02/5/24

I Love a Good Story/Con

It’s Monday, and here is #36.

I love a good story.

Whether it’s on the page or on the screen, I can’t get enough. Similarly, I’m fascinated with cons.

Tonight, Melissa and I watched The Sting, starring Robert Redford and Paul Neuman. The movie is literally as old as I am, and it holds up. It’s so, so good.

It’s like a magic trick. There is the setup, the push into action, the surprising twists and turns in the presentation, and then the final payoff at the end. Am I talking about the plot of the movie or the way a story is laid out? Yes. Yes, I am.

Stories come in different shapes and sizes, much like con jobs. The reader and the mark both need to be drawn in and sold on what is happening. If the reader isn’t buying it, they’ll put the book down. If the mark doesn’t believe the con artist, they’ll walk away.

In both cases, the author and the artists must show the stakes. Why should the mark go along with the con if they don’t believe there’s something in it for them? Why should the reader care about the story if they’re not invested in the characters?

And then there’s the twists and turns. All of the misdirection and theater. If the plot of the story is too straight-forward, the reader can grow bored no matter how fantastic the characters are. And if the mark doesn’t get fooled by the misdirection, the game is up, and they walk away, or worse.

The payoff is a little bit different, because it’s the artist that comes away ahead in the end, if everything goes according to their plan. If the writer does a good job bringing their story to a satisfying conclusion, everybody wins. The reader doesn’t lose anything, except possibly some tears, depending on the story.

If you haven’t watched The String in a while, it’s on Netflix, and it’s very good. It’s 2 hours well spent.

02/4/24

Lost Power

It’s Sunday evening, and the server is back up. More on that in a moment.

Upcoming Events and Such

Boskone rapidly approaches. There’s more stuff in March, but I’m not going to think about those things until after the Boston trip.

The main thing I’ll be doing at Boskone is managing two tables in the dealer’s room. The first is the Paper Angel Press table, of which Water Dragon Publishing is an imprint. The other table is the Small Publishing in a Big Universe, where we provide an opportunity for authors to sell their books when they don’t have a table of their own.

Steven Radecki won’t be able to make it to Boston, so I’m the point of contact. I’ve already heard from two of the authors. If you’re looking for books by Stephen R. Wilk or Colin Alexander, I will have their books at Boskone.

The Topic: Lost Power

The power is restored and I’m on my work laptop, in the dining room. It occurred to me that I could still get my work done tonight through my hotspot, and I was about 20 minutes into it when the lights came on behind me.

I have some herbal mint tea with honey steeping beside me. I’m using one the custom keyboards I built to type. The heater is blowing warm air down the back of my sweater. The glow of my screen is likely reflected in my glasses. I’m alive and comfortable in my home.

For a little while, we sat in the dark, listening to the wind whip through the trees. Occasionally, the metal gate along the side of the house would get picked up in the dance and clang against a fence post. Chris’s cat does not care for the stormy weather, and to be honest, I didn’t care for it much myself.

You appreciate the little things when you no longer have them. We haven’t been running the heater hard this winter, but we have been keeping the house from getting too cold. With the power out and no estimate for when it would be restored, the chill felt profound.

With the trip coming up this week, there are a number of things I need to do to prepare so that Day Job will be happy. It’s really hard to do those things without a working computer and internet. Even when I pulled the laptop from its docking station and setup on the kitchen table, I still have a screen a little larger than a postage stamp to operate on, and as a software engineer, I can tell you that isn’t a large enough workspace.

Then there’s all of the entertainment options. I rely on Spotify for music. Streaming services provide videos. I chat with my friends on Discord. I could do some of that on my phone, but with no estimate for the return of power, it did not seem wise to run the battery down.

Finally, there is this blog. I was already a couple of hours late with yesterday’s post. How would I feel if the lack of power kept me from writing this one? I could write something in Notepad or Word using one of my laptops, but the server itself runs in my garage, so it was down, too.

The power is back, and all is well. I still have a bunch to finish for work, but that can proceed, now.

Wish me luck!

02/4/24

It’s Still February 3rd Somewhere…

This is getting posted technically on Sunday, but from my perspective, it’s still Saturday.

We’ve had hail, and rain, and sunshine the last couple of days. I’ve been cold and not feeling super awesome all day. Not feeling particularly sick, but I’ve had a headache and I’ve been tired all day. I tried napping and it didn’t work.

I wound up spending most of the day on my work laptop, thinking about work I need to do, but not really doing it. Without focus and energy, it’s hard for me to do anything, including writing these posts.

Still, here is something. I’ll post another on Sunday night. It’ll be… fine? I’m the arbiter of this contest, of which I’m the sole participant.

This is what writing is like, too. There are days where you wake up late, and you can’t put the words together, and you don’t achieve your goals. You have a choice on days like this, to either let it get to you, or take it in stride and keep going.

This is how you deal with rejection.

This is how you deal with unrealized dreams.

You figure out what happened, and then you keep going.

I’ll talk to you all again real soon.

02/2/24

How Do We Fix the World?

It’s Friday night, and I’ve been feeling a little lazy for the last several hours. Unmotivated and low energy… how about I talk about something lighthearted and easy tonight?

The Topic: How Do We Fix the World?

So.

The first step in fixing a problem is admitting that a problem exists in the first place. The world is broken in some fundamental ways. How do we fix it?

What are some of the symptoms?

  1. It’s extremely difficult for young people to get jobs that will sustain them.
  2. It’s harder than it has ever been to buy homes, because it’s just so expensive. If people can’t buy homes, they can’t secure wealth, which means we’ll have an entire generation beholden to the previous, which is not sustainable.
  3. We value money more than we value human life.
  4. We have the means to feed, house, and educate everyone, but we don’t because of the previous point.
  5. We have the greatest wealth gap we’ve ever had.
  6. We have the greatest communication network we’ve ever had in history, giving access to the wealth of human knowledge and invention, yet we have a loud and motivated minority spreading anti-intellectualism and spawning things like anti-vaccination movements.
  7. Racism, bigotry, ableism… all of the inequality that is still baked firmly into the infrastructure of our society.
  8. The frailty of our political system. There’s a LOT more I can say on this subject, but that’s a rabbit hole for another day.

These are a handful of symptoms right off the top of my head. There is so much more. Goodness gracious. If you have a favorite flaw I failed to include in this list, let me know and maybe I’ll edit this and extend it.

So what do we do about it?

Individually? Almost nothing. We have to be the best versions of ourselves. We have to value people over substance. We have to lift each other up instead of tear each other down. We need to look at complicated issues with nuance and thought, rather than reduce it to bad/good.

Protest? Vote? Don’t vote? What does a person do?

It’s easy to get disillusioned with voting when there is gerrymandering, two-parties, and electoral colleges. The fascist party is unified behind their villain, even while he’s in court (poorly) defending himself for libeling his rape victim. The other party is feckless and mostly in support of their geriatric incumbent that was known for gaffes as a young man.

I think Biden is a good man. I also look at him and feel like it’s very difficult to ignore his age.

That’s enough on that subject from me tonight. I’m trying to succinctly state facts and be honest. We’re trying to fix the world, not alienate everyone.

I don’t have an answer for the political problems. I’m not sure I have an answer for the capitalist problems, either. We’re cool with pooling our resources to pay for police and firefighters. Police in some places are buying armored personnel carriers, body armor, and weapons of war, while firefighters can often be found once a year on the street, passing the boot in order to raise funds. Maybe we haven’t solved that problem, after all.

A lot of the solutions to some of our capitalism problems wind up looking like socialism. It’s very difficult to privatize socialism without being someone as wealthy as Elon Musk, but to get as rich as someone like Elon Musk, you have to value money more than people. It’s not going to happen.

That leads back to politics, and there are too many people that get in a twist over trivial matters at a football game. No kneeling. No Taylor Swift. The priorities of some of our population do not appear to be in alignment with the Christian values they proclaim to support.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I’m getting old and my perspective is skewing towards pessimism with age, but I don’t see how we untangle this knot. The 2020s have shown me a side of humanity I thought was much, much smaller. Problems I thought we, as a society, had fairly well solved are not solved at all.

So how do we fix the world?

There must be an answer.

02/1/24

What Are You Not Doing?

Welcome to February 1st, and the 32nd blog post in a row.

Personal News

With this, I’m feeling accomplished and a little bit tired. I’ve done 31 posts in a row multiple times before, usually in October. Completing the challenge in January with very little prep time fills me with pride. I still wonder at the wisdom of this. But let’s re-evaluate at the end of February.

There’s a pile of Day Job work I still need to do tonight, not because I was overloaded, but because I lacked focus during the day. I’m going to put on some music, maybe louder than required, and see what I can get done.

Upcoming Events and Such

This time next week, Melissa and I will be in Boston. It will be our first Boskone and our second writing event this year. I expect my time will be taken with manning the table in the dealer’s room again. I’m not on any programming, and I probably won’t witness any of the programming because of my obligation to the table. I will have the opportunity to meet other writers and talk craft, though, which is what I enjoy the most at these events.

Some of the hard covers for One for the Road should be in transit now. We will have tons of soft covers of both it and The Repossessed Ghost available in Boston. It would be amazing if it sold well, but I’m going to keep my expectations low. From what I’m told, Boskone is smaller than Arisia.

The Topic: What Are You Not Doing?

We often define ourselves by what we do. I’m a writer. I’m a gamer. I’m a musician. We ask each other, “What do you do for a living?” when we’re trying to get to know each other.

In that context, what does it mean when we aren’t doing the things that define us?

I’m not gaming as much as I would like. I play video games with some of my friends on Wednesday evenings, but that’s not the same, and not the kind of gaming I am referring to. Roleplaying games. Tabletop, social games, where you and some people you get along with get together and play make believe, but with dice, character sheets, and some sort of rules to keep it from devolving into complete chaos. Ostensibly, I’ll be playing in a Pathfinder game this Sunday with Richard and friends, but that game has been canceled and postponed more times than we’ve actually gotten together, and I am not holding my breath it’ll happen Sunday.

Music. I haven’t played my sax in a long time, now. I don’t really have a place to play right now, and I’m not playing with any bands so the motivation to work on something is nonexistent. I’m always thinking it might be nice to work on some covers for a YouTube video or something, but all of that takes time. I also don’t have any reeds right now, but that’s a poor excuse. I could order more reeds. I just haven’t been moved to play.

Some of my friends know I like to build keyboards. There’s a split redox I started a while ago that is not done yet. I need to remove the controller boards and replace them, probably with Teensies. With Chris in the garage now, my space for that kind of tinkering doesn’t exist. I had plans to work on some RC planes and tinker with that, too, but with no builder space, I can’t see that activity taking off.

Finally, there’s writing. On that front, I’m trying to do something, though blogging doesn’t delight me the way writing and revising does. There is no story here. There’s just the topic of the night. Sometimes I try to dress up the words here so that they please me, but that’s not really what this space is about.

Soon, I’ll work on a story here. The more I think about it, the better an idea it seems. I like talking about writing. I like passing on what I’ve learned so far. Writing a story publicly might be one of the best things I can do with my time.

It beats playing solitaire, waiting for the clock to run out.

What are activities that you feel like you should be doing, but you don’t either because of time, money, or space?

01/31/24

The Main Benefit of Diminished Social Media

It’s the final day of January, the 31st post in a row, and I want to talk about the benefits of reducing social media.

But first, the downsides.

I miss some of my friends I interacted with on Twitter. That’s the biggest problem I’ve had since deleting my Tweets and reducing my time on all social media platforms. Some of those relationships are true friendships, and I look forward to seeing those people in other ways.

Another potential downside: I’m not as on top of news and trends. I fell out of the habit of checking my news aggregator every morning. I’m no longer seeing the Trending Topics, so some things I might like to know about are flying under my radar. For example, the horrendous murder in Pennsylvania, where a son cut off his father’s head, broadcast it, and called for a revolution against Biden.

For some reason, that story didn’t get a ton of coverage. I happened to see something about it on Bluesky, and I found it on some paywalled news sites, but then it’s like the story just vanished. Apparently, the gruesome video was up for hours, and people saw some things they really didn’t want to see. The Pennsylvania murder never showed up on my news aggregator.

That leads nicely into the main benefit: I don’t have to partake in the online drama.

For example, Taylor Swift. Apparently, some people are upset about her dating a football player or something. I’m being vague and light on details here because I don’t know what the beef is, and I really, really don’t care. I hope she has a good time. I think her boyfriend is on the Chiefs, playing against the 49ers in The Big Game so I hope he loses, but really, I hope they make the most of the time they have.

There is a lot of nonsense and bullshit that flows through the social media rivers, and while I still get a big whiff when I visit, I’m no longer drowning in it like I had been. People I will never meet, with opinions I will never agree with, may be saying some absolute nonsense. Chances are, I won’t see it and my life is better for it.

But what about the discourse?

There is no real discourse on social media. No one is scrolling through Twitter looking to expand their horizons or explore the nuance of a topic. On Twitter, you will find memes, advertisements, arguments, threats, blasphemy, nonsense, and war crimes. You know what? I can find memes on Discord.

I sort of like Bluesky, but I’m not as into it as I had been. I like the people I engage with on Facebook, but I can’t stand Zuckerberg. Instagram is kind of fun, but again, Zuckerberg.

There’s probably some political schadenfreude I’ll be missing this year. Actually, social media in the two thousand twenty-fourth year of our Lord is likely to be a radioactive war zone, so maybe I’m not missing anything on that front.

I’m sure you know me by now, and while I’m not going to get into politics that much in this space (for now), I will say: I’m ridin’ with Biden, though not nearly as enthusiastically as some. If the other guy is re-elected, we will probably lose our Republic. That is not hyperbole.

So in summary, while there are things I miss from social media, the main benefit — avoiding the bullshit — outweighs everything else.

Talk to you all tomorrow.

01/30/24

Bringing Back the Dead on Screen

It’s Day 30. This count will get much more interesting in a couple days.

Personal News

I woke up rough and considered calling in sick. I made it through most of the day, but then a headache hit me around lunch time and didn’t subside. After SCRUM, I took a nap and slept until almost 5PM. I feel better. I must not be getting enough sleep.

The Topic: Bringing Back the Dead on Screen

There is a new Ghost Busters movie coming out, and the trailer looks pretty good to me. On YouTube, I watch a bunch of videos on New Rockstars, and today they posted a breakdown of the trailer. At the end of the video, Erik Voss gave his opinion on the SAG rules and what he thought of recreating Harold Ramis.

Here is that video, hopefully right where Erik talks about this:

If you don’t want to or can’t watch that clip, Erik is basically saying:

  1. The SAG rules don’t go far enough in protecting actors from being necromanced by greedy studios
  2. Consent from the living relatives isn’t enough, because who can say what the relationship is between the deceased and their kin?
  3. Instead of using VFX to recreate deceased actors, recast with actors that look similar, and maybe don’t show their face

Naturally, I have some thoughts.

I’ll start with the second point. I’m not sure that it’s a great idea to assume the worst with regards to familial relationships. If there is no evidence of estrangement, why would we assume estrangement exists? Are we trying to protect the deceased? If so, paying their families what the actor would normally be paid seems like it would be a kindness.

If that point is muddled, maybe this one is better: if an actor’s living relatives are allowed to say whether they live or die when they’re in a vegetative state, I think those same living relatives should be able to say whether or not the actor’s likeness can be used after they’re gone.

Let’s tie this in with the first point: the greed of the studios. If you want to address the greed, then use the point I just suggested, which is the actor’s estate should be paid just as much for using the likeness as the actor would be paid if they were still alive. When you factor in the cost of VFX and the potential backlash the studios will face for resurrecting beloved actors in this way, the greedy studios will have to think long and hard as to whether or not their necromancy is worth it.

Third point… they already wind up using other actors to stand in for the deceased. Whether it is make-up, VFX, or clever camera angles, the new actor isn’t really getting great exposure or the opportunity to shine. I think that’s ultimately what Erik Voss is angling for with that point. Let the dead lie, and celebrate the living. Let new actors have a chance to take the stage.

I do think we should be looking to tell new stories and make new things. One of the reasons the years seem funny, that 1995 feels like it was 10 years ago and not nearly 30, is because I’m old. But another reason is that movies and music have sort of stalled out. The digital media doesn’t degrade. With streaming services, all of the old content is available in perpetuity. Before The Internet, we had tapes and CDs, but we also listened to the radio for new things. Now you can create a playlist in 2011 and still be listening to it 13 years later, without losing fidelity.

It feels harder to find new things these days. Movies are in a similar rut, in that the studios mostly just keep revisiting existing franchises and banking on nostalgia. We get a couple of morsels of something new every year, like Barbie and Oppenheimer, but then a glut of remakes, rebrands, and retreads. Kind of like the Ghost Busters movie that’s getting ready to come out, that spawned this post in the first place.

Anyway. I’ll stop shouting at the clouds. Let me know if I’m way off base, here.

01/29/24

Melissa

Personal News

I’ve been out of it today, for some reason. I woke up poorly, and then I had trouble focusing on just about everything. I got some work done, but not enough. We’ll see if I can have a more productive day tomorrow.

Upcoming Events and Such

We leave for Boskone a week from Thursday. We’ll have quite a few books available at the table. About 20 soft copies of The Repossessed Ghost and around 20 of One for the Road.

The Topic: Melissa

I might have failed to write my post today, but Melissa saved me. She found me sitting in front of my work laptop, not working but just doing nothing with intense purpose. I was listening and partially watching someone play Lethal Company on Twitch while also mindlessly playing solitaire over and over. There’s something very soothing about taking the chaos of the cards and rearranging them into order.

Chaos. If I am a champion of order, Melissa is an agent of chaos. If she were a cat, she’d be the sort that walks on the tables, knocking over glasses and anything left too close to the edge. On more than one occasion, I’ve seen Melissa reach over and disrupt whatever neat piles I may have assembled, because it’s too orderly and chaos must reign. She gives my minor O.C.D. quite a bit to contend with.

She just brought me a cup of hot, cinnamon apple spice herbal tea. Of the all the tea options, this is my favorite. It’s good enough that I question if it is really tea. This drink reminds me of the drink I first gave to Melissa while we both lived in dorm 518. She was sitting in the hall, complaining with her friend Smith about their hot chocolate being a bit chalky. We were in New Mexico, and it was cold, and I had a care package from my Mom which included some powdered bags of cinnamon apple cider. I ran some water through my coffee maker, took her a cup, and she loved it. That’s when we became friends.

Some time later, she found me practicing pool in the day room and asked if I had a car. I did. An ’87 Mustang GT I bought from someone else in dorm 518. One might look at the situation as her asking me out, but I figured she was just looking for a ride. We went to the Alamogordo theater and watched Dumb and Dumber. Smith accompanied us.

She borrowed my VCR once so she could watch some spicy movies. I remember swinging by her room after I’d gone to the commissary. I showed her this short sleave silk shirt I’d just picked up, and she borrowed that, too. I didn’t get the VCR back, nor the shirt, until after we were married.

I loved her before she loved me. I was devoted to her before she saw me the same way, but I had something going for me that no else did: I was honest with her. I wasn’t trying to use her. I called her out on her bullshit, which wasn’t hard because we were both young and absolutely full of it.

Twice during the time before we got married, she threw her hairbrush at me. Hard. Both times I caught it just a couple of inches in front of my face. I don’t think she ever meant to actually hurt me with those throws, and I also think that if I hadn’t caught it the way I did, we probably wouldn’t have wound up together.

I listen to her. She used to be angry with me, that I could listen as deeply as I did, sometimes without appearing to pay her any attention at all.

There’s a tiny version of her in my head. It’s basically all of the memories I have of her put together, creating a version of her in my mind that lets me figure out what she wants and needs. Sometimes, Melissa gets upset with the little version of her that lives in my head.

To know a person is to love them, or maybe it’s the other way around. When Melissa reminded me that I needed to write my post tonight, I asked her, “What should I write about?”

She jokingly said, “Me!”

There are lots of ways to describe someone, but I think my description of Melissa tonight can only be created through sturdy, unassuming love. The kind of love that looks weathered and beaten, but is strong enough to support a relationship for decades. The world will press against us, and I may despair from time to time, but I know Melissa, probably better than she knows herself. And this is my love language.

01/28/24

A Literal Stroll Down Memory Lane

Melissa and I just back from a trip to San Jose! This was a well spent Sunday.

Upcoming Events and Such

Boskone is coming up, and as long as I can find a place to record, we’ll be doing a Live From Boskone recording for the Small Publishing in a Big Universe Podcast. Additionally, I’ll have LOTS of copies of both The Repossessed Ghost and One for the Road available at the table.

Additionally, I’ll be attending the Sacramento Comic-Con on March 9th and 10th where I will also have books available. I’m sure I’ll talk more about that later.

The Topic: A Literal Stroll Down Memory Lane

Melissa and I went down to San Jose to meet up with Steven Radecki, managing editor of Paper Angel Press and its imprints, and his wife. I had the cash to hand over to him from some of the sales at Arisia, plus the signed release forms for the podcast we recorded. It was the first time I got to meet his wife, and she and Melissa had quite a bit in common. We had a really great time, and I’m sure we’ll meet more often.

After we parted, I drove us about 12 minutes away to the first neighborhood I can remember. It’s been over 40 years since I’ve seen those streets, and it was truly fascinating seeing that area as an adult.

We found the first house I can remember on Blake Street. It looks like an additional room has been built where once we had a closed off covered patio. As you might imagine, the place looked smaller than I remember, because my memories are from a 6 year old. The front yard is just the same, and I remember it feeling spacious when I played on it. As a 6ft tall adult, it looked more like a green postage stamp.

After staring at my old house for a bit, hopefully without making the current occupants nervous, we turned and walked half a block to what used to be Luther Elementary. The heavy wooden sign that once said Luther Elementary is still in front, but the campus is now split between a Montessori school and a French American Academy.

Gates were open, and we walked through the hall connecting the different buildings. It was all just as I remembered it, save for a change in paint and everything seeming about 20% smaller. I was able to point out the rooms where I attended 1st and 2nd grade, and a bit further down the walkway, the yard where I played during kindergarten. Past that, we were able to wander around the field attached to the school. One of the old fitness trail signs from the 70s is still there.

We walked around the field, then hung a right and made it to Kellogg Way and the other house I lived on once we moved from Blake Street. The house on Kellogg looked much, much different than I remember. The tree with the long boughs I was yelled at for swinging on wasn’t there anymore. The lemon tree where my father’s cat was buried is no longer in the enclosed patio. I had a hard time reconciling the house to what I remember from when I was 7 and 8. Again, it’s been more than 40 years. Things were bound to change.

The feel of the neighborhood was the same, though. It looked like a place that would still make a good home.

Next, Melissa and I will have to wander over to Susanville and see what that old haunt feels like.

01/27/24

Echo and the MCU

It’s Saturday afternoon, and this is #27

Personal News

The cat has once again ceased her desperately horny yowling, and we enter another couple weeks of peace. I met up with my publisher and we debriefed for Arisia and talked about preparations for Boskone. I finished the work I needed to finish. Time to play, right?

The Topic: Echo and the MCU

I mentioned Echo yesterday. After finishing the post, Melissa and I watched the rest of the season. Did they stick the landing? I kind of think so!

What did I like about this show? It seemed more grounded and the stakes were personal. I liked that the answer the main character found for defeating the antagonist wasn’t just a fight. I liked the reconciliation of the family. It was nice, and I felt some emotions.

Is this my favorite thing in the whole wide world? Not really. I enjoyed it for what it was.

Apparently, I’m in the minority of actually liking Echo. It has the second lowest Rotten Tomatoes of any of the MCU series. I’m not sure why it was rated so poorly.

Hating on the MCU seems like the trendy thing to do. I’m not ready to jump on that bandwagon yet.

If the world wants me to give the MCU less of my attention, it needs to offer me something else to focus on. Something more interesting than just tickling my nostalgia.

Give me new SciFi. New genre fiction. Take a chance on new or recent stories and give me more to love.

Don’t expect me to hate, because something has to be really, really bad for me to hate it. Like Rise of Skywalker.

Happy Saturday, friends.