Hump Day

Ted Kennedy passed away last night at 77 years of age, probably amazed the world let him go on so long when his brothers were taken so young. Senator Kennedy was never ashamed of the word Liberal, and understood better than any living American the rich history and tradition behind that term. It remains to be seen what the rest of this century brings us, and how we handle basic Liberal causes as defined by John Stuart Mill and others, to feed the hungry, shelter the poor, heal the sick, and treat all men and women (women were the first great cause of Liberals) with respect.

AARP is featuring 6 word memoirs, promoted by Larry Smith, editor of Not Quite What I was Planning:Six Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure (Harper Perennial, 2008). see
aarpmagazine.org/6wordmemoirs. The ones I read are more like advertising catch phrases than haiku, but are a better way to waste time than Suduko.

Wikipedia is changing its policy on contributions, and rejecting lies and personal opinions in favor of opinions and personal lies. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8222397.stm

Time magazine: What Britney Spears Can Reveal About Alzheimer's.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1918352,00.html

Back to School

Is there anything braver than a 5-year old going to public school for the first time? Not in my experience. You get through traffic to the overcrowded school for Opening Day and kids are screaming and crying for their mommies. Our little trooper Aliyah in her plaid uniform looks like such a big girl. She's been going to daycare since she was 3 so she's handling it and offering to help others. I've been babysitting her during the summer break. Anyone who thinks that's not a full-time job has never done it, or at least done it right. I pick her up at 2, and then we'll hear all about the first day.

Time magazine has a list of the 50 Top Websites for the year. Some I did not know about are really interesting. At Supercook.com, you type in a list of what you have in your fridge, and it tells you what recipes you can make with those ingredients. I keep getting beer cheese soup, so it shows my shopping needs.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1918031,00.html

Return of Joe McCarthy

There has not been such a deliberate attempt to spread lies and fear in the USA since the Blacklist days in the 1950s, where conservative white people rose up to find the Communists every place they disagreed. The insurance companies seem to be the ones financing the smear campaign, which sounds suspicious in itself, if you think about it. I remember as a kid seeing ads in movie theatres against PayTV, and how it would destroy our freedom of information. Sarah Palin has resigned as Governor of Alaska, to help guide fellow Americans into a complete misunderstanding of The Public Option. Her brief sojourn as an elected official, approved as presidential material by people who should know better, has proven to be qualification enough to render judgments on Death Panels and Socialism. What is shocking is that so many Americans are fighting to keep health insurance through employers who will lay them off in a heartbeat to adjust the bottom line, and where 50,000 losing their jobs help the stock price to raise 13%.

Surrounded

We're coming up on our 28th wedding anniversary this weekend. Not bad for folks who couldn't maintain serious relationships, I guess. The trick is to not take it seriously. And stay busy. Time flies by. I'll wait until our 30th anniversary before I'm sure this thing's going to work out.

I'm supposed to rent a truck and move a big heavy dresser and long awkward sofa to mys on's house. I've recruited my brother Dave, who makes a good point. What are these women going to do when we're 70? I'm going to be 60 this year, and he's a couple years younger. But I watched him carry two five-gallon jugs of water, one in each hand, as we unloaded the van after a trip to BJ's. Maybe we'll be doing this 10 years from now. I'm cool with that.

I'm tired of getting stupid emails from old Republicans on Medicaid telling me why they're against public health reform. And the guys at the town hall, worrying what will happen to their insurance at work should start worrying what they will do when they get laid off. I appreciate the fact that morons can speak their minds but I'd just as soon they keep it among themselves, maybe move to Alaska or somewhere farther down the line.

Days of Miracle and Wonder

I was helping John Dufresne fix his Sony Vaio all-in-one gorgeous LCD/TV/computer, and got his crashed hard drive out and took it to my friends at Arco/ Data Protection Solutions. While they were working on it, John and his wife Cindy bought a Mac, the drop-dead gorgeous Mac all in one that does everything but fly around the room, which is an option you can buy at The Apple Store. They, the Dufresnes, asked if I would like to have the Sony, see if I could fix it. I was stunned.

John and I had worked a couple hours getting the screws out to remove the back cover, so with their help, I loaded the computer in several pieces in the back of my van. Later I was able to bring them the drive from the Sony, with all the data alive and well, as far as we could see, in an EzBackup SATA drive enclosure, that can plug in to any USB port.

I thank John and Cindy for their generous gift, which I'm refurbing and setting up for my daughter Dianne and her daughter Aliyah. When I got the back cover on last night, I had eight screws left over. A bad sign. The computer ran then turned itself off after a minute or too. This morning it's working;I'm using it now. The cover is off the back. After I do a screw-to-hole count I'll try remounting the back panel. For now, I'm sitting here in amazement.

Other wonders: Tropical Storm Ana has formed in the Atlantic and is heading here. We have agreed that if it has anything near the intensity of my ex-sister-in-law Ana, we will be leaving soon for the Rockies.

Returning Sunshine, Bright Future

Nancy Grace has written a novel that will be a bestseller or is a bestseller or something.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/books/08/10/nancy.grace.novel/index.html
Read an excerpt here, and then find an abandoned copy in the Delta terminal at your local airport.http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/08/10/nancy.grace.prologue/index.html

Touchy, touchy: Hillary seems uptight about recent Bill Clinton success, snaps at poor African student. http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/10/clinton.translation/index.html

Muslim punk bands. Sounds weird, right?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/08/11/generation.islam.punk.rock/index.html

Now you tell us: new GM 'Volt' will get 230 MPG.
http://cbs4.com/national/chevy.volt.mileage.2.1123052.html

New Miserable Experience

News from the planet of the apes:

Women duped by diaper wearing Craiglist dude. She changed grown man's diapers and bottle-fed him then became suspicious when the payments were late.
http://cbs4.com/local/janet.schulte.melbourne.2.1121186.html

Someone is killing horses in South Florida--for the meat?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/08/10/horses.slaughtered/index.html

Your dog may be smarter than your kid.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/personal/08/07/smart.dogs/index.html

Skinny Jeans Workout tones so members can button their jeans.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/10/skinny.jeans.workout/index.html

Mommy Bloggers vow to end ethical conflicts.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/10/mommy.bloggers.ethics/index.html

Zombies give life to our economic blues.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/08/06/zombie.film/index.html

Mechanics

I read a DFW interview where he stated he "was a five draft man." When writing, he wrote five drafts before he sent it to his editor, revising and polishing the first two in his handwritten notebooks, then the others typed or processsed so he could get a feel of how they appeared in print. This seems like good advice, for non-certified writers like myself, trying to learn the craft by reading and paying attention to the considerate advice from published authors.

I'm printing the 242 pages of Rooster today, so I can go through line-by-line and edit the work down another twenty pages. I would say this is the fourth draft I've actually completed and printed. The other three were written in third-person POV, and somehow got sidetracked into some pseudo-literary bullshite that bogged the story down. I couldn't decide if I was telling Rooster's story or my own, so I told both, to disasterous effect. Still, making the Top 100 in the Amazon.com Breakout Novel contest was tremendously encouraging, and the scathing review by a rep from Publishers Weekly (posted here at BL and in the archives) was direct and fairly accurate and a much-needed kick in the pants. It's amazing how much I learn from negative feedback, after the indignation wears off and I make an effort to see how someone could say something so awful.

I need draft five completed by summers end. I am very close. And I have to do the same for my short story collection, Believable Lies, and have that done by mid-October. But that's mostly cutting and pasting and re-reading. Having two complete manuscripts in hand for the writers conference at Hutchinson Island in October seems like a good plan. These are the mechanics I'm using these days. Or is it mechanix? You get the idea.

The Biology of Evil

The development of a Biology of Mind as a branch of science has done much to help us understand how learning functions at a subcellular level. Google Biology of Mind and you'll see some of the fantastic work that has been done. There is proof that both short-term and long-term learning are accomplished by physical changes in our neurological infrastructure. The way the neurons bind, the way certain chemicals are blocked or enhanced in movement, the influence of repeated stimulus-response over a long period of time are measurable and are the biological foundations of learning.

It seems to me that we might, in the near future, find a way to discover the biological foundation of evil, or of those behaviors that are destructive not only to an organism but also to its species as well. When you think of Darwinism, you think of the survival of the species through adaptive changes in its biology. Suppose there is a reverse-Darwinism, where the adaptive changes result in destruction and harm? Mathematically, this option has a high probability, when you start considering millions and millions of organisms over extended periods of time.

Suppose an individual with a weirdly developed personality could actually condition himself to further his weirdness. Suppose that by obsessive behavior, enhanced by making videos and computer notes about himself he could actually condition, could actually change his biological nature ever so slightly. and eliminate the self-preservation instinct. He might even eliminate the fundamental instinct common in all living things (undamaged living things), that of preservation of the species, and decide to destroy future possible "mates" as well as himself.

The information coming out about George Sodini encourages this type of speculation. All of a sudden we have repeated incidents of mass killings ending in the suicide of the shooter. Why does the suicide have to kill others first? There is something other than clinical depression at work here. In the case of Sodini, the diary and tapes point to an objectification of self; he becomes an object among other objects rather than a self among others.He watches videos of himself making plans for murder. He reinforces his most negative impulses. And I'll bet over a period of time he influenced his own biology, the same way an addict influences his own biology, to build his object-self, a robot in a man's body, with only a perverted instinct to drive him.

New Opening to Rooster

Where things start and where things end are indefinite points of time, blurred by fading memory, incomplete information, personal prejudice, and denial. I will tell you this happened, then that, then after that this also happened, and make a story that seems to define the series of events I am best known for. The story may or may not agree with what you have been told by other more “objective” reporters. I’ll do my best, at any rate, to tell the truth as I remember it, though there is a certain reluctance on my part. In fact, I am sorely tempted to simply lie, to entertain you in riotous fashion as we examine my dirty life and times, and talk of money and sex and murder. Sitting at my laptop, drinking cold beer in the shade of a patio umbrella, looking back seems so much easier than late at night, alone in the darkness, when what happened will not let me sleep.
Memories are like shallow graves. They’re best approached in the daylight. Because the more you dig, the more gruesome the discovery.

Our American Dream

Lottery Winner Loses $500,000 ticket on way to cash it in.
http://cbs4.com/local/lottery.winner.500.2.1111773.html
"Now, the 69-year-old retiree from Palm Beach county is hoping someone will find it and return it. The Good Samaritan, he said, would receive a cash reward."
This fellow seems completely unfamiliar with human beings. Also, he neglected to sign the ticket. So whoever finds it can cash it, no questions asked. Since the retiree can't prove it's his. Duh. I feel for the guy but God's will seems to be a major force in his life.

Family lives alone in 32 story high rise. And not by choice.
http://cbs4.com/local/family.lives.alone.2.1111989.html

Parishioners pray for help to keep churches open. Maybe a priest will find the lost lottery ticket.
http://cbs4.com/local/catholic.church.churches.2.1111462.html
Wouldn't that be a hot topic in Ethics 101?

Kill Granny campaign alarms seniors. Republicans claim Obama wants to euthanize the elderly.
I predicted this in my story, "Land of Opportunity" at Bewilderingstories.com. Only I called it Early Termination, where you get paid for opting out of life.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32247482/ns/politics/

On With The Show

Had a terrific time last night, with different friends from FNW meeting for drinks and thinks. I'm trying to decide whether to lay out the money for a writer's conference in October sponsored by FIU at Hutchinson's Island, or save and go to Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College in St. Pete in January. Doing both is not out of the question either. Now as my manuscripts are shaping up, I want to meet some live bodies in the publishing/editing/bookselling business, and see what I can make happen. Doing it by mail sucks, the query letters sound stupid and should be written by an agency, an agent to get me an agent, that's how awful it is. But I do good with live folks, and can at least say I tried hard. Not getting published because my query letters suck would be some kind of literary disgrace, demanding I commit seppuku on the steps of the public library. I can live with not getting published because my writing sucks, that's the nature of the business. But to not get published with no one reading my writing would make me wish I had been born a frog.