A confession. My name is Phred, and I’m a writer. [GROUP RESPONSE: Hello, Phred] In a tangible way, this really IS therapy (of a sort) and you, gentle reader, are my therapist (except you are not getting paid, sorry). Full disclosure is that I spend time upon awakening almost every morning, mentally writing on the ceiling of my bedroom. This morning it was almost an hour (trying pointlessly to go back to sleep). I (finally) decided to get up and commit the ramblings to paper…er, online storage.

The phrase “older but wiser” is always (at least half) true. I’m perched at the edge of another completed lap around the sun, but (as far as this work is concerned) with little to show for it. I have no way of expressing my regret at the wisdom lost to you from my slacking off (and just as much relief at the pain averted from the pointless-drivel parts, but it doesn’t necessarily balance in quantity or quality). To prevent the need for endlessly repainting the bedroom, I “intend” to continue posting works here in the future.

I have to…I’m not skilled enough to knit gnat guards.

Phred

post 86 of n

(fed) UP (with fireworks)

Disney and Pixar did a great movie when they did UP! However, I find as I get older, I find I relate to the character Carl Fredricksen (done by Edward Asner) more and more, and I still have another fifteen years to go to get “there.”

The community where I live had their annual firework display last evening. The park across the street is the launch site, so sitting on the veranda allows me to see the whole event from a third-row seat POV. (Well, not quite, as there’s a street light in the way to light the parking area by the building. You need something to shield the minor supernova bright LED on the pole…annoying, but manageable.)

My building is devoted to senior living facilities, but there is a sub-division full of family duplex units managed by the same company on the other side of the building, so there’s a LOT of locals in the area, and the presence of my neighbor’s kids/grandkids/nieces/nephews/inlaws/outlaws insures there’s a constant stream of people wandering past all evening. It’s almost as interesting a show watching the people as the sky. Not to mention the (invisible from the patio, but clearly heard) launches from the 40 other buildings behind mine and those firing from the eight-building apartment complex across the street. Many of the visible ones were roman candles and low-cost/power items from the local general stores, but the Phantom Fireworks store (located about a kilometer away) apparently had a good year from the sounds of it.

Finally, after about an hour and a half of the amateur warm-up acts, the stage cleared for the main event, hearlded by a single firework launched into the darkening sky. You could hear (and feel) the excitement in the crowds awaiting the start from the patios on all four floors of my building. It got (relatively) quiet while the smallest voices announced “Grandma, it’s starting!”

It was over in around twenty minutes, give or take a few seconds. In my opinion, easily the WORST firework display I’ve seen in 60+ years. It wasn’t for lack of trying, however.

By my rough estimate, they launched about a thousand projectiles into the sky. Apart from the initial launch (I believe it was a test shot to see what the wind conditions aloft were), there was never another period where there were not at least 3 shells bursting in the sky at a time, with several sessions of a dozen or more simultaniously exploding at once. The finale had too many going off at once to count, but they wasted more in the last 90 seconds than what a full 90 minute display used to send up back in the 60’s and 70’s when I was growing up.

Don’t get me wrong, I like watching fireworks. The operative word here is WATCHING, though. Looking for the launch streamer and tracking the dark projectile along the path, anticipating where and when it would explode. Then, the BANG and watching the sparks spreading across the sky. Watching them die out and listening to the “oohs” and “ahhs” from those around me and discussing just how great the best ones were. Then a modest delay and repeat the process. A great way to kill an hour or so on the mid-summer holiday.

But this year’s event also gave me pause to consider the plight of my fellow veterans that served in combat zones (I was on a ship and was never involved directly in combat…I honor and respect my fellow brothers and sisters in arms who DID see combat directly and I salute you!). In past displays, there was the chest-crushers (nothing to see, but a huge BANG that generated a tangible shock wave you could track by the echos returning from distant buildings and hills) sent up to make sure you were still awake (or to awaken the babes that were sleeping…sorry mom). But they made up a very small percentage of the show, typically only 2-3 in the whole evening. Last night there were a couple of sessions where there must have been streams of 15-20 going off in carpet-bombing fashion. Maybe there was a half second or so between a shell and the next, almost too fast for the flash to die away from one before the next exploded. I’m reasonably certain there were some seasoned vets that were looking for shelter…

Technology has evolved a lot since I was a kid. There are shaped charge fireworks that explode into identifiable shapes: hearts, stars, circles. I think (guess?) there were some of these last night, but it was difficult to tell as before one shot opened totally to view, another couple were going off, too, both near and far. The shells that changed colours a couple of times or launched screamers and spinners were not noticable as they were masked by several others vying for your (limited) attention.

Conspicuously absent was the parachute flare launch of my youth, where a shell would burst and a brilliant white flare would be suspended from a parachute, to float several minutes before burning out. It was fun to watch and see if it would reach the ground before going out (it never did, but still…). Had they used a couple, sending the second up only after the first died off, they might have spanned the whole show…

I tried to appreciate the huge sky-filling displays which only made up a small percentage of last millenium shows, but these, too, paled into insignificance when drowned out by another dozen lesser shots overlaid at the same time. I really tried to appreciate the show, but I believe they compressed a great show by at least a factor of nine, taking a show that could have (read: should have) taken three hours and compressed it into sit-com length (without the commercials). Apparently I’m not ADHD enough for this kind of display.

Next year, I’m considering setting Mr. Spatula (my goldfish) out on the patio to watch the show and get his take on how good it is. Though, full disclosure requires me to declare ahead of time I don’t think this is going to work that well…

I think he has too long of an attention span, too…

Phred

post 85 of n

Inspiration Is Not Amusing

Last week, I had the opportunity to meet four new people at the library. Not that meeting people at the library is particularly odd, unusual, or abnormal in any sense, but in this case the people were gathered for a singular purpose: to write. Rather, to listen to each other’s writing, for this was the bi-weekly Writers Roundtable meeting.

Apparently, they have been meeting on regular basis at numerous locations for years (though not necessarily together as a singuar group…they have wandered in from other groups scattered around the semi-local area). This gathering location has been a couple years in history. The meeting I attended was only a fraction of what it was a (bi)week earlier, with 7 others failing to make a show. (Not entirely unreasonable, with it being summer; many groups decline during the summer months because of competing activities—the kickball squad being a notible exception.) Half of the regulars brought in material written and printed during the past period for the group to hear and provide input/encouragement/constructive criticism regarding the effort.

My attendance was a semi-spur-of-the-moment event, as I had only learned of the group the day prior while feeding my addiction checking books out of the library. I arrived without a clear understanding of what I was getting myself into, as the only information I had was the time posting on the calendar of events: 6:00 Writer’s Roundtable. I wasn’t sure if it was going to be the standard 12-step group, going in and introducing myself: “Hello, I’m Phred, and I’m a writer…” followed by the group response “…hello, Phred.” Not quite that dramatic, but in some ways just as intense since they were compassionate about their craft. I heard from a younger gentleman writing for a youth picture book describing a room that allowed the user to change their physical and mental capabilities. It ended with the person reverting back to their original state after “cranking the wisdom dial as far as it would go….” It would appear it worked quite well.

The other reader was a middling woman bringing in several chapters (in the 33-38 range) of an ongoing adventure involving a teenage girl and her relationship with several people in her life. As it has been in development for an extended time, I was not as able to appreciate the story as the others, but could see the passion and focus in the work presented, and see a glimpse of the depth of the characters involved.

Both works were received with great enthusiasm and delight. The group was clearly bonded together in this task and was working to help one another become more skilled in their craft. I felt involved and welcome even on the first meeting and was included in the discussions (both the ones involving the readings and the following ones about the group in general).

It was with a measure of regret that I discovered the group was specifically created and focused on fiction writing. As much of the material I create (at least 83 of 97) involves me in some way or another, it seems unlikely a disinterested third-party observer would consider it fiction (even though a close examination of the material from the inside also suggests minimal direct contact with the “shared reality” that third-party observer would be claiming as a basis for fact/fiction, so it’s debatable who’s right in this case). I expressed as unlikely my future attendance to additional meetings in the near future.

But, a definite take-away point I got from my exposure to those for whom this process of putting pen/pencil/ribbon/toner to paper/screen/display is a serious adventure was to clarify a misunderstanding I developed from my education as a youth. Or, rather, a misunderstanding I acquired as a result of the LACK of education as a youth.

Since I’m an old f*rt (it’s taken a lot of trips around the sun to reach the place where I’m sort-of comfortable saying this kind of heresy), my education was during the dark ages before the internet gave you instant, easy access to knowledge. I’m from the Encyclopedia Brittanica era of learning.

My exposure to ancient Greek mythology was essentially as extensive as my development in learning Latin, which in the public schools of the 1960’s was essentially ZERO. Therefore, I sort of understood the concept of the Muse as a friendly, gentle spirit that guided you in the development of your craft. The dictionary.com listing for the second use (subunit 2) of ” (sometimes lowercase) the goddess or the power regarded as inspiring a poet, artist, thinker,or the like ” reflects my thoughts of what it was supposed to be like. Light, good natured, friendly and helpful.

Not mine. Often there’s a hint of sulphur and brimstone wafting in the air when my muse has presented itself (gender neutral as it’s not clear if demonic spoor from the underworld actually come in multiple forms). No gentle taps on the shoulder or wispers in my ear to guide my attempts at creating. Rather, great hunks of flesh being rendered from my backside as it’s talons rake across my cowering body, it’s screams of styrofoam packing being rubbed together drowning out the chalkboard scraping fingernails of others trying to distract me from further attempts at maintaining sanity.

When asked, the others didn’t express the existance of a muse in their experience directly, but were driven to write for other reasons best summed up by the group leader. He said once he was asked by someone how they could “know” if they were a writer or not. His response was simply “just stop writing…if you can, you’re NOT a writer.” They write because they write. Oh, if it were only that easy…

To paraphrase something Mark Twain said about being addicted to smoking…

“…it’s easy to quit [writing]. I’ve done it hundreds of times…”

Phred

post 84 of n