tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11062547344888193812024-03-05T04:51:44.887-08:00Malkuth Madness Network 5.0Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.comBlogger155125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-44141367475735754682013-10-13T21:27:00.001-07:002013-10-13T21:27:22.511-07:00http://ghastderp.tumblr.com/post/63774390036/leif<br />
<br />
that is allAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-33200802456354097952013-05-25T02:10:00.001-07:002013-05-25T02:10:53.597-07:00My cousin Ffion. Show love.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEtJo8EkdKw&feature=youtube_gdata_player">Watch "WITHOUT YOU - David Guetta cover version performed at TeenStar" on YouTube</a><br>
She's in a uk singing contest.</p>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-232050511291006612012-08-23T17:11:00.001-07:002012-08-23T17:11:50.414-07:00Daily Parade of Horrors<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container zemanta-img" style="float: right; margin-right: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gen_Con_logo.svg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: clear:right;"><img alt="Gen Con" border="0" class="zemanta-img-inserted" height="87" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/44/Gen_Con_logo.svg/300px-Gen_Con_logo.svg.png" style="border: none; font-size: 0.8em;" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption zemanta-img-attribution" style="text-align: center; width: 300px;">Gen Con (Photo credit: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gen_Con_logo.svg" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Ok well the 200 words a day plan tanked entirely. but I am helping a friend with a blog <a href="http://dailyparadeofhorrors.blogspot.com/">dailyparadeofhorrors.blogspot.com</a> but that's as maybe. I had a great GenCon. I had a terrific time and met Alasdair Stuart who has been kind enough to provide guidance in some of my writing here. He is a man of letters himself at <a href="http://alasdairstuart.com/">http://alasdairstuart.com/</a> . So anyway I am re-enrolling in college now trying to get a teaching license. Hopefully that will work out. I am overbooked for next week though. I also have some other projects that may be coming down the pike but they are secret.<br />
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<a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/?px" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=893c9ca9-bf1f-47fc-91e9-041a938960ae" style="border: none; float: right;" /></a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-23476476380274409422012-08-08T13:14:00.001-07:002012-08-08T13:14:28.583-07:00clever moment<div><p>I felt very clever today. someone was nattering out about the masses not understanding and threatening his art. I said, "Its not so much the masses you have to watch out for as the Forces and the first derivatives of Acceleration." (third derivative of position if you care) I like this joke more than is at all appropriate.</p>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-17461747554886293502012-07-31T21:15:00.000-07:002012-07-31T21:15:09.861-07:00Well Otakon was a thing. I have been writing, just not here. I think I need to go back to it. There just have not been enough hours in the day.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-4011180450180016782012-07-19T12:00:00.001-07:002012-07-19T12:36:35.632-07:00Its been seven hours and 15 days<div><p><b>Oh well its been about two weeks or so since I promised I'd write 200 words per day and I have just not all here. I wrote some as responses in other people's blogs I've written reports, short fiction etc. just not all here. That being said though it sounds like a bit of a cop out. So here's for making up for list verbiage. I'm going to try for 1600 words here and now. </b><br>
<b>Zen dog dreams of a medium sized bone. Adam Long</b><br>
<b>Exsanguinate</b><br>
<b>Another renter had come and gone. This one was some kind of hospital worker. The courts had helped and hindered, they said I was entitled to eight month's rent out of him but that finding him was my own hangup. His baby momma took my nice carpets and bed. she left a ratty sleep sofa, a pile of old </b><b>crts</b><b> and several rooms full of medical detritus. </b><br>
<b>I had a cop come with me to look through the stuff to make sure it wasn't drug paraphernalia. It wasn't, although the piles of needles, lancets, tubing and bandages were certainly potential </b><b>biohazzards</b><b>. I walked the block to the hospital to ask for a sharps box and some related equipment and they were quite helpful. On y own I decided to use a pair of red plastic salad tongs to pick up the various objects and put them in the sharps box, I also wore gloves, mask and goggles. Its not paranoia just preparedness. I wandered, swaddled in protective equipment through the house. After a day of cleaning an old colonial home in hundred degree heat while wearing  such things I was soaked through. I spent the last of my energy to get to the beach, float in the ocean and get a sandwich on the boardwalk. </b><br>
<b>On the drive home the cars ahead of me contained hurried tourists and small grey stones tapped on the car window, kicked up by their tires. That same irregular staccato tapping was repeated at night as I slept. The heat broke and the rain on the air conditioner made gentle taps through the night that even invaded my dreams as though I were haunted by the ghost of Gregory Hines.</b><br>
<b>The next day was cooler in the morning and a surprising amount of cleaning was done but by noon the remnants of the rain had ceased to cool and merely turned the air into a swampy mess. I took a nap in the newly cleaned kitchen, the compressor from the fridge making the occasional tap. When I awoke I found that with well rested clear eyes I could see medical waste I had missed the night before. bits of needle and tube strewn about with gauze. I cleaned long into the cool night and in the end took pictures to attract future renters. A fruitful day demanded a reward, so a wander to King's and some Pineapple ice cream later, my sleep was a blissful one. </b><br>
<b>The dreams that night involved being chased by a rabid Shirley Temple as she sang about the good ship lollipop and attempted to rend me limb from limb with her Medusa-like curls, but that's what I get for eating dairy before bed. I do not regret my gustatory decisions.</b><br>
<b>I awoke and set about preparing the house to be viewed, purchasing cookie dough, getting forms and pencils etc. when I noticed a pile of needles, tubes and gauze I had apparently missed. It was small and after cleaning I had to see to a dripping faucet on the second floor, the drip of the water against the basin was made audible by the newly earned and hard won stillness of the house. I slept this night in the rental property to get a feel for it once again, as potential renters would surely ask about the climate control or any other potential issues with the house. When I awoke I went to the kitchen and went through the motions of a breakfast. and I noticed, in the corner an arrangement of needles, tubes and gauze. I quickly flipped though my phone to the pictures I had taken of the very same corner not long before. It had been spotless. I quickly looked around the area to see if it could have fallen off any shelves or out of any holes in the wainscoting or vents or other reasonable places. Then quickly discarded the idea that my house was beset by diabetic Ninja with Alzheimer's. I again heard the tapping. this tie I moved the fridge. I thought I saw a small gleaming ball bearing roll beneath the counter, making arrhythmic tapping noises all the way. Effort with flashlight and tongs revealed a small and improbable creature. Eight hollow needle legs, like hypodermics joined with bits of tubing to a bulbous translucent rubber body. It attacked the tongs with fangs that jabbed like lancets and attempted to wrap them in strands of silken gauze. I placed the creature in a steel thermos. eventually the tapping stopped and it fell apart into a pile of medical debris. I could still faintly hear the tapping. The fridge was unplugged, the sky was clear of rain, and Gregory Hines had been dead for years. I followed the sound to the floorboards and decided to instead go around to the door that leads beneath the house. </b><br>
<b>Normally this would be called a crawlspace but the erosion and the age of the house has turned it into an unofficial cellar where a man can stand if he's under 6'5".  The floors and walls are made of the same sandy soil that makes up the whole coastal town and deep strong beams are sunk into the ground. From time to time communities of cats must be discouraged from holding whatever dark congregations they arrange through the use of traps, chemicals or simply finding and filling in the holes they make. There hadn't been a problem with the local feral felines in nearly a year, perhaps this should have been my first suspicion as I stepped upon the sand and heard a muffled crunch. Kicking the uneven sand revealed the skeleton of a cat, wrapped in its fur. devoid of flesh or fluid and preserved in gauze and the cool dry air beneath the house. I thought briefly of Egypt and their mummified crypt guardians and was about to leave when I saw it, a mound the size of a man. his face smoothed over, wrapped in threads of gauze and silk. Unlike the protagonist of many a horror movie I ran then and there. I knew I could not hear the tapping of the needle spiders on sand and staying home was not an option. </b><br>
<b>I now knew the location of my erstwhile renter and will be contacting the local police with this information. I will no longer be seeking monetary redress for his late rent. I have however sent you this letter. As a customer of your insurance company I have paid quite an exorbitant amount for your policy regarding loss property value or income due to vermin and other animals after the feral cat incidents over the past few years. I wish for you to please rid my house of this </b><b>cryptozoological</b><b> horror post haste as  I have potential renters coming in and I do not wish to have them exsanguin</b>ated.<br>
Yours,<br>
B. Walker <br>
  </p>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-42076102724065717532012-07-12T12:16:00.001-07:002012-07-13T16:53:44.867-07:00Like a circle, like a spiral<div>
So plot then, this might be a cop out post but compare <a href="http://m.wired.com/magazine/2011/09/mf_harmon/">this</a><br />
with <a href="http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/hulk-explains-why-we-should-stop-it-with-the-hero-journey-shit/">this</a><br />
with <a href="http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/episode-07-pacing">this</a>, and this<br />
and you get <a href="http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-heros-journey-part-1">this</a>, <a href="http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-heros-journey-part-2">this</a>, and<br />
This:<br />
So the windmills of my mind are grinding slowly but they are grinding exceedingly small. What I do apparently is to writing as farming is to cooking. Mitch Hedberg has a good bit about it. Something that the Extra Credits guys and the Hulk missed about designing narrative for games is that for games you should not be designing narratives. You should be designing the tools you use to make narratives. The best example of this that I have found lies in third edition dungeons and dragons. (or 3.5 or pathfinder, to a lesser extent fourth but its still there at all). <br />
Your potential choices at the beginning of a game are infinite. you're first level and you can go anywhere and there's not going to be much difference between you and the various ncps in capacity and most of the pcs can basically do each other's jobs, albeit badly. Most of what you do is a grind or a bit of fine point accounting and deciding the minutia of day to day life. Nothing tells you you have to leave home but over time if you have built an area that works the experience mechanic is such that you will rapidly challenge, then defeat then master anything in your starting comfortable area. It turns out, at this time you have received some sort of special abilities that have speciated and separated you from your partymates and no one would mistake you for anything but the most stalwart of npc classes. Even if you stay in your home area physically the scope of the effects of your actions move beyond the small area in which you start and you begin affecting the course of towns. As this continues, you get to the real meat grinder, death comes easily and often but resurrection is possible and expensive. Successful parties develop problem solving strategies, hone their skills in and out of character to maximise for the ability to work their will in the world. Then you hit the next threshold from 15 to 20 where death has no sting and you are, not at all metaphorically, the master of many worlds. Your ability to go to or pull resources from other planes really comes into its own, you can consult gods without much trouble and you have either reconciled with the local power structure or you are the local power structure wherever you may be. Once again all of this is implicit in the mechanics. It doesn't matter if you're running ballroom dancing contests or Conan rip offs or Tolkein rip offs. If you are using d20 or its descendants and their core rules mechanics this is what will happen. s for the parts where players decide t then go home or do other things afterward, who can say? What does happen, however is the power curve flattens, the fantastic becomes mundane and the players, as a rule, stop questing because wherever they are is irrelevant, they are home wherever they want to be and most of what you do is a grind or a bit of fine point accounting and deciding the minutia of day to day life. So at least as far as the mechanics are concerned a journey home or something like it has been achieved. <br />
Yahtzee, Portnow. etc all talk about building story into the mechanics but there is precious little about how that is done. I am not sure if I can manage it but I will try over the next few weeks. It basically goes something like this. Watch the real world and listen to the stories and narratives people put around real world events when they happen. watch movies yourself then listen to other people when they describe movies. The Hulk has a good bit about concrete details somewhere, I forget the concrete details. <br />
I will need to tighten this up later, but step two goes something like this, after getting a good feel for how people will report an event after the fact, take a good look at mechanics, look at what they mean, try playing games re-fluffed. For example call the cleave feat something else like, very good follow through or battle pirouette. Something that helped me was studying a little bit of real world physics and then physically doing high school type kinematic experiments. then trying to picture what would happen in the game world if the game rules replaced the standard force equations. Try playing your game with all of the contextual speech removed, like having fireball called power 3 and enervate called power 4, dwarf as race 1, halfling as race 2 and removing any words that don't have a game effect like dwarves being shorter than humans, effectively they are not. Just play through a session or two with this disconnect. See what stories you end up making about the noble and valiant 2s vs the brawny and brutish 1s. these are the stories your mechanics build. If they don't match up with your fluff, you need to change the mechanics more or re-fluff your system.<br />
If you do this sort of thing for long enough you will get a feel for which mechanics map to which narrative devices under which circumstances and which ones the players will pick up and use. Now you know what to include or keep out of your game based on the kind of experience you want the player to have. To once again put out the food metaphor, game design is like Iron chef, you now know what ingredients to prepare and leave out so that your players (who are the actual cooks) can make a worthy meal you will all share. You are the chairman, once you have set the kitchen in motion all you can or should do is ask how they are doing and what they plan. If you have set up the kitchens right, not only will your players surprise you every time but their surprised won't derail or destroy the game, you will reach a sublime mix of emergence and predictability, because no matter how good a storyteller you are you are likely not as good as reality for coming up with interesting twists.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-84295067437674585112012-07-11T18:26:00.001-07:002012-07-12T14:44:08.759-07:00In the quest of 200 words<div>
My tablet has died and I've only had it a week. I am going to try to get a spare charger and see if that solves the problem. In the meantime this is posted from my new smartphone. I have had an idea for a jeepform. I do wonder though. Apparently to be a jeepform you must be initiated in their ancient secrets by anotheer jeepformer and I do not know if playing jeeps with Lizzie Stark counts.<br />
The basic structure of the game is six people are gathered at the funeral of the seventh. It has three acts. Act 1 the eulogy, act 2 burial, act 3 one year later. The basic mechanic is interwoven with a game of truth, dare, double dare, torture, kiss, or promise. A game all the characters played together in their youth. <br />
Act 1 the characters only have access to truth, dare and double dare. Act 2 they only have access to torture, kiss and promise. Any character can, once in the game call for a flashback between 2 other characters, not themselves, in which the calling player says character A dared character B to __________. Then A and B play the scene In act three there are no more flashbacks and everyone's backstory has been hashed out. Now everyone has time together playing ten minutes of the rest of the funeral, then a one year later reunion, then a soliloquy saying how things have gone after ten years.<br />
Except for writing the backstories I think this is a jeep.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-54345132942928518502012-07-10T12:54:00.001-07:002012-07-10T12:54:04.748-07:00Run as fast as you can just to keep Still<div><p>I managed my way through the 1200 words in fits and starts but it took 2 days so I owe another 200. this is going to really kill next week when I have to do 300 per day. So I have been having an interesting conversation with a scientist who says that one of the best ways to get reliable metadata about publishing and writing is to engage in fanfiction. Apparently unlike traditional authorship methods fanfiction has reliable metrics of quality, a large base of readers who are willing and able to comment and a pretty fast turnaround time for editing. This having been said it is still fanfiction and having the madness of the crowd determine your style may or may not be the same as having a room full of out of touch editors do it. He does have some interesting metrics about wuality of stories as they vary with size. he uses views upvotes downvotes etc to make a complex formula replicated here. http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/44123 . apparently 2000-8000 words is the sour spot for terrible stories. More than 8k and you see an increase in quality, also less than 1k and you see a steady climb. So I am thinking I'll keep increasing my daily output of basically barfing on the page all this week. Then increase and increase and increase until I can reasonably hit 1000 per day then stop and work on polish and editing and polish and editing. It's probably not a terrible plan.</p>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-85699850353397282682012-07-10T12:38:00.001-07:002012-07-10T12:38:46.266-07:00Catching up part 2<div><p>Thursday morning was spent swimming, then there were a pair of Pickup Jeepform games. Well, only one of them, Doubt was a proper Jeepform  The other game was a Freeform put together by some people who run Jeepforms called Let The World Burn. It's a lot of fun. For those who don't know what a Jeepform is, it is the antithesis of ethical gaming within the social contract, as a matter of fact it is as far from being a larp while using the same tools as being a sailor is from being a mountaineer. Both careers involve heavy use of the use rope skill and care about weather, that is about it. Although, fun fact something I found out about Jeepforms and the use rope skill... never mind. In a normal Larp the separation between character and self is essential to sustain a game world and the suspension of disbelief, not only that but to  properly make a sustainable environment people have to have actions in character not affect or be strongly affected by actions out of character. Jeepforms encourage a thing called Bleed. Bleed is when you take context, emotion and out of character desires and motivations and impose them on your character in order to use the character to explore those things in a consequence light environment. Jeeps are specifically crafted to maximise Bleed. Freeforms of the same school allow Bleed and function when players are bleeding  but it is not expressly necessary for the game to function and while the structure of the game allows it, it does not specifically try to induce it. Due to the personal nature of the Jeepform experience I will not be telling anyone how it went especially not in an open forum like this one.<br>
Thursday evening we all had empanadas and discussed making a squirt gun based larp  called Urban Island in which you save poor unfortunates from heatstroke. You start with a sponge and work your way to fire hose. It still has some teething troubles.<br>
Friday morning, More swimming followed by the Iron GM competition. The ingredients were Phasm, Potion factory, and Payback. I came in third, got some cool prizes. If you want to see more about it it was totally televised on the net and for all I know on espn 8 'the ocho' The winner was one of the guys from Hitmouse, an Indie RPG studio that I love and respect. I'll be glad to see him at Gen Con. Then the EOE team played in Live action space marine. It was cool. It was a lot of fun, the props were excellent, they had randomizers built into nifty guns, provided costumes for everyone, the sets were great and the game was terrific . There were a few teething troubles as this was the first time the game had been played. Also it emphasized to me just how much of the base Warhammer mechanics are luck and rely on massive troop numbers to have strategy have any meaning by letting the law of averages play out.  Then drinking, then sleep. </p>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-33807637433910103802012-07-09T08:09:00.001-07:002012-07-09T09:23:38.498-07:00So much for habit forming<div><p><p>The convention i have recently attended, dexcon, kicked all of the ass. The only problem was an overwhelming lack of internet. So i have not written my 200 words since Wednesday. As i write this it is Monday. This means 1200 words today. And since my phone my desktop and my laptop are all recovering, this is coming to you from an unfamiliar tablet. I am significantly discomfited by the missing click and press of keys as I type. But now is the time to learn the new way of doing things. I has an oddly similar moment reversed yesterday. When trying to get some files from someone we used my kindle as it was the only device with a sufficiently robust connection. For several minutes my friend poked at the screen and grunted in nearly simian frustration. "It`s not working." He had grown to accept as standard that any piece of technology would have a touchscreen and any icon would be responsive to his will. The small keyboard and navigational pad had completely passed him by as tools. He presumed them to be vestigial attachments like the ones on my smartphone. After a few moments of shuffling a cursor around the skills of a lifetime of window icon mouse and pointer returned and it all worked out in the end. This entire enterprise shocked me. This was a man who had published with Linotype&#160; on dead trees. How quickly the habits of years have melted away before this new interface. Right now i am reduced to a variant of hunt and peck, but as i type blue streaks follow my fingers when i do not lift them quickly enough tempting me to try this new typing as calligraphy method. I don't think it will work out well. My vocabulary does not lend itself to the method. In fact i used it to try to type the previous sentence and it took more than a dozen tries to swipe the word vocabulary. In the end i had to type it, blue streaks mocking me all the while. </p><br>
<p>Sadly, I can not remember the details of the entire convention. Some was lost and never put in long term memory. Some was&#160; erased by tiredness, some by alcohol and some by promises of secrecy. On the whole this may be better than having written my thoughts of the moment as many would have been uncharitable before i later received context. Then again some things that seemed perfectly innocent became more sinister with time. Enough dithering, here was my convention.</p><br>
<p>Wednesday. We split into two teams. Jax, Alex and I on team A, Aisling, Jocy, Susan, and Tasker on team B. Team A arrived at 3 am on site so we could help with setup at 8, and set up we did. Dexcon, unlike most conventions I have seen keeps many careful metrics of who exactly does what to whom, where and when. Their methods of tracking guest behavior, likes, dislikes and trends are more professionally and competently recorded and assembled than many sociological experiments i have seen. Like the realm of the sciences, this takes a lot of prep sign in sheets, big boards with schedules and descriptions, rules and warnings, rewards and puzzles all must be placed just so and in tim and with a workforce that is often untrained and entirely volunteer. Our team integrated easily and quickly into this hive of activity and in the afternoon was joined by team B. They too took to the organisation like a fish to tartar sauce. Not necessarily willingly but very well. In the evening we attended opening ceremonies. As it turns out, they had a spotlight and no light tech. Alex is an excellent light tech and during the ceremonies even got to engage in some tech humor with the comedians. This led to some later comic misunderstandings, but more on that later.</p>
</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-51305775135414521902012-07-02T20:54:00.001-07:002012-07-02T20:54:11.442-07:00Turnaround timeWell now that I've been home, spent a day at work its time to pack again for another con. Dexcon this time. It's a lot of fun, I get to run the same pony nonsense as I did in Bronycon but also the new Champions piece and good old Changeling. God willing and all his little angels nothing important will explode, be damaged or be stolen by kleptomaniacs in strollers. There's a story behind that but not a good one. I've been doing my best to keep up correspondence with the various Californians I've met and rationalists and its been largely hit or miss, but its silly season for them too. I think I'll be doing more long form prose in another week or so when I have more than a few seconds to breathe. On the plus side, new Terry Pratchett "The Long Earth". Am I the only person who when they order Amazon things to themselves always fill out the gift card with a note to myself so I can remember the context under which I ordered the object? Or maybe just a reminder because the post will come later. I bought a book for myself with some surplus I had and wrote to myself on the book. "I hope you had a good date. If you have not made the time for her, do that now." knowing that I would be mad superbusy and not take the time to really care for my partner. So we went out today, her favorite restaurant. It was a calm moment in the eye of the hurricane and worthwhile. Interesting part is I almost never remember writing the note, but notes delivered with a gift have greater impact. The rationalists call this "doing something to affect your future self." Me I am not certain the notes are coming from my past self as I only have Amazon's word for it, but whoever is sending them the advice is good. I'm pretty sure past me is the same shortsighted jerk that present me but hey. Have kept up the good work! (time travel tense is weird)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-78550468157485950232012-07-01T21:15:00.001-07:002012-07-12T21:10:21.169-07:00Watashi Wa Nezumi Da<div>
So, I'm home again after Bronycon and I might have stopped in the most American place in the world. I passed through a crowd of Chinese nationals buying electronics to send home, past a booth where a man was selling illegal fourth of July fireworks, and into a Walmart that had a McDonald's inside. This was the first time I had seen such a thing. All of the ones near me have Little Caesar's. I was looking for the bathroom and the first three people I saw, blue clad workers, spoke no English. In fractured Spanish I found out where the potty was and became like many visitors in this strange land. I showed up, commented on the decor, took a giant dump and left. Pausing only to use some of their resources. Unlike many visitors to this American metaphor, I stopped and was briefly grateful to each person who had helped me on my way. I then promptly bought the most overpriced thing I could find (A fountain Coke) out of a feeling of obligation to the people whose wherewithal I had used for my own personal enrichment. We drove home. Now the reason for the post title is I have made it home to my bedroom and people have compared my room to a rat's nest many a time. It's a large wodge of blankets and pillows haphazardly mixed with stuffed animals and clothes. But recently I have accidentally acquired a desktop so it is now also overrun with thick surge protector cables that criss cross the environment, lacing between fans, computer parts, portable devices in mid charge and old crt's. The cables are kept away form the cloth because of fire safety and all. All and all I feel most comfortable here with the hum of the wires and the fan. There's an rpg I'm playing where several of the npcs have mistaken me for one of the prolific species of that world, rats that take human form. They don't mean that in a bad way. They're good folk, the Nezu, and pillars of the community. But I think I see their point. </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-85684784839263056192012-06-30T19:08:00.001-07:002012-06-30T19:08:04.392-07:00exercise in frustrationwell this is an exercise in frustration. i am writing this post from the back of an undersized sedan heading for seacaucus new jersey. i am writing it on my new phone, largely to see if i can. with the exception of the shift key not functioning and a few other quirks it seems to be going ok. however, i can not capitalize, use punctuation besides , and ? and. nor can i make numbers or contractions. it is interesting. i feel like e.e. cummings. so i am in a small and worrn car with three lovely women heading to bronycon in hopes of bringing larp to bronies. I am now writing this post on my new asus trasformer. The real pity is I can not for the lifeof me make anything copy to clipboard and then paste back out elsewhere. I am not sure If I will ever make this work. I can't type properly even using this dock. If anyone out there knows how to properly make this thing work I'd love to know.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-19171047055758776592012-06-28T21:07:00.000-07:002012-06-28T21:07:02.436-07:00Two Hundred Words A dayAs part of my rationality training (lesswrong.com) I am attempting to write 200 words per day. I picked this number since it was approximately the length of the features I used to write for radio and I figured I'd be able to handle 200 words per day even if I was at a convention from my kindle or something else. Sometimes I might post old writings but they don't count unless 200 new words have been added to the text. Well as I have burned up 83 of those words being meta I suppose I ought to have something of substance in this last bit. The thing I learned about in the Minicamp that I retained best is timeless thinking. <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/r1/timeless_control/">http://lesswrong.com/lw/r1/timeless_control/</a> The understanding is not far from the mode I use when writing a book or working on a project. The rule is if I am not doing it I am not going to do it so do it now. ON a related note, every time I have explained Timeless thinking I have gone and flossed. Its complicated and weird but more on that if you want to know. Tomorrow we do mages most likely.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-68247068980757608762012-04-04T12:58:00.002-07:002012-04-04T13:01:24.295-07:00I could write a book<div><span>So I did.</span></div><span><a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1832603818/champions-live-action">http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1832603818/champions-live-action</a></span><div><span><br /></span></div><div><span>So here's my brother talking about similar things.</span></div><div><span><br /></span></div><div><span><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/yhp4CEd3n5w" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></span></div><div><span><br /></span></div><div><span>His book is about love and things. <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1832603818/champions-live-action">Mine is about superheroes. </a></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-29226839739998143402011-05-28T08:14:00.000-07:002011-05-28T08:20:02.295-07:00Participation (version 2)I didn't particularly want to write in the style of "What I learned in this class is" so I used Participation to really recap and cover what we learned in the class about interactivity. As it appears that was a bit too abstract. Here's an explicit summary. In class I learned that in a class bout participation it is possible, nay easy to participate too much. I learned that one voice often overshadows many in the case of Charlie Sheen and the democratizable idea of universal participation still has a lot of bugs. I learned that the difficulty in any system where we have a great deal of signal is not finding information but in sorting it form noise. I learned that the people in the Library are very helpful and understanding about the use of the media rooms. I'm not sure what else to say that wasn't in my previous (and I thought last) blog post. so I leave you this parting thought.<br /><br />http://www.calamitiesofnature.com/archive/?c=526Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-25503553949215357952011-04-26T16:36:00.000-07:002011-04-26T17:20:37.223-07:00Wiki Govt: Participation<span class="zemanta-img separator" style="clear: right;"><a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Logical_connectives_Hasse_diagram.svg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; display: block; float: right; clear: right;"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Logical_connectives_Hasse_diagram.svg/300px-Logical_connectives_Hasse_diagram.svg.png" alt="Bertrand Russell's views on philosophy" style="font-size: 0.8em; border: medium none;" height="424" width="300" /></a><span class="zemanta-img-attribution" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; clear: both; float: right; width: 300px;">Image via <a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Logical_connectives_Hasse_diagram.svg">Wikipedia</a></span></span>Sorry to post all of these at once they were created much earlier in <a class="zem_slink" href="http://docs.google.com" title="Google Docs" rel="homepage">Google docs</a> and I thought they would automatically post to my blog the way the rules update posts did. turns out no.<br /><br />Anyway, the book seems to take <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom" title="Axiom" rel="wikipedia">axiomatically</a> that increased participation is a worthy goal. By and large it is correct, to enough eyes all bugs are transparent. But there is the problem of self selecting <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network" title="Social network" rel="wikipedia">social networks</a> the book mentioned in that often the people who gain the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital" title="Social capital" rel="wikipedia">social capital</a> are neither the wisest nor the most skilled bu the loudest, and volume is no substitute for being right. Now this is not to say that this is not the case currently but often with a smaller volume of information teasing out what is propaganda vs what is useful credential is at least possible. An incrfease in volume of data does make organizing the entire endeavor much more difficult. Some things cannot afford to be measured by reddit-like thumbs up and down as sometimes esoteric ideas are quite unpopular. That having been said any suggestions made by such a body would presumably go through less time in lobbying and other craziness because everyone already agrees with whatever the decision is. Efficiency is a worthy thing and not to be disparaged.<br /> <div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=73393364-cbf0-4f2c-a7a1-09c86512b00e" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a><span class="zem-script more-related pretty-attribution"><script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.zemanta.com/readside/loader.js" defer="defer"></script></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-58103220692131784652011-04-26T16:15:00.000-07:002011-04-26T16:34:23.476-07:00Wiki Governance :East Coast Code<span class="zemanta-img separator" style="clear: right;"><a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jdsource.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; display: block; float: right; clear: right;"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Jdsource.jpg" alt="Screenshot of wwwwwwwww.jodi.org/ source code ..." style="font-size: 0.8em; border: medium none;" height="1324" width="167" /></a><span class="zemanta-img-attribution" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; clear: both; float: right; width: 167px;">Image via <a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jdsource.jpg">Wikipedia</a></span></span>Why shouldn't policymakers design the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code" title="Source code" rel="wikipedia">computer code</a> and device parameters to more closely hew to the desired <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law" title="Law" rel="wikipedia">legal</a> outcome? Because the desired legal outcome is created by committee and the law is not obliged to work only to make people feel like they've done something. Bad <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law" title="Law" rel="wikipedia">laws</a> are passed constantly and by and large if the law is too ludicrous or unrealistic people merely won't enforce it or will enforce it selectively and pretty much forget over time. <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_poor_design" title="Argument from poor design" rel="wikipedia">Bad design</a> is eternal, the physical world does not simply ignore foolish or impossible design decisions consequence happens and usually in a devastating manner. An engine or device that clings to what is legal will often not do what is practical, especially as what is legal can be fluid throughout the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design" title="Design" rel="wikipedia">design process</a>. We currently have cars that will not start until a <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathalyzer" title="Breathalyzer" rel="wikipedia">breathalyzer</a> is used on the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steering_column" title="Steering column" rel="wikipedia">steering column</a> and that is all well and good. What if a similar device was made slightly earlier, say when in some counties women were not allowed to drive without a man present, or devices that keep a car from exceeding the speed limit under any circumstance. These may be silly but are unjust and unsafe. One of the founding ideals of the law is the idea that sometimes the law is wrong and human judgment should be used. Technology cannot apply such judgment. nor in many cases should it try. In the Time of <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.last.fm/music/Gilbert%2B%2526%2BSullivan" title="Gilbert & Sullivan" rel="lastfm">Gilbert and Sullivan</a> some unscrupulous people transmitted their works by telephone and telegraph across the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=0.0,-30.0&spn=0.1,0.1&q=0.0,-30.0%20%28Atlantic%20Ocean%29&t=h" title="Atlantic Ocean" rel="geolocation">Atlantic</a> to <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.lonelyplanet.com/usa" title="USA" rel="lonelyplanet">America</a> so that actors could perform bootleg operettas. If the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy" title="Policy" rel="wikipedia">policy makers</a> of the time decided that such illegalities were important and had a hand in designing the phones, would we even have he clear signals we take for granted today? Think of what a <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press" title="Printing press" rel="wikipedia">printing press</a> that values the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_ordinance" title="Local ordinance" rel="wikipedia">local ordinance</a> for obscenity or property over clarity of copy. Would we even have modern faith as we understand it if the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic" title="Catholic" rel="wikipedia">Church</a> policy makers chained the press to their requirements instead of those of the people? Technological growth is unfortunately amoral, sometimes our reach exceeds our grasp and the capacities science gives us are ones we are not mature enough to use well, but far more often this increase in capacity is the spark that topples existing injustice simply by making control of the new capacities too expensive to police. I don't want my equipment designed by people who care about what's legal I want it designed by people who care about making good equipment. I have my own moral faculties.<br /> <div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=03c48a54-eff1-4e11-a6a8-40a581ac5f95" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a><span class="zem-script more-related pretty-attribution"><script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.zemanta.com/readside/loader.js" defer="defer"></script></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-84679823311260480832011-04-26T16:02:00.000-07:002011-04-26T16:14:53.253-07:00Wiki Government: Patent Leader<span class="zemanta-img separator" style="clear: right;"><a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tournure1873.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; display: block; float: right; clear: right;"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/Tournure1873.png/300px-Tournure1873.png" alt="Tournure1873" style="font-size: 0.8em; border: medium none;" height="263" width="300" /></a><span class="zemanta-img-attribution" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; clear: both; float: right; width: 300px;">Image via <a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tournure1873.png">Wikipedia</a></span></span>Fundamental problem of current <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent" title="Patent" rel="wikipedia">patent law</a>, too many things are patented and people have been offering <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutually_exclusive_events" title="Mutually exclusive events" rel="wikipedia">mutually exclusive</a> patents to multiple people for the same device or concept. The suggestion of the book is that some sort of automagic search system compares patents to see who has what. Sounds like a good idea and steps in this direction are being taken so perhaps all is well. There is a problem, <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_language_processing" title="Natural language processing" rel="wikipedia">natural language processing</a>. In order for patents to be acessible to the common man and indeed comprehensible at all patents in regular everyday lanuage must eb considered allowable. However, language is fluid and can describe a phenomenon or device in hundred's of ways. A Binary Metallic <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_making" title="Decision making" rel="wikipedia">Decision Making</a> Device is just a complicated way of saying, flip a coin. The taxonomy of ideas that must be involved for a truly comprehensive and comprehensible patent system may well be impossible. Not to say it isn't worth trying but any time parsing a truly stupendous amount (terabytes if you include pictures, text etc.) of data in next to no time is the easy part of your task you have quite the difficult task. I am not certain the optimism of the book is warranted nor am I sure that technology is the appropriate solution. Perhaps a more precise measure of language in encoding the patents in the first place would be worthwhile. Natural language patents could be accepted but then a summary or abstract version would be encoded by a patent worker and then entered into the system. Unfortunately this solution would be wickedly expensive and time consuming but it is hard to imagine a system which isn't.<br /><br /> <div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=ba51e721-8a69-46d7-bda2-2eb265215be9" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a><span class="zem-script more-related pretty-attribution"><script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.zemanta.com/readside/loader.js" defer="defer"></script></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-32766077045299182602011-02-21T18:49:00.001-08:002011-02-21T18:54:31.364-08:00The Zero-eth useful site on the internet<span class="zemanta-img separator" style="clear: right;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diving_knife.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; display: block; float: right; clear: right;"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/47/Diving_knife.JPG/300px-Diving_knife.JPG" alt="A diver's knife from three bolt equipment" style="font-size: 0.8em; border: medium none;" height="225" width="300" /></a><span class="zemanta-img-attribution" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; clear: both; float: right; width: 300px;">Image via <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diving_knife.JPG">Wikipedia</a></span></span>That's not a crap filter <a href="http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes">THIS</a> is a crapfilter<br /> <div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=6205d48a-8ff1-4dd4-a097-e8e676907319" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-29983800738550045812011-02-14T17:16:00.000-08:002011-02-14T17:35:31.800-08:00User InterfaceIf you have Ice Cream I will give it to you,<br />If you have no Ice Cream I will take it from you,<br />This is an Ice cream Koan.<br /><br />What is the difference between a Walke Talkie and a Radio? Some say the Radio is crippled since the same hardware could be used to send as receive, just as any speaker can be used as a <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microphone" title="Microphone" rel="wikipedia">microphone</a> and every microphone a speaker, but no one does that. The Radio is no more a crippled Walkie Talkie than a Walkie Talkie is an insufficiently broad band <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio" title="Radio" rel="wikipedia">radio</a>. Each of them are used differently and each of them uses things differently. The Walkie Talkie uses the airwaves, sends things upon the waves and out into the world. Shakes the aether and makes invisible marks in the sky. The Walkie Talkie Uses the airwaves, and in turn the airwaves shake the speaker and command the listening part of the Walkie Talkie. It uses and is used in return. The Radio does NOT use the airwaves, it is used BY the airwaves. The Radio does not, even in a small way shake the sky, the sky shakes the radio and the electronics turn the waves into sound. Similarly I rarely use twitter. I often read twitter and twitter informs my interactions and tells me what my friends are doing. The aether is folded into brilliant packet origami and sent to me, shakes the computer and moves my eyes, my mind my hands. in this twitter is using me. Sometimes, rarely, I will use twitter. I want to tell the world what I am doing or where a meeting will occur or promote something and my mind fires my hands type and the aether flows from me into the world. Aggregate sites, Filters, Readers, etc. you use the agregator, and twitter also uses the aggregator but you are not using the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://twitter.com/" title="Twitter" rel="homepage">Twitter</a>, you are listening actively and atttentively to be sure, filtering your perceptions. Like the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_broadcasting" title="FM broadcasting" rel="wikipedia">FM radio</a> you filter out which waves you wish to shake your speakers but you are not using the airwaves. I have a plug in called <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Zemanta" rel="homepage">Zemanta</a> it helps me use blogger. Me using <a class="zem_slink" href="http://blogger.com/" title="Blogger" rel="homepage">Blogger</a> not blogger using me. It seeks out pictures, links and content so that when I wish to speak to the world it will be a little bit shiner, a little brighter and a little better connected. I have another plug in, it is called DDN. DDN uses my blog. It uses my blog, I have no way of programming it, of telling it anything or anything other than relaying its choice of news. It uses my blog and I am glad to give it the space to use my blog as it is cute and doesn't take up much space. Remember the words of Joss Whedon "I wear the cheese, the cheese does not wear me."<br /><div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=4670d4ee-dfed-4c3c-977e-b8ff1c98d456" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a><span class="zem-script more-related pretty-attribution"><script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.zemanta.com/readside/loader.js" defer="defer"></script></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-18623159238378243762011-02-07T17:13:00.000-08:002011-02-07T17:33:46.868-08:00Hello UAPPeople<span class="zemanta-img separator" style="clear: right;"><a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PD_with_outside_option.svg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; display: block; float: right; clear: right;"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/23/PD_with_outside_option.svg/214px-PD_with_outside_option.svg.png" alt="A prisoner's dilemma with an outside option fo..." style="font-size: 0.8em; border: medium none;" width="214" height="97" /></a><span class="zemanta-img-attribution" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; clear: both; float: right; width: 214px;">Image via <a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PD_with_outside_option.svg">Wikipedia</a></span></span>Well this is my own collection of political musings, stale jokes, crackpot theories, writing, <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necromancy" title="Necromancy" rel="wikipedia">necromancy</a> and music. Also <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory" title="Game theory" rel="wikipedia">game theory</a>. I started this blog because it was mandatory for a Convergence Journalism project. Kept it because it was useful for <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_development" title="Game development" rel="wikipedia">game development</a>. Resurrected it to contact family and Its still here because the web forgets nothing. So now its here for an I.T. Class. Hello IT Class! you get to read my stories about rpgs and strippers, yay! or you can just keep it to che clean class topics. please watch the camptown ticker on your top right to get news of the day stuck in your head to a catchy tune. The Diagram above is of the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma" title="Prisoner's dilemma" rel="wikipedia">Prisoner's Dilemma</a>. This has nothing to do with how I may feel about a three hour lecture, nothing at all, really. I know I'm supposed to be careful what I write but I've already written this and had it posted, commented on, re-blogged, viewed, reviewed and sometimes even gotten a penny or two of ad revenue so I'm not sure what sort of tone I'm supposed to project. I think that's the biggest 'challenge' besides remembering the password to this old thing. given the various samples I was told that one was called the SUAPP underground while others are comment-less government mouthpieces. I insist there is a difference in tone between <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0860219/" title="Hunter S. Thompson" rel="imdb">Hunter S. Thompson</a> and a BBC newsreader. The trouble is I have no idea where in that continuum to stake my claim.<br /> <div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=5ca3c223-cd57-4e77-bb54-9a159ad89497" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a><span class="zem-script more-related pretty-attribution"><script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.zemanta.com/readside/loader.js" defer="defer"></script></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-1184464789908650542010-11-04T17:26:00.000-07:002010-11-04T19:10:29.434-07:00Pater Familia: Tales of Dukinfield: YanksThe Yanks are Coming!<br /><br />I saw them arrive. The Americans came into the village in a quiet procession of just three cars, yet stretching the length of the block. The cars didn’t sound like cars; In fact, they didn’t so much make a noise as suggest it; a hint of a rumble from the hood and tailpipe, overlaid with a shushing of tires. In length, they were absurd, yet impressive; in width, they took up more than half the street. Not with arrogance, but with a confident assurance that Dukinfield would adjust to them and not the other way round. For the first few days, we thought maybe they could fly, with their enormous tailfins and rear lights that could well be retro rocket thrusters; their backs lit up like Blackpool illuminations, all the way across the car; and their flashing lights for turn signals, instead of the little amber arm that sticks out from normal cars.<br /><br />They set up their heavy equipment on Platt Street, opposite Grandma’s pen, between the railway sidings and the Suttons’ row of houses, hiding it from Astley street. I learned their names, just by hovering around their little group. They didn’t seem to mind. After a while, I approached them.<br /><br />“Where do you come from?” I asked no one in particular, half expecting a declaration of peaceful intent towards all mankind.<br /><br />“The Great State of Texas, son.” Answered the lanky one named “Tex”.<br /><br />“Is that why you’re called Tex?” I asked again.<br /><br />“Yup.” He answered, just like real T.V. and cinema Americans talk.<br /><br />“Doesn’t it get confusing,” I inquired, taking this opportunity to ask questions I had pondered for years. “if you’re all called Tex, how do you know who your mum is calling?”<br /><br />“No, son. We’re only called Tex by outsiders.”<br /><br />“So what does your mum call you?”<br /><br />“Leonard.”<br /><br />“You mean, the Cincinnati Kid might be called Irving at home?” I was slightly stunned and would need time to absorb this revelation later.<br /><br />“Why have you come to Dukinfield?”<br /><br />“We’re here to dismantle the Allied War Machine.” He said, with pride. I said “Tara” and walked away as calmly and slowly as I could.<br /><br />“Bloody Hell!” I yelled to my brothers in the safety of our den. “There’s a fluckin’ Allied War Machine here in Dukinfield and we’ve never even noticed it!”<br /><br />Tex’s simple statement shook us to our shoes and set off a week-long search for The Allied War Machine. We knew the ins and outs of every building in the village, including the location and type of every machine and yet we’d somehow overlooked an Allied War Machine on our own bloody doorstep.<br /><br />“Maybe it’s disguised as a cotton loom” said Kenny Hodgin “or a compressor.”<br /><br />“Nah, it’s got to look like a gun” said Derek.<br /><br />“Steel lathes look like guns” said Steve.<br /><br />“Yeah, but they’re still steel lathes”, I said, growing exasperated.<br /><br />“We’re going about this the wrong way.” I said. “Since we’re always seeing things as guns; sticks, clothes poles, our fingers, we would have noticed a stray Allied War Machine hanging around. So if it isn’t here now, they must be bringing it in somehow. The question is, how?”<br /><br />Later that day, Grandma arrived with other news.<br /><br />“Edith, t’ Suttons have done a moonlight flit.” Lots of people were leaving their condemned homes with rent in arrears nowadays. As soon as the renters left, the town council’s Compulsory Purchase Order came into effect, leaving the landlord with neither income nor property, just the pittance paid by the council for the seizure.<br /><br />“Good God, Mother, you’ve got enough in your hands. Here, let me give you a hand. Neil, Steven, come and help your Grandma.”<br /><br />“Sure thing, ma’am.” We drawled.<br /><br />Grandma came through the front door sideways, not entirely because of the shopping bags full of stuff she had looted from the Suttons’ house. She always came in sideways, partly because of her ample girth and partly because it was easier to keep her balance that way as she stepped up and over the stone threshold. We took the bags with glee and began to rummage through them.<br /><br />“Here, leave that alone. I’ll show it to you when I’ve caught me breath.” She wheezed.<br /><br />“”Sure thing, ma’am.” We drawled.<br /><br />“Would you like a cup o’ tea, Mother?” asked my Mum, according to ritual.<br /><br />“Ooh, yes, please, love. I’m parched.” responded my Gran.<br /><br />“It won’t be long, I’ve just put t’ kettle on.” Added my Mum, to nobody’s slightest surprise.<br /><br />Me and my brothers went back to playing with our toy cowboys on the table, knowing that nothing would happen until after the tea ceremony.<br /><br />“Now the Suttons have left, there’s almost nobody to play with, pardners.” I said, quietly.<br /><br />“Yeah, that whole block’s vacant, now.” Murmured Steve.<br /><br />“Hey, pardners, that means we can play there!” Shrieked Derek. You see, we weren’t allowed to play in houses near where people lived.<br /><br />“Ma’am, can me and my sidekicks go out to play?” I asked, as innocently as I could.<br /><br />“All right, but remember the rules: no playing near the Conservative Club, or in houses near where people live.”<br /><br />“We won’t Ma’am. Thank you kindly ma’am.” We drawled, as deeply as we could.<br /><br />In our most innocent saunter, we went through the back ginnel to Mill Steet and up the block and across Astley Street, where we stopped and surveyed our new territory in awe. We had an entire block of row houses to play with and the back bedroom of each house overlooked the wasteland where the yanks had set up camp.<br /><br />Methodically, we crept in and out of each house, wary of redskins or bushwhackers, checking each yard, toilet, kitchen and living room. We whooped and danced around imaginary camp fires in the bedrooms, throwing trash in the air and watching which way it fell, a sure-fire way for the spirits to show us which bedroom would make the best wigwam. Being used to underground dens, we needed the guidance of the spirits. We couldn’t decide by ourselves.<br /><br />“It would be great if we could have them all as dens.” Steve pondered.<br /><br />“We don’t have enough stuff for that many dens.” I said. “Besides, we’d have to keep climbing up and down the stairs to get to each den.”<br /><br />“Too bad there’s not doors between all the houses’ bedrooms.” Mused Derek. Me and Steve agreed.<br /><br />The railway hooter blew noon, so we set off for home, passing Dave Combs and his mates, knocking down the yard wall of Mrs. X’s old house with their sledge hammers.<br /><br />“They could knock holes in the bedroom walls.” Realized Steve.<br /><br />We explained our idea to the big kids, after getting them to agree to share the place and not kick us out. When we came back out after dinner, they had already knocked holes in the walls joining three of the seven houses. By teatime, they had done the whole row.<br /><br />We ran back and forth through the holes in the walls, from house to house, free from the eyes of the outside world. We were lions, jumping through hoops, we were escaping prisoners of war, we were cops and robbers, we were happy. And there were no grown ups to stop us. We played this way for a week, always keeping an eye on the yankee varmints out the back windows and anticipating the arrival of The War Machine.<br /><br />Looking out of an open front bedroom window one day, Steve lobbed a chunk of plaster into the back of a passing truck. That became the game and when we ran out of chunks of plaster, we used cans and bottles. Then there were no more trucks and I tried to lob a rock on to the roof of a passing car and hit the windshield by mistake. I just hadn’t been thinking. Until, that is, I saw the look of panic, followed by anger, on the face of the driver.<br /><br />The windshield wasn’t damaged, but he skidded and squealed to a stop and leaped out of his car. He dashed into the first house and up the stairs. We bolted behind the blanket covering the hole and right to the end of the row, across the street and home to safety.<br /><br />I couldn’t believe I had done something so stupid and sat with my heart pounding for quite some time. I wanted to undo it. I conjured up pictures of what might have happened and couldn’t sleep that night.<br /><br />After breakfast the following day, I felt a little better. Better enough to realize just what an effective escape route we had created. That morning, we covered all the holes with blankets, tarps and rags, so that we could enter any house in the row and vanish immediately. The covers would slow us down a bit, but not by as much time as we would gain from the confusion of any pursuer.<br />If we were fast enough, we could get to the upstairs windows and watch which house the enemy entered and go back downstairs in the house next to him, leading him in circles.<br /><br />We were practicing such a maneuver when we were stopped by a roaring of heavy engines and a clanking and grinding that we had never heard before. We rushed to the back bedroom windows and watched in silent awe as a column of immense tanks and armored personnel carriers rumbled out of the railway sidings and past Grandma’s pen to the wasteland opposite, right up to the back yard gates of the houses we were standing in.<br /><br />“The Allied War Machine,” Derek muttered, in awe.<br /><br />“Our secret.” I declared.<br /><br />“Cross my heart and hope to die.” Swore Steve.<br /><br />“In a cellar full o’ rats.” Vowed Derek.<br /><br />It was obvious that this place would be declared off-limits the moment our Mum and Dad found out about the War Machine. We went to the front bedroom to see if anyone on Astley Street had heard or seen anything. Dave Combs and his mates were throwing knives at a telephone pole. I opened the window and shouted to them. Meeting them at the front door, I made them swear the solemn oath, then led them upstairs.<br /><br />“Fuckin ‘ell” said Dave, hungrily. His mates agreed. We plotted for awhile and, one at a time, went home for provisions for the gang. We sat there for hours, till the yanks went off for dinner. Then we descended on their camp. We found some gum and cigarettes, but not much that we could move. Then Dave got into an armored personnel carrier and started it up with a tremendous roar. I don’t know where he found the keys, but we all piled in.<br /><br />It took Dave awhile to sort out the gears, but we were all thrown to the back when he got it going. I had always thought tanks and other tracked vehicles were slow, but this thing flew! Dave demolished the back yard and toilet of one of the houses before he figured out how to stop and turn it. He backed it up and aimed for two big, steel ramps the yanks had erected. He hit them square on and we zoomed up the ramps, sailing off the other end and crashing down on another vehicle. Now the yanks had been working on this second vehicle and had almost removed the heavy machine gun mounted on it. The machine gun popped out of its turret and lay beckoning us from the broken glass and cinders.<br /><br />We scrambled out of our tank and went to pick up the gun. We couldn’t budge it. Everybody ran home to get their grappling hooks and heavy ropes. Derek got our bogey, a go-cart my Dad had welded out of steel, that ran about six inches off the ground. We hung pulleys from the ramps and swung the gun up and on to the bogey. We tore down a blanket from one of the holes in the wall and covered the gun.<br /><br />The bogey didn’t show the slightest strain, but it took all of us to push it up Mayers’s Brow and down the embankment to the dens. If it hadn’t dug into the ground at the bottom of the banking, it would have rolled right into the canal. We hid it in the dens for over a week, because the yanks were frantic and looking everywhere. But we had to move it because it took up too much space. So we moved it early one morning to our house, since they’d looked there first and often. We mounted it on a dustbin in the ginnel, to show my Dad when he got home from work.<br /><br />“Enemy approaching!” Called Steve, as my Dad pedaled down the street, black faced and tired.<br /><br />“Enemy approaching!” I called back to Derek, on gunnery duty.<br /><br />“Halt! Who goes there?” Challenged Derek as my Dad rounded the corner into the ginnel, squarely in Derek’s sights.<br /><br />“Bleedin’ ‘ell!” Shouted my Dad, falling off his bike in incredulous terror, his eyes wide open and his voice quavering an octave higher than usual. “Get out from behind there. You could get killed, or kill somebody else!”<br /><br />“Budda, budda, budda!” Shouted Derek with glee. “I got ‘im! The filthy Nazi’s down!”<br /><br />Me and Steve jumped on him with our bayonets. “Get the bloody ‘ell off me! I’ve told you them bayonets aren’t bloody toys!”<br /><br />“Budda, budda, budda!” Squealed Derek, having the time of his life and lobbing bean bag hand grenades on to the filthy Nazi’s head. “Boom! Boom! Boom!”<br /><br />“I’ve told you, now. Bloody well stop it, or I’ll bloody well hit you!” Repeated the filthy Nazi.<br /><br />“Budda, budda, budda!” Repeated Derek, bravely refusing to surrender until his machine gun nest was overrun by the filthy Nazi and then running into the kitchen to hide behind my Mum. He forgot, though, that my Mum is a filthy Nazi sympathizer, a collaborator, a traitor who handed him over for torture.<br /><br />Me and Steve sidled in and made ourselves as small as possible. We ate our tea, washed, brushed our teeth and quietly went to bed. We didn’t talk much, for fear of attracting attention to ourselves. Derek came up and joined us at the foot of the bed, smirking, but he wouldn’t say why and we didn’t feel like torturing it out of him.<br /><br />Y’know that dizzy, falling sensation you get sometimes when you’re falling asleep? Well, that’s where I was when, with a frightening roar, the filthy Nazi rushed into the bedroom with the coal scuttle on his head (which was, in fact, a bronzed Nazi helmet) and a rolled up newspaper in his hand. He scared the wits out of us, but then we laughed as he pretend-thrashed us with the newspaper. Derek sat up at the bottom of the bed and laughed at us till he almost had an asthma attack.<br /><br />Then my Dad sat down on the bed.<br /><br />“Guns have only one purpose, to kill. I’ve told you that. That gun can kill dozens of men in less than a minute. You only have to see one man shot to know that guns are wrong. Where did you get it? From t’ yanks?”<br /><br />“Yes, Dad.” We said.<br /><br />“Well, I’ll have a word with them tomorrow.”<br /><br />“But they don’t know we’ve got it, Dad.” I objected.<br /><br />“It makes no bloody difference. You don’t leave ordnance lying around, especially when there’s kids about.”<br /><br />“They didn’t leave it lying around, Dad. It was attached to an armored personnel carrier.” I grimaced with honesty.<br /><br />“How did you get it off, then?”<br /><br />“Well, the yanks had it part way off, then we dropped another armored personnel carrier on top of it.” It was a relief to get it all out.<br /><br />“On top of it?” He yelled.<br /><br />“Well, there’s them ramps, you see, that you can drive up and off the end.” I explained.<br /><br />He muttered something under his breath and sat there, shaking his head.<br /><br />“We’ve told you everything, now, Dad. There’s nothing else to come, except we’ve had the gun for over a week and the yanks looked very hard for it. They couldn’t have expected anyone to drop an armored personnel carrier from the sky to get the gun off. They’re nice blokes, Dad. Really nice.” I pleaded.<br /><br />“Yanks are nice blokes.” Said my Dad. “Very nice. Except in their love for guns and their hatred for colored people. I’ve seen shore patrols come into a bar and beat the crap out of colored blokes with their clubs and the colored blokes were doing nobody any ‘arm. And the gun crime in America. Any nation with any sense at all would outlaw gun ownership. They have more murders in one city in one day than all of England does in five or ten years. I don’t understand how such likeable people can be capable of these things.”<br /><br />“But they helped us win the war, din’t they, Dad?”<br /><br />“1939. That’s when World War Two started. And we had to fight Hitler alone until 1941. Then, just when we had the Germans beaten, the bloody Yanks came in and took all the credit. Y’know, we once got a shipment of American supplies, underwear, mainly. You never saw the like; polka dots, bloody stripes, you name it. You never saw such fancy underwear in your life. We were dancing around in it and really having having fun. And you should see their uniforms. All of them had bloody stripes on their sleeves. If you ran into a real officer, it’s a wonder he could lift his bloody arms up, for all the bloody brass. But they looked bloody smart. That’s why all our women fell for ‘em, but then again, that’s bloody women for you.”<br /><br />“Were they good fighters, Dad?”<br /><br />“Once they got the knack of it. They took a right bloody pasting in the D-Day landings. Y’know, we told them how to fly their Flying Fortresses in formation and at night, but they wouldn’t listen, till they lost a terrible lot of men. Just like Pearl Harbor. We had listening stations that warned them the Japanese were going to attack, but they’re a bit big headed, see and if they don’t find something out for themselves, they ignore everything from everybugger else.”<br /><br />I think my Dad was still talking to us when I fell asleep. I love to listen to his voice as I fall asleep.<br /><br />Everything got smoothed over between us and the yanks. We apologized and promised not drive tanks or other vehicles and not to remove any weaponry. Even with these restrictions, we would say “hi” everyday and, when nobody was around, we’d climb into the vehicles and pretend, since that wasn’t forbidden.<br /><br />Then, as abruptly as they came, they left, while we were at school, so we didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye to Tex and his friends. I felt let down and I scuffed my shoes across the wasteland, trying to kick up anything to remember them by, but they had cleaned up thoroughly. Despondent, I stomped slowly up the stairs of the first row house to the bedroom we had made our den.<br /><br />I plonked myself down on the old mattress, laid back and studied the ceiling. For awhile, I had had a link with the outside world. Not just outside the village or outside Dukinfield, but out there, where life was like on T.V. And now it was over. I rolled over, about to cry, but the mattress was lumpy, so I put my hand underneath, to smooth it out. I pulled out a stack of paper. Superman comics! And at the very bottom of the stack, a Playboy magazine! Thanks, Tex.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1106254734488819381.post-32017958526814030512010-10-09T19:37:00.000-07:002010-10-09T19:38:57.277-07:00Pater Familia: Tales of Dukinfield: Acknowledgements<span class="zemanta-img separator" style="clear: right;"><a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Delaware.svg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; display: block; float: right; clear: right;"><img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c6/Flag_of_Delaware.svg/300px-Flag_of_Delaware.svg.png" alt="Flag of Delaware" style="font-size: 0.8em; border: medium none;" width="300" height="200" /></a><span class="zemanta-img-attribution" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; clear: both; float: right; width: 300px;">Image via <a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Delaware.svg">Wikipedia</a></span></span> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><span style="color:#000000;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;">A note from My Father.<br /></span></span></span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><span style="color:#000000;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;">ACKNOWLEDGMENTS</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><span style="color:#000000;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;">This is the most intimidating part of the book to write, for I shall surely omit a close friend or helper. So let me begin by thanking those deserving souls who are omitted below. No slight is intended.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><span style="color:#000000;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;">Meri Bernstein, you’re a terrific agent. Thanks for steering, pulling and pushing me through the publishing process.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><span style="color:#000000;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;">And thanks to Nina, about whom a few words are in order. My friend Nina is not big on <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_criticism" title="Literary criticism" rel="wikipedia">literary criticism</a>. I think she feels unsure of her ground and, having helped me through the throes of mania and the ravages of depression, she is probably reluctant to risk tipping the balance. Nina is a very caring person, a truth she would admit only to her nine indoor and four outdoor cats.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><br /></p> <p style="text-indent: 0.5in; margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"> <span style="color:#000000;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;">Nonetheless, we have persevered with each other and, in reading her my stories for our mutual entertainment, I have tried to convince this self-described “non people person” that a critique of a story is more useful to me than an expression of support, at least when I’m not depressed. Poor Nina, I put such conflicting claims on her.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><br /></p> <p style="text-indent: 0.5in; margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"> <span style="color:#000000;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;">So I read her about ten new stories one night, easing her into the process of criticism with,</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><br /></p> <p style="text-indent: 0.5in; margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"> <span style="color:#000000;">“<span><span style="font-size:100%;">Tell me what you remember about this story.” and </span></span></span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><br /></p> <p style="text-indent: 0.5in; margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"> <span style="color:#000000;">“<span><span style="font-size:100%;">Tell me what you didn’t understand”. By the last story, one with which I was not happy, I asked,</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><br /></p> <p style="text-indent: 0.5in; margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"> <span style="color:#000000;">“<span><span style="font-size:100%;">So, what did you think?”</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><br /></p> <p style="text-indent: 0.5in; margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"> <span style="color:#000000;">“<span><span style="font-size:100%;">It stunk.” Said Nina, emphatically.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><br /></p> <p style="text-indent: 0.5in; margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"> <span style="color:#000000;">“<span><span style="font-size:100%;">Er, thank you, but do you think you could be a little more specific?” I asked, constructively.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><br /></p> <p style="text-indent: 0.5in; margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"> <span style="color:#000000;">“<span><span style="font-size:100%;">It stunk worse than a rancid polecat.” Said Nina, helpfully.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><span style="color:#000000;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;">Thanks to my dear friends Paul and Tim, who not only have encouraged me to keep writing, but have raised my spirits when low and kept a watchful eye on me when high.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><span style="color:#000000;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;">Thanks to Kathleen, my former business associate and current E-mail reviewer and source of never-ending support.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><span style="color:#000000;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;">Thanks in particular to Sherry Chappelle, who coached me in the art and craft of writing at the <a class="zem_slink" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=39.6791111111,-75.7521666667&spn=0.01,0.01&q=39.6791111111,-75.7521666667%20%28University%20of%20Delaware%29&t=h" title="University of Delaware" rel="geolocation">University of Delaware</a> Academy of Life Long Learning and whose expert opinion encouraged me to pursue publication.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><span style="color:#000000;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;">And thanks to my three harshest critics; my wife, <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108761/" title="Ellen (TV series)" rel="imdb">Ellen</a>, who keeps me down-to-earth, however much I might resent it; my son, <a class="zem_slink" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0760437/" title="Ben 10" rel="imdb">Ben</a>, whose encyclopedic knowledge, sharp wit and innate kindness make him a far better writer than I; and my son, Steven, whose high standards and mature judgment will not allow me to declare a story finished before it is complete.</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><br /></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%;" align="LEFT"><span style="color:#000000;"><span><span style="font-size:100%;">Finally, thanks to the people, <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police" title="Police" rel="wikipedia">police force</a> and <a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_medical_technician" title="Emergency medical technician" rel="wikipedia">EMT</a>’s of <a class="zem_slink" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=38.7758333333,-75.1422222222&spn=0.1,0.1&q=38.7758333333,-75.1422222222%20%28Lewes%2C%20Delaware%29&t=h" title="Lewes, Delaware" rel="geolocation">Lewes, Delaware</a>, who rescued me from my suicidal depressions, helped me cope with my tremendous manic urges and piloted me through stormy mental seas into their <a class="zem_slink" href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=41.3998243,-71.5064463&spn=0.1,0.1&q=41.3998243,-71.5064463%20%28Point%20Judith%20Pond%29&t=h" title="Point Judith Pond" rel="geolocation">Harbor of Refuge</a>. </span></span></span> </p> <div style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;" class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" href="http://www.zemanta.com/" title="Enhanced by Zemanta"><img style="border: medium none; float: right;" class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=763405bf-f7db-454d-9f15-68a0e6fee72a" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /></a><span class="zem-script more-related pretty-attribution"><script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.zemanta.com/readside/loader.js" defer="defer"></script></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15986896398842180604noreply@blogger.com0