Nuncupatories

The root of much evil

2006-08-06T13:18:00.000+12:00

Since we're all subject to the self-validating influences of confirmation bias, it was nice to overhear, quite by accident, an interview by a completely-out-of-her-depth Kim Hill (a strident, annoying NZ 'radio personality') with Susan Blakemore, who is one of the more interesting characters working in the field of cognitive science today, and possibly ever since that field was established as a kind of identity of its own. I may not agree with some of Blakemore's conclusions about what's what and how things work in the mind-universe-body area, but she has good reasons for coming to her conclusions, some of which were arrived at as a result of her own experimentations with her own 'body-mind' complex, placed into perspective through an integration of those with the work of others. A remarkable lady.

So, it was nice to hear her coming down on 'religion' with a solid THUMP. It made my own pronouncements on the subject appear tame by comparison. Christianity and Islam in particular copped a lot of vitriol. She stopped short of calling them 'evil', but it was a close as you'll get without using the word or any close circumlocution. A particularly interesting point she made—one I hadn't actually considered fully in its importance—was that while religion might serve to provide a unifying tool at certain scales, it does so only at the cost of being divisive at others—and that this, by and large, results directly in many of the global problems we're having today—and had throughout the last 1.5–2 millennia, those being the times of the global ascendancy of monotheisms. Before that it was either polytheisms or ethnically/culturally confined monotheisms. Only since about the year ZERO C.E. has the disease become the grotesque monstrosity it is now.

Of course, Blakemore sees it all in terms of 'memes'—but these are just descriptive models; like physicists resort to 'quarks' or whatever happens to be fashionable to explain the behavior of the world at the smallest scales.

However—and this is where 'confirmation bias' gave me the warm fuzzies, because this happens to be my personal sermon as well, and has been for a long time—when the interviewer asked Blakemore about the function of religion for the provision of values, she noted that we don't need religion, since we all have values that are built-in. Religion adopted some of those, but invariably perverted them until they became grotesque caricatures of what they actually are—if only because (to paraphrase and expand on Blakemore's comments somewhat) transforming them from evolutionarily sensible guides to behavior, personal and social (and especially social!), into absolute categorical imperatives. Religion decreases our sense of society as a society-with-other-human-beings and redirects our sense of obligation towards others into that of an obligation to a deity, which, in the two major monotheisms of the world, has become a monstrosity that's greater than the very universe we live in and whose appetites, whims and values—all of which arose from and are being fed by the imaginations and self-serving ambitions and delusions of priests, theologians and theo-politicians—dehumanize us and actually make us into less than we are: the exact opposite to what they claim they do.

(Wow! Long sentence! Long-winded, too. I hope it still makes sense, but I ain't re-writing it!)

Seriously, I ask you: when has the existence of religion ever made the world into a better place? When has religion ever prevented a war? When has religion ever nurtured respect for other human beings as human beings? When has it ever fostered, without being dragged kicking and screaming to reality, scientific enquiry? (I mean that kind of enquiry, empirical and/or that might threaten the foundations of its preposterous claims?)

"Ahh," you say. "Now he's done himself in—because what about..."

Think again. Take any example you care to think of and first, for example, demonstrate that conflicts apparently averted by the existence of religion were actually likely to have arisen if it weren't for religion to begin with. Consider also that all the sensible and humanistic precepts of any religion are those that said religions had to adopt, because otherwise nobody would have bought into them to begin with.

You may find, I admit, a few instances where religious thought may indeed have prevented a conflict or an oppression of freedom that wasn't caused by religion to begin with—but, let's face it, said instances dwindle into statistical and historical insignificance when compared to those where religion was, is and will remain the main originating cause and origin of division, conflict, wars and general physical, political and psychological mayhem and cruelty.

"Ahh," you say, "but what about the evils of Atheism? Think of Communism and..."

Absolutely. Any 'ideology' is likely to have pretty much the same effects as 'religion'. The thing about Atheism is that, as political forces go, it's self-limiting. History will nuke it in due course, and usually in a finite span of time. The gods venerated in the context of those instances where 'atheism' ruled were short lived. Besides, it wasn't 'atheism' at all, just a denial of the supernatural version of the 'God' idea. Instead of 'God', 'Javeh', 'Allah' or whatever wally name the deity is given, the great unwashed masses were given Marx, Lenin and the god-emperor Mao, the most absurd of them all. It was just religion in disguise. And then there's the soon-to-be-in-a-stable-state Fidel Castro, of course; who also will ultimately suffer the same fate as all those other pathetic little deities. With mortality will come ultimate oblivion. Mortal gods will eventually become nuncupatory, and if you need any evidence, just look at what happened to the mighty USSR and what is happening to China.

Religions, especially the monotheist kinds—though using temporary idols in human form, like Popes and Ayatollahs and the whole sickening pantheon of holy delegates—have at their heads entities that don't die! Ever! Not only that; they grant eternal life to the devoted followers. Meaning that—apart from variations in enthusiasm across the range of those idiots who 'believe', as well as the ebb and flow across history and religious fashion—you can't hope to have them attritioned in the same way that you basically can just wait out Lenin and Hitler and Mao and Castro and {insert list of names here}...

True 'atheism' denies the existence of any kind of deity and is, at its heart, of a humanist disposition. It also ultimately denies even the absoluteness of its own premise. True atheism isn't afraid of being wrong, because one can't know what is absolutely right, because one cannot know what is absolute. That's because one cannot know everything one doesn't know, or even know everything one doesn't know one doesn't know.

Religion, and especially the monotheist kind, is at its core destructive, divisive and inhumane, and its influence on those who adhere to it will be to make them behave, at worst, in a destructive, divisive and inhumane manner. It is only 'human nature'—which I believe at heart, and by and large, to be 'humane'—that prevents religion from doing, on an even larger and possibly terminally fatal global scale, the kinds of damage it would if it weren't for the innate tendency of human beings just to want to live their lives, look after their kids and propagate the species. Said activity always has and always will bring humans into conflict with each other, but religion acts like an amplifier for these conflicts, and the result is what we see today. The degree of amplification is proportional to the perceived size and significance of the deity involved.

The current 'wars' in this world may be stimulated and set into motion by triggers that are definable in the terms currently in favor—human greed, social inequality, competition for economic/military/cultural hegemony, 'national security', etc—but let nobody deceive themselves about the grim fact that these are not the engines that power them. At the heart of it lies religion, pure and simple. It is a cancer, aided and abetted by the twin basic human failings-of-thought, 'confirmation bias' and 'attribution error'; a fiendish synergy that has held up human development more than any other identifiable 'mental' phenomenon.

Is there a solution?

Umm. No. The human species will have to continue relying as a species for its survival and 'progress' on the luck that has seen it survive to this day. Let's us hope—and hope we must, for what else is there—that luck remains with us. Given the display of stupidity even among those who strut around thinking of themselves as 'intelligent', I think we're pushing it.

The Outer Reaches of Inner Space

2006-07-21T06:52:00.000+12:00

Harking back to a recent post on the mind...

I...matured...(that post-'growing up') in a period where the commonly held wisdom by the then intellectual and spiritual elites was like "Hey, man, why you wanna go to outer space? Don't'cha know that it's all about the inside, man? Inner space goes on...like...forever. Just go inside yourself. Outer space. All that technology! Mind can't keep up with all that technology. All artificial, man. The mind...that's like 'natural'..."

All right, so I mixed in some current-day teen-speak-patois. So sue me. But you get the idea. The notion then, arising partially from the mind-altering drug culture—which then was, relatively, novel, and had, relatively, few truly nasty manufactured chemicals as are extant today, with LSD being about the most far-out of them all—was that 'inner space' was indeed infinite. You could just do your own thing, without needing to take recourse to the help of the evil technology produced by an evil and 'sick' society—which society? hey, pick any!—pop a pill or take a toke and off you went into your inner space, traveling to whatever far shores you though you discovered there.

Years later, when I was in my John Campbell phase, I picked up a book of his called The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion. Great title and a great book, too. Nothing truly novel in terms of Campbellian thought and, as so often, somewhat long winded, but it was a good summary of his notions on the connection between the Star Wars phenomenon and the myths explored there and mythology in general. What the title referred to was how metaphors are transferred into the realm of science-fiction/fantasy; which provides us with the ideal 'medium' if you will, for relocating mythological adventures into 'far away' lands, while living in a world whose unexplored lands have shrunk almost to zero. The wonderful and strange lands of Karl May, the German adventure writer with whose writings I grew up, and which instilled in me an urge to travel and never stop traveling, have long been vanished in the mist of a past that never was, but one might have believed that maybe...just maybe...

My copy of Durch die Wüste was pretty tattered by the time I stopped reading it; Der Shut contains narrative imagery, some of it represented on the cover, that is indelibly water-marked onto my brain—but then I grew older and moved on to Perry Rhodan and science fiction pulps.

Crappy 'literature', I know—but in those days the notion of a benevolent 'third power' being established to avert the potential and ever-present short-notice nuclear calamity threatening humanity was something one took to; something to give hope. Nowadays I know it's a lot of bollocks and it would never work, except through coercion and mind manipulation that would ultimately turn back on its creators—á la Serenity—but then again, I've lived a bit longer now than I had then.

But the images of massive spaceships—just about all of which George Lucas ripped off, much like the creatures, plus a gazillion concepts; reminds me a bit of how Matrix ripped off Dark City; and did it badly, by the way—battling it out in the vastnesses of 'outer space, traveling at the wink of an eye, albeit by accident, right into far off galxies like M87 and into the interstellar conflicts there, between creatures at the same time oddly-human and yet alien; for something like 50 issues of the pulps...

...and just generally carrying mankind to the stars—and the whole notion that maybe you don't have to die, if only we have the technology...

...that was truly and amazingly awe inspiring—and still is, even in the hindsight of the remaining, dim memories.

This kind of early-life imprinting—all of it entirely self-inflicted, and disapproved of by my more intellectually inclined parents—may have contributed to my jaundiced view of voyages into 'inner space'; because I really didn't think, except for a relatively short period of temporary confusion, we'd find stuff there that'll ever match those heady, impossible voyages.

The Inner Reaches of Outer Space was a title I found immediately fascinating. Even knowing what it actually meant never stopped me from wondering what if...

And, indeed, after all these years and with what we know know about the physical basis of that things as 'the human mind', and what we may reasonably conjecture about it in the context of what we are and how we came to be where and what we are, it appears that the Inner Reaches of Outer Space are indeed The Outer Reaches of Inner Space—and this a notion I'd like to leave you with today. Because if you dig deeply enough into yourself what do you find? After heading further and further down through the layers of perception and cognition and social context and thought and emotion—and coming upon that vast pool of 'thought' inaccessible to 'direct' inspection, unless done through the confused haze induced by hallucinogens, in which case you might as well not go there, because it won't do you much good... After all that, what do you come down to and what do you find?

'Star stuff', of course. Elements created in the cores of Supernovae, ejected into space in their death throes, and condensed into, ultimately, those structures we know as 'living creatures'. Go deeply enough through the layers of 'you' and you'll end up back on the outside. Another existential Moebius strip, embedded in an existential space of more dimensions that we can ever even begin imagine, and can indeed only experience.

This is the cosmic joke played on the middle-aged hippies or New Age moonbats of today. In order to see what's inside, they just have to look what's outside, physically and socially. And in order to save their 'essences'—their lives, is what I'm talking about, of course!—they have to make use of that which is not-their-essence, and which is, indeed, of that evil genus, the 'artificial'. The fruits and products of scientific technology, that is.

I know, I know: 'duh!'...

From my collection of great first paragraphs: from Jack Vance's Mazirian the Magician, the first of the stories in The Dying Earth.

Deep in thought, Mazirian the Magician walked his garden. Trees fruited with many intoxications overhung his path, and flowers bowed obsequiously as he passed. And inch above the ground, dull as agates, the eyes of mandrakes follwed the tread of his black-slippered feet.

Actually, these are just the first three sentences of a much longer paragraph, that continues with the same relentless, colorful assault of imagery.

Dummies rule

2006-07-20T08:08:00.000+12:00

Here's another 'for DUMMIES' gem, pointed out to me by a colleague. I invite you to send me images of others with related themes for blog insertion and/or honorable mention.

And while we're on the theme—go figure how I worked that one out!—take a note of this one:

Police officer moonlighted as prostitute
20 July 2006

An Auckland police officer has been allowed to keep her job, despite moonlighting as a prostitute.

[...] police [...] refused to confirm the gender or rank of the officer but John Saunders, executive assistant to Police Minister Annette King, told the Wairarapa Times Age newspaper the case involved a female police officer...

[full article]

And why not? It can happen in the best of families—including, as some maintain, 'holy' ones.

The flow of life

2006-07-19T09:11:00.000+12:00

This blog is written on a 'free' access terminal in the international gate area of Sydney airport. A sudden spontaneaous trip to Australia for reasons related to business is coming to an end —only lasted a couple of days—and here I am, waiting for my flight back to Dunedin.

Last time I was in Sydney—lived there, actually—was two decades ago, and I wonder why it doesn't seem like...well, two decades ago; and time has wrought some changes, mostly for the worse. Cities overall don't change for the better; the damn things just get bigger and bigger, and the airport interior has ballooned to a maze of shops that, for the most part, you can't avoid. Passage through them used to be a matter of choice; you had to veer aside from your usual route, make a decision to become surrounded by the stink of conflicting perfumes mingling into an even worse reek, while people utterly disinterested in you except as customers and providers of sales commissions ogle you openly or furtively. 'Duty-free' is a major exercise in deception on the idiotic passers-through, who used to be 'passers-by'. I've checked on some salient prices and I could purchase many of these items at the same or a lower price in Dunedin, by dropping into my local camera or electronic retail outlet.

But, yes, passage through shops is now obligatory, as you step into their brightly lit areas from the usually-dimmer passages frequented by the permanent denizens of the place. It's like the visual equivalent of what happens on TV when the ads come on and the sound levels instantly go up.

In many ways the airport is representative of the city in general. Sydney never was low-key, but the bit I've seen of it on this brief sojorun qualifies as very much 'in your face'.

Going back to Dunedin and coming into landing over the heads of herds of dairy cows and sheep is going to be a somewhat strange experience. I thought I was used to it, but it's amazing how quickly one can get habituated to the other way of things and styles of life. Here, at Syndey airport, watching the crowds line up at check-ins and flowing through the passages, shop-lined or not, I am reminded of...well, blood actually. Corpuscles of blood flowing through arteries and veins in trickles or in floods, solitary or in boluses. And then they come to a temporary rest, caught by duty-free shops or dead-ended and temporarily impeded in their smooth progress by the gate, waiting to proceed into the winged thing that will carry them wherever they go.

Such are these transient reflections, which I shall now cease to pursue any further, at least on the keyboard. Some poor bastard is itching to get onto one of the three internet terminals and I'm being a bad boy hogging it.

Signing off then; one solitary corpuscle in the flow of thousands of others, driven by their own intents and plans to destinations where what awaits them only they can know; if that, for we can never know what awaits us, even if we do have some idea of what may be likely.

I'll whip out my iBook now and sit down and do some writing--for as long as the batteries last.

I kid you not...

2006-07-16T10:00:00.000+12:00

...and I invite you to consider the, possibly hilarious, implications of the unavailability of the following titles:
Atheism for Dummies
Existentialism for Dummies

Something Evil This Way Comes

2006-07-16T08:00:00.000+12:00

'Evil' is a noun and an adjective. Google 'evil definition' and you'll get 22,600,000 entries.

Quotes regarding evil are legion. Here are a few:

"Do not yield or give in to evil, but proceed against it ever more boldly." Virgil

"I would prefer as friend a good man ignorant than one more clever who is evil too." Euripides

"When divine power plans evil for a man, it first injures his mind." Sophocles

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not just because of the evil people in it, but because of the other people who do nothing about it." Albert Einstein

"One who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it." Martin Luther King, Jr

"Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph." Haile Selassie

To say that 'evil' is a 'label' pinned on something, as moral relativists would, is a vacuous statement that tells us nothing. To say that 'evil' 'exists', or is 'real' in some sense, is probably simply false and a direct result of believing in the Platonic Idealist Fallacy.

Here's my take, for all it's worth—and, yes, please take it or leave it; but I'm not going to argue about it.

'Evil', as noun or adjective, is an attribution; that is, a quality or property assigned to something or someone which or who affects us and those in our circle of care and/or concern in a particular way. We may assign 'evil' to an agency capable of intentionality—human, godly, extraterrestrial, whatever—or to something that has no such capacity—cancer, death, disasters—though we are prone to transfer the evil assigned to such intentionality-free agencies to intentionality-capable ones lurking somewhere 'behind' it.

When assigning the property of evil-ness to other human beings we commit what in psychology is known as the Fundamental Attribution Error; we provide an explanatory framework for their behavior by attributing to them certain properties or qualities—while not doing the same for us in explaining our own actions. Committing the FAE is a basic and ubiquitous element of human behavior, if only because we simply don't, in general have the time, mental resources or information available to figure out why someone really did something.

When assigning the property of evil-ness to agencies not possessed of 'intent', we implicitly anthropomorphize them or whatever lies 'behind' them; and then commit the FAE. This, too, is 'normal' human behavior resulting from our need to make sense of the senseless.

The actions assigned to intentional or random 'evil' are those which result in the destruction of something we consider of 'value'. The more valuable what is destroyed, the greater the assigned degree of 'evil' involved.

And that is basically it. End of story.

It has to be the end of the story, because it all now comes down to what one values. For what one values one usually considers worthwhile preserving. I don't know what your values are; so I can't tell you what your evil might be!

I can guess at a few fairly common 'valuables', like the life and health of you and your loved ones and friends—at least I would like to think these are commong human valuables; though they're not for some, for whatever dysfunctionalities they might be afflicted by.

Try to look at 'evil'—and 'good' as the opposite of it—in the sense delineated above, and see if that fits into your life. It's not easy, because though the definitions are, in essence, 'simple', their consequences for each and every one of us are complex, and they don't ever, as it were, let us 'off the hook'. We are responsible for making the decisions, and while there are guidelines, dictated by what we 'are' as creatures on Planet Earth, the rest is dictated mostly by just exactly where contingency has placed us in time, space, social context and the events of our lives that shaped us into what we are.

I also invite you to reconsider such commonly accepted statements as, for example, 'world peace would be a good thing' and 'violence is evil' in the light of the above. 'World Peace'—a concept whose full import few care to consider for fear of risking dearly-held beliefs—in order for it to come into being requires the destruction of things that many people, including I, would consider to be of value and worthy of preservation. And 'violence' may indeed be necessary, for a given individual(s) or group(s), to preserve something they consider valuable and worthy of maintaining.

I also invite you to reconsider the quotes at the beginning of this blog, to check out how many of them still make sense if one accepts what I wrote above.

This is, of course, just an invitation. 8)

Ahh, the drama...

2006-07-15T23:11:00.000+12:00

No, I'm not referring to my personal life, but the issue of what is 'good' drama. Thing is, I made the mistake of writing, in my last blog 'Gilmore Girls and House; probably the best 'drama' extant at the moment'.

Bad mistake. 'What about The Sopranos?' commented someone—rightly so. Sopranos is good and 'dramatic' 'drama', approaching Greek tragedy on occasions, and sinking into mere bathos in others—and it is, possibly and according to some measures, 'better' and definitely more 'dramatic' than Gilmore Girls. So, why do I stand by what I said—which, I do.

Thing is, drama is not just about plot and presentation and all that. It's also about 'connection'—and I just can't 'connect' with Sopranos. They're just not my kind of people. Their 'dramas', and especially Tony's, leave me cold. I've watched three scattered episodes of Sopranos and decided never again to waste my time with them or anything else watched merely for the sake of watching something that has won so many awards and has been praised so extensively. I mean, who cares, right?

But that's just me. I also never connected with Godfather. I am intellectually aware that gangsters are 'people', and, like all people, they have a point of view and a reason for being who and what they are. They have a right to be considered as 'people' with 'people rights' and so on. Just like I'm sure terrorists have points of view and perfectly valid 'reasons' for acting as they do. If they didn't they wouldn't; it's as simple as that. I don't believe in the the actual existence of that thing called 'evil'; just in actions that merit the label. More on that in another blog; maybe the next one. But there is a difference between, say, looking at a rose and being aware of its colors and shape and scent and just how amazing it is that such a thing should exist—and, on the other hand, being 'touched' by these attributes and, over and above the qualities that give the rose its appearance etc, finding it, for example 'beautiful'. The latter requires a connection that goes to a more sublime, level of...well, 'connection'.

Let's face it, this is the reason why some genres of literature will never become as 'popular' as others; either in writing or in film. People need to be able to connect; to relate the pseudo-lives, actions and value-systems of their characters to their own in some way; or alternatively they need to be fascinated by them, like mice are by snakes who are about to eat them. I can relate to and understand what goes on in the lives and minds of the people I see represented in Gilmore Girls and House. My mirror neurons fire in all the right simulation patterns, which they don't for Sopranos.

So, let me amend my imprudently generalized statement to read: 'Gilmore Girls and House; for me, the best 'drama' extant at the moment'. 8)

Still, the comment generated some thoughts I might not have had otherwise. In particular, I now have a piece of internal dialogue for Falcon to start off the next part of the book. So, that's all good. Silver linings and all that.

Episode 1.1

2006-07-14T06:47:00.000+12:00

A few nights ago, after having the DVDs sitting in a plastic-wrapped box on a shelf, placed there because my daughter brought it over on her visit from the UK, and passing it several times a day and telling myself that 'soon' must be the time... A few nights ago the time had arrived and the box was un-plastic-wrapped and the sleeve removed—and I'm writing in 'passive voice', which, writers reading this take note, is a 'no-no'!—and the disk inserted into the DVD player, and I, and my wife, finally watched the first scene of the first ever... drum-roll... Gilmore Girls episode.

Now, you're thinking 'duh' or 'what?' or 'who gives a shit, and why's he...?" or 'what?'... but I've said that already, so let's stop here.

Well, I'm thinking that it was moderately momentous. After watching as far back in time as maybe late Season 2, the very first episode and those that follow it—and, yes, we're in the phase now where it's like "oh, why don't we just watch one more episode; it's only midnight and we only have to get up at 7 a.m. and so..."—was a religious experience of some sort. I mean, the first ever! It's like the beginning of time, almost six years back, which is like forever, sometime in 2000, when the world was carefree, Lorelai's biggest issue was her relationship with her as-always dysfunctional other-universal parents, and Kirk was just some random pain-in-the-ass and not a fixture. Luke, however, took only three episodes to turn from a guy who ran a diner, was moderately clean-shaven and even wore a shirt tucked inside his pants, to the Luke we all know and love, with the permanently reversed baseball cap. Hygiene reasons, I suppose. It's either that or one of those food-preparers' regulation shower-caps I guess. Can't see Luke with a shower-cap. Can't really see him without that reverse baseball cap either.

Rory was sweet and teen-ish, with occasional tantrums and what you expect at that age. The dialogue between the two Lorelais in Episode 1.1 reminded me of words not unheard-of in my own household maybe a decade or so ago.

Looking back from Season 6 I can see just how well this show was written right from the start, and how it kept pace with the characters' development and the swells and troughs of life. And, finally I got to see all the scenes they used in the intro sequence. It's been killing me to know! Now I can live.

I'd love to write a TV series. Well, I have, actually. Wrote the pilot and several seasons' worth of episode summaries and story arcs. Twice, though #2 took a lot of ideas from #1. But writing TV series is even more futile, basically, than writing spec feature-film screenplays. The bottom-line is that, unless they are produced they will never be read by anyone but you and a select few; probably very few, if any.

Still, like screenplays, writing TV series pilots and episode synopses can serve as a platform from which to launch into the writing of novels, which potentially do have an extensive readership. So, maybe it isn't all that futile. Think of the screenplay as an extended, and very simplified synopsis of your novel, with a lot of details thrown in, but a severely limited level of complexity. A good idea is to write the screenplay with that possible extra novelistic complexity and plot extension in mind, or at least as a potential.

Such was the case for a screenplay called Sword of Light, written many years ago, like sometime in the late 90s, which was left open-ended because my 120 pages were up. But it stopped at an interesting point, which almost screamed out for a sequel. Thing is, at the time I had no idea what to put into a sequel; hadn't even thought much beyond that last moment, which had a sort of open-ended promise and glory about it. Anything could happen—or nothing at all. But the question lingered, as it does with me for unfinished stories: what now? Pretty much the reason why Keaen kept on having sequels attached. I don't mind open-endedness; in fact I think it's all good. But I have this thing about 'unfinished business' coming back to bite you in the ass. There's an urge to tidy it up. Hence Finister, Tergan, Fontaine and Tethys. Talk about OCD. It's like scratching an itch that won't go away.

This isn't a feeble attempt to justify the sequels to Keaen, but an explanation as to why I spent time on them, rather than tackling any of the half a dozen novels I also have on my to-do list and that have nothing to do with Keaen: SF and non-SF materials, which are being pushed into the background because the Keaen story is still itching; a monkey on my back.

Back to Sword of Light. A few years later the screenplay kind-of 'became' Seladiënna. The novel was based on the original premise, extended its geographical and narrative scope, tweaked some logic and emphases, and ultimately ended up as the longest novel I've ever written. It doesn't even come some to the logorrhoeic productions of some authors, but weighs in respectably at 160k words. I'm kind of wondering—idly at this point, but things can get out of hand after 'idle wonderings', as I know only too well—if I shouldn't now go and make the book into a TV series. Reason for that is that one should never dismiss such considerations, because a good idea is worth being re-formatted into other media. Besides, I really like the notion of being able to getting to know my characters even better than I do—or maybe figuring out that they're not quite the people I thought they were in the novel. That is, of course, the most attractive aspect ot TV series—and, to get back to Gilmore Girls, it is done very nicely here; from the central characters to the, permanently or transiently, more peripheral ones.

I think I'll get Season 2 as well. Never really caught most of that part of the story. Why not? There are worse things to spend money on.

Gilmore Girls and House; probably the best 'drama' extant at the moment; drama of the kind that doesn't really rely on technological gimmickery, or on way-out premises. Just some characters drawn sharper than they usually are. I mean, somehow just about everybody in Gilmore Girls, even the likes of Kirk, is recognizably someone we probably know or know of, but drawn with a strong, determined pen.

A note on readership of this blog:

It's gone down as of recent. That either means I'm getting boring or uninteresting, or tackling topics that people don't give a shit about, or it means that there were a lot of readers who wanted more KAC pics. If the latter were the case, well, that'll be too pathetic for words. To those who have left because they're not getting to see more hot chicks, albeit in fairly chaste contexts, good riddance! As for the rest of you, thanks for staying around.

Time to 'fess up...

2006-07-12T07:16:00.000+12:00

So, harking back to here, this was the question:

"...what is the best and most promising method of actually convincing someone that their view of this and that is actually not ‘right’ and that yours is?" with the proviso of excluding anything that smacks, even remotely, of 'brain washing'.

....

I started writing this, and a few moments later heard about the Indian bombings. Since I have my 'reasons'—based on certain kinds of evidence I'm not about to discuss here—to suspect that the cosmos is possessed of events that may look 'accidental' and like statistical flukes, but which are at the same time revelatory of an underlying order at every level...well, here's to being prodded to provide the first part of the various answers to the question above:

You can't convince anybody of anything they don't want to be convinced of.

In the case of the unconvicables who did these bombings, and the ones responsible for 9/11, 3/11 and 7/7—to which we now have to add 7/11, and methinks that an accident it is not—the only response is to take what you might call 'action'.

“We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.” George Orwell

Time to send in the rough men and do some serious harm to these people and whoever is associated with them, or aids and abets them. Seek, identify, apprehend, interrogate with extreme prejudice, kill, dispose of in such a manner as to ensure that they don't get into heaven—or that at least their equally unconvincable associates believe that they won't get into heaven; for, in determining people's decisions, 'truth' doesn't matter, but only that which people appercieve as being true. There is no 'reasoning' in the universe that would change the minds of these idiots. To those who argue that we must remove the 'root causes' for these acts, may I suggest they don't even know what said causes actually are.

I know all this is fraught with danger and the potential for a lot of innocent people getting hurt. Well, a lot of very innocent people just did get hurt—again. Seems to me like we're talking about a basic and pretty much unalterable parameter of the human condition; and that all we can try to do is our best to ensure that as few innocent people as possible get hurt—and, to be brutally honest about it—and if you're honest I think you'll have to admit it to yourselves as well, no matter how un-PC that may be—that those getting hurt don't include our own loved ones and friends.

It's a tough one, I know. Sorry, but no answers are available. None at all. Just miserably imperfect decisions, each with a gazillion unintended and probably unpleasant consequences.

Back to the question and the next part of the answer:

The only way to convince anybody of anything is to give them a motivation to be convinced.

Any motivation, through any of a gazillion possible methods. In other words, people need to—in terms of the 'house' metaphor I used here—be willing to either let you into their house to help you probe its structure, or come into yours, so you can show them what it looks like.

In either case it requires openness: yours and theirs. Without openness, 'reason' cannot find a foothold or anything to work on.

The usual way in which people try to achieve that openness is by asking you to be open to them.

"Just look at my arguments [facts, reasoning] and you'll see..."

Of course, nobody ever does—not just because of being told "Just look at my arguments..." anyway. Oh, we look at them all right, but only to assure ourselves just how silly, mistaken, nuncupatory, context-deprived, narrow-scoped they really are. I mean, let's face it, we're 'right', right? And if our spouses of friends think differently in this way and that, and we know they're obviously wrong or don't 'see' something really important or don't 'understand' what it 'really' means, then we become concerned about their states of mind, and where they're going in their lives and minds and whatever.

To open someone up to what we know to be 'true' or of 'value' or what is 'right', we require, more than anything, trust.

Not just personal trust, but trust in the capacity of the person who is trying to convince us of something, to 'see' the universe, life and whatever matters in a way that is...well, 'truthful' in some way, or providing us with values that, in some way, please us and make us feel complete and our lives 'meaningful'. People need to believe that if they shared the suggested truths and/or values they would be better off, in whatever way or context happens to be relevant.

In other words, there has to be a connection with the person who's trying to convince us, or whom we are trying to convince, at a level far more profound that that of the issues at the center of contention. If that happens, 'reason' does its work to solidify and buttress these connections so they can stand up to the assaults from others.

It should be clear to anybody that if what I said above is right, there really is no point at all to, as the Germans would say, "dir Flusen an den Mund zu reden", which means something like talking until around your mouth you have collected a significant amount of lint, and all that for nothing at all.

Personally, and over the years I've been alive and capable of thought, I have believed a great many strange things to be true—at least as working assumptions, until they turned out to be bogus, as they usually do—and I have believed the words, spoken and written, of a great many people, dead and alive, who presented me with ideas that appeared useful and 'true', on levels ranging from the mundane to the 'spiritual'. Most of them have been struck off the list of people-to-pay-attention-to; a list including, but not restricted to, the following gallery of shady characters: all demagogues and politicians; anybody belonging to or identifying himself with any political party or group subscribing to anything even approximating 'idealistic' or utopian; used car salesmen; realtors; anybody offering anything 'free' or 'bargains'; employers; managers; priests; philosophers, academic or freelance, and their religious aberrations known as 'theologians'; anybody thinking they actually 'know' anything more about what really 'matters' just because they're 'educated'; literary and film critics, or make that 'critics' of any kind; 'artists'; 'believers'; anybody associated with the SHAM; futurologists; journalists and 'talking heads'; 'Brights'; pacifists; environmentalists; the 'well-meaning'; anybody considered an 'authority' about or over anything or anybody; 'experts'; royals; the proletariat.

To summarize, it appears that:

In order to convince somebody of anything s/he isn't convinced of, it is necessary and sufficient to motivate them into trusting you enough, in whatever regard is relevant, to surrender their decision-making process about the issue in question to you.

That is, of course exactly what a lot in that list of shady characters above claim we should do. And, once their aim is achieved and we have surrendered our judgement to them, we're screwed. Which is why there are such a lot of people around who are, indeed, royally screwed; only they don't know it.

So, you ask, whom can you trust?

It depends.

If you're talking about personal day-by-day trust in someone's good intentions toward you and all that, go for the people who will take you as you are, and respect you as you are; warts and strange beliefs and everything included—just because...well, because they are your family, friends...people who love you or at least like you.

As far as life and the universe and the meaning of everything is concerned... Well, methinks you can't really 'trust' anybody, least of all those who have any kind of investment in promoting this idea or that, or who claim to 'know' something important that you don't. There are, of course people who actually do 'know' more than you do about some really important things; almost all of them qualify as 'scientists' in some way. But they only 'know' stuff about certain things, and if they make claims going beyond what they verifyably know and can prove they know, then they're just like those who really know diddly-squat more than you do yourself.

This, at least is my view of this, and I have nothing whatsoever to back it up with—so take it or leave it.

Oh, and by the way, as far as the original question is concerned, it was deliberately 'leading' and intended to serve as an object-lesson in misdirection of thought—the lesson being that you shouldn't let people dictate to you the questions you ask! Figure out your own. Questions are more important than answers.

Thing is, you see, that maybe you shouldn't even try to convince anybody of anything they're not already willing to be convinced of—or if they are actually asking you, directly or obliquely, to convince them. Not just because otherwise it's basically pointless, but because it is arrogant and disrespectful of them and who and what they are—and unless their disposition actually presents a danger of sorts to you and yours, what is the harm in letting them see the world their way?

Welcome to Paradise

2006-07-11T07:00:00.000+12:00

Taking a break from the pace and tone of Tethys, I went to the library and took out a copy of Laurence Shames's Welcome to Paradise, a novel I'd read maybe a couple of years ago and I knew it would be diverting and help with my current, inevitable 'voice-changing' problems. (More on that below.)

Welcome to Paradise, on the surface, is just another 'South Florida caper', as people like to label it. Underneath it's much more than that. This may be intended, though I suspect it's just because the writer is who he is. There's something artless and organic about Shames's writing that makes me think he's not just using 'devices', but is just being himself: a wry, compassionate observer of human nature and life around him. After all, he lives down there.

Unlike Carl Hiaasen—whose rage and anger at the destruction of the Floridian environment and the lifestyles of many of its denizens is always bubbling and seething right under the surface; just like it does in the persona of a former Governor of the state, now called 'Skink' and usually wearing a shower-cap instead of an inverted baseball cap—Laurence Shames appears to regard the foibles and shortcomings of his fellow citizens with a more compassionate eye. There's none of Hiaasen's apparent bitterness, though Shames is equally disposed to laying open without mercy the decrepitude of the culture; which in his hands, however, turns into more of a testing ground of character for the two 'Big Al's and the Katy Sansone, who drift into this place, two of them without volition, the third by—ultimately foolish and, for him, fatal—intent.

Big Al #1 is a small, somewhat corpulent Mafiosi from the Big Apple, with a cowardly Rottweiler whose outstanding feature are prominent testicles. He brings with him Katy, his mistress, who is slim, considerably taller than her sugar-daddy and suffers from a near-terminal lack of self-esteem. Al #2 is a tall guy, salesman from NJ, pussy at heart, who won a 'holiday' in that place, whose only companion is a small shi tzu called 'Fifi', and who'd rather not be there. Things go to custard for both 'Al's when two hitmen are dispatched to harrass and later ice, #1, but mistake #2 for #1 on account of the vanity plates on both men's cars: 'Big Al'.

The ensuing drama plays to an ultimately predictable and satisfyingly happy ending; however, it's not the end, but the journey, that matters. On that journey, in which their 'holiday' place is revealed as the ultimate testing ground for their character and fortitude, Al #1 discovers—or fails to discover, though he should have—that he's an asshole, doomed to fail; Al #2 finds out that he's not quite as much of a pussy as he thought; and Katy finds her misplaced self-respect.

Shames has a poet's soul, and he's one of the few writers I know, who can break point-of-view without breaking his stride and keep the reader with him all the way. It's usually considered a terrible no-no to have two short paragraphs in immediate succession, which don't just incorporate two alternating third-person-limited points of view, but also add a major authorial incursion into the story. In Shames's hands it flows smoothly and give rise to such lovely and unforgettable lines as "...for new lovers the entire world was wet cement: the lightest stepping left its print."

I would never, ever have thought of that image. It alone would make the book worth the price and the time invested in it. As it is, it's full of these kinds of gems.

Welcome to Paradise and Mangrove Squeeze are my favorite Shames novels. And, while we're on the theme of 'South Florida' novels, let us not forget James Hall, whose Bones of Coral also qualifies as a minor masterpiece. Hall, too, is a poet, but he's grimmer than Shames and lives in a much darker, violent and melancholy world.

On writing matters:

After 65k words writing almost exclusively about Mac and Naela, I now need to perform a significant internal context switch. The main characters for most of the rest of the book are Mac's buddy, Falcon, as well as Caitlan, Ailin, Eeona and Teris. Back, in other words to whart will be a somewhat eclectic mix of view-points. Falcon, after all, is the most un-Tethys like character in the whole series, and also one who needs to be clearly distinguished, in temperament, thoughts and language, from Mac. The two are comrades-in-arms, but very different. Then there are the 'locals', some of whom we've known since Keaen, while others came onto the scene during Fontaine. It's not going to be easy to keep the language adjusted appropriately, while at the same time not losing track of the story.

I'm giving myself a few more days to make the internal switch, and then we're back in action. I hope.

Great starting paragraphs; from James Hall's Bones of Coral:

Cassie Raintree was dying of brain cancer every afternoon at two-thirty. She had been dying all through January, and Shaw Chandler thought she was becoming more beautiful every day.
She wore a turban of bandages, and her cheekbones seemed to have risen to the surface. A halo of diffused light surrounded her hospital bed—that strange phosphorescence of the dying that Shaw had witnessed so often.

Night Lamp

2006-07-09T20:42:00.000+12:00

Sometimes I feel a bit like Twilly Spree from Carl Hiaasen's Sick Puppy: in dire need of 'anger management'. Of course, I also feel pretty much like Twilly did about the whole culture involved in said activity. The anger that grabs me is not, in this case, directed at environmental polluters—though they are overall a detestable bunch whom I'd like to kick from here to the closet cesspit, septic tank or mercury-polluted patch of former 'nature'—than about polluters of what's called the 'ether' or 'radio-waves'. I mean what can anybody possibly feel if—as I did by silly mistake, because I should have known better—one turns on a Saturday morning magazine programme, transmitted by the best available on this country's radio dial, and what comes on is this strident, opinionated woman with the grating voice and whose name I shall decline to mention, interviewing, and drooling and fawning over 'independent film maker' Dick Kirby, whose claim to fame is partially staked on two flicks about monomaniacs: one the now-safely-underground French 'philosopher' and 'thinker' Derrida; the other the sadomasochist Bob Flanagan, whom the 'film maker' described admiringly as probably the most interesting, intelligent and perceptive human being he's ever met.

Things like that make some deep down anger well up, and I want to strangle somebody; preferably anybody at all involved in inflicting on unsuspecting poor me that program and especially...

Breathe!

Stuff like, plus the endless, usually embarrasingly open, anti-American bias in the NZ media can derail my best intentions not to engage any more idiots in political discussions, and other idiots in arguments over what are the responsibilities of respectable journalism. And then I tell myself that maybe I could...just this once...just...

No!

Last time I got involved in 'discussions' of this kind, I wasted many good hours of time I should have spent writing. WRITING! Stories, that is. Still, there's maybe the possibility of tweaking a bit of plot this way or that to accommodate a bit of a tirade.

No, you don't!

Besides, it occurs to me that there's someone else, who's dealt at length and with gusto with, inter alia, monomaniacs. I highly recommend a novel called Night Lamp, by Jack Vance, that takes aim at so many things, all in one fell swoop, that I stand in breathless awe at it. There's nothing at all I could write that Jack hasn't done better, more mordantly and, in the case of Night Lamp, more darkly. He is my answer to that stupid woman doing that stupid... Whatever.

One day, I predict, Night Lamp will rank among the classics and be considered more of a satire 'relevant' not just of our time, but of human social organization and behavior throughout the history of what we quaintly call 'civilization'. People fawn over Swift and Gulliver's Travels, and nobody seems to mind that it was basically what today we would call a work of 'fantasy'. Night Lamp is far less so, though it qualifies as 'imaginative fiction', like almost all of Jack's work. In today's literary marketplace that seems to disqualify it from 'serious' consideration. Nonetheless, it is a work of what you might call 'high literature', equal to anything highfaluting I've come across in my several decades of life and reading. The word 'masterpiece' doesn't seem to do it full justice. Why will the author have long passed away before people at large—not just those in the community of 'Vanciacs'—will appreciate what an amazing piece of literature Night Lamp really is? If I think about it too much, the need for anger management is likely to loom prominently again.

(By the way, for my Spanish-speaking readers, if such there are, there's an excellent translation, Lampara de Noche, which you can find here.)

Vance has tackled other topics, with his usual eclectic ethics, a lot of which I share; and he has done so with a mordant humor that must surely discomfit just about every self-righteous pompous nitwit who comes across his writings. Jack's current lack of...well, let me call it 'popularity'...is a constant reminder to me that one can be a truly great writer and story-teller without making a shitload of money in the process. I know Jack isn't.

Fashions come and fashions go, though I suspect that Jack's writing will always be more attractive to the 'discerning public' than followers of 'popular culture'. What do we get instead? Reality TV and Oprah. Makes you want to puke, doesn't it?

Back to anger management. I'm still pissed off majorly about that stupid woman doing that stupid interview with that stupid 'film maker'. But she's 'in' and so is that stupid 'film maker' and that's that. Shouting about it and tearing out my non-existent hair isn't going to help, and I would just have wasted my first precious weekend without having to do contracting work.

I managed to write it out of my system by re-focusing my energies on the last, fast-paced section of 'Book Two', subtitled 'Odyssey' of Tethys. And, at the end of this Sunday, there it is: is the end of 'Book Two', after 5+k words on Saturday and Sunday—more like my 'usual pace'!—and a total count of 65k words now, which brings us to about half-way stage. The next section, 'Book Three', is subtitled 'Battle for Tethys', for that is what it is all about.

(And, yes, I did manage to have a 'life' this weekend. My wife and I went for a nice walk and tonight a catchup with two weeks' episodes of Gilmore Girls is on the plan.)

To my buddies who read this blog, and especially those who have pre-read my stuff before, if you're game to tackle—and, in a second pass, maybe proof-read—the first half of Tethys, I'd be incredibly grateful. I want to get Finister 'out' by the end of this year and the remaining three books by the middle of 2007. So, any proofing and critiquing a.s.a.f.p. will be more than just 'useful'. I may ignore some or all of your 'critiquing' comments, but I will almost certainly be eternally grateful for your help. And, yes, you'll be reading something that ends, temporarily, on a cliff-hanger; but why not? I'll do my best to deliver the second half by late October at the latest.

And I really could do with someone else—or two 'someone else'—willing to copy-proof PDFs of Finister, Tergan and Fontaine. Ideally, I would send these out as enabled for commenting, which means that anybody with Adobe Reader 7.x could just add comments and then send them back to me. If anybody's game, go to my website and click on the email link to send me a note.

By the way, there is a moral here for writers: writing is the best anger management, because it gets you thinking about things other than those that got you angry. Basic CNS cybernetics, 's all.

With nearly running out of KACs worthy of mention, it may be time to start another trend: cool first sentences or paragraphs of novels.

Here's the first, from Carl Hiaasen's Skinny Dip:

At the stroke of eleven on a cool April night, a woman named Joey Perrone went overboard from a luxury deck of the cruise liner M.V. Sun Duchess. Plunging toward the dark Atlantic, Joey was too dumbfounded to panic.
I married an asshole, she thought, knifing headfirst into the waves.

About this blog...

2006-07-07T07:00:00.000+12:00

For those who came in late and wonder what this is all about; and also for those who've been here for a while and wonder what this is all about...

This blog is written by this person, whose website is here. That would be me, of course.

The blog was started to map out some of the processes going on in a writer's head as he starts a project—in this instance a re-write of a novel called System Crash. Hence the name.

Those who've followed me to this point—whether they were there from the start, or came in along the way—will be aware that System Crash was once more put on the back-burner, for reasons too numerous to list. In between starting this and now there's been a screenplay first draft, and right now I'm in the middle, almost literally, of Tethys.

I've written about a lot of things: some personal: some about writing, story-telling and related matters; some about philosophy; some about all other sorts of weird and not always wonderful things. Occasionally the reader may wonder if the blog hasn't gone astray, or where it is supposed to be going; if it's going anywhere at all.

It's like this: I am not an island. I have a life and a family and a job and 'everydayness'. A gazillion contingencies impinge upon my consciousness and steer the course of my thoughts and emotions. All of those will influence the process of writing down the story one is telling. Actually, they will determine what story one is telling, and how and what it is all about. Hence, all these reflections—about everything from dancing politicians to South Park and cognitive philosophy and art—are, in some way representative or reflective of, or relevant to, what this particular author creates.

I'm also trying to keep the blog 'interesting' and varied, because it is also about 'promotion', and promotion for a writer is about keeping people interested in what he does and produces. Hence the variety of subjects, apparently chosen at whim, but quite often with a concealed intent, not unlike the meta-messages built into my fiction.

So, folks—in case you were wondering—this is what you're reading. I hope you stick around.

Skeptical... about 'skeptics'

2006-07-05T23:11:00.000+12:00

Here is a story, which, to save you clicking the link, I'll just repeat:

Psychic aids search for missing Alzheimer's sufferer
03 July 2006

A search resumed today for a missing 73-year-old Palmerston North man after a psychic helped police find his personal items on the bank of the Manawatu River.

Sergeant Bill Nicholson said a local woman, who did not want to be named, contacted police on Friday night and described a location to police.

James Alexander, an Alzheimer's sufferer, has been missing more than a week.

The area the psychic described was familiar to police, who launched a search late on Friday.

On Saturday morning the psychic accompanied Land Search and Rescue and police on another search. Mr Alexander's personal items were found on the banks of the Manawatu River shortly after 11am. They found a hat, a shoe, a watch, a lighter and a pair of glasses.

"The thing about it that really got me was that she had never been to this area but she was describing to me an area that was familiar to me because back in February we had a search for another Alzheimer's patient who had gone missing from a different rest home," Mr Nicholson said on Radio New Zealand.

"Some things she said prompted me to take it further. If I hadn't been involved in that search in February, then I might have just passed it off. But it was worth a crack and it paid off."
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Mr Nicholson said Mr Alexander was most likely to be in the river, which has been high, but was now dropping.

The dive squad was due in the area today. There was a log jam about 150m down from where Mr Alexander was believed to have entered the river.

So far they haven't found the old man's body. Maybe it floated away. Maybe it isn't there. Who knows? Maybe by the time you read this, they will have found it. Check it out, if you're interested. I'll try to keep track of this as well.

Sounds quite Medium-esque, does it not?

Anyway, they show a report about this on TV; a brief statement by someone from the NZ Skeptics, possibly the current 'Chair': a woman I've heard talk before; loud and opinionated, and just the kind I berated here. This time her usually sloppy manner of dressing and presenting herself had degenerated into something approximating 'grunge', which told me more about her self-image than it did about her obviously equally carelessly (that's three words ending in 'ly'; is there a name for that?) prepared banalities. These went along the lines of dire warnings about the consequences of people getting carried away by the 'irrational', and especially the police. The reporter either failed to ask her specifically about the details of this case and how she felt about the evidential nature of this instance of apparent 'psychic' forensics; or else they asked her, but didn't show it, to minimize time viewers had to be exposed to this person, while still making sure that 'sekptics', much beloved by NZ media, got their obligatory 2 cents' worth onm record.

Way I see it, this whole report allows three basic lines of follow-up reasoning:

A) It's just wrong. Something crucial is missing that would reveal that things hadn't happened as quoted above, and that therefore the whole issue is bogus. Media cock-ups and distortions. Nothing new.

B) The 'psychic' knew things in other ways but through whatever way psychics 'know' things. Maybe she was a witness; actually was there and saw something being thrown in that place; was involved in the disappearance; or something along those lines.

C) The psychic really is a genuine 'psychic', whatever that means.

I'm not judging the merits here, because I lack sufficient information to do so, but I am prone to going with 'evidence', and right now it seems to me like the NZ Skeptics—unless they actually truly know something factual about this case that I and the rest of the public don't—are in violation of the ideals promulgated on their website and in other places.

And here's a more significant and well-known skeptic: Michael Shermer, who has a monthly page in Scientific American and whose works and opinions you can find here.

In his commentary in the May 2006 issue id Sci Am, he has a go at the SHAM (Self-Help and Actualization Movement) Scam; and for the most part, I completely agree with him. Next to religion it's probably the greatest and most cynical fraud perpetrated on the fools born every minute everywhere, but especially in the 'West'.

Then, however, Shermer turns around and shoots himself in the foot with a large caliber shotgun.

It goes like this. The likes of Shermer, being atheists and against all things supernatural, are the most serious supporters of the 'bundle theory' of mind I alluded to in my last blog. As the theory goes, and this is exemplified especially by the writings of Dennett, it is all about how we basically are nothing but the 'stories' we tell ourselves and others.

It seems like a sensible suggestion to make then that, if we want to 'change' a person's behavior or character or 'personality', this implies a changing of the narratives that make up the individual in question. So, techniques that set out, in various ways, to do just that, appear to me eminently sensible. After all, everybody does it, all the time; some more invasively so than others.

If someone therefore proposes a self-help personality change based on explicit re-writing of one's story through some form of conditioning; would that not seem exactly on the mark?

Yet Shermer, in the last part of the article, berates the 'SHAM gurus', as he calls them, for doing just that; implying, directly and by context, that this is bunk, and that said gurus are using scientifically flaky methods. Which they are not! Their suggested narratives may not improve on the current ones of those seeking help—Indeed, how could they? 'Walk a mile in my shoes' and all that!—but the technique itself has merit, as is evidenced by millennia of the application of a variety of brain-washing techniques; with 'brain-washing' being just another term for the same process.

It appears that Shermer either reached his 'wall' and crashed into it, refusing to connect X and Y and maybe realizing that that this means Z is true—not A!—or else he presumes that his readers are too stupid and simple-minded to pick up on the flaws in this piece of 'reasoning'.

This may be good enough for theologians and academic philosophers, but it won't do for 'skeptics', if they are to be worthy of bearing the appellation. Shermer was trying to make a valid point, and he wasn't committing any sins that aren't being committed by journalists every day a thousand times over. But he thinks he's better than these people—and he isn't.

The purpose of skepticism—if it is to have any use at all—isn't to 'debunk' or find 'explanations'. It is to weed out the bogus, so that we end up discerning those things that are 'true' enough to help us with a better understanding of what 'is' and what we are. The results may not be what we expect though; and I, for one, suspect that the rabid anti-'psychic' tendency in skepticism is misplaced and unproductive, because there is more to this universe and 'reality' than meets the scientific and self-proclaimed 'rational' eye. But this doesn't mean that one has to fall victim to charlatans. Equally, however, one should do one's best to avoid becoming the gullible victim of misguided skeptics, who treat their practice with the same reverence as a religioid would his. A fervent is a fervent, no matter what garb he wears.

By the way, and in case anybody's wondering, yes I am still on course, pursuing the question I asked in Be Reasonable! (25 June 2006).

Twists and turns

2006-07-05T07:07:00.000+12:00

I guess maybe I shouldn’t rant about things that infuriate me, throwing invectives everywhere and showing a dismal lack of ‘respect’ for those venerated near and far. But, let’s face it, some of—correction: ‘many of’—these people are idiots who have completely lost their sense of perspective.

Let me give an outline of the issue that pissed me off in a blog-sized nutshell. Philosophy of Self 101, in the palm of your hand, at the tip of your finger.

The ‘Self’ side of the argument, proposes, in essence, and with many variations and sub-variations—e.g. ‘soul’, ‘spirit’, ‘essence’, ‘ego’—that what we ‘really are’ is something that has a core of some sort. All our thoughts, emotions and whatever are somehow connected to this thing at the center of ‘us’.

This view is the mind-philosophy embodiment of Platonic Idealism; purporting that there is something there, some substance whose nature we may not know or understand, but it’s there anyway, and it is what we ‘feel’ to be there whenever we think, feel or do anything.

On the other side of the argument is a model derived from the philosopher Hume, and given new life by guys like Dennett, and which essentially proposes that what we think of as ‘self’ is nothing but a tight weave of stories or narratives that connect to each other and become each other and weave and twist and wind their way through our brains and its connections and chemistry. (Hence, one might wonder, the importance of and or addiction to telling stories and having them told to us?)

Think of it like this.

In the ‘self’ model, the ‘innermost’ ‘you’ is like a ball of some ‘essence’ hovering somewhere in the space of existence, if you will, and all your thoughts and emotions are somehow either connected to that ball, or can be said to emerge and/or terminate in it. Think of images of these huge solar flares with giant loops of plasma rearing out from it. Matter of the sun, constrained by the lines of the magnetic field generated by the sun. It’s a grandiose picture, and it’s not unsuitable for the ‘self’ model.

Let bring this back to a desktop size, and think of it as a magic-essence golf ball, lying there. That's the core, the center, the essence, the definable self you can point at, the one you somehow 'know' is there, deep inside you, at the heart of it, etc etc etc.

The bundle-theory model, on the other hand basically says: take a strip of paper—long and thin, so it can make a nice big loop when you lie sideways on a table top—and connect the ends so you have a closed loop. Write your stories on the outside and others on the inside—‘Conscious/unconscious’ suggestions here?—and this is basically what you ‘are’: those stories, written in an endless stream; and when they stop getting written, because the strip disintegrates, it’s bye-bye stories and bye-bye ‘you’. It's like a mental version of 'string theory'. No 'particles', just loops. I wonder if the parallels mean something...

In contrast to this, the ‘self’ theory at least suggests the possibility that maybe it’s not bye-bye, because the core may be indestructible because...well it just is! After all, everything came from it and was connected to it. How could it be destroyed?

The arguments between the proponents of these apparently-mutually-incompatible theories are extensive and wasteful of time, space, use of paper, internet bandwidth as well as contributing to global warming through the generation of a lot of hot air, plus the greenhouse gases emitted from uptight asses. Allow yourself to become sucked into their discussions and their terminology and conceptual spaces and you’re screwed; philosophical dead meat. Dare, if you will, to google some of the terms, but I warn you, here are dragons—and I mean the European variety; those that devour you, not the ones that are the sources of wisdom and power and all that, as they are, for example, in China.

Thing is this—and I fond of visual analogies, so here's one coming up.

Take that loop of paper with the stories and lie it sideways on a table surface. What do you find? That it encloses a space, producing an 'outside' and an 'inside'. I could have used a sphere for the analogy, but I need you to do something to the strip that you couldn't have done, imaginatively and physically. I want you to cut the strip again where you had stuck it together, twist one side by 180 degrees and then stick it together again, to form what's known as a 'Moebius Strip'; a structure that has neither 'inside' nor 'outside', yet if you lie the stip on the table again, you'll realize that some of it faces 'in' toward the 'center' of the loop, and some of it faces 'out'.

End of story. End of argument. The inside is 'out' and the outside is 'in'; it all depends where you are. The stories thread from inside to out and outside to in. If you go far enough along the inside you will end up on the outside and vice versa. None of this 'the inside is the final frontier' bullshit, still so popular among the philosophically illiterate—and apparently among some who would reject such a claim, but obviously can't understand what they're reading; they get words and the grammar, but their semantic comprehension is somewhere over in another universe.

And, yes, go far enough outside, and you'll end up facing 'in'. This may also be a devious conceptual 'solution' to the problem of what is 'physical' and what is 'mental' and how they are connected and interdependent. Thing is, it's not a 'solution', because there's actually no 'problem', just some dumb-ass questions generated by people with too much time on their hands, and then repeated over and over again, until the rest of us started to believe that they had cogency.

The 'self' or whatever takes its terminological place, is nothing but the space inside the loop of paper. It is clearly defined by the strip surrounding it, yet it cannot really be said to be of any substance.

Of course, I have simplified issues here. This is, after all, just a blog. But the 'bundle-theory', usually instantiated as a 'bundle of properties' kind of theory, has been used on a much broader existential scale than just the 'mind'. Problem is that people have used it to answer the wrong questions, which have ruled the roost for millennia. The questions implicitly presupposed and dictated a world-view in which 'objects' were viewed as things not unlike the 'self' described above. Essences of some kind, located in some conceptual framework, and you could actually ascribe something like 'properties' to these things. You could point a mental finger and say "there it is, that thing, and it has the attributes/properties {A, B, C, D....}"

Think back to the 'self', the golf-ball on the table. If that's what 'objects' really were, you could indeed play the property-attribution game until you're blue in the face. And get nowhere, as is evidenced at nauseam.

But if it isn't—and there's no evidence to suggest it is!—then the only properties you can ever describe are those of the context that defines this 'object'; just like the Moebius strip is the 'context', if you will, that defined what it's wrapped around; the space inside; the elusive, yet well-defined 'self'.

End of story. Or a new beginning. Take your pick. It's all a Moebius strip to me. This one here is knitted! Talk about dedication. The 'self', knitted together, lying on a carpet.

Ahh, the bathos of it all. If the fatuosity of 'theology' is best characterized and satirized by the question "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?", what, I wonder is the question that would perform a similar service for that canard known as present-day 'philosophy of mind'?

Any suggestions? I'm still looking...

Bundles of joy and consciousness

2006-07-04T23:11:00.000+12:00

"Most people can’t think, most of the remainder won’t think, and the small fraction who do think mostly can’t do it very well." R A Heinlein

I've been reading up on some cognitive philosophy, with a particular eye toward what is sometimes described as the 'bundle theory' of mind. While I basically support this view—or something similar that could be called the 'context-node model', though you won't find the term in any dictionary, I'd say—the occasional inanity of the arguments pro and con this theory and others from people of whom I really would have expected more leaves me breathless. It seems that they all labor under the assumption that, just because philosophers have asked the wrong questions for millennia, everybody today should feel obliged to waste their thinking time dealing with the basically silly conclusions from, and answers to, these dumb questions.

Why should we? There we are, lamenting that humanity is making no real philosophical 'progress' and just rehashing the same old crap from days of yore.

Well, yes, of course we are! But why? From a sense of reverence,or because we tell ourselves that the 'ancients' were wiser than we are, and that their questions made sense just because they asked them? Does anybody really, truly believe, these people were smarter or wiser than we are; or that they had some insight into the nature of existence exceeding our own, just because they lived then and we live now?

What kind of dumb-ass reasoning is that? Maybe, just maybe, should we not consider the possibility that, with what we are learning about the physical universe, we actually have cause to declare some of the old questions and concepts defunct, decrepit, nuncupatory, not worthwhile wasting out time with?

And why, I ask, should we not? Maybe we'll find that the questions we find as a result of this trash-disposal exercise turn out to be much, much more interesting and helpful and relevant than what has gone before. Stranger things have happened.

But maybe that's just me: the guy who once was given an 'A' for an essay on functionalism, but with a admonitory note that maybe I should exhibit more respect for the folks whose work I was criticizing.

Ha! Me bad, bad, bad! — I guess. — Not.

A philosophy acquires no virtue whatsoever, just by having been around for a long time. All it takes is...well, 'time'. The survival of a philosophy or concept says nothing whatsoever about its value or appropriateness; just about the people who kept it alive, for whatever obscure reasons.

Couple more things from the 'maybe interesting' bin for today:

My daughter pointed this one out in her blog Even the creators of South Park could not possibly have invented this kind of thing in all its ineffable absurdity!

And here's the page that will have updates on the cover design of Finister, as time goes on. Not many updates for a while, because I am focusing on Tethys. But there will be progress in due course, and the book will be published before the end of this year.

So say I.

The Last of the Mohicans

2006-07-03T19:07:00.000+12:00

Warning: lots of pictures!

Yesterday I browsed through my wallets of DVDs and chanced upon Michael Mann's expanded edition of The Last of the Mohicans. Hadn't watched it for a while, so I thought 'why not?' Hadn't seen it for a year or so. And now I'm going to rant about it.

If there's anything I regret with regards to movie-watching, it's that, when it came out in NZ in 1992—I think—we were too strapped for cash to afford going to the movies. Also, it didn't last that long, for some incomprehensible reason. As a result I missed out on seeing this movie on the big screen, and when I finally picked it up in VHS years ago, it was like 'damn, damn, damn!' It still is.

If ever there was a movie that qualified as having just about everything your heart might desire—and if you are that way disposed, of course—it's TLotM; and the slightly expanded director's edition, though hated by some, is, overall, a much better film than the cinema release. I think so anyway. If you look at the movie on Amazon, you'll find some vehemently differing opinions.

The movie starts with the most 'architectural' and sweeping of its tunes—and an amazing soundtrack it is!—and a large and incredibly elegant title.

It sets the tone for the movie; which is large and in your face and unapologetically romantic, tragic, grandiose; vast in scope, subtext and context, yet tightly focused on its characters, almost all of which manage to get fleshed out to the extent that we end up 'knowing' all, even the 'bad guy'.

The cinematography is often leisurely and sweeping, and always at the same time beautiful, yet unintrusive, unlike some other instances of 'great cinematography', where it either subtitutes for story or occasionally destroys it. This here reminded me of Ridley Scott and The Duellists; which, if you haven't seen it, you really ought to.

After this brooding, yet peaceful opening, we follow a deer hunt by the three 'last Mohicans', one of whom is a white child, adopted by the eldest of the three.

Back to the picturesque, stately and elegantly misplaced in this frontier world.

If anybody ever managed seamless integration of story and truly great imagery; well, here's the best example I can think of.

Based on James Fenimore Cooper's story—which I read, long time ago, in my teens, the full version, though translated into German—but freely adapted and modified to fit the medium, and thereby made into a better, richer story, LotM gives us a few movie-'greatest'.

For one, it has the...the word is 'hot'...one of the hottest love scenes ever. No words and not a shred of clothes coming off; at least not that we see. But there's more sex and romance in this one scene than most movies pack into their entire length.

It also has the most breathless, panicky and edge-of-your seat rescue-the-girl sequence ever, pushed along in perfect rhythm by a score that's got to be heard to be believed.

All that is set in the context of the battle between England and France for the Americas...

...with the Indians either becoming exterminated or else corrupted; not necessarily by alcohol but simple greed.

And the monologue by Chingachcook at the end—which does not appear in the theatrical version—is a sad summary of the inevitability of the future and what it brings. Not a condemnation, but acceptance of what is inexorable, and a summary of the human condition, individual, social and historical.

Ultimately it is a lament for the disappearance of something we all fear, because it is tempting, but also dangerous, and will devour those who aren't made for it; as it does the younger of the Munro sisters, Alice; while the older one finds it all 'strangely stirring to my blood'.

Yet we all yearn for it, and will, openly or secretly, depending on our disposition, mourn it after it has vanished: that strange thing known as a 'frontier'; which has to disappear as civilization established itself, whether it is truly 'civilized' or not. Maybe the theme resonated more than usual with me right now, because it is a theme in Tethys as well.

There are no villains in LotM. Not even the colonial powers are actually 'condemned'. People do what they do for reasons perfectly valid to themselves; and what they do will appear to them—and if we accepted their assumptions, it would to us also!—as if it were perfectly sensible and justifyable. The colonials and the Indians all ultimately exhibit the same traits, strengths and limitations.

Magua, the 'bad guy' of the piece, also is not really 'bad', but rather twisted by contingency and predisposition and a yearning of revenge that gets out of hand; though, of course, for him and within the context of his culture, it is a perfectly sensible way to react to what had been done to him. Still, he's not a nice person; and ultimately he is psychologically defeated and effectively humiliated by the weakest of the protagonists, and killed shortly thereafter by a man whose motive, like Magua's, is revenge. There's irony galore. Still, there's a savage kind of satisfaction when Magua finally falls.

Ultimately—or maybe it depends on one's disposition—LotM is ineffably sad; for though the characters at the heart of the movie survive and presumably will raise a family of their own, they also will have to change into something else than what were when they first appeared on the scene. Something has to go, so something else can start.

An amazing film that never ceases to grab me. I can only imagine what my reaction would have been seeing it on a big screen, and for the first time. Alas, some things cannot be; and this is one of them.

My new toy - nyah nyah nyah!

2006-06-30T13:03:00.000+12:00

So there was a 'special' that ran out end of June, and I thought "Why wait? Life is too freakin' short." Excuses, I know, but I also want to get started on the cover for Finister, and this seemed a good time—so eat your hearts out.

This, by the way, is an Intuos 3, A5 size version (that's 6' x 8'). Now I just have to be careful to work hard to increase the 56k words of Tethys to half-way size and not get distracted into spending too much time 'trying out' my new toy. Happily, on a whim and because I thought it would be cool to kill someone I'd actually just started to like and make plans for, the plot has just taken an unexpected twist—again!—but that, as before, is all good. We're still aiming for the same midway point, but with much more zing. All good, as I said. Maybe another 15-20k words max to go before we definitely focus back on Tethys itself and what's happening there.

Once again though my trusty stand-by story-writing technique is paying off. It's the one where you plan things out and stick with the plan as it stands, with all the twists and turns that you can see coming. That's also what your characters do. Then some demon inside me says "screw that—boring, boring, boring". And life for the poor bastards in the story takes an unepxected turn; one that even I didn't see coming just a day ago. It happened this morning as I was trying to get 1k words typed between getting up at 05:30 and going to work at 07:30, squeezing it all in between making tea for me, coffee—good, percolated quality best-in-town coffee!—for my wife, a simple breakfast, have a shower, get a couple of DVDs burned... Aw, what the heck, it was only about 800 words that got written, but as I sat there I thought, "Why kill XXX [not telling! nyahnyahnyah!] later? Why not right now? And look what it implies that he dies now! It means that that scheme has, like so totally and terminally, gone to the dogs and those plans are so much soft shit now."

Cool! That way stories get interesting. I think so anyway.

By the way, going back to drawing, I've tried drawing on paper and stuff. Painting, too. When I put my mind to it, I'm not all that bad at it either. But maybe I'm too much of a child of the electronic age of how-to-do-things, because I kinda like things like 'layers' and the magic of Command/Apple-Z (that's Ctrl-Z for Windoze freaks); and the whole idea of being able to correct your cockups as much as you want, rather than having to stop there, now, because if you erase only one more time you'll wear through the paper. I also always—and I mean 'always'!—preferred word-processors (or, as they used to be called in the old days: 'editors') to typewriters. I have some affinity with the notion—and done it often enough, and probably will continue to do so—that, say, a screenplay may be better first-drafted in longhand; but when it comes to typing... I never got it how some throwback stick-in-the-muds could possibly ever like those awful machines called 'typewriters', or hark back longingly to their 'days'. I mean, they really only ever were like an intermediate stage of technology between long-hand and the word-processor.

And to think that I once, as I traveled, as lightly laden as I could, over strange grounds, lugged around a piece of metal almost as heavy as all my other backpack weight combined—and that was called a 'small portable' in those days—and, yes, this kinda gives away my advanced age. To think that anybody should wax nostalgically about these transitional abominations...

Anyway, I've got my graphics tablet. Happy, happy, joy joy.

"WE DON'T TELL PEOPLE WHAT TO THINK—JUST HOW." Episode 2

2006-06-29T07:00:00.000+12:00

In Joss Whedon's movie, Serenity—serious spoiler alert here for those who haven't seen it!—it turns out that the dreaded 'Reavers' were the result of a deviant biological response from a group of people exposed to a chemical designed to make them more peaceful and get the fighting instincts either out of their system, or at least subdue it. The remainder of the population just ended up lying down and dying peacefully, because they'd lost something else along with the 'bad' instincts. Plato would have been proud: Only the dead have seen the end of war.

Now, putting chemicals into drinking water is fairly commonplace. We put in chlorine to keep out nasty bugs; or fluoride to help tooth decay. This is done in the name of 'public health', and, let's face it economy. Sick people cost a shitload of money, and if you can prevent bad things from happening by the simple act of chlorination, well that's all good, right?

Well, it is—if you're talking about chlorination and fluoridation. There are a few freaks who ignore scientific facts and think that it's all a ploy by an evil government to make us all sick, or that it does nobody any good—but, let's face it, there are also flat-Earthers and Scientologists, to name just a few. So...

However, putting a peace-making substance into water...now that, I'm sure you all will agree, isn't really kosher. But why not? It'll stop all those deaths resulting, directly and indirectly, from the exercise of the built-in human urge to 'do' violence, which is probably the most maligned word in the English language. It'll save everybody a shitload of money and resources, which could instead be put to better use making life better; create human welfare systems; advance education and scientific research; foster cultural and spiritual development and progress; and so forth.

Why aren't we doing it? Because, apart from a few truly stupid people, it smacks of enforced manipulation. Chemical interference in 'human nature' is generally considered a form of 'violence' and hence unsavory. (I'll say something more about chemistry and 'human nature' in another blog. Keep reading...) Even if it were done with the consent a democratic majority—a conceivable scenario—it would still be violence, if only on those not assenting to such manipulation and bereft of their choice. Pretty much the same situation as we have, one might argue, in the case of drinking-water fluoridation. So, far-fetched it is not! (By the way, I am in favor of fluoridation; just for the record.)

OK, so chemical manipulation is out. What then about the only alternative: 'cognitive' manipulation? Say, someone seriously started a large programme to engage Hollywood film producers in ensuring that, on a progressive basis, they cooperate in eliminating negative things from their movies. Things to be eliminated might include the positive depiction of violence as a means to solve problems; the use of ethnic, racial, gender or other stereotypes. Consciousness of socially beneficial behavior and thought could be raised through various stratagems derived from cognitive psychology. This could be done on TV, in the cinema and basically all 'entertainment media'. Since children are the most susceptible to imprinting of 'violence' patterns, a campaign would be directed at them specifically. No more cartoons depicting violent acts, containing weapons or stereotypical behavior involving conflict-creation and violent conflict resolution. Violence may threaten and it may even happen, but never with a satisfactory outcome per se. There are a thousand ways to demonstrate peaceful conflict resolution.

Older entertainment material should be treated in the appropriate way: to be placed into perspective with regards to the new consciousness.

I know! That's taking it too far—right? I mean, anybody reading this blog on a regular or semi-regular basis is probably of a disposition to realize that there are dangers here as well. You can take it only so far, right? Make fewer violent blockbusters, for example. Use more 'drama' and less 'action' because the latter almost invariably leads to violence—unless you make the ultimate conflict resolution take place at a non-violent level. That should make the point clear, without actually trying to 'condition' people.

Right?

Hmmff. Really?

Thing is, this kind of cognitive manipulation is actually being seriously proposed by some—the most public spokeswoman for whom currently appears to be one Mahzarin Banaji—who think they have discovered something that anybody with a smidgen of social savvy and more than two neurons interacting properly knows anyway: that people interact with each other based on inbuilt biases; and that the only way to make social interaction 'work' despite those biases, is to suppress them by conscious effort; because, contrary to those who think that humans can be 'improved', they can't; and so learning to know what your prejudices are and how to cope with and manage them, is probably a good way to go.

By the way, a couple of friends of mine will probably now accuse me of 'intellectual arrogance', and worry about my state of mind, but my reaction to reading about these 'discoveries' was 'duh!' So what else is new?

Really! You mean...? No, it can't be! Wow! Amazing! You dont say! Jeez! You're shitting me? I'd never...

I'm struggling to find appropriate ways to express my ineffable condescension. Probably not succeeding either.

Back to the issue at hand: One might argue, what could be a more worthy project than trying to make this knowledge widespread through the use of properly-told stories and early childhood pre-conditioning? Nobody's trying to change human nature here! They're just trying to tweak its everyday expression a bit and how we handle ourselves; and maybe in the process making ourselves into better people. Get those Hollyweird executives into the fold and have them make more socially conscious movies. Make sure they keep the social importance of what they're doing in the forefront of their minds. Have them go to periodic seminars to keep them aware of their public duty. They could build protective measures into their lives and work, much like fluoride in drinking water. In every movie where you can do things counter to stereotype you are likely to produce change.

(The last two sentences in the paragraph above were quoted from Scientific American, June 2006, page 24, where ther's an article on Mahzarin Banaji and the IAT folks and their epoch-making, ground-breaking, world-shaking research. Malcolm Gladwell also referred to their work extensively in Blink.)

I don't see much of a difference between these folks and the deluded do-gooders on the planet 'Miranda' in Serenity; now surrounded by a ring of demented 'Reavers'. Maybe you can, but I'd like to see you try and argue the case.

Not that I'd suggest doing anything serious to discourage these people, dangerous and misguided though they are—forgetting, as usual, that the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions. A common failing, that.

I'm not suggesting taking steps to discourage them because I firmly believe in the virtue of the free competition of ideas in the marketplace of human thought. Indeed, to propound what may amount to heresy, I think that extremists should not only be tolerated, but are necessary and useful, because they are like characters in fiction: larger than life, drawn with sharp strokes, clearly visible for what they are and represent. If they weren't there to hold up red flags, avocating everything from genocide to well-meaning thought-control we wouldn't see these dangerous things as clearly as we do. They do it for us; as a public service, so to speak. In other words, extremism is good for society and its continued functioning. All kinds, people—not just those you would like to see! Human evolution, one might say, is fueled by the energies of the extremes, becoming mired and de-extremified in the general mire of everyday life led by the majority. Much like life on Earth is fuelled by much-filtered and damped-down energy from a star burning matter to produce energy, radiated into a cosmos that's just about as chilly as it gets.

Sleep on it. It may make more sense to you tomorrow than it does right now. After all, extremism is bad, right?

KAC du blog: Well, here's a lady with a fancy bow; the courtesan ('companion') Inara, from Serenity. Behind her, the deceptively sweet Kaylee does her best to make sure that she'll survive, too, so she can have sex with the guy she's got the hots for and who is right behind her.

The prospect of sex as an incentive for survival? Sounds like a perfectly valid reason to me. Note that they're all in a fight for their lives against some of the fruits of the labors of do-gooders and human improvers.

The scariest sentence...

2006-06-28T07:00:00.000+12:00

Have you ever noticed this? You have this basically intelligent, verbal or email, discussion about issues of import with someone, whom you consider to be intelligent and worthy of spending time discussing things with. Both of you appear to indulge in that strange activity sometimes referred to as 'meaningful communication'.

Then. Boom! There's the wall. Discussion and communication ends in a crash-and-burn. Your buddy suddenly moves from communication to declaration of something that is in some way 'obvious' or has a character of immutability. It's not that you've necessarily stepped on touchy territory; you just reached The Wall, beyond which critical and investigative thought will not proceed. Yours might, because you don't have that wall; but your buddy is smack bang in there.

Now before you go all smug and say "yeah, been there", remember that you, too, run into your own walls, and your buddies probably feel the same way, only from their p.o.v.

Where does the drive to follow a train of thought simply stop—and if it isn't a wall, it's some serious sand-drift. Maybe no damage to the vehicle, but progress is mired for good.

I have some very intelligent and perceptive friends and acquaintances, whom I respect highly. Yet all of them—as I'm sure they feel about me—cease to proceed past certain points with regards to certain issues.

Here are a few, from different friends, that qualify as go-no-furthers. I'll make an effort to list positions that qualify as 'contrary' to each other; and most of which might also be considered 'controversial'. And, yes, as a friend of mine once said, I do live in a varied philosophical ecosystem.

1) Gays are deviant abnormal perverts.
2) Homophobia is evil.
3) All abortion is murder.
4) A woman's right to decide what to do with her body is sacrosanct.
5) It's obvious and necessary that God exists.
6) There's nothing beyond what science tells us there is.

I've left out obvious and mainly 'political' issues.

I know truly intelligent, educated, thoughtful people who will stop thinking at those points. All of them, in my estimation anyway, do so, because thinking further and considering the context of their thoughts and what that might mean will invariably lead to the subversion of something they feel they need to be sure about.

To continue past the dead-ends listed above...

1) All one has to do is consider this: Yes, homosexuality is indeed 'abnormal' or 'deviant' from the 'norm', in the sense that the norm for our species is heterosexuality, and for a damn good reason. However, as biological science and biomedical research reveals, it is perfectly normal that in a population of mostly heterosexuals, there will be deviations from the norm. Hence the existence of homosexuality is not abnormal; just a consequence of the distribution of the relevant genetic, environmental and social traits and contingency.

2) Homophobia is a built-in; a direct consequence of us being a sexual species. Homosexual behavior is overall counter-reproductive, and hence we have evolved to be 'against' it, despite the inevitable deviations in any 'normal' population. This serves to discourage such behavior, in favor of that leading to mating with someone of the opposite sex, for the purposes of reproduction. Homophobia, in other words, is perfectly 'natural'.

3) Where does a human being, as an identity, actually 'begin'? As a clump of undifferentiated cells? Where? Is such a clump of cells in a Petrie dish existentially different to the same clump in a womb?

4) Same questions, plus... Does the fact that a child in physically inside the body of a person really give that person the right to place her 'rights' above those of the unborn? In the absurd instance of a recent NZ case of what, by all rights, should have led to a prosecution of criminal manslaughter, this was taken to the point where the differentiation of the child as a human being with the same rights as the mother, and especially the 'right to live', was separated from it being an entity with less existential rights than the mother by less than a day. In this instance the child was denied life, because it had not been allowed to be removed from the mother in time for it to live. The mother and the midwife effectively decided between the child's life and death; a child which would have been perfectly capable of surviving without its mother or any external 'artificial' means. That kind of action, had the child been outside the mother, instead of inside her would have been called 'homicide'. I'm not certain what it would have been called if it had been outside but still connected by the umbilical. Who has what 'rights' then?

5) What piece of evidence, or body of evidence, actually exists to demonstrate, in a consistent and reasonably unassailable manner, the existence of any kind of 'God'? What body of assumptions is required to allow a 'God' to exist even on the basis of rational argument?

6) What piece of scientific evidence, or body of evidence, actually exists to demonstrate, in a consistent and reasonably unassailable manner, that science either can, in principle, explain everything that requires or might require 'explanation'—or that there is nothing that it simply does not currently have within its scope of explanation?

I've tried to suggest such further thought-paths to the people in question, but not one of them has taken the bait. Oh, there is some, "hmm, interesting" reaction, but it's all fake. None of these otherwise thoughtful and intelligent people would seriously consider pulling out their own judgmental rugs from under their asses and coming to grips with these nagging nurgles in their articles of faith, except as pro forma exercises, which they''' design and conduct in such a way as to prove that they were right to begin with. Which is what they will, in the end, demonstrate to themselves beyond a doubt in their own minds, no matter how convoluted and ultimately ludicrous the 'reasoning' that gets them back to where they knew they should have been all along—demonstrating to them that the whole thing was obvious anyway; so why waste time with all these irrelevant red-herring side-issues?

Right?

Right!

I see these reaction as evidence of intellectual cowardice—but maybe I shouldn't be so judgmental. After all, we all have to stop pursuing the full complexities of anything and come to some 'working conclusions'; and which we make into 'working assumptions' that we use to conduct our affairs. But after having operated with those assumptions for long enough they tend to become convictions that must not be touched. Articles of faith. Opinions congealed to certainty.

It's OK to have this operating at a personal level. Faith in the good will of those one loves or one's friends is a good thing. It's essential for the coherence of family and social frameworks. But non-essential things that nonetheless may, in the bigger picture have ramifications far beyond one's immediate reach—like persisting in one's children—should not be treated thus. Every 'opinion' should be open to review.

But, no.

Bang! There's the wall. Crash and burn.

The scariest phrase for these people appears to be "I don't know" or "I'm not certain". Take your most cherished articles of faith about the world and how it works and apply either of those two phrases. See how it makes you feel. See how it makes you feel to assume a p.o.v. opposite to the one you have right now.

I know you won't—and this isn't reverse psychology either. Just human nature. Thing is, you won't because you simply can't. Too far gone along this road instead of that one.

More on this to come. I'm not done with you yet.

Michelle's adventures in Bali land

2006-06-27T21:00:00.000+12:00

The video [has now been taken off the site—email me, till@owlglass.com, if you want a copy] of the 60 Minutes segment on Michelle Leslie: about 15 minutes long, and you'll need QuickTime 7, available free from Apple. Excuse the quality, but I don't have infinite bandwidth.

Faking religion

2006-06-27T07:00:00.000+12:00

Last night I watched a 60 Minutes item on Michelle Leslie, an Australian model, unfortunate enough to get caught in Indonesia with drugs on her. Or so I thought, until that report. As a public service, in a couple of days or so, I will have the segment on-line for a limited time, and please feel free to watch it. It is a sobering story. I'll let you know when it's available.

When you watch it, remember that there were howls of indignation from the religioids (e.g. 1 2 3)—even Christian ones. (Actually, reading some of those articles in the light of the 60 Minutes item may make you want to puke; so make sure you have a plastic bag or bucket handy.) How, the religioids and their apologists chant in demented unison, dare anyone take opportunistic advantage of a religion for the sake of getting oneself out of hell and to safety? Do whatever you want, but don't you dare crap on religion!

It's not that I am advocating the practice, but is there really any difference between taking advantage of someone's religion than any other deeply held conviction he might have? If there is one, I honestly can't see it. If anything, I wonder if it means that—since this notion is so wide-spread, and since religion is as well—the deeply-held convictions held by religioids, and especially those of the monotheist variety, are at the same time more deeply held than any other convictions we might have, but also the most vulnerable. And said vulnerability, or so one might suggest—and I'm just putting this meme out there into cyberspace to let it roam around and see what happens—could well be caused by the fact that really, really deep down the believer knows that...well, it's all just...not true. That it is truly and honestly just a lot of bollocks. That each and every one of us are really all alone, and all we have is each other, and that we have to face the universe, whose substance is our substance, without succor or guidance from the super-natural—and that when we are swallowed whole by that terrible darkness called 'death' we don't even have that anymore.

In other words, you don't get to play again. Every decision you make is yours. Every decision and its consequences are irreversible and cannot be undone, and there is nobody to forgive you for your pecadillos but you; and maybe a few other people, who are as fragile and finite as yourself.

Harking back to a recent blog (Be Reasonable), we might say, that the Michelle Leslie affair gives us a profound insight into the awful mess in a lot of people's 'houses'. And it's not a pretty picture, is it?

Not that this is a revelation of great novelty. Still, there is a silver lining even to this dark cloud. For Michelle and her family and supporters managed to get her back home—whatever the cost and whatever religious and political sensibilities were kicked around. And now there's a story neither the Indonesians, nor the PC-crowd, nor the Australian government wanted to have told publicly. And Michelle herself, through all this, may actually be better off as a human being—for now she knows who her friends are; and that's a really important thing to know. And maybe the fates rubbed her nose in a few more revelations about herself, life and the universe and everything. Ultimately isn't that what makes us grow?

If the substance of the 60 Minutes report is correct and things basically happened as they were reported there I will admit that I have profound admiration for that girl's moxy and her determination to get out of that place. And I empathize with her parents, who, it seems to me, would have done literally anything in their power to help her. This is as it should be. It's known as 'love' and 'loyalty'—not to some stupid deity, but those who depend on you.

808

2006-06-26T23:11:00.000+12:00

So, for the last three months I'm averaging about 10 hits on this blog/day. That isn't too bad, I guess, especially when you consider where some of them come from! I can assert that this blog is read on all continents, excepting Africa. Got to work on that one! However, with the spread of the System Crash blog meme, there appears to be a price to pay, since owlglass.com is having very few hits. So, how does the SC meme spread into the oddest nooks of the world?

Here are some comparisons for the last two months:

For May:

For June (so far):

Losing some and gaining others. Interestingly, the frequency has been fairly constant throughout the monitoring period.

About 808:

South Park episode 808, which, in its usual even-handed manner, had a go at Presidential candidates, you-must-vote-nazis and PETA, all in one fell swoop. They are masters at laying bare the 'reasons' people use to buttress what's just fervent convictions about what's what.

Stan's been banished from South Park by his PC parents and everybody else for not wanting to vote for a new school mascot; said election becoming necessary since the previous one, a cow, had incurred violent protests from PETA for animal exploitation. He ends up in PETA's compound in the wilderness, where strange practices are commonplace.

Finally, someone steps up to him and...

PETA guy: Stan, I want to introduce you to my step-daughter, Theresa...

{Some dialogue cut out, since this is a family blog. }

PETA guy: You don't belong here, Stan. You should return home.

Stan: I can't. I was banished for not voting.

PETA guy: But why on Earth wouldn't you want to vote?

Stan: I think voting is great. I just didn't [care to choose] between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.

{Umm, yes, unsurprisingly those were the candidates put forward.}

PETA guy: But Stan, don't you know, it's always between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. Nearly every election since the beginning of time's been between some douche and some turd. They're the only people who suck up enough to make it far enough in politics.

Now, lest anyone thinks I'm just trying to gross you people out, let me emphasize that, as usual, there's a 'point' here. For 'politics' is one arena where people do take bizarre positions and 'reason' soon becomes a galley-slave on the boat of opinion. Indeed, nowhere is the basically subservient role played by reason more evident than in anything 'political', and especially in any system even pretending to be 'democratic'.

What I like about South Park is that every character has a clear point of view, and every character's point of view qualifies as decidedly 'third-person-limited'. And every one of the viewpoint characters gets to say at least one thing in an episode that will make perfect sense even to those who don't share his point of view otherwise. Nobody, even the stupid, is totally stupid; and everyone sees something another doesn't. This is why SP is both even-handed and offensive; for even if you took out the toilet-humor, there remains enough subversion to made those identifying with some side, invariably drawn with an 'extreme' brush to make the point, at least uncomfortable.

I'll continue this theme in my next blog. Yes, there is a theme. How could there not be?

KAC du blog: inevitably, here's Buffy. I never went for the series myself, except for occasional snippets. Too much teen-angst as dramatic infrastructure. I'm not really into teen-angst. There are equally interesting themes for the likes of me to provide dramatic interest.

A room to live in

2006-06-26T11:11:00.000+12:00

© Joel Anderson, artist and illustrator extraordinaire.

Since I was talking about houses/buildings/rooms... This had a lovely warmth to it. I suppose I could live there. But what lurks in that dark nook behind the sign?

Be reasonable!

2006-06-25T12:39:00.000+12:00

Long blog alert! Proceed at your own peril…

My sympathetic treatment of Dancing Rodney (Dance the Night Away) would not have met with approval from all, and especially not those in my circle of acquaintances and friends who hate Rodney and all he stands for, whatever that is or they think it is. On the other hand, those same people are quite likely prepared to rationalize as either insignificant, or ‘just political’, or ‘understandable, given the circumstances at the time’ the then-behavior and continued existence in important political office of a man, who in his former career as a teacher indulged in behavior that I, as a father of two daughters, find more than just mildly disturbing, no matter what the circumstances were in some dim dark past less than two decades back.

The matter occasioned me to think about that strange thing called ‘reason’. It occurred to me that all the three people present at the discussion to which I refer had a solid framework of context, and that within each framework the ‘reasons’ advanced to think this or that made perfect sense. That, by the way, includes me.

Isaac Asimov once wrote that ‘A chain of valid reasoning will lead to the determination of truth’. If that were so, then maybe there was a way to resolve the impasse of contrary opinions? Some chain of valid reasoning to determine of Rodney is really a terrible man who shouldn’t be in parliament, or wether the same thing applies to that certain Minister of the Crown; whom I shan’t mention by name for reasons having to do with the recent application of totally bizarre sedition laws to what should have been a straightforward case of criminal nuisance.

Alas, I think Asimov was blowing smoke through an orifice designed for a different purpose. For his dictum completely depends on the validity of the Platonic Idealist fallacy; which would imply that ‘reason’--—sorry, that should be ‘Reason’, I guess—is the great cosmic remedy to all our ills, and if only we all proceeded according to its precepts and incarnated its essence, then we all would come to conclude pretty much the same things.

Which is a lot of bollocks, of course. It’s ‘Reason-Absolutism’, a.k.a. ‘The Vulcan Fallacy’. Mr. Spock solved everything by ‘logic’. Yeah, right. Thing is, ‘Captain Kirk’, despite his many flaws, actually had it right. As opposed to, say, Jacob Bronowski, who was a man I have great respect for; but he, too denigrated the importance of what truly drives us to do what we ultimately end up doing, and thought that the new and improved man had to move forward into a better way of working things out—in what is, of course, in the realm of ‘reason’ or ‘rationality’.

If it’s all bollocks, then what is ‘reason’, or ‘rationality’? What does the term really describe?

Metaphor/analogy alert!!

Think of us all living in different houses, buildings, edifices of some kind, which represent everything that can be called our personal ‘context’; the framework of our beliefs/assumptions, implicit and explicit; actions; reactions; decisions. The basic frameworks of these houses are constructed of whatever it is that we call ‘the universe’. Then there’s genetics, environment and contingency, past, present and future-conjectured; and so on.

All our houses are all different in some respects. Not in the basics, of course—and one would presume that when we look at them we’d all agree on some fundamental principles of construction; like that, for example, houses are built bottom-up, with the foundations coming first; rather than the roof, say, magically suspended from nothing above and everything happening top-down. At least you’d think we’d all agree. But never mind that little nurgle.

But then there a gazillion differences; or at least they look like differences, and maybe they are. And as we continue to construct the house we live in—some of it by intent, but most of it purely reactively—we need a system to navigate its many rooms, to deal with electricity and plumbing issues, and occasionally to cope with matters that have to do with the way the house is built. Like when we look behind those papered walls, what do we find? What kind of supporting/connecting structures that hold it up and make sure it doesn’t collapse; or maybe how does it look compared to what Jack next door told me he found when he accidentally put a fist through one of his walls.

This girder connects to that, and that one in turn supports this one and both brace the one over there, and they’re all dovetailed just so and not the way Jack told me his here.

Ah, so that’s how a house is built! But no! Jack says in his the girders are not straight but arcs, and they’re made of PVC, rather than wood, because wood rots and who’d want the structure of a house to rot?

That, in a nutshell, is what ‘reason’ is all about. What we find, or think we find, when we try to figure out what’s holding together, in some way that our brains can make sense of, the complicated edifice that is our context as it is, or as we see it.

When we ‘reason’ with somebody about something, most of us really just explicate, at greater or lesser length, how our house hangs together, so to speak. What keep it from falling apart, or being other than this perfectly sensible house I’m living in. And, let’s face it, it’s the only structure that makes real sense, because the thighbone connects to the kneebone and how could it be different? 2+2=4. Period. That’s how houses are built. Jack’s notions probably come about because his lights aren’t working properly, so he must rely on his sense of touch when he gropes around in the wall-space. And he’s got it all wrong. All I have to do is explain to him how a house is really built—like mine—and all will be clear. So, why doesn’t he want to listen? It all makes perfect sense: this connects to that and supports that over there and…

If Jack only used the flashlight I’m willing to throw over to his front doorstep, then he could look and see what’s really there. Just like I have.

And so on, and so on…

Both I and Jack use equally perfectly valid chains of reasoning, which lead to the determination of whatever truth we can determine by observing the structures in our houses, and how they enable and constrain us and how they hold the house together and what they tell us about the world the house in built in.

By the way, Jack thinks I’m an idiot, not to realize the obvious existence and utter essentialness of curved PVC girders. My report on the straight connections and support systems I found in that segment of my wall is dismissed as being due to my needing spectacles, since my eyesight is obviously flawed—all that being proved because he found a thighbone that wasn’t connected to a kneebone, so this whole system of mine is just so much speculation, based on overly-hasty conclusions about the systematicity of lower-limb structure. Besides, his house was built from the roof down, as was mine. He’s got a book in his house that says so, and that book is so like totally true and stuff. He’ll only pick up the flashlight from his front door, if I pick up the book he’s thrown over to mine. No promise to use it, of course; and besides, these flashlights blind you to what you can see when you’re blind. Didn’t you know the blind ‘saw’ things nobody else could? After all, they can’t be fooled by the illusions created by the eyes.

Ahh, I say to myself, so he is blind! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! He’s wrong, wrong, wrong! And I’m right, right, right. I love being right! And because I know now that I’m right, I can relax and do my stuff as I would if I were right, which I am.

It never occurs to me that maybe if I went up to the next floor and punched a hole into that lovely patterned wall that I spent hours on drawing on when I was a kid, I would find quite a different structure, or that, had I followed the girders a bit further then the flashlight allowed me to, I might have found some connections and support systems that I never had expected; or maybe that the three-member framework I carefully analyzed only actually works because of that fourth one up there, which is actually—shock and horror—made of PVC; but it isn’t curved, like Jack would have it, but instead a hollow square-cross-section pipe.

And then someone looks in from his house—using a device I’ve never heard of that, he claims, lets him see through walls, which can’t be done, because walls are solid, right? That’s why they’re walls, idiot!—and calls me up and asks me why I always go from this room to that through the left door, and isn’t that a dumb detour anyway, because taking that door and then this actually makes for a shorter path. After getting over my dismay at him knowing this—which he shouldn't be able to because he can’t look into my house!—I tell him that it’s none of his fucking business; and I am about to hang up when he suggests that maybe knocking down the wall between this and that room I might end up with a single one, which it should be anyway. Some idiot put a wall there, he says. Why?

“Because it’s structural!” I yell, totally pissed off now. “If I tear that down then the ceiling will collapse. Don’t you know anything?”

“No, it won’t; because that wall it’s just decorative. Someone put it there because they thought the room was too big.”

What an arrogant bastard! How would he know who did what in here?

“Yes, it is,” I tell him, trying to control my imminent explosion, “and I know that because I saw that girder connects to that one and then it goes…” etc.

“Whatever,” he says and hangs up.

I stare at the phone for a moment, then slam it down. The door over there on my left, the one he said would lead me to a shorter way, beckons with tempting allure. But that means I’d have to open another one before I get…

And then there’s the wall. I’m trying to remember who put it there; but somehow the memory is gone. Maybe it always was. Of course it was. It’s structural, damnit!

For a moment I contemplate the outrageous, exhilarating possibility that maybe it isn’t—but then I tell myself that it’s too damn dangerous and that I don’t have either the tools or the time to even try.

And as for that door. I shake my head and consider the other one. I could walk that way with my eyes closed and I know that hallway from a million previous passages. The other one—and I admit, I did once peer in there briefly—is dark, and I have no idea where the light switch is.

What’s the point? Maybe some other day.

Enough of this tale. But, let’s face it, it is our story: yours and mine. Day in, day out. And how could it be otherwise? We need familiar paths, and we use reason to map them out and to establish cause as to why to go this way and not that in our thoughts and actions.

Someone else will, in turn, have their own rationales. Insofar as some of them are shared—perforce, since all our houses are constructed, in some respects at least, according to certain unchangeable rules—we coexist and communicate. But when it comes to those things others do not, by necessity, have to agree with, our reasoning follows certain inevitable rules, like those of a computer, but each is based on different perceptions of the individually differing aspects of the houses we live in. And since we’re all finite beings we can not ever explore all the intricacies of our houses’ structures; and others we can’t discern in principle; they are forever implicit.

Most ‘discussion’, ‘argument’, ‘debate’ is usually an exercise in trying to tell others what the structures that we think hold our houses together look like. The problem with that is that, unless the other person has similar notions about their own environment, she probably won’t be very impressed. Maybe she could be, if she were to visit your house; but “walk a mile in my shoes” can’t be done. You’ve got to wear your own. Period.

This is what is known as ‘talking past each other’. The only thing of value in this kind of communication of when at least one of the communicating parties uses this apparently futile exercise to get clues as to the causes of the differences of opinion. Or maybe the ‘differences’ are just variations in presenting the material? Or maybe in a dissonance between the producer and the receiver of the communication?

But this rarely happens. Get people to talk about something they have any medium-strong to strong ‘feeling’ about, and the only thing about the other person they’ll ever really be interested in is finding out why the other party of ‘wrong’ or ‘doesn’t understand’. And that is because the basis of our interaction with and attitude towards others is never, ever ‘reason’ but ‘preconception’. Reason is just a handy tool to trace, and maybe reinforce, the framework of our own house, and thereby to prove that someone else’s notions about how houses are, and the cosmos that allows houses to exist is, constructed have to be flawed.

People who think they’re ‘rational’ are maybe even more prone to not understanding this than those admitting to the fallibility of their judgment of how reason determines anything that has to do with any actual ‘truth’.

In other words, when you hear someone say “be reasonable” what he really means is “assume that my way of seeing things is the correct and appropriate one”. I knew you knew that, but did you know that it’s actually really so? Do you know that, no matter what you do, each time you’re asking if of someone, you are doing exactly the same thing? Even when you’re asking them to be reasonable about things that are so obviously true and evident and proven and factually supported and…

Anyway, while I’m going to leave this here, to pick it up in a future blog soon, I ask you mwanehile to be reasonable for a change. OK? Just think about what I just told you and know that this is the way it is.

All of that despite the fact that I know that you know that there are certain facts or truths I haven’t taken into account when writing what I wrote above. Because I am, of course, ignoring the obvious fact, which I could verify if only I looked at the right places on the internet, that all girders are really made of steel and that steel rusts and that this is all a ploy to establish an alien base in the Sahara to mine the rich oil reserves underneath.

I know, I know. But I live in my house and I, too, cannot leave it. Ever.

So, meanwhile I leave you with this question:

Given that is the dismal truth about human ‘communication’, what then is the best and most promising method of actually convincing someone that their view of this and that are actually not ‘right’ and that yours is? Is there such a method at all? Please exclude drastic, nasty means like cognitive readjustment by means other than the subject’s own choice. And please, don’t insult my intelligence by suggesting ‘education’, all right?

KAC du blog: Gina Torres; formidable antagonist from Alias; and loyal, lethal and competent 2IC of the 'Firefly'-class space-ship Serenity. As KAC as they come.

Post-KAL Blues... No, no, wait! I just had a thought! — Oh, oh, oh, this is really cool!

2006-06-23T12:23:00.000+12:00

Truth be told, after blogging about Diana Rigg, I find it difficult to get myself enthusiastic about the current crop of KACs. It's such a letdown, really. For one not given to nostalgia about things past, that's saying something!

I mean, I'm the one who thinks that most 'remakes' end up better than the, usually vastly overrated, originals; and that Star Trek, the original series, really had only two episodes worth repeat-watching—and please feel free to start the guessing game.

It's likely that the post-KAL blues has no deep down dark obscure causes rooted in my mis-spent past, but it's just that I think Diana Rigg is The Incomparable One. So shoot me.

I'm going to have a serious think about the extant KACs, to see what, if anything, I can find that's truly remarkable, or brings them in any way into Rigg territory. I've still got a few on my list, so let me finish that one first, and then we'll see. I was also thinking of having a look at the current dearth of males suitable as 'heroic' figures. Not necessarily super-action KAGs, but guys with more future than the aging crop of has-beens, a lot of which were pretty pathetic anyway; preferably with more depth that certain self-adulating Scientological nitwits or gravel-voiced strutters and preeners.

Of course, there are a gazillion good ones out there, but most of them either are not in the acting profession, or remain obscure and unknown. Still, there are a few 'knowns', and I'm asking myself, if I wrote a screenplay requiring a heroic figure—or tried to film one already in existence, like the many-blogs-ago-mentioned Sareen's Gift—and could compile a 'dream cast' to make the movie, which male protagonist among the array of better known male actors would not do the script an injustice, or make it into something it shouldn't be? It's tougher than you think, but not entirely hopeless. More about that in a later blog; but if anybody wants to offer suggestions, please feel free.

And now about sudden thoughts.

Today I was walking through the lunchtime 'crowds' in Dunedin, thinking some of those things mentioned above; and my thoughts meandered this way and that, and they drifted away from Tethys and its narrative intricacies and into 'ideas'. One is always looking for ideas, especially for screenplays. You can get away with a lot of conventional stuff in novels, but marketable screenplays are a different proposition. Either you go for serious high-concept, hoping that the next submission you make to a competition will get somebody's eyes to light up—or you're trying to find new angles for stuff you might want to produce and direct yourself. No reason why that shouldn't be high-concept either; but the reality is that you've got to think 'budget' as well.

Things coalesced, with KACs and KAGs and high-concepts and whatever else came along, and bubbled up from previous reflections and musings, plus the imminent release of Superman Returns, which I have no real eagerness to go and see, since Superman, being truly super-human, never did much for me—but there's Kevin Spacey, who promises to be the best Lex Luthor ever. So...

Same problem with a lot of cinematographic KACs: they're either not human at all, or qualify as significantly überhuman, or have some strange mystical attributes or connections. If we exclude those—which for example also eliminates 'Buffy' and some of her super-associates, the witches from Charmed, 'Aeon Flux', 'Selene' (Underworld), 'River Tamm' (Firefly/Serenity) and Max Guevera/X5-452 (Dark Angel)—we end up with a considerably reduced group, which includes 'Emma Peel'; 'Sydney Bristow' (Alias); the various 007 KACs; as well as Jessica Biel's various action/horror-flick incarnations, including that in Blade: Trinity. We might also want to add another 'attitude' lady, who is prone to bouts of violence, one 'Temperance Brennan' (Bones).

Rambling, I know; but I'm just trying to map out some idle thought processes.

Going on to wondering about what 'special talent' one might have and still be entirely human; and yet have it have a profound effect on one's life, and that of others. I've been mulling that over for a long time—and I think this may be it. It feels good and has great potential scope for conflict. What if, for example...

Down, boy!

How would one handle the...

Stop it!

Everything in its due place, order and time. Ahh, the danger of having bright 'ideas' or hitting upon 'concepts', and especially good ones—and this one is a gem. I won't sit on it for long, but it'll have to wait until Tethys is finished. Let it stew and bubble on the backburner of the subconscious until a suitable story coalesces. After all, the story is what counts.

And, no. I'm not telling. Not this time. This is too public an arena. I'm not even going to issue teasers. Zip. Nada. Nix.

KAC du blog, from another too-short-lived British TV series. Another lady with attitude and no slouch in the kick-ass department either. Tamzin Outhwaite from Red Cap. Sorry, but I have no super-cool action shots or poses, except for this tiny pre-series training shot for the actress. Nice wrist twist.

The KAL of all KACs

2006-06-22T23:11:00.000+12:00

Long before any of the KACs I've mentioned so far there was a certain KAL (Kick Ass Lady); for that's the only way to describe her. Diana Rigg. To KAC fans she's known better as 'Emma Peel', forever changing the associations one might have with that innocuous name, 'Emma'. Think Jane Austen. Yeah, right. Not this lady; no sir!

There were two other 'Avenger' ladies, Honor Blackman and Linda Thorsson, but the series is almost defined by 'Mrs. Peel', as she was always addressed. She was the first true KAL in black leather—or whatever it was—and she kicked and karate-chopped and joint-locked her way through the bad guys and gals, ably assisted by one 'John Steed', who ostensibly was her boss. Yeah, right.

She's British, of course. 'Dame' Diana Rigg these days. An actress who didn't need the appellation 'actor' to lend herself credibility. The only ones not in love with her were the prepubescent, the blind, male homosexuals, female heterosexuals—who were jealous, of course—and those with a blonde-fetish. In truth though, Rigg probably plucked a few secret strings even in those groups. Somehow she was just not a matter of taste—because she was everybody's taste. I was exposed to Emma Peel in my teens, the rising-sap period. She may have forever determined my taste in women. It occurs to me that maybe Joss Whedon, despite his lesser age, may also have had an overexposure to Emma Peel during an impressionable period. Now that might just explain his propensity for the ubiquity of KACs in his productions.

Diana Rigg also appeared in a much-maligned 007 flick, which, I think, is still among the best ones, if not the best; possibly because of her presence—an ultimately tragic presence, but not because she played a psycho, but the only woman 007 ever 'loved'. Couldn't have picked a better one, really. Compared to her all the others are bimbos.

There are just a very few who might live up to her example as KAL, but the operative qualifier is 'few'. Every now and then I seem to catch a glimpse in one or the other, but always it is but a shadow.

P.S. Here's another curio, relating to what I wrote in a recent blog (Die einen haben die Waffen. Sie ist gefährlich.). I first saw The Avengers in Germany, where it went under a title that translates to, wait for it...

With Umbrella, Charm and Bowler Hat

I'm not even going to start on the French title, which was almost German; if that statement makes any sense at all.

Ahh, never mind! I give up.

The long and the short of it

2006-06-21T23:11:00.000+12:00

Someone told me in an email a few days ago that he considered novel writing 'hard'.

It depends.

He's not alone, of course. Even many of those who fancy themselves 'creative writers' and actually do 'creative writing'—say short-stories or maybe little plays for stage or radio, skits and sketches, scripts for shorts, and so on—feel that way. Others write one novel and then think that's 'it' for a while.

The reasons for those people who might even consider writing a novel, or novels in general, shying back from the enterprise of novel-writing are manifold. They range from what are, in effect, excuses—which in turn range from semi-rational to...well, dumb excuses—to what qualify as real 'reasons'. I've heard a lot of them, invented some myself; and I doubt that, apart from individual details, anybody could offer me anything new and unexpected in that area.

Now, I'm not actually wanting to encourage people to go out and try to write novels here! It would be silly to even try. For one thing, let's face it, the more people go out and write novels, the more optential competition for readers I'll end up with, and if they're better than I, I'm even more screwed. So, folks, don't feel compelled to write novels in response to this. I am not, not, not, suggesting you should. In fact, don't.

But I also think that you shouldn't feel bad about it. Thing is, if you need to write novels, you will end up writing novels—or other long and/or involved tales; and I include feature-length screenplays in that category. Unless you get hit by a bus, of course, before you can start the enterprise. And since that's always a possibility, get your ass into gear and started. Carpe diem and all that.

But some people will never write a novel or a serious screenplay, and others will manage to finish one and then gave a gut-full of it and never do it again. They'll end up seeing it as such a huge, big, massive, daunting, draining, scary exercise that it's "thanks, but no thanks" from then on. Not unless someone pays them a shitload of money for their effort, in which instance the validation effect sets in and they'll do it, simple because they want more validation. Also, let's face it, writing is way more fun to earn a living than work.

Others—like me, fortunately or unfortunately, depending on the day and circumstances—become addicted. 'Addiction' is the operative term here. To explicate this a bit, let me first deal with those who won't end up thus addicted.

A word up-front: it's got nothing to do with 'story-telling' per se. Stories come short and long, and there are a gazillion ways to tell them. But stories in novel form...

Anyway, I’m going to generalize here, and I know that some writers will cross the lines I’m drawing here, but it’s the beginning of an explanation for why people will shy back from novelizing.

In brief, I think people start writing novels and not be afraid of them when what happens to people, and what ‘happens’ in general, becomes more important in their lives and intent-of-writing than ‘points’. By that I mean that a lot of people write stories because they want to say something, explain something, get a message across, polemicize, propound, hold forth, persuade. There’s something they’ve got to say, and they just say it in fiction.

That remains a significant element in the work of even ‘addicted’ novelists. If you don’t have anything to say you don’t really have a story to tell. You may go through the motions and even display technical skill and excellence, but it’s all form and no substance. Like a truly bad movie; I could list a few, some of which are actually widely considered to have substance, but really hide their vacuosity underneath a skillfully constructed veneer of style.

But the urge to get the ‘point’ across, whatever that point may be, tends to get in the way of the essence of the ‘novel’ variety of story-telling. Trying to make a point, or get a message across, is basically like writing non-fiction, only it isn’t. But for novels it isn’t enough. One might as well stick to non-fiction. Novels written as polemics are truly awful things to behold. Nauseating rants, like just about anything by Ayn Rant.

I started off writing long-fiction because I felt that I needed to say something significant about life and the universe that nobody was going to listen to if I spelled it out in non-fiction. I tried to, you know; several times. Anything fictional I’d written before was juvenile short-story style egocentric get-it-out-of-my-system poor-conflicted-me kind of stuff. Not something to let loose on an unsuspecting world.

My first novel was awful, because it was all about ideas and ‘points’. I tried to bring in the ‘human interest’ factor, but somewhere there was always the urge to ‘get to the point’ and make it. Bad idea! It makes for terrible novels—and short ones, too; uninvolving ones; serious it-sucks material.

In my case I was lucky though, I guess, because I happen to be inflicted with the story-telling bug. Always have been, even though I didn’t start writing my first serious ones until I was 20+. And when the point-making urges had worn off, their place was taken up by something very strange and, in many ways, very wonderful: interest in characters that don’t exist except in one’s head and things that happen to them. Call it a decrease of interest in ideas and an increase of interest in…well, maybe the correct term is ‘life’. It’s the best I can think of anyway.

Novels gradually ceased to be vehicles for the conveyance of ‘points’ to the audience and became observations and involvements in the lives of fictitious characters. All of which ultimately translated, by implication, into better everyday observations of real people and how and why they did what they did. Why? Because one can’t help it. It comes with doing this kind of thing—at least for me. I can’t imagine how it could be otherwise.

Thing is, the ‘points’ are still there, but they are implicit. That reflects my personal conviction that the only ‘values’ in the universe are ‘human’, and ultimately ‘social’, or ‘relational’. A message, a ‘point’—no point!—has any existence unless it is grounded in human experience, individual and/or social. And that, if anything at all, is the ‘meta’-message or ‘meta’-point that lies at the heart of every line I write.

What you are reading in this blog is ‘point making’, because I’m explaining things and trying to expose the points—occasionally indecently. In this context that’s sensible. People here read with a view to listening to the ‘points’. But those buying novels or watching movies aren’t looking for that, but for emotional experience; whatever that emotion may be in any given case.

As to novels being huge and daunting undertakings…well, it’s a bit like life. Or, say, marriage. Or parenthood. It’s big, but that’s no reason for not doing it. Or maybe for some it is; or maybe they decide, for reasons other than having been intimidated, that this particular thing is not their thing; not right now, and maybe never. Which is cool, but that’s a decision about life-priorities and shouldn’t need a hundred silly rationalizations. We all have to pick and choose. This is what makes life interesting. Otherwise we’d all be the same and I would have even more competition than I have already.

KAC du blog:

Before Alias, there was the much more interesting Dark Angel, which got canned after a miserably short run; just when it was getting really interesting. Not quite as short as Firefly, but it obviously didn’t pull the ratings. Still, it had so many interesting characters, and—peace Alias!—a much less contrived plot-line. And Jessica Alba did kick some serious butt. Here she is, twice. The first picture is posed, but it's quite Dark Angel-ish. Couldn't find any really nice shots from the TV show. I was looking for a reasonably large image of her on a serious motorbike, but couldn't find one. If I do one day, you'll find it here. The second image is, of course, from Fantastic Four, an unproblematic and thoroughly enjoyable comic-adaptation flick; the most silly aspect of which was that JA ended up as the disappearing woman. Seems kinda stupid, but that was the story, I guess...

Thinking ahead

2006-06-21T12:00:00.000+12:00

This caught my eye. Click on the image to open a large version in another window. I've highlighted the sections that caused me to chuckle. Of course, as an emortalist I find the whole thing rather objectionable, but I guess somebody has to make a living from dying, too. Indeed, some folks would think of this as a job with significant 'job security'. It may be for now, but methinks perhaps if, as they write there, 'circumstances change'... hehehe

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things.

2006-06-20T23:11:00.000+12:00

More odd places appearing on my June map of readers...

Reflecting on why I started this blog, I seem to remember that the original motivation was to 'share', in not too profound a way, some of the twists and turns and internal processes accompanying the creation of what was originally supposed to be System Crash, the novel. Then that became something else and now we're well into Tethys, and along the way, since I started this in January, there have been a lot of differently-slanted blogs, ranging from outright advice to writers to reflections on dancing NZ politicians.

All of that still qualifies as being in-line with the original intent of the blog, I suppose; because, let's face it, these things, as they come along, are obviously on my mind—even if it's only because I feel I should communicate them—and they reflect, in some existential mirror, or system of mirrors, what was/is going on in my head as, now Tethys, continues towards the half-way mark and the end of 'Book Two', this being the main part of Mac's and Naela's adventures off-planet. Soon-ish I'll return to Tethys to follow what happens to Falcon and the others left behind there.

Last night, as I continued the book, the story took a slight turn, plot-wise, as it sometimes does, but in this instance I realized that this turn actually took it back on track, narratively speaking. It had veered off into dealing with the curios associated with a certain civilization. That was fun, but we got to get back to some action. Rest is over, Mac and Naela. You thought you had a break and forgot that time waits for no world-saver. This one should nudge you to get your sorry butts into higher gear.

Still, as I may have mentioned, nothing wrong with changing pace every now and then. Not everybody likes Mathew Reilly non-stop action.

And speaking of slow pacing, here's a note regarding the title of today's blog. I wish I could claim that I had a classical education and was intimately acquainted with the assorted writings of Epictetus, so I could just pick out this quote and throw it in your face in my blog about the redoubtable Rodney H. Alas, this is not the case. As so often, this pearl of wisdom came to me through a movie, in this instance Serendipity; which also, by the way, has the best can-I-have-your-phone-number line ever:

Jonathan: You know, maybe you should give me your phone number; just in case.
Sara: In case of what?
Jonathan: You know—in case of life!

Delivered with John Cusack's manic earnestness, this one's priceless.

Serendipity is one of those movies that, if taken as the light-hearted flick it is, is lovely. Nobody in it does anything truly objectionable. People make mistakes, but basically everybody screws up while really not wanting to do any harm to anybody, and in the end all ends well—for all, I daresay, even those who end up disappointed. A testimony to how it's possible to make interesting and engaging movies about people that aren't all 'edgy' and tense and super-interesting and deep and conflicted, but just...'nice'; and without a plot that requires great stretching of one's imagination, but keeps it simple and straightforward.

I may to blog about 'nice' sometime in the future. Soon-ish.

But you see the 'point', right? In fact, you saw it coming up a mile off, around several corners and against the wind, right?

Damn, I got to stop making those damn 'points'! Friend of mine, who just re-read Keaen gave me a hard time over polemicizing at certain points. That's the trouble with people who know you too well, and who see you in your writings. It's like going to the doctor when the doctor is a close relative or friend.

If some other writer had said the same thing, my buddy wouldn't have batted an eyelid, but taken the issue, context and my character's dialogue for what it was: an attempt at stirring up conflicting and thought-provoking mental processes. A question about the nature of ethics and moral behavior; decisions and their unintended consequences. It was also the point at which the consequences reached the point of not being 'safe' any more, but had basically blown up in the decision-makers' faces. Did that mean the original decisions were 'wrong'? Or does it just mean that life simply isn't 'safe'. Our decisions aren't either, and can never be. Anything we do, say, or maybe even think, can amplify to truly terrifying proportions. I'd like to think that those who don't know me well enough will not have the same difficulty dealing with the true narrative purpose of this part of the plot.

On the other hand, this whole thing about people too close to you reading your stuff can take a humorous turn, especially when your offspring read the sex scenes you write! Cringe-factor 10! It brings a smile to my face each time I think about it.

Time for a seriously posed KAC wallpaper for your collection. Didn't have time to hunt around for a new candidate, so stuck with one I knew.

Die einen haben die Waffen. Sie ist gefährlich.

2006-06-19T23:11:00.000+12:00

In my last blog I regaled you with stunning images of strangely-dressed people doing even stranger things on a dance-floor; so here let me return to KACs with a vengeance. And to language, which is what writing is all about.

Here are two examples of English advertising posters and displays for Joss Whedon's Serenity. You may recall me having mentioned it before. Several times. Possibly.

Here, to jog your memory, are English-speaking-world and German variants of basically the same poster.

Some of the differences, which cast interesting lights on national characteristics as well as language use.

The English version is usually terse, cheeky, or philosophical ('The future is worth fighting for').

And then there is that line, taken straight from the movie, which sounds cheeky, but actually encapsulates much, much more .

And here are some magnified details of the German poster.

This one translates as 'They have the weapons. She is dangerous.' Note also the different background and its style.

There a huge subtitle for this one, which translates as 'Escape to [or maybe 'into', but not 'in', as can be gleaned from the grammar] new worlds'.

Indeed every damn title seems to require a subtitle! Someone trying to pack a novel onto a poster?

Here is the most curious instance of subtitling. 'From the maker of'...

and...

Buffy gets to be 'In the spell of demons', while Angel ends up as... hmmm, interesting. I can think of at least three ways of translating this:
1) 'Hunter of the darkness'- meaning someone who hunts the darkness.
2) 'Hunter from the darkness'-meaning someone who hunts and comes from darkness.
3) 'Hunter in the darkness.'

Ahh, the ambiguity of language; in this case German, where you wouldn't really expect it. Maybe the subtitle needs a subtitle for clarification or semantic expansion.

I don't know what it is with the German subtitling, but it's got to be some national characteristic. Nothing else makes much sense. Maybe Germans need to be told these things. Maybe they want to be told these things. Maybe they can't interpolate or contextualize without these aids. Maybe they just want more words to make it look like there was...well, 'more' I guess.

Having been brought up in Germany and having lived there for most of the first 21 years of my life, I still remain puzzled.

Whatever that means. Maybe I need a subtitle.

Dance the night away.

2006-06-18T23:11:00.000+12:00

I've figured it out. Yes, I have. Not that it matters, but I've worked out that I have about a dozen 'return visitors' to this blog. They appear, with varying scores, every month. I'm sure that I know about four of them; I think I may know who another two are. The remaining five or six are anonymous regulars, whom I may or may not know. Thank you all for your interest. Really. It's nice not writing into a vaccum; despite the fact that responses are sparse—which is probably a good thing, because I really should work harder to push those 47k words in Tethys to giddier heights. Thing is, right now I also have an editing contract on top of my normal work, and I'm pushing things here.

Apart from the dozen regulars, by the way, there are 'occasionals' that show up every now and then. And then there are the real odd ones, and I ask myself "what the...?"

Algeria? Bulgaria? Japan? I wonder if some of those drift in—and then out again—prompted by my sneaky insertion of my website address into my Amazon reviews. But then I would expect the same locations to appear on the corresponding map for owlglass.com. But only some do! Some drift in via my daughter's blog, but even so it doesn't cover all visitors. So, how does this work? The internet is an odd place. If we want to use it as a model/metaphor/analogy for the human brain, I'll leave you with your own thoughts as to where this may lead.

To something else, namely a New Zealand politician called Rodney Hide. He's a pudgy little fellow—now less pudgy—right-wing as they come; annoying as hell, especially to those on the center-left; a constant hounder of governmental pecadillos; and a general right royal pain in the ass. The New Zealand media were livid when, despite their best efforts, he alone, through getting elected to a parliamentary seat, ensured that in our MMP electoral system, his party remained in parliament, despite not making it past the MMP threshold as a party.

Anyway, Rodney went out and did something which, I must admit, makes me plain admire him. He went out and braved the NZ TV public on a show called Dancing with the Stars, prepared to make himself into a laughing stock, by facing what he called the one thing that truly terrified him: dancing; dressed in preposterously silly outfits; before I don't know how many viewers, plus the usual bunch of dumb-ass judges, some of which were quite unabashed at making sure everybody knew how much they disliked him—for his politics at the very least, and probably because everybody knew that he was supposed to be the comic relief on a show where everybody else was glitzy and much more glam-famous—to be humiliated at their whim. Which they did.

Even the announcement of him appearing invoked predictable comments like:

"Great to see Rodney Hide is to become one of the Cast of "Dancing with the Stars" after all his ego is bigger than his waistline, and he will be good for a laugh. It will also prove to the NZ public just what a Clown Hide really is."

Which about sums up the general reaction. No surprises here.

I don't have much time for Dancing with the Stars—or any of its myriad, manifold and varied voyeurist relatives—but someone in our household feels otherwise inclined, and so, not to be anti-social, I sit there with earphones on my head, using the time to type blogs entries like this one, and occasionally looking up from my laptop when I think an interesting moment was imminent. Even before the episode where Rodney and dance partner were eliminated, TV had a field day taking the piss out of him; laughing at his antics; impugning his motives for being there; decrying his absence from the hallowed 'debating chamber' and his wasting of taxpayer money; and so on. When, in their last performance, Rodney somewhat unceremoniously dropped Krystal at the end, after a daring fling over his shoulder that she should never have let him try, the laughter became a roar of giggles and schadenfreude. Nobody appeared to have noticed that at this point Rodney and Krystal provided us with what was actually the most human moment of the whole damn bizarre show.

Rodney faced down his terror of dancing, and exhibited great dignity in dealing with the ridicule. With the weight he lost—and with the additional weight he's still planning to lose—he seems to have simultaneously have gained in stature as a human being. And when he described his feeling returning to the hallowed chamber where democracy is practiced, and where humor, except as personal vitriol, is noted by its complete absence, I had a laughing fit, it was so funny.

Watching Rodney being taken the piss out of on a TV magazine programme tonight, Sunday 18th June, and thinking my thoughts —as I often do, despite what people say— it occurred to me that those who tried to make fun at his expense did not only lose this particular game, but did so rather pathetically—and maybe the funniest thing here is that they probably don't know it, and wouldn't understand what I'm saying, even if they heard me.

And it occurs to me that maybe a person's proclaimed politics—unless he advocates mass murder or ethnic cleansing or similarly despicable practices—is considerably less important, even for a politician, than what he is. And I've come to wonder whether maybe in the next election I shouldn't cast my vote based on whether I would allow that person to enter our house and have dinner with us. And I certainly wouldn't want to socialize with our PM, for example; nor most of those sitting on our parliamentary benches. After seeing Rodney talk about this tonight, being grilled by unsympathetic reporters, I find myself surprised to realize that I would gladly invite him and chat over dinner. If he wanted to score brownie points, he succeeded with me.

And if this makes it sound like this blog entry was all about politics, you've misunderstood it. It's about seeing a little pudgy man in his 40s facing up to something that terrified him—whatever his reasons; and he was right to be terrified, because he did, on occasion look ridiculous, though not because Rodney went out to look like a clown—unlike a certain other political personality, the mayor of Invercargill, who did this in the first season of the show; but then again, that guy is a clown—but mainly because he was so earnest in trying his best, and because he followed Epictetus's dictum: "If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things."

(For those interested, the quote continues: "Don't wish to be thought to know anything; and even if you appear to be somebody important to others, distrust yourself. For, it is difficult to both keep your faculty of choice in a state conformable to nature, and at the same time acquire external things. But while you are careful about the one, you must of necessity neglect the other.")

Courage is found in the oddest, most unexpected places. I thought Rodney deserves to have his mentioned, because he's an example that should give us all pause for thought; maybe even those who are prone to reviling him. He was given a chance to exist outside his box. He took it, knowing that the opportunity was offered for reasons at least partially malicious; that it would incur him opprobrium, humiliation, ridicule, a million cheap shots at his expense. But he took it anyway. And I think he had fun doing it. And, though I may not agree with most of his politics, he has earned my respect as a man.

The other person who earned my respect was the dance-experienced young lady, who was his guide/partner, and who was thrown into the deep end by being assigned to him, I guess—and who described Rodney and teaching him the rudiments of dancing as having been a 'challenge'. Her loyalty to what she knew had to be a losing proposition as far as the competition was concerned—which is always a good promotion for the 'experienced' partners as well—was not an act, but it came through in a hundred little body-language signs and utterances. I'm fairly certain that she didn't have a 'thing' with Rodney. But she, too, was taken outside her own box of perception, I'm sure. The moment after that disastrous near throw-on-the-head, avoided only by her dexterity...there was a small gesture...the kind of thing you pay big money for to get someone to script it, get it into the movie, get it done right by the actors and edited right afterwards. A tiny, sparkling gem in the bilge of TV programming.

And here, and I know you were pining for them, are Rodney and Krystal. And, yes, please feel free to laugh—for example if you go here to have a look at the glamor competition. (Well, maybe not all qualifying as 'glamorous', but you'll get the drift.)

Talk about being set up! And for those that way disposed, feel free to download the Rodney and Krystal Wallpaper—yes, there are wallpapers for all the couples!—for your very own computer and visual delight. I wonder what the download rate is around NZ.

Note: the site whence I stole these images, had a caustic article accompanying them, commenting on the Hide phenomenon, speculating in particular on the reasons why the 'popular vote' was so high; which was what kept Rodney and Krystal in the competition for as long as they stayed there, despite the judges' vitriol. Unfortunately, for the writer, the article loses its credibility before it even gets started—at least for the literate public, or so one would think.

The headline:

Whose voting for Rodney?

The preposterous competing with the bizarre for top spot in the 'weird' league. I'm not sure whose winning.

If you talk to God, you're religious. If God talks to you, you're psychotic.

2006-06-17T23:11:00.000+12:00

Cool line from a recent episode of House. I am inclined to agree. I also feel the same way about Moral Absolutism. To paraphrase: If you're trying to do the right thing, you're being a good human being. If you think you actually can act as if you had any notion of what is truly 'right', you're a zealot.

And, yes, there's a paradox here. The paradox of morality actually—and the only resolution to it is the existentialist acceptance of the createdness of all value. Most people, of course, can't live with that. But that is mainly because, as a theologian acquaintance of mine once expressed it (and I paraphrase, but closely): "Meaning comes to us from something external to ourselves." I tried to explain to him—and failed miserably, as I knew I would—that what he thinks of as 'external' is really just 'wider context', the medium in which our limited contexts—what we see as 'ourselves'–are embedded.

Few people understand how these things are different. But it's not that hard. Think of your brain as the thing that houses what is 'you'—it isn't, not solely, but that's the point I'm going to try and make. Now that brain by itself, and without the context of the body that houses and maintains it, without the myriad inputs from body and 'external world' (another bit of a silly notion, but I won't go into that right now), would and without the ability to interact with the body and the world around it...without all that, the brain would indeed have no...well, 'meaning'—for 'meaning' is nothing but the set of references and connections to whatever embeds the things that 'meaning' is found for. Meaning, if you will, is like that ogre; the onion; the layers. A 'layer' is not a 'layer' without there being other 'layers'. That's what makes it into a 'layer', rather than, say, a 'surface'.

Human beings—like everything else—gain 'meaning' from 'context', not something 'external'. Mainly because, when you really come to think about it, nothing actually is 'external' to anything; not in any reality we can conceive of. When you think about it some more, you'll soon realize that, though the word itself exists and is used in particular ways, what we actually use it for, is invariably the description and classification of interactions. But, like that earlier puzzle—and no takers here either, surprise!—about the boundary between thought and action, you'll find it just as difficult to find the boundary between the 'internal' and the 'external', physically and functionally, of anything.

This is a writing blog—so why am I babbling about philosophy? Because when I write about what people do and think, I end up wondering why it is so and not some other way. And people are inclined to act as if 'morals' were indeed something that had some absolute reference lurking somewhere, in some mysterious dimensions of the ideal–and as if they could actually behave and act as if they had some deep-down access to and implicit knowledge of these ideals. Lots people aren't even as subtle about it, but declare with fervor and conviction that they actually 'know' something about what's what in the realm of morality. Some say it in more oblique ways and couch it in the convoluted language and explanatory methodology and sophistry of 'theology', but basically they're all made of the same cloth, only some don't flaunt it quite as openly.

But this what people do, and therefore things are as they are and one may conjecture that things will be as they will be because of this as well. And will there be anything to change these parameters? Can there be? It's a valid question of whether we need to be as we are in order to be recognizably 'human'.

Another thing. Someone asked me casually about whether I had anything to say about the connection between story-telling and persuasion. I didn't have the heart to ask him to wade through these blogs here, though he would, not doubt, find his answer there somewhere. So I responded to his email as briefly and yet completely as I could; and this is what came up. I quote it here because it kind of nut-shell summarizes some things in a few paragraphs. Those of you having followed these blogs probably find familiar territory covered; so please either bear with me or just ignore what follows.

Tens of thousands of years before there were 'educators' there were story-tellers. All 'teaching'—and what else is 'teaching' or 'education' but 'persuasion'?—and often even that connected with simple survival skills, was probably couched in 'narrative', which provided a suitable cognitive framework. We still use the same techniques in our [Japanese swordcraft] dojo today, to contextualize the kata and help the students—and ourselves—to pace them and make them meaningful, rather than just empty sword-waving exercises.

Religion without narrative: unthinkable. Theology is just an annoying anxilliary, a philosophical parasite on the narrative main body of religious thought and practice. And this is not just for the reasons John Campbell put forward —narrative as a way to express the ineffable and inexpressible—but because religion actually is nothing but fiction confounded with fact. This seems like a much simpler and straightforward explanation for the phenomenon, and is a testimony to the power, not necessarily of myth, but of 'story'. The two are identical; this is self-evident, is it not? The need for religion therefore really becomes a need for narrative, story, fiction that we can immerse ourselves in. Why this should be so is an issue I don't have time to go into here.

Story is persuasion by distraction, a cognitive rope-a-dope. That is its essence. Diversion of attention from the issue being 'persuaded' about and slipping it in under the radar, so to speak. It doesn't matter what the contents of the message are. This is why stories are 'dangerous'; because they try to circumvent the system of critical analysis.

Interesting what comes up when one is prompted to summarize things...

No KAC today. Really. Not this time.

Ban! Ban! BAN!

2006-06-15T23:11:00.000+12:00

Ban bread and water!

And taking pictures of celebritoids smiling...

One of the more bizarre celebritoid incidents occurred a few months ago when Charlize Theron visited New Zealand to promote her super-PC flick North Country and bond gushingly with her soul-mate, the film's director, Niki Caro. On one occasion, apparently when Theron was in danger of smiling and exposing her teeth, her publicity pit-bulls told reporters to refrain from taking pictures. Apparently those kinds of images were not considered to be appropriate.

No images of someone smiling—especially if that someone is Charlize Theron, who happens to have a very nice smile and definitely good-looking teeth? So, what are we talking about here? Some modern-day publicity equivalent of soul-stealing-by-picture-taking? The similarities to the superstitions of some tribesman from the darkest, deepest recesses of Africa or New Guinea, transposed into the world of modern media celebritism are just a tad too close for comfort.

I was reminded of the Theron-voodoo-phobia as I was idly searching for a KAC picture from my collection and happened to notice that all but two images I have of Theron show her with her mouth closed; at least when she's not saying something. Compare this to pictures of some of the other KACs, like Beckinsale, Biel or Pike, and the whole thing is beginning to look rather odd. Being someone who follows odd thoughts to occasionally preposterous lengths—and you wouldn't believe what I sometimes find at the end!—I followed this one and looked at lots and lots of pictures; and real people, too!

You know what it's like when you suddenly notice specific features in people? Facial ones in particular. Shape and size of noses is one. The mouth and the eyes; with special emphasis on the asymmetry in the latter. Where they look as they walk along the pavement. And now it's about whether their mouths are closed, open, half-open, slightly parted...

Of course, it all partially depends on mood and is a function of the moment. But not quite as much as you might think. With people I see regularly I've begun to notice...trends. When they aren't thinking and controlling their faces, what shapes are their mouths in? Is it a function of what constitutes a 'relaxed state'? Or just a 'default state', which may not necessarily be relaxed? Is it a function of climate; since people in cold climes might prefer to keep their mouths shut, so the cold air stays out; while those in really hot climes would be inclined to do the same, but because of the insects? Is it just physiology; and for some, parted lips are simply more ‘natural’ for any number of morphological and anamtomical reasons?

I’m still investigating this; but here’s one way in which such tiny issues can be used to add color to a created world. Suppose, for example, that it’s an quirky bit of social morality of some culture that one’s mouth should be closed unless one speaks, is gasping for breath for some serious reason—and even then it might be considered socially deviant—or unless one eats. And why not? Imagine the consequences for the structure of social interactions; and, even more significantly, for visitors. Reminds me a bit of Marune: Alastor 933, a Jack Vance novel where eating and drinking are things you really shouldn’t do in public, but where the generation and enjoyment of olfactory sensations has been elavated to elaborate social ritual and an form of art, in the same manner as women in Jane Austen novel movie-adaptations are always amusing society with playing pianos and singing strange songs. And we’re not going into the sexual practices of the ‘Rhunes’. This is a PG-13 blog, with an advisory to parents only because of the occasional use of profanity and a touching on ‘mature themes’—as well as the open promotion of South Park.

KACs: Looks like she was really clinging to that ceiling... Cool shot.

I'm thinking about...

2006-06-14T23:11:00.000+12:00

...this...

A recent winter chill dumped a crapload of snow across the NZ South Island. Mercifully, Dunedin is among the exempt areas. We've had a few drifting snow flakes and some settled on the hills, but that's gone again. Instead we get these amazing dawns.

And when the sun shines the sky is really that blue.

Enough bragging about Dunedin.

Actually, what I was really thinking before someone sent me that amazing picture of the South Island, was that I should create a table of contents for this damn blog. It's getting out of hand. So I'm going to create another blog, insert the link on the right side of this one, and that bog will have nothing in it, but a table of contents of this blog here. Still thinking on how to order this table. By topic, I guess, but with my lack of topical focus in the blog entries it might mean the same entry will have to appear under different headings.

Hmmfff... When I have the time. Maybe watching something crappy but entertaining on TV with my precious iBook on my lap. Soon. Ish...

Meanwhile, something about Keaen and its sequels. The issue came up in the context of writing Tethys.

One early previewer—an avid reader of fantasy—when he read Keaen, noted that the whole place appeared to be devoid of churches and priests. 'Magices' don't count, because they're not really 'religious' agents, but have other functions; mostly political. Besides they don't actually ever claim to be more than guys who have more knowledge and power than the common ruck.

"You can't have a medieval-like society without religion," said my buddy. "No way."

“But it’s in the future and on another planet and…”

“There’s always religion!”

I remember that at the time the reaction came as a bit of a surprise. I hadn't even thought of putting religion—of any sort—into the novel. I know, it would sound better if I could lay claim to some great plan or design of this world that included some sensible way in which there was no religion, no notion of 'God' or 'Satan', and certainly none of the traditional monotheist—or polytheist, for that matter—mummery surrounding the decrepit edifices of the religions of the world; though I'm inclined to look more kindly upon polytheisms and pagan beliefs, since they are far less potentially and actually harmful to individual spirit and society, as well as the world in general. Way I see it, the more existentially inflated a deity becomes, the more nasty things will be done in his/her/its name than would be done anyway.

I filed the ‘religion’ issue away for future reference, because I had other things to deal with in Keaen. But it was there, and remained there, and when Finister came along, I had to think about it some more. Of course, Finister is partially a spoof on religion, and this time deliberately so—at the same time as it’s my first real novelistic reaction to what that guy said years before. Because, I thought, religion does have known functions, like thought and behavior control. It can also be used as metaphor for something else; like some of those curiously bizarre beliefs do in Finister. Here, they serve to ‘encode’ information about things that are actually true, though not in the way in which one might expect them to be ‘true’. Only those who see the metaphor as metaphor and understands the embedded clues… You get the idea. A Da Vinci Code kind of thing, though without the evil conspiracy. Or maybe there was one—but for me to find out about that I’d have to write the prequel to all of these novels, and I haven’t even begun to think seriously about the intricacies of Turillian Odyssey.

Anyway, with Finister came the notion that maybe here's something to think about. The notion that in some way religion is 'necessary' for our species and will 'develop' as an inevitable consequence of what we are and the fact that we live finite lives and face a shitload of 'unknowns', together with a need of the mind to create explanations for apparently random events in order to make sense of the world—that notion is so pervasive that it's rarely disputed, even by atheists. The latter just try to find 'logical' explanations—and never mind that few of them think about the absurdity of using the attribute 'logical' in that context.

Thing is, religion is all-pervasive; not quite as much as death, but getting close. But to say that it is therefore 'necessary' is plain silly. We only know for certain that, given the contingencies and chronology of human biological, social and cultural evolution, religious thought and behavior is pervasive. Nothing in that, however, points to necessity. And so, I wondered, what if the 'founders' of this world first described in Keaen weren't just woolly-minded romantic throwbacks to an earlier age, who just wanted to create an ideal world modeled on some silly image they had of a past that never existed? What if they had actually put some thought into this construct of theirs? What if they had actually known that there were no utopias, but at the same time thought they'd try out something that had never been tried before—with some significantly altered social 'initial conditions'—one of which was that notions of 'religion' and the 'super'-natural—as opposed to the currently-incomprehensible-but-still-'natural'—simply weren't a part of any existing philosophy? How would this work out over long periods of time? Would religion as we know it arise inevitably as a part of...well, 'life', I suppose?

It's one of the many questions I asked myself as I started to think about the people that founded the societies on Tethys; rather than just wondering about the societies there actually 'are' at the time these tales take place. And there are quite a few more similar issues where that one came from...

Now, of course, in Tethys Naela is 'out there', in a world where religion is still wide-spread; because I suspect that, no matter what happens, religion is here to stay; especially the montheist kind: a meme that's been singularly successful, a synergy of our ignorance about more than we don’t know than we do know, as well as our need and drive to explain things and make sense of them; all of that rationalized and supported by an extensive, varied and amazingly adaptable philosophical framework always based on what is essentially the Platonic idealist fallacy.

Still, it is a writer's privilege to speculate, and if I want to invent a world where certain concepts have been expunged—and where those who had them expunged agreed to have this done, as a part of their agreement to participate in this social experiment; meaning they were zealots of a kind, but not entirely stupid anyway—well, I shall certainly feel free to do so, and have done so. Initially not by intent, but it definitely is intentional now.

The challenge for the author now is not to be too much in-your-face about this. It’s a story, after all; and the danger of author-insertion is ever present. I’ll probably write down what comes to mind and then edit it out in the revision. Still, I think that putting the notion out there isn’t such a bad idea. It may be wrong; religion may indeed be an inevitable consequence of human thought and social context—but we don’t actually know this to be true; and the evidence so far—if ‘evidence’ isn’t just a way to elevate plain rational silliness into respectability—is mostly, if not all, of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc kind. Which isn’t ‘evidence’, but sloppy reasoning.

No KAC today. You had enough pictures!

Aww, what the heck, why not? Changed my mind. Here's another version of a poster I showed in a previous blog—only this one is for Germany; and it's so damn...well, 'German'. There's something about the way Germans deal with SF that's very unique to them. I know, because I grew up there and I read about 500 Perry Rhodan pulps before I emigrated—plus all the other SF pulp crap I read; don't get me started on this!—and I'm telling you: nobody in the world treats or views SF quite the way the Germans do. This here is a definite example; subtle in its configuration, but if you look carefully and can read what it actually says, it all becomes clear. I think.

Grrr....

2006-06-13T23:11:00.000+12:00

Actually, the more I think about it, the more it annoys me. Just thinking again about what I wrote in my last blog how as of recent the more interesting actresses were forced to be 007 bad girls, while bimbos ended up as the Bond chicks-of-choice. This definitely applies to the last two, Die Another Day and The Word is not Enough, though at least in the latter, Marceau was the first woman who might be called a true female antagonist. Otherwise it's always men. Guys against guys, with the chicks thrown in as eye candy and bed warmers.

Of course, that's what Bond is all about; and even the Brosnan version couldn't tear itself loose from that. Still, the leading ladies in the first two, GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies almost qualified as Bond's equals—certainly, Michelle Yeoh could have kicked Bond's sorry ass from here to eternity and with both hands tied behind her back! And then came the anti-climaxes of Denise Richards and Halle Berry. What were these people thinking; if 'thought' is the operative term here? Was there some guy-thingie repercussions from the deadly leading ladies of the first two? Makes you wonder.

I saw a teaser for the new Bond movie the other day. Trying not to be advance-judgmental here, but I wonder what they're going to do to Eva Green—of sultry Kingdom of Heaven fame—and if she's going to be there for eye candy only. I'm taking bets. I know where my money goes.

Why get pissed off about Bond? Well, I just like this crappy stuff, but it would be nice if they could drag it kicking and screaming into the 21st century without going out and inserting PC feminist stuff into it, almost like other crappy movies do sex scenes, because it's supposed to be there to show they've gone with the times. It would be much nicer if they could assume that the PG-13 public who watches this is not just a bunch of macho pillocks, but maybe there are shitloads of guys—yeah, and gals—out there who really enjoy KACs, and don't feel threatened by them. To cast serious KACs in the role of bad girls and leave Bond chickdom to bimbos is fairly blatant misogynism, and no amount of PC pseudo-feminist blabbering from M and Moneypenny is going to make it any less so.

End of rant.

KAC du blog: just to drive the point home, here's another one of Rosamund Pike.

... timid sister Jane from Pride and Prejudice—No; not the annoying and miscast Keira Knightley, but the one standing demurely behind her!—showing off her dark side. As I said in my Amazon.com review, can you imagine Pride and Prejudice with her as Elizabeth Bennet? I could, and it would have made P&P into a truly memorable flick, rather than ending up just so-so. They should have used someone 'interesting', someone with 'layers'—and I get the impression that Pike has quite a few of them.

Act out your fantasies

2006-06-12T23:11:00.000+12:00

Sophie Marceau, the French actress—and very lethal and twisted bad girl in the 007 flick The World is Not Enough—has two interesting quotes listed on the IMDb.

About acting:
"Acting is wonderful therapy for people. Instead of suffering for yourself, someone will do it for you."

About writing:
"It's so attractive, too attractive. Your writing becomes more real than your reality. Acting is contained - you act for three months, then leave it - but writing is the act of creation. Writing is dangerous."

An interesting take on something I wrote in previous blogs. I love the 'writing is dangerous' line. It is.

But methinks she plays down the importance of acting. Maybe it is only 'three months', but it is also, as she admits, 'therapy'.

To a lot of movie-makers actors are necessary evils. You can't live without them, of course, but they're tough just to have around. They need to be told stuff, made to do things in as many takes as it takes, and hopefully there will be enough material to edit together a coherent and effective series of clips that, to the viewer, form a sensible and engaging whole. This at least is the approach I know a lot of directors take. There is, of course, the gushing Hollyweirdesque "I love working with actors" crap spouted by many; which is often responded to with the obligatory "he's such an actor's director" from the other side and blah-blah-blah-whatever. Gush, gush, puke.

Ignore publicity and listen to DVD commentaries; especially if director and actors are on the same commentary track. Listen to their interactions. That'll tell you a lot more. I did this most recently for Underworld, which had the director (Len Wiseman), the lead actress (Kate Beckinsale, Wiseman's now-spouse) and the lead actor (Scott Speedman), laughing and wisecracking their way through the commentary—in a very genuine kind of way. I like this kind, which tells me more about making movies than endless sermons of technical production information. For me—and that is just a personal preference—it is far more interesting how the actors 'brought themselves' to the movie, and what it was that made it 'work'; or not, as the case may be. In this instance I understood why it worked here. The 'chemistry' was right, and something I've always suspected but Kate Beckinsale, even in her 'sweet' roles, finally became confirmed: that underneath there lurks quite a different personality. Not a dislikeable one, but something edgy and not at all 'sweetie'. By the same token, in the flicks where she does act out the darker side of herself, I always thought her other, softer side, somehow always is there somewhere. Paradoxial, it appears, that playing one type appears to compel subtle evidencing of the other, the one that is suppressed in this instance.

All of which makes Beckinsale into an 'interesting' actress, and she's an example of why actors aren't just necessary, but how the good ones enhance the story-telling process. Of course, you might say, it's all 'acting'; and there's no doubt that, for a seasoned professional, putting on a performance to represent just about anything is probably more convincing than it would be for a less experienced person to even represent someone s/he should be easily able to represent. Practice makes perfect and all that. But there's more to it. That elusive quality called 'substance' cannot be 'acted'. It's there or it isn't. You got it or you don't got it. No amount of skilled acting can replace 'substance'; the 'onion' thing: layers; like an ogre.

Shrek: Ogres are like onions.
Donkey: They stink?
Shrek: Yes. No.
Donkey: Oh, they make you cry.
Shrek: No.
Donkey: Oh, you leave em out in the sun, they get all brown, start sproutin' little white hairs.
Shrek: NO. Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers.
Donkey: Oh, you both have layers. Oh. You know, not everybody likes onions.

Well, I do. Layers is good. Layers makes for good story-telling. Unsuspected layers is even better. Actors with 'layers' are like unsuspected gems you find in your story. I certainly discovered that when I made Dating Blind. The actors, just by being who they are, partially re-wrote the story; at least changed its emphasis. It acquired a depth it hadn't had before, because before that it was just a story I wrote. It became a story with flesh-and-blood people; all of them basically inexperienced and bringing their personal baggage to the film, and mostly still unskilled at sublimating it. That created problems in one aspect, because there was some baggage I didn't want and which hindered the story I wanted to tell. In other regards it was the opposite. A lot, one might say, like life. All of which made for what I think a pretty good first effort. Thanks, to a large extent, for the actors just being who they were, and because I didn't know about much of what came out during the filming.

The way to transfer this 'surprise' factor into the writing of a novel—or even the realization that such a factor would be of definite utility—occurred some time after understanding my actors' true contributions to the movie, over and above just 'acting'. For there is a way, and the preceptive ones among you would have figured it out by now, since I've mentioned it before. It's the thing about letting your characters surprise you. Let them do or say something you hadn't planned on letting them do or say. Put them in a situation unexpected even by you a few pages earlier. See what happens.

All of a sudden you have to figure out to yourself and explain to your audience why someone, whose behavior appeared consistent up to this point and had formed a particular 'character profile', suddenly does something that's not deducible from all this prior evidence. Is it still consistent? If so, how and why? What does it 'add' to the character? How will it influence, twist or tweak plot, relationships, outcomes, emphasis?

This is, of course, the genesis of Nyla/Naela, who was a curious, potentially irrelevant and boring side-line character, then acquired 'layers' as she started doing things that surprised me. Right now, just about 30% (guessing) into Tethys, I kind of wonder what's going to be next and why.

KAC pic du blog: Rosamund Pike, from Die Another Day; another very competent, very lethal, very psychotic and very tragic KAC from a Bond flick. There's got to be a reason why recently they put the best actresses into the bad-girl roles. Pike is certainly the most interesting one in recent 007 history. She should have kicked Halle Berry's sorry ass. Would have forced the producers of X-Men to come up with somebody really interesting for the role of Storm.

Do you really think so?

2006-06-11T23:11:00.000+12:00

Jimmy Carter, former President of the U.S., during his election blitz, came out with some statements worthy of Dan Quayle. One of them was his admission that 'in his heart'—meaning, of course, in his thoughts, imagination, daydreams—he had, in the past of course!, committed adultery. However, he also pointed out that he had never actually done so.

By implication he voiced an opinion, which only moral zealots would seriously disagree with: that there is a difference between 'thought' and 'action', and that the two have differing...well, let's call it 'signifcance'; ethically and 'morally' speaking, that is. I'm going to have it out with 'morals' in a future blog, but here it would distract from the current theme.

So, following on from Jimmy Carter's shocking admission, here's a question to kick-start your week:

Where does 'thought' become 'action'?

To be precise, what I'm asking is, where in the CNS—or 'how' if you prefer—does the neuronal activity generally described as 'thought' translate into that initiating action?

Simple example: road rage. There's this moron who just almost nearly ran over you and your kids. 'Anger' doesn't even begin to describe your state of mind. You have an instant daydream, of frightening realism, of chasing after this guy, stopping him, pulling him out of the car and punching the living daylights out of him, then carving his heart out with a spoon: a blunt one.

Associated with these thoughts is neural and hormonal activity in your brain, and it may or may not proceed to other neural activity, which translates into yet other neural activity that controls the motor functions required to perform the hitherto-only-imagined activities. The mechanism whereby, in any given case, a ‘decision’ is reached to let the day-dream become a day-action or not, will differ from case to case, and in each instance will involve different configurations in activity and the structure of the chemical environment in the CNS. The effect of one on the other is intrinsic, but it is also determined by factors that may be considered ‘external, such as chronological factors and sensory inputs: like your wife telling you to get a hold of yourself, or your kid screaming its head off in shock; or how angry your idiot boss made you just an hour before; or… You get the idea.

When you’re dreaming, your thoughts—which are usually uncontrollable at that time, unless you’re a regular ‘lucid dreamer’—are prevented from becoming ‘action’ by the imposition of a functional barrier between brain activity and physical expression. That’s why you’re basically paralyzed during sleepy-time. When the barrier breaks down, potentially hazardous activities can result; for yourself and others. This happens more often than you would believe.

But in waking life, this barrier is inactive. Paralysis of the sleepy-time kind is too indiscriminate during ‘normal hours’. The cascades of activity are kept in check—or not!—only by…well, ‘what?’ is the question of all questions.

Is daydreaming of adultery, when you have a choice to either do so or not and the power to act differenntly inside your head, really that far removed from going out and doing it?

“Of course, it is!” you say.

Why? Because, you like to think that your thoughts are ‘private’ and ‘free’, and that, as long as they stay secret and confined to the inside of your head—whatever that actually means!—and don’t have an effect on those around you… well, what’s the difference to anything, right?

Really? How you you know that the fact that you’re having these thoughts does not impact on your behavior toward your spouse in some way that is detrimental? I’m sure, when Rosalyn Carter finally found out that her husband had committed mental adultery, she wasn’t pleased! Would your spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend be pleased if you did—even if it’s just in your head?

Only reason why you can even pretend that it doesn’t matter is because it’s a secret—your secret. But that’s just like doing(!) anything at all, as long as it can remain secret. Then you can claim that it won’t have an effect on others in a similar way.

So, does that mean that if you go and commit adultery and your spouse never finds out, that’s OK? Because it’s a secret, right? And, assuming you’re practicing ‘safe’ adulterous sex, who cares? Right? The ‘other wo/man’ might have no inclination to let the cat out of the bag, for any number of reasons. Maybe s/he was just someone passing through town, just for a night—or even just some nookie in a elevator. Whatever.

I know this is low-brow stuff, but philosophical questions of the thought-action kind have a tendency to get out of hand and become messy very quickly; which is why academic and religioid philosophers tend to favor an approach that maps the question into a series of suitably chosen concepts that make no reference to the grubby physical reality of our brains and neurons and stuff like that. (That’s another theme I’ll tackle one day soon-ish.)

‘Abstraction’ here, by the way, really means ‘simplification’, because only then can anybody even consider providing some, usually ethically pat or simplistically moralistic, answers.

Story-tellers, and especially those writing stories with a focus on people, have no such easy way out. Furthermore—and this is where the theme of this blog ‘came from’, if you will—they have no option but to spend serious time in daydream-land, in the company and the heads of people, both good and not-so-good, and in the development and construction/replay of thoughts and actions that would get them arrested if they played them out in real life. Sometimes their thoughts have to take them to very dark places indeed; especially if they’re trying to get into the heads of the bad guys in their stories and try to what is often called ‘understanding’ them.

This kind of ‘understanding’ is pretty much the same thing you’d expect from a forensic profiler. More involving, if the truth be told. The story teller has to live the lives of others; often several of them in parallel, especially if the stories are told from that p.o.v. called ‘third-person limited’. You start living other lives; thinking their thoughts; doing their deeds. It’s no use arguing that somehow all these people are really ‘you’ in one form or another. In a strange kind of way—and it all has a lot to do with those damn mirror-neurons!—everybody we interact with is ‘us’ in a very real way, at least as our brain is concerned. Imagining other people may be a way of imagining ourselves as we might be, think or act; but in a very real sense it is also being in the heads of ‘others’. And we end up doing things—in thought, yes; but in thought that actually makes it onto a page or maybe even a screen!—that we as ‘ourselves’ would not do.

All of which then always begs the question: who is this ‘we’? Or ‘I’? If I am, in some way that affects my life and that of others, also my characters—male, female, protagonist, anatogonist, important, unimportant—any of those people who point-of-view I have assumed at one time or another, whose thoughts I have emulated—‘had’?—and whose actions I have performed in the way in which one might in a dream, where apparent feedback from action is perceived without said action actually having taken place in the ‘real world’…

The one way in which this multiple-identity thing is going to affect the rest of the world is by having its product—book, movie, play—received by others, which will be influenced in some manner. This may or may not impact on my ‘real life’ in a multitude of ways—economic, social, etc—but that it will have an impact is certain. Even failure to communicate a book to a wide audience will affect the creator; disappointment has its consequences as much as would, say, fame.

Are these effects the result of the writer having written the book/screenplay? Of the writer having become the people he wrote about? Both?

And then there’s the vexed question of ‘memory’. For will I not now also have what effectively amounts to memories that rightly belong to the characters whose identities I have assumed, however briefly, at one time or another? Considering the unreliability of memory in general and its influence on defining who and what we 'are'—if we can be said to 'be' anything!—what does that tell us about thought, action and identity? What does that tell us about ourselves as creators of worlds and characters?

OK, so here's JB, having a pretty bad time. The picture is of a 'KAC', because in the end she does kick ass. And a picture from a horror flick, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), because there's some pretty horrific imagining going on here. Just to drive home the points made above. Nice house, too.

Spider, spider on my desk

2006-06-11T16:05:00.000+12:00

This little lady sits on my desk at the place where I work. When I'm in a mood to do so, I'll place her onto the keyboard when I leave. The keyboard is black, and so Charlotte—named that way for obvious reasons—looks suitably threatening and sinister; a darkness crouching atop another.

Those around me who have come to view my foibles with a smile, rather than a puzzled frown, probably look at Charlotte as an expression my general of ‘in your face, buster’ attitude. The rest are…well, ‘puzzled’, I guess. However, everybody gets the symbolism of Charlotte’s positioning.

Keep your damn hands off my keyboard.

Not that it make a sparrow’s fart worth of difference if people didn’t. But sometimes, after a ‘yak!’ day at work, being as bit of an in-your-face ass as you log out of your work day is a cheap way to make yourself feel better.

Direct visual symbolism. In our eyes; in your face. For the writers of plays, screenplays, novels, and short-stories the constant challenge is to evoke these images the way he wants them to be present—or as close as possible—in such a way as to bypass the reader’s critical/analytical filters and hit him right in the gut, so to speak. This is best done by weaving the implied and explicit visuals into emotionally involving or otherwise distracting action. Emotional involvement stimulates imagination and opens up its pores. What the writer wants to achieve is ‘guided imagination’. Action and a few choice key-descriptors that don’t interfere with the action and Bob’s your uncle.

That’s why—and I know I’m repeating myself, but I’m saying this to myself as much as to you—it’s worth spending time on those choice words. Not enough time and effort to get paralyzed and lose track of the tale, but an extra moment or two of reflection may make a huge difference.

It’s not necessarily about the words themselves, but where and how they are used. Or, as Ebenezer Blackadder might put it: “it’s not what you got, but where you stick it”.

We already had a ‘chick pic’ in this blog, albeit of a plastic arachnid—or are Tarantulas ‘arachnids’? Gotta check up on that. Anyway, you know what I mean. So, no KAC this time. Tough titties.

Cool! Next one, please!

2006-06-10T11:01:00.000+12:00

Editors and other strange people

2006-06-08T21:26:00.000+12:00

There are basically two views of editors—and I'm talking here in the context of 'creative writing'. 'Technical writing' is an entirely different ballgame.

Anyway, about those two views: one is the view editors have of themselves, and then there's the one the authors have. (OK, so there also a third: the one publishers have—and a fourth: the one everyone else who doesn't know an editor from a crankshaft has. Let's ignore all those.)

The view of editors of themselves, predictably, is always favorable. I've yet to come across one who thought he or she was a useless pustule on the skin of the publishing business. Some of them think of themselves too highly—but, then again, so do some authors; so that makes us all even, I suppose. Nothing really new about all that. Except for one little thing: once you've been an editor too long, you will stay one. There may be an occasional bout of attempts at 'creative writing', but 'editing' becomes a mindset, and I have reason to believe that this mindset is utterly incompatible with that of a 'creative writer'. I'm not putting editors down here, but that is, to my observation, the way it is.

Opinions of authors about editors vary from adulation to 'kill-kill-kill'. In the middle there's what might be called 'agonizing ambivalence', as authors realize that they would prefer in many ways to live without them, while in others they know damn well that they need them. They need them for the copy-editing—to weed out the typos the spell-checker didn't catch, and the apostrophe that shouldn't have been there, and to insert that missing closing quote mark. They need them to point out undesirable aspects of the story—like my first editor pointed out to me that some aspects in the forst version of Keaen really had to be ditched.

What authors however emphatically don't need them for, however, is nitpicking with their use of language; unless said use is abominably deficient. If there's one thing I've learned while working with the Vance Integral Edition—and also looking over some of Robert Heinlein's biographical materials—is the horrendous carnage some editors can wreak, have done, and presumably will continue to do, to that thing most precious to an author as an individual: his 'voice'.

That's because many an editor thinks that s/he knows better how to use language better than some dipshit author, who may be 'creative', but unless he's got a degree in English—or whatever language we're talking about—what would he know about just about anything?

The editor-author interaction is fraught with potential and dangers. I've experienced some of the best and the worst. If you find a good editor, be he attached to a publisher or someone you know and pay for 'proofing' your writing, treasure them. If he gives you trouble or appears more interested in his hobby-horses than the story and your interest as a writer, ditch him if you can. A.S.A.F.P.

Some of the best editors are your friends; those who read your novel on some crummy, ill-formatted printout or even the screen of a computer or—believe it not, but someone actually did this for the Keaen sequels!—of a PDA. Just encourage them to annotate everything they find, whether they're sure about it or not. You wouldn't believe how many things professional editors miss that your friends won't. Again, harking back to the Vance Integral Edition work, there were people who spotted the typos, those who instantly saw the flaws in kerning, while others found plot-holes that nobody else had. Everybody looks for different things, and in my experience at least what passes for 'professional' editors these days are people focused on detail, who tend to miss the all-important big picture.

And I admit that I despair, when I read a signifcant and much-quoted tome like The Seven Basic Plots and find typos on the average every 10th page or so. Whoever copy-edited that book should either be shot on sight; or certainly never be allowed to work again. And I don't care whom I'm insulting here. It stinks. It really does!

Reason why I brought this up is that, alongside with everything else, I've now got to start editing my own work—with the kind support of those people who have read it and contributed various corrections, at all levels. This is the place where I say 'Thank you!', because without them I couldn't have even have gotten even remotely close to publishing, for example, Seladiënna—which, by the way, still has some errors, but with maybe 20 in 160k words, that's not bad going for a self-published work. Not good enough, but the nice thing with Lulu.com is that one can re-submit edited contents from time to time and so improve the book all the time.

Oh, yes, and blogs are the prime example of why editors in their roles as proof-readers do come in handy.

KAC du blog: Charlize Theron from Aeon Flux. Another lethal lady; though, for what it's worth, I much prefer Kate or Jessica.

Don't mess with Jess

2006-06-04T06:11:00.000+12:00

Warning: long blog coming up. You might want to get the coffee first. Or else just skip this one.

Well, right now, at the NZ box office, mutants kick ass, while religious conspiracies take second place and mindless, narcissistic Tom Cruise MI:whatever:whatever action is third and fading fast. Which provides a good introduction to today’s rant.

The Da Vinci Code, book and movie—neither of which I’ve yet had the time to read or watch; and probably won’t for a while yet, possibly skipping the reading of it altogether—has, among those I’ve talked to, and who have read the book, received mixed reactions. I tend to watch reactions more with an eye to the book-story vs. movie-story issue, and question those I talk to with regards to this. So, far, opinions seems to favor the book, which is regarded as more bang for buck, monetarily and story-telling wise. All of which might lead book-philes—and the more book-philic they are, the more anti-movie they tend to be—to conclude that, yes, of course, books beat other media hands down. They are so much more engaging, imagination-stimulating, and so forth. Right?

Well, sort of. If you remember what I said in the last blog, you’ll soon understand why stories told in books are apparently so much more ‘absorbing’ than those told in other media. The ‘you’ve got to imagine stuff’ is only a part of it; arguably not the largest either. The visual, symbolic, subvocalization and grammatical/semantic processing takes up a huge amount of brain resources. Add to that the need to supply your own special effects and you realize why, if you get engrossed in a novel, your brain really has little spare resources for anything. The resultant impression is that, after a goodly bout of reading, one’s brain feels like it’s had a good workout. The net effect is not unlike what you get after a good body workout in the gym. Lots of feel-good hormones soak the brain, doing quite similar things.

Adding to that is the physicality of books; wieldy objects that, once the problem of dealing with their contents has been mastered, give one the impression that they can indeed, be ‘mastered’; that you’re in some way in control—unless you’re reading The Neverending Story, of course, or some other book that ‘has power’ over you. Then you’re in trouble. And, let’s face it, books do have power—not the books per se, but their contents. Stories delivered by book, not to speak of more sinister things like propaganda, have immense power, because—if well-told and combined with the fact that reading does use immense brain resources that otherwise could be applied for real-time critical analysis of the content, they work their magic even better with our defensive resources occupied otherwise.

Books may be potentially more dangerous than any movie. Thing is, since a lot of the story is supplied by you, often implicitly and interpretatively as you read, you can’t quite as easily criticize it. After all, you’re criticizing yourself as well—and we are inherently very reluctant to do that, at least at this level. Plot inconsistencies also are far harder to spot in a book than in a movie, because we contribute to the plot, and it’s also much harder remembering just at what point on what page things really don’t make sense and there’s a hole large enough to drive an Imperial Star Cruiser through. These plot holes usually are of the ‘soft’ kind; meaning we’re talking about inconsistencies that aren’t necessarily of the ‘logical’ type, but more of a contextual nature. A movie would show these much more obviously, and there such flaws would appear as instantly obvious dissonance. The mind tends to gloss over dissonances when well-disposed; and if we like a book, we’ll forgive a heck of a lot of sins and often just pretend they’re not there. It’s so much easier here, because at the very least you can just skip the word, sentence or paragraph.

Movies bypass a whole lot of brain resources and free them up for other uses—including those we would use in everyday life for critical analysis of something we’re watching. Sitting in a theater or watching a DVD may not be quite like going about our normal business, but it’s so much closer than having our nose in a book! Our cognitive processes are attuned to things they would normally be attuned for; except that, of course, we still indulge in some agreement with the movie to suspend our disbelief about this or that premise essential to the tale.

One significant thing about movies is that—until the advent of video and DVD, and particularly the latter—they imposed their own time-frame on the recipient of the story. They play havoc with our perception of time, compressing, expanding, or skipping over intervals at will.

On the other hand they supply definite imagery. This is incredibly important. Unless you supply a known face for a character in a book you actually won’t have a concrete image for him or her. There’s usually some vague composite, made up out of various described or imagined features, but not an actual whole face that is ‘seen’. Also, a gazillion nuances of facial expression that leap to the eye on a screen, would require laborious or distracting description. Go back to the King Kong sequence with Naomi Watts a few blogs back. Imagine that written down and retaining the flow and impact of the sequence.

‘A picture speaks a thousand words’ is probably one of the truest truisms extant. A picture speaks a thousands words in one, brief, visual instant. Add sound and movement, and you have the tools for high-impact story telling. Added to that is something else, that is, if we exclude animation: the aliveness and reality of the actors. That’s a double-edged sword, of course, because if the actors are crap and the director doesn’t know how to deal with them, you get crap. But it’s pretty much the same as with writing: if you don’t know how to use words, little good will come from your efforts.

There’s also the problem of actors becoming ‘stars’ and suffering an overabundance of public exposure, and hence become people with too much contextual baggage. People go to watch the actors, rather than the story and the people the actors are supposed to represent. But this is a different, social, problem. There’s a strong case to be made for choosing good, but unknown, actors for your movie, if you were to make one. In practice that’s probably unavoidable, because ‘you’ probably don’t have a choice, unless you have bucketfuls of cash. Problem is, cheap actors often are truly terrible. But then again, so are many expensive ones. Go figure.

Which medium is ‘superior’—assuming, for a moment, that we compare products of similar ‘quality’ in both? I think the answer depends on the qualifier ‘superior doing what?’ The two forms of story-telling engage different brain mechanisms. The cognitive overlap exists mainly at the higher levels, that is at those having to do with ‘emotional impact’, ‘understanding’ and such areas as ‘critical analysis’. In many of these areas movies are probably superior. Direct visual images are very powerful tools to deliver emotional impact, instantly and in-your-face. Understanding of a situation, and especially that of the characters in the story, is delivered far better through the making-visible of actions than through a comparative description, accompanied by the necessary descriptions of the characters’ internal states of mind and emotion. It’s one aspect of novel writing I dislike, and try to avoid like the plague—without, I admit, being as successful as I would like to be. And critical analysis is much, much easier with things you’re watching than those you have to [re]construct in your imagination. I also dislike movies that resort to this device; a common failing with pretentious art-house material, where the addition of internal dialogue is meant to add depth—I suppose, for why else should it be there?—when it really just resorts to a device almost inevitable in a completely different medium, the novel, but which just doesn’t belong here. It’s almost always a sign that the writer is either lazy of simply doesn’t relate to or understand the medium s/he’s writing for.

End of rant. I’ve just touched on these issues, but I’m writing a book, remember? As such these matters tend to surface sporadically, when a particularly difficult-to-write scene comes up. And sometimes it’s the apparently easy ones that are hard to write, because the obvious solution isn’t always the best.

KAC du blog: Jessica Biel in Stealth as a hot-shot flyer downed in North Korea because of major clusterfucks in the chain of command and new technology. Of course there are no flying hot-shot chicks even remotely as cool—but, hey, it's a movie. Explanations of the pictures shouldn't be necessary. "A picture speaks..." and all that. And now you've finally got an explanation for the title.

"Excuse me, who's in charge here?"

2006-06-02T06:11:00.000+12:00

"None of us are in charge. We're all powerless."

Very, very funny. Two lines wrapping up the entire warped victim philosophy of a particular class of self-development/self-improvement/ self-fulfilment/self-blahblahblah movement. That brief exchange—as the kid barges into the self-flagellating AA meeting, just after a brief ode to powerlessness and 'surrender to God' by one of the attendees—was what South Park's 'Bloody Mary' episode was all about. That religioids should have totally missed that focus is unsurprising.

Oops! Did I just coin a neologism there? Just as well there's no pesky editor to tell me the word isn't in a dictionary and therefore should/must not be used, lest the ‘average’ reader—a term usually, and very arrogantly, directed at American readers by non-American English speakers, who think their English is so-o-o-o much more refined and pure and whatever—is puzzled and distracted by its appearance. And, yes, with me being the EiC (Editor-in-Chief) of my own books, I intend to commit such linguistic sins as using the word 'siccantly' as a kind of synonym for 'dryly'—in a more active form, as in ‘adding dryness’, or something like that—and I shall also continue to differentiate between using ‘not surprised’ and ‘unsurprised’ without having to explain my meaning to someone who can’t be bothered to look it up in a dictionary, paper or on-line.

Back to Bloody Mary. I’d like to encourage people to watch the episode, though many will, no doubt, find it off-putting. Nothing new about that. It is South Park, after all. You can download it, but you will need BitTorrent, which is available free for Mac and Winpuke systems.

Thing is, the line becomes funnier as we see it in context.

“Excuse me. Who’s in charge here?”

"None of us are in charge. We're all powerless."

And it's even better if we hear the voices. Everybody instantly recognizes at least the kid.

Reading, like mathematics, is a profoundly unnatural activity. It is also a fundamental aspect of most modern cultures. The power of ‘writing’ to record and transmit information until recently was without peer. ‘Literacy’ is an almost compulsory requirement for membership in our civilization; those with reading/writing deficiencies are singled out as having real ‘problems’. Only as of recent, with more discoveries about the function of the brain and other advances in cognitive science, are we beginning to realize—though it will take decades for this to filter through far enough to make a difference—just how silly that notion really is. This may also serve to torpedo a lot of commonly-held notions, including at the most august levels of academia, about the influence of language on thought, and particularly the sub-conscious kind. I predict that in fifty years or so we’ll look at the ideas of the likes of Chomsky, and will find them at best quaint and naïvely simplistic, and at worst discern them as being one of those silly fashions that sweep science on a regular basis, much like they do...well, the fashion world. Language does matter, but not enough of the mind is 'linguistic' for it to be as significant as some would have it.

The process of conveying a story through the written word is rather long-winded and laborious. People have to see the written word, put it through a visual recognition mechanism, run it through a language analyzer, perform sub-vocalizations of significant parts of what they read, analyze the subvocalized material, combine that analysis with the structural analysis of vocabulary, grammar and style, and then add imaginative components to supply the context that becomes the individual’s contribution to the story.

A lot of these processes happen in parallel; some are sequenced; and in order for reading to ‘work’ everything has to be synchronized and linked ‘just so’. If it isn’t, we end up with ‘literacy-challenged’ individuals of some sort.

Since I write in English, using English grammar, punctuation and the 27-letter alphabet—which is a very particular way of conveying information, as opposed to, for example, Chinese writing—I have to confine the following remarks to that subset of human linguistic expression. And what I’m going to try and show is just how much subtleties of language-use can completely change the meaning and pacing of a simple statement. This isn’t about obscure issues of style or literary quality, but about how the presentation of the written words on the page conveys nuances of meaning and action, quite without the reader even being aware of it.

Consider a simple scene. Two actors—think of the people as actors in a play or movie, just to aid with visualization—are having a somewhat adversarial exchange. We’re taking just one snapshot of something the woman says; and we’re explicitly prohibiting the use of such visual devices as italics.

Version 1:
“You know I don’t like you doing that.”

Version 2:
“You know, I don’t like you doing that.”

Version 3:
“You know, I do not like you doing that.”

Version 4:
“You know,” she said, “I don’t like you doing that.”

Version 5:
“You know—” she sighed “—I don’t like you doing that.”

Version 6:
“You know…” She sighed. “I don’t like you doing that.”

Version 7:
“You know,” she said, “I…don’t…like you doing that.”

Version 8:
“You know! I don’t like you doing that!”

There are more. A director, having to direct a scene, in which this is written as…

WOMAN
“You know I don’t like you doing that.”

…would be at liberty to interpret it in any way he pleases. The writing gives no definite indication as to what is meant, though it suggests versions 1-4; but leaves ample room for the others.

The reader of a story told in conventional prose is in a similar position. He is like the director of the visual scenario played out in his head as a result of reading this. The writer on the other hand surely will have her own idea about what exactly is being said—or so one would hope! But then it behooves her to ensure that she and the reader share this understanding, and it is up to her to do whatever needs to be done to help to achieve this understanding in the visual presentation of the story; preferably without the extensive interjection of descriptions of facial expressions or whatever. If the subtext and meaning can be conveyed through some judiciously placed punctuation, or the kinds of pacing-breaks achieved by writing ‘she said’, then it’s better to do it that way.

Personally, these are the kinds of things I often go back to: basically simple statements that need to be clarified, in their context and meaning, without actually adding a lot of extraneous verbiage.

Next blog: I think, maybe some reflections upon the supremacy of the visual media over the written word. Heresy, I know. Toes will curl in horror. Uncontrollable twitches, jerks, palpitations. Gasps of dismay. How dare he suggest such a thing—even conceive of it, and be in the darkest recesses of his mind? For it must be have been conceived in darkness, this horrible notion.

But we’re on our way into times where the medium of story-telling is already undergoing significant transformation, and this is just the beginning. Not that I think the written word will become insignificant, but it will have to take on a different place in the world of the story-teller. Not by choice, but historical contingency.

KAC du blog: how could I forget Jennifer Garner? Can’t find any action shots from Alias, so Elektra will have to do. The guy with the swords deserves what he's getting. His technique and posture suck majorly.

Oh, and try to figure out which one of the "You know I...' versions she might be saying to him. She isn't, but she might.

Mirror, mirror on the wall…

2006-05-30T18:11:00.000+12:00

Yep, ‘mirrors’ is the answer, and I only wished somebody had indicated that they give a sparrow’s fart. Thing is, they should—because, together with what we now know about mirror neurons and their significance (1 2 3 4, just to get you started) it must be amply clear that the unprecedentedly wide availability and use of mirrors had influenced not only our philosophies, but also such fundamentals as the way we relate to others and choose our mates.

This was driven home to me the other day when, three times in quick succession, I saw couples that were stunning mirror images of each other, not only in terms of physique—as much as that’s possible, given they were heterosexual couples—but especially in terms of their faces and even their spectacles.

You’ve all seen the dog who looked like its owner—in some, occasionally hard-to-define yet oddly definite, way? There’s a somewhat silly explanation for this, which essentially suggests that person and pet, or husband and wife or whatever, come to look like each other because of some strange ‘morphic’ effectThere may well be a grain of truth in that, but it’s got nothing to do with ‘morphic resonance’. The much more obvious explanation is that people choose who they associate with based on appearance, first and foremost. There are other factors, but the truth of the matter is that, given the predominance of the visual sense in humans, the primary determinant for choosing another creature to associate with is visual. If you look over those mirror-neuron articles you’ll soon understand why this should be so,

Ordinarily, however, we only see (have experience of) creatures other than ourselves. As far as humans go, it’s those who surround us; and even more so those we grew up seeing (having experience of), and especially in our formative years. The whole issue is, of course, more complex than that, but you tell where this is going. We are constructed by evolution to function in this way, because it was conducive to species survival.

But now introduce a device with the potential to make ourselves a significant object of visual experience; rendering our likeness with more precision than it ever was the case for reflections in water or the distorting mirrors of previous centuries, and even then these were accessible only to those who could afford them. Spread the phenomenon among the populace, making the vision of oneself a potentially more intense, prolonged and interesting experience than visions of just about anybody else.

Remember how you spent time—when you were ‘little’ of course; you don’t do that anymore, right?—looking at your mirror image and wondering about that creature in there? Whole philosophies have been constructed around the notion of ‘mirror worlds’ and what they might imply, if only they did exist, and so on.

I dare say that, for many of us, our own faces have been studied at significantly greater length throughout our lives than the faces of any other individual. The consequences this has had for the psychological development of ourselves and our societies—the whole New Age I-love-me movement may well be directly attributable to the ready availability and widespread use of the mirror.

I’ll leave these notions for you to stew over for a while. Maybe you’re even interested enough now to be less blasé about my original question. Maybe the question wasn’t as dumb and contrived as you secretly thought.

Great line from King Kong:
Jack Driscoll: “Actors! They travel the world, and all they see is a mirror.”

It all assumes interesting new meaning now, when you look at it from another angle…

Tellers of tales among you: if you come across something odd that starts off an apparently tangential train of thought that can’t possibly lead anywhere…don’t just drop it and get on with your shopping. Think about it some more. There are a gazillion things like that, and they’re all potential openers of vistas you hadn’t even thought of before.

KAC du blog. I suppose, if we had Lucy Liu, Uma must also get a mention. So. Here she is: the Bride, in full action.

"This is my finest sword. If on your journey, you should encounter God, God will be cut."

2006-05-29T18:11:00.000+12:00

...said 'Hattori Hanzo', maker of lethal weapons, (Kill Bill Vol.1, for those who live on another planet).

Of course, that I should 'meet God' on life's journey is highly unlikely, for obvious reasons. It is however possible—nay 'probable'!—that I, and you, shall come across one of these:

(Supply your own subtext here. The figure was composed carefully, so that everything has its place and significance.)

When these people cross your path, in most instances it's a case of poodle thinking he's a wolf, and you'll soon realize that the knife is made of rubber, the halo painted onto the background, the star made of cheap plastic, the hair a toupe, and so on.

And though he would dearly like to make you feel like this...

...all he's ever likely to see of me is this...

...though there's a better-than-even chance that,if he annoys me enough, I'll dispatch one of my friendly KACs...

...for a wee heart-to-heart chit-chat.

For, as the I Ching tells us—and, yes, I'm mixing metaphors, veering toward scatological imagery—'even a lean pig has it in him to rage around'. And sometimes you gotta stick it to the piggy in the wiggy woo.

For the writer, there is, of course, another alternative. To quote 'Chaucer' from that little flick A Knight's Tale, "I will eviscerate you in fiction. Every pimple, every character flaw. I was naked for a day; you will be naked for eternity."

By the way, I finally got to see the vaunted South Park 'Bloody Mary' episode, and I laughed and laughed, for it is indeed bloody funny. These guys are geniuses of satire. Profound satire, I hasten to add, because, though Catholics screamed bloody murder and put even the Scientologists to shame in their efforts to ban this evil from reaching the eyes and ears of the vulnerable public—oops, I almost forgot the 'l' there...—this was a really very thoughtful episode, which lampooned political correctness, victim mentality, AA and religion—all of which are in dire need of having the piss taken out of them.

And...

Still no takers for my question. What is it with people? I'm almost of a mind to keep it to myself.

Here's another hint, virtually giving it away: the device/appliance in question is also extensively used in science. Indeed, without it, our knowledge of the universe on the large scale would be much impoverished.

Since I almost told you what it is, here's the follow-up question: why is it so important and what difference has it made to our lives, societies and philosophies?

Why story-telling is good for you

2006-05-28T07:07:00.000+12:00

This is going to be one of those philosophical blogs, and people will wonder “but what about writing??” Bear with me, young Padawans. Just bear with me. This is about how story telling is good for you, the story-teller—whether you ultimately get it published or not.

Most people go through life ‘reacting’ and ‘coping’. 90% of human misery is caused by a lack of anticipation and sheer lack of thinking-ahead. This applies even to those who should be motivated into thinking ahead; like people with chronic problems or issues of life, health, the universe and every damn thing.

Say, for example, someone tells X that she will get cancer if she continues smoking. It’s not certain, but immensely likely. Other problems are associated with the habit as well, and maybe that should be additional motivation to quite.

The thing is: smoking -> highly probable illness.

That’s a fact.

A lot of those smokers, who don’t live in denial about accepting the correlation—and I know about this, because I used to be one, long time ago—will go through periods of being scared and trying to stop it. Those who don’t have an addictive physiology, and are therefore less subject to something which may or may not exist, and is called ‘nicotine addiction’, than to the simple habit of smoking and getting a buzz out of it, tend to fall off the give-up-smoking wagon for two main reasons: habituation and habit-patterns.

Habituation means that the thing that scared them and motivated them into trying to give up originally becomes less scary as it is with them for extended periods of time. One gets used to the danger and learns to live with it. Instead of being able to continue to use it as a motivator, it kind of wears off and ceases to motivate. Habit patterns take over again and all of a sudden there’s that next pack bought and the cig lit up and presto, we’re back in the shit!

Same mechanism applies throughout human psychology. Habituation is good and necessary, because it’s a built-in mechanism to ensure that we don’t stress for extended periods. Being aware of the horrible consequences of smoking is a stressful state of mind to be in. And that kind of stress isn’t good for you.

So, habits kick in, and we just ‘do’ things again we really shouldn’t be—together with suitably placed rationalizations as to why it’s OK to do something that it isn’t really OK to do. Not thinking at all about the consequences, really—and then comes the ‘I feel so bad about this!’ thing immediately in tow. Which causes lots of stress. So, it’s either into full denial-mode, or else into perma-stress. Both will do great harm. Lose, lose. You’re screwed no matter what you do.

So, how to get around this crappy scheme of habituation, habit-patterns and apparently inevitable stress or illness?

The answer is ‘habitual anticipation’. Developing the habit-pattern of anticipating situations, actions and their consequences. Choosing ahead, before situations even arise, ‘if that happens, then I have options A, B, and C and A and C are not good and so I’ll choose B’. It kills spontaneity, at least as far as some things are concerned, but believe me, there’s always something in life you hadn’t anticipated, and that’s going to come from around the corner in a dark alley—where you shouldn’t have gone to start with, you moron!—or even, and that’s even more unsettling in an apparently brightly-lit street.

And this is why story-telling and plotting is good for you: because if you do enough of it, the pattern of situation-anticipation will become so habitual that you’ll find yourself spinning out little narratives about the likely issues in your future without even thinking about them. More than that, you’ll start anticipating what you’ll have to anticipate in order to anticipate. You don’t just think about that plane you have to catch, but about the traffic beforehand, and the possible flat tire, and the cop that might pull you up, and the queues that form for international flights long before the dead-line, and about how you want a decent seat and so you’ll better be there early, and about the fact that if you have a good book, then maybe it’s better to sit in the departure lounge for an extra hour reading, rather than leaving things that should be left to the last moment to said last moment and then getting into all sorts of dependencies on the traffic not snarling up even worse than usual and that accident and the problems with your passport and…

You want to tell a decent story and plot it out without major holes, you’d better learn to anticipate and think about eventualities, contingencies, imponderables, and the fact that if something random happens it’s almost always to the protagonist’s disadvantage.

Trust me, you’ll do enough stupid and un-thought-out things to keep you busy and embarrassed in your life. And there will always be a monster lurking in a corner and there will always be ample opportunity for spontaneity. You don’t have to become an OCD sufferer. But don’t let the things that matter go unanticipated—those you know that matter, that is; the others are excluded by definition.

Anyway, learn how to narrate and plot the critical and anticipatable things in your own lives. Story-tellers do have an advantage here; though, if you look at a lot of them, it doesn’t seem to improve their lives much. But then again, who knows how screwed-up their lives would have been if they weren’t who they are? We only know the world we know…

---

Other stuff:

Announcement:

Coming in the last quarter of 2006!

Planning ahead, you see? I may only be 40k words into Tethys, but that’s far enough to anticipate what’s coming after it—which in this instance will be the design of the cover-themes for the entire series of books, including the fonts, which will have to be slightly different in appearance since Keaen, Finister, Tergan, Fontaine and Tethys are all words of different lengths, and so the font for the series titles will have to be worked our carefully.

And then there will be the publication of the first sequel to Keaen, Finister. The layout should be easy; the books has gone through a lot of editing cycles and its structure should make layout a cinch. (He says now, but is he anticipating the possible problems? Yes, he is, but so far it looks relatively straightforward.) The cover will take more creative effort. I have an idea, and it will probably be a full-image wraparound cover—as it will be for all the books in the series. This is, however, a background task, to be delegated to the subterranean part of the mind to gestate for a while.

Still, it’s been announced.

Kick-ass lady du blog: Lucy Liu, from Kill Bill Vol.1. Dainty, deadly, damaged, devastating.

And here’s another hint to help you with the question that nobody seems to want to try and answer:

You will find the item in question in many places. It, or several like it, can be found in just about every household. Some are found in public places. Smaller ones may be carried by people on their persons. The names of these objects were first used in the early 1990s to describe newly discovered physiological structures in the CNS.

Dirty Tom Rackham

2006-05-26T10:27:00.000+12:00

My pirate name is:

Dirty Tom Rackham

You're the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean -- not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

OK. Fine. Whatever. When I took their survey I admitted to bathing once a day, so why 'dirty'?? Didn't they believe me? Bastards!

Still, I thought it made a neat title for this blog. Not that the contents are going to have a lot to do with it—I think...

Something to add to the theme of my last blog.

Fantasy and science-fiction are, of course, riddled with the absurd and preposterous. But people who read this stuff make an agreement to 'accept' it anyway. Those are the parameters of the genre. Same goes for fairy tales, of course; and people claim rightly that anything 'sf' is really a fairy tale. I'm inclined to agree.

Still, it's possible to introduce the preposterous into a universe already full of other preposterous things. The way to do that is to find the dissonant; the 'creatively dissonant'; the thing that makes you perk up your cognitive antennae and say "Hey, there, what's'a happenin' here?"

You see, the absurdity and preposterousness of genre fiction is predictable and has its own fairy-logic. Step outside those confines and see what you get. Amazing things. Like that moment, In Pirates of the Caribbean (just to remain at least with one foot in the 'pirate' context) when Captain Jack Sparrow makes what may amount to the most profound statement uttered in recent movie history:

The only rules that really matter are these: What a man can do and what a man can't do.

It's moments like these that stay with you, because in this instance that, too, was an instant of cognitive dissonance. It looked like it was all about Jack Sparrow and Will Turner having it out about who gets to do what they feel they need to do, plus some general testosterone spraying. And then comes this moment, and it makes everything different, because it came around the corner when you completely weren't expecting it.

Here's a picture of the moon and Venus rising above the Otago Peninsula early on May 25, about 05:40h—taken with a Sony Cybershot 7.2 Mpix camera. Not bad for a little thing the size of a cellphone. Of course, I needed a tripod. Holding still for 2 seconds...I think not, my little puppy.

And here's one of a toadstool, hidden from the view of passerby by distance and grass, my wife spotted while we were ambling through the Dunedin Botanical Gardens last Sunday.

The lessons:

If you want to see some truly amazing sights, you might have to a) get your ass out of bed early, and b) allow yourself to look a bit closer where you ordinarily wouldn't.

Not for this 'amazing sight', as I will admit...

...even though it qualifies as 'bizarre', if only because there obviously are people who take their toy light-sabres very seriously indeed.

Nor, I must admit, for—sorry, couldn't resist; Kate does such great kick-ass attitude shots—for the kick-ass lady du blog.

In both cases all you have to do is read this blog. Far too damn easy...

And for all you slackers! Here's that question again:

Which object, in almost everyday use in our society—though not in all societies, and only readily available in ours for the last 100 years or so—has, more than anything else, changed the way in which we select the people we associate with, are comfortable with, are likely to 'go for' and likely to select as mates?

Not a single email or comment! So does that mean people don't give a shit; couldn't be bothered to even try; think it's so obvious that the question is too dumb too even think about; are scared that I'm trying to trick them into something?

Whatever—slack-asses!

Here's a hint.

If you read this blog, you're likely to be one of those people who uses said artefact at least twice a day, and probably much more often.

When you finally find out—and I might stretch this out with some more hinting—you're going to want to kick yourselves for having overlooked the utterly obvious.

And, yes, there were more hints in that last sentence.

Welcome the absurd, embrace the preposterous

2006-05-25T10:54:00.000+12:00

Every story has a ‘slump’, a dip, a slack-off. The longer the story, the more likely at least one slump and probably several. Slumps are necessary. Stories that don’t have them, especially the longer ones, will fatigue the reader/watcher. Well-placed slumps, periods of rest, recuperation, reflection, rejuvenation, reconnection, emphasize the significance of what they bracket—like peace brackets war; of vice versa, depending on how you want to see it.

Authors telling stories also have slumps. The thing’s forging ahead, but now this sequence of action and excitement comes to a close. The author gets distracted, loses some of the immediacy of the urgency that drove him or her to rush to complete the exciting section. Life intervenes; work, family, publication stuff, blogs. Or maybe he’s just getting a bit tired of all this rushing himself and realizes that things just can’t go on at this particular pace. Also, there may be periods where one just travels from A to B. A good time to do some exposition—unless one wants to skip the whole trip and flag it as ‘uneventful’ or what happened during it as irrelevant and hence ignorable. It’s as if the trip never happened. Instant transition. People go into the journey, which may take days, and come out of it essentially unchanged; or maybe with a later flashback to something that happened there when such a flashback is needed.

I try to use such occasions for what you might call ‘reconnection’. Reconnecting me with the story—which might have been interrupted, as it was this time, for days; but it could also just have been a night, even less a time-factor than the discontinuity between preceding action and sudden respite. At such times a story can go very flat; I’ve seen it happen in some damn good books and also movies. Reconnection also is needed to the characters, which works best of there’s a reconnection between the characters.

Sometimes a good way of doing this is to create a situation which is absurd, unexpected, glaringly dissonant, or even apparently horribly stereotyped, possibly creating a danger of causing the reader/watcher to go “what the…” and to cause the possibility of withdrawal, of reader/watcher detachment. He’s not ‘in the story’ anymore, but becomes a watcher instead of participant. The ‘estrangement’ effect, much dreaded by story-tellers and warned-against by those who think they know a lot about story-telling. ‘Losing the audience’…just about the worst thing you can imagine.

Or not—because risking losing them actually means that this may be the very point in which, if you succeed in keeping them with you, they’ll actually end up going with you to places they might not have gone before. You ask for suspension of disbelief; for faith in your story world and its consistency and sensibility. If they agree to follow at this critical juncture, they’ll basically follow you everywhere else. It’s much like life. Kierkegaard’s ‘leap of faith’ applied to the story world. It’s a risk, but a worthy one.

In order to accomplish this feat one needs to, as the title of this blog indicates’ welcome the absurd and embrace the preposterous.

Example: action flick, The Island. After an extended chase and narrow escape sequences already defying belief—but very cool anyway—Lincoln 6-Echo (Ewan McGregor) and Jordan 2-Delta (Scarlett Johannsson) end up on a large sign high up at the side of a high-rise building. The moorings come lose, causing the sign and its occupants to fall to the street below, taking a helicopter and some bad guys in it with it along the way, as well as L6E and J2D. Crash, bang. Objects hit the street with definiteness. People scatter. Cars get flattened. The sign comes tumbling down the building, crashing down. Absurdly, preposterously, L6E and J2D get thrown to the side, caught in a building workers’ safety net and so survive the unsurvivable fall. A classic case of the watcher going “Nahh, gimme a break!” Just another dumb-ass Tom Cruise MI:X:Y flick—and, yes, those are pretty crappy.

But, before the viewer has to catch his cognitive-reflective critical faculties and really gets the chance to say “Nahh, gimme a break!”, there’s this building worker who starts fishing L6E and J2D out of the net, saying something like “That’s the craziest mess I ever saw! Jesus must love you!” and to J2D in particular, as he reaches out and heaves her up, he says “I know Jesus loves you!” Everybody grins, accepts the absurdity—exposed, acknowledged and subsequently embraced—and everything’s cool. Everybody knows it is preposterous, but the admission makes it alright; meaningful even; possibly even totally reasonable, given whatever went before—which was a lot of action that basically converged on this moment; because after that we do get a period of respite.

A sleight of hand, I admit, but a good one. After that moment, those who are with the movie will stay with it through a few more hairy plot devices; and in the end, when the clones run toward the freedom of a world that may be scarier than the one they’re leaving, and with Steve Jablonsky’s amazing score, you sit there with odd little shivers or satisfaction running down your back. It still does it for me after watching that movie several times. That’s because it has a lot of layers of meaning and emotional context. Still, it could have lost me when they survived that ridiculous fall. It didn’t, because it asked for the leap of faith, gave me no time to really decide, but just dragged me over that cliff. That’s good story-telling.

Anyway, it's a nice way to reconnect; rather than just carrying on carrying on. See the absurd and allow your characters to see it; allow your characters to be the ones that step aside and observe and gain cognitive distance. That way they stand in for you or the reader/watcher and so keep him in the story—because that's what keeps us in a story: identification, overt or subtle. I suspect that in most cases the audience welcomes the device, at least if they are basically enjoying the story and therefore disposed to staying in it.

Kick-ass lady for the day...

Here's Kate again, minus latex, but just as deadly, in Val Helsing. Girls and swords: always a winning combination...

And here's a question to ponder until next time, when I might or might not answer it:

Which object, in almost everyday use in our society—though not in all societies, and only readily available in ours for the last 100 years or so—has, more than anything else, changed the way in which we select the people we associate with, are comfortable with, are likely to 'go for' and likely to select as mates?

A job well done—I hope...

2006-05-21T06:11:00.000+12:00

So, here's the new cover, complete wraparound for Seladiënna, the 'pocketbook' size version. There will be a similar change for the one I'm going to publish 'fully', meaning I'm going to fork out the cash required to have it entered into all the important books-in-print databases and appear on Amazon.com as a 'real' book, rather than a Marketplace anxillary.

Those who can be bothered to check, here you can still, for a short time, see the older version—and in the previous blog there was the front page of the original. The hardcover edition, the one that never got an ISBN and which is available from lulu.com only, I'll leave as it is.

Some thoughts on the cover changes:

Fonts

There are possible problems with copyright for the font I used for the front writing in the original version. Better to stop these from even becoming an issue. Also, I thought, after living with it for a year or so, that maybe it was a bit too soft for the purpose. Hence the new version, which uses a version of Garamond, somewhat distorted and colorized. I also decided to simplify the font for the back writing, just because I think it looks better and is less intrusive on the image. It's screwed-up enough because of the need to put that huge ISBN label on it.

Layout

Not much has changed on the back cover, but the girl's face on the front has been sized up. I thought that, with the changed font and several other issues, the whole esthetic of the previous sizing didn't work anymore.

Comments on the layout would be appreciated; either by email, or blog-comment. The more the better. I'm really interested in this, since it's the thing that people first see when they go into a shop, or even see the book on Amazon.

The book layout, plus some editing changes and fixes, is also done. An initial version has been uploaded to lulu.com via my snail-paced modem. I really, really have to get broadband one day soon; as soon as N.Z. Telecom's monopoly has been officially trashed by the government; not a day too soon!

The process of re-issuing the book, content and cover and all, has taught me yet again that

PUBLISHERS LIE

About some things anyway, and in particular about the agonies involved in getting a book laid out and the cover made and blah blah blah.

Let me outline this process—ignoring the printer, that is lulu.com, interface; which isn't that big of a deal and just tacks onto the end of the real work. The main work is to upload content and cover, get an ISBN from lulu.com and put the picture onto the back cover, then re-upload the cover, and pay for the international distribution (not done yet, but will do from a faster connection tomorrow).

What had to be done in terms of real work was this:

Typesetting

* Create a new InDesign template for pocketbooks.

* Make a new InDesign book.

* Extract text from old InDesign chapters—28 in all, plus the leader pages—and put into RTF files, and do a bit of editing.

* Re-import the contents of the RTF files into the new template, resize the font, check the layout and flow, make some edits.

* Export to PDF, check all's as it should be—and if it isn't, go back to the InDesign documents, make whatever changes are necessary, and export the PDF again. Do this until you're cool with what you've got.

Cover (and this took me the longest)

* Decide upon and make the writing in Illustrator; export to Photoshop.

* Make up an image of the correct size—info available from lulu.com—for front and back covers.

* Find the bits and pieces used for the old cover, and that can be re-used.

* Compose and put together front and back pages.

* Use lulu.com's spine-width calculator to figure out how wide the spine has to be, and make an image for the spine.

* Make an image consisting of front, back and spine, and save as PDF.

Now you have two PDFs, one for content and one for cover, and the rest is uploading and publishing technicalities.

I realize that I had most of the material, and I do work faster than a lot of people once I get going, and the process above may sound complicated to someone who's never done it. But...

Look, it isn't that big of a deal. The hardest part is writing the original story and designing the cover. The rest is technical crap, requiring skill and time, but that's it. And, as I said before, you can do it with a word processor—to avoid having to use Word, try out Open Office, which is free—and something as cheap as Photoshop Elements. The process is pretty much the same.

Of course, I use a Mac for all serious creative and layout work, because I think Windows is hell and Microsoft is Satan—I really do, by the way; and how anybody can produce such crap and be so successful is beyond my comprehension! Using a Mac makes life very easy indeed, because, for example, using Mac OS X, all creation of PDFs is simply an option in your Print dialog; and if you really want to have each chapter in a separate file, there's a gazillion free utilities on the web to string together PDFs into a whole (and I think you can even do it using TextEdit!); so typesetting should be a cinch. With Winpuke it's a different issue. It's do-able, but as just about everything else, it requires much more effort and operating system know-how. As I said: 'hell'.

At any rate, given that any self-respecting publisher should have the requisite equipment and Macs to do their work—as well as hopefully employing people whose skills in laying out books and covers should exceed mine by far; or why else are they working there!—the fact that I just produced a completely new edition of a book in the space of something like 12 hours should be indicative that—even allowing for my possibly deficient design skills—the habitual publisher's moaning and groaning and excusing their costs and apparently endless delays in getting things done appears just a tad...well, it sounds like self-serving crap, doesn't it?

That may be because it is. There was a time when all of this was a shit-load of tedious work. Well, here's the news: it isn't anymore—and any publisher trying to tell you different is trying to justify to you why your royalties are going to be as pathetic as they are likely to be, and why they want all the rights to your book and whatever comes from it.

Way I see it, publishers' business these days consists largely on first deciding on what to publish. That involves paying someone to go through, with varying degrees of attention to detail, what must be a huge amount of crap.

Secondly it consists of getting the material into publishable form—and, as I hope I just demonstrated, that isn't such a big deal.

Thirdly it's getting the stuff printed. Given that publishers have to stick out their necks—because they're not likely to use print-on-demand, but need to go for larger print-runs; which are risky, because they cost money—here's a legitimate source of monetary risk.

Fourthly they need to promote the published material, and that takes connections and marketing skill—though I wonder how much 'marketing' is going to junkets and having a good time at the expense of the book-buying public, as well as the royalty-deprived author. I may be a cynic, but so be it.

Promotion is difficult, because it requires contacts inside the marketing culture, which is a world with its own rules and back-biting and prodding and pushing and greasing wheels and whatever it takes. For an outsider like me, or you?, it's a tough one, and there are a gazillion people out there waiting to take your money to provide 'promotional services'. They remind me a bit of people who will 'critique' your work for the payment of money, usually because they claim they have some inside knowledge of what 'the industry' requires. Remember that those who do the critiquing are invariably those—not belittling them; this is a quality-free description—who are not creatively active and possibly never were.

I rest my case.

By the way, the process of getting my 'published' book into the computer systems of the world and to have it appear on Amazon, may probably take up to eight weeks. However, that doesn't trouble me too much. It's still a pathetically small interval, when compared to the preposterous lead-times publishers expect us to accept when they negotiate with us about contract times and durations.

Kick-ass girl du jour. Back to Luis Royo, and a pencil drawing from his Conceptions volume. I have no idea what went on in his head when he drew this one, or what the gas-mask in her hand is doing there. He does do a lot of work set in rather dystopian environments.

BTW, I didn't use the more risqué version of what I think may be the same girl—just to keep it PG-13!

Going with the flow—and getting washed away!

2006-05-18T10:22:00.000+12:00

Friend of mine and fellow swordsman, Greg Wilson, the guy who made the sword I used in the cover illustration for Seladiënna...

...the other day gave me an artefact he'd purloined from an archaeological dig some years back.

It's a fossilized partial dinosaur skull. Who knows where the bottom part has gone. Given the size (maybe 30-40 cm in length) and looking at the teeth, it looks like it's from a raptor of sorts, because those chompers aren't for chewing leaves. Not a fellow I would have liked to have an encounter with, and who would be quite at home in one of the Jurassic Park movies.

Of course, I just lied—or maybe that should be "told a story"—because the thing is made of clay, and has been fashioned by the incredibly talented Greg himself; and he just loaned it to me, so I could take lots of photos—praise digital cameras!—for possible use for a future book cover. You can see the potential...

Cool though, huh?

Anyway, as far as going with the flow is concerned—and I've talked about this before...

There I was, looking at that skull and thinking about book covers, and I said to myself "What book cover?" I don't have a book involving dinosaurs! Uhh, take the damn pictures anyway and file them away for future reference.

And then it was like "why not?" I don't have a book involving large extinct reptiles, but wouldn't it be cool to weave it into an exisiting story. Hey, why not? They are my stories and I can do with them what I damn well want to. Right? Right!

There were at least two things I wanted to show about the universe 'outside' Tethys: a place where people lived under an explicit law-of-the-strongest; and another where 'civlization' appears to rule. Now, I think, I'll add a third: a place where the super-rich and powerful go to play games. It'll be cool, and I found a neat way to weave it into the tale. And all that solely because Greg showed me that damn dinosaur skull of his...

It's not going to change the story as such; just the details of how it plays out. Classic example of following a moving target. As long as you remember what the target is, no problemo. But remember you must.

And now for the 'washed away' part:

And here's some news to make me some bloody unnecessary work—and I'll have to decide what's more important: keeping my stuff available from Amazon or getting Tethys finished first. Thing is, lulu are about to kiss good-bye their Amazon Marketplace arrangement, which means Seladiënna and Continuity Slip will be available only from lulu.com. On the other hand, lulu now provide pocket-book format, instead of those dumb-ass trade paperbacks. So maybe it's time to do a new edition—which means work and some monetary investment to get another ISBN and get the distribution service underway. That would also mean a cheaper book; not much, but some. So...

Grrrrrr....

And here's another kick-ass chick. Naomi Watts from King Kong.

Not that she physically kicked anybody's ass, but she was competent and used strength to exercise power—though, in the end, she, too couldn't fight city call and the roaches infesting what we call 'civilized society'.

There wasn't much in the character of 'Ann Darrow', and especially not in the 30s version, that suggested kick-ass-dom, but Peter Jackson is obviously a closet-Joss-Whedon, who would have had Ms. Darrow kick some serious butt, if only the story had provided a context for it. In the event he did the next best thing: he gave her strength of character, in addition to beauty.

The sequence of images below is from the narrative turning-point about halfway through the movie, where Ann turns from frightened victim into somebody who realizes that, if she wants to survive, she has to manipulate the monster, find its weakness and make use of it. At this point she's not yet found compassion; it's just a matter of survival, and she's going to do what it takes.

Notice how little is needed in terms of facial modifications to convey the entire process; that, plus some extra body language, as implied in, for example, looking at something sideways. Naomi Watts did it perfectly. The transition from terrified to calculating and going into a different kind of 'survival' mode, all of which happens in that sequence, makes for great character-driven story-telling.

An excellent argument, I think, for suggesting that, before writing a scene one should have a 'visual' of the placemant and movement of the characters ('blocking'), as well as important facials and poses of the principals. Run it through your head visually, like a dress rehearsal. The same goes for dialogue: if you can't say it out aloud, it probably sucks, and not just in the context of a screenplay.

Nothing lasts forever

2006-05-16T11:28:00.000+12:00

...but some things are tenacious, like that rose—even though it is losing its perkiness and elán...

...and I just noticed that in our small garden the absurdly healthy and growing Aloe Vera—which I some years ago stuck into the ground because I thought I'd see what happens to it if I did—is growing a...flower? blossom? sprout? What do you call these things. I wonder if that means that, once it's done blooming, that part of the plant is going to die off. I think that's what Aloes do. We'll see.

To writing matters:

Question: how to we imagine people? I mean, people we really don't know and have never seen? Like...well, let's stick with Naela—whose name, during writing, I still routinely spell the 'old' way; which means I end up doing a search-and-replace-all after a major bout of writing; just to make sure. And then I remember that ghastly writing over the entrance...

So, how do we imagine people? In the first instance I'm talking about the writer here. The reader is another issue altogether, because he is at least nudged into certain paths of imagination by the writer; or, if the writer is of a disposition to detailed descriptions, more than just 'nudged'.

The issue is important. Humans are visual creatures and a writer who doesn't have a clear image in his mind of his main characters, protagonists and antagonists alike, will never get into their heads and understand why they do what they do. Unless the writer writes about him or herself, of course, in which case the whole thing is nuncupatory.

Needing an image to get 'into' someone's head? Well, as I've said before, this is about my 'process', and I may be generalizing here. Maybe there is some other way to get into the head of someone who isn't you; only exists in your imagination; but of whom you don't even have a concrete kind of image. 'Eyes narrow', but you don't know how. He or she frowns, but how does the frown look? Even more importantly, the non-existent person smiles or laughs and you don't have the foggiest notion what that does to the eyes, the mouth, the cheeks; how they crinkle or flex or twitch or tense or relax.

Everything we know about other people we know primarily through visual impressions. This is true for those we know in person and in-the-flesh, and even more true for those we've never met, except through TV or film or printed media with lots of pictures. There are other ways to gain 'experience' of others, but that usually happens later. Vision is first.

"But what about novels?" you ask. Those without pictures, that is; i.e. not 'graphic novels'. They were always held up as an example of 'imagination stimulators'; and the advent and increasing pervasiveness of the visual media has been greatly lamented by many of those who lauded the written word as the ultimate in brain-fodder. But, let's face it, it isn't. Indeed, the written word, like mathematics, is very artificial and, dare I say it, 'unnatural' a medium to get to know people through. And if those people are fictitious, then a writer adrift without his own internal visual contructs is at a definite handicap when trying to describe the apperances, actions and even thoughts of his characters.

Or maybe it's just me? Perhaps, but I know I'd be lost without at least concrete images of faces. Personally, I actually need to 'see' them; and if there are faces of real people available; well so much the better. And the more I have to get 'close' to a character, the greater that need becomes. Not that the faces are exactly those of 'real people', but at least what's in my mind has to lend itself to visual manipulation—you know, like how the face moves when they smile or cry or get angry or suspicious; and the eyes... Eyes are so important. If you can see your character's eyes, how can you know anything about him or her at all? Sometimes I wonder if the critical parts of what we need to have a clear vision of isn't just this area of face, taken from an entirely artifical woman:

Plus a miscellany of attributes, such as hair color, type (straight, curly, etc) and length; general shape of face; size and shape of ears; length and comparative thickness of the neck.

Everything below the neck is general physical features of secondary importance; except maybe for the hands, which are capable of 'expression'; not as much as a face, but more than just about any other body part—as opposed to the impressions given and inferences provided by 'physique' in general.

It probably helps to have visual aids to facilitate the imaginative process. It's a myth that we can do it at will and purely from our 'creative imagination'. The mind doesn't work that way, pop-psychology misconceptions notwithstanding. We can only 'imagine' what we already 'know' in some way, whether as a whole or in parts. Imagined people—I'm talking purely about appearances here; though this applies, to a lesser degree, to 'character' aspects as well—are bits and pieces of 'seen' people, seen either in the flesh or in images, put together to form chimeras that we use as 'characters' in our stories.

The reader in turn takes these construct and translates them into his own contextual and conceptual framework and so makes his own creatures. Characters related in a non-visual medium, i.e. using just words or sounds, are capable of more flexible interpretation in the mind of the receiver. Whether that's good or bad, an undesirable imaginative constraint or a potentially powerful aid in rendering character and story, is a matter for debate. Personally, I think 'graphic novels' work just fine if are done well. The Fables series is an instance where it works very successfully indeed. The same goes for film. I have no problem at all with being made to see story-characters appear like the actors who play them.

Which brings me to a suitable close with another kick-ass chick pic:

Yeah, well...

Adventure and sex

2006-05-15T09:28:00.000+12:00

Friend of mine—such a good friend that he actually paid money for Seladiënna and read it from cover to cover; and thought well of it, as you can see in his lulu review—told me that, while he really enjoyed Seladiënna and got a lot out of it, he thought that maybe there was more sex in it than necessary to tell the story. Since he's a Jack Vance aficionado like me, and since Jack tends to be very low-key about matters sexual, that makes sense. Vance readers in general are reticent about having sex made too explicit; for any number of reasons, none of which I shall guess at publicly, if for no other reason but that they are too varied.

But when my friend wrote me this, it occurred to me that the real question was 'which story?' or 'what was the story all about?'. Readers very often—or maybe that should be 'usually', and indeed 'almost always' might be most appropriate—confuse their own projection of author-intent with their own. This is particularly true for stories that have 'rich' content; meaning that they have many possible foci of attention and/or subject matters. For Seladiënna, it's quite possible that the love story at the heart of it becomes overshadowed by the adventure in a fascinating strange land; or that the same adventure masks the other major thread, which is philosophical/political and has to do with the price to be paid for 'change'; for the bringers and the receivers of the changes alike. It's also about religion and humanism. Still, at the heart, it's a love story, and love is about lots of things, but at the physical level it's about sex. Take it or leave it, but you can't change it. That's what it is. The strongest of basic human motivations, apart from protection of offspring, have to do with sex, one way or the other. Sex is necessary not only for society but also for health.

I just finished Immune Response, the latest Steve Perry novel, and a really cool book. Totally different to everything I’ve read of his; certainly the least SF-ish one; though it’s about something a lot of folks might consider ‘science fiction’: a gerotard that can be swallowed as a one-off pill. That’d be nice! Count me in for the testing.

Anyway, as is often the case with Perry, there’s sex involved, some of it moderately explicit. The romantic component is not just for show, but an essential element of the story; without it, dare I say, the story wouldn’t work half as well. That is unsurprising, though some folks might not get it. However, reading through this tale, it occurred to me that Perry, too, follows in a particular story-telling tradition of dealing with romance when romance isn’t what the story ostensibly is all ‘about’—i.e. we’re excluding the ‘romance’ genre, which has its own strange ‘rules’.

Novels containing a romance thread, and especially romance involving actual sexual encounters of varying explicitness, usually follow the following pattern:

At some time, possibly after a build-up that might take up a significant portion of the story, the two people involved realize their mutual affection and have a sexual encounter; followed by possibly several more, possibly in the context of danger; followed by a decrease of focus on said encounters, in favor of the ‘main action’ of the story; with an outcome that might or might not keep them together.

As the story continues, the focus on sex will give way—like it does, for example, in Immune Response—to focus on danger, thrills, mystery or whatever. Unless it’s a story like The Trinity Vector, also by Steve Perry, where the sexual encounter between the two main protagonists, after a long build-up, is placed so close to the end that one wonders if it is going to be—as often happens in such stories—a prelude to something awful happening to one of the two. This is a silly, stereotypical, vapid, overused device—not so likely to be found in a Steve Perry novel; nor in one by Till Noever.

The whole thing is like, ok, so these two have a ‘relationship’ now, and we have established and confirmed it and now let’s get on with the story. In Immune Response Perry replaces some of the sex by subsequent ‘bonding’ and a growing close of the characters. But the sex, while still in the background, becomes a far less explicit matter. A brief lead-in that is, I suppose, meant to imply that what was earlier described explicitly is now going to take place without further need to linger on. At that stage, there is little difference between this and the technique of letting the camera pan away used by writers who don’t like to be explicit. It’s almost like the writer saying, “well, now I told you what they do, so now telling it again or lingering on it is basically gratuitous”.

I suppose this is partially what my friend was talking about when he noted that there was maybe more sex in Seladiënna that was ‘necessary’. Because I decided that I wasn’t going to follow that pattern, and instead ramp up the sexual aspect and continue to emphasize it. I did this because I didn’t want that aspect of the story to be come perfunctory. It’s also not ‘realistic’.

Yeah, I know: ‘realistic’, haha! It’s a damn story, right? Who need ‘realism’?

I’m not disputing that. It is only a story. But it’s also ‘about’ something; and in a lot of my tales romantic relationships are very prominent; and the stories are not just about the ‘plot’, but about male-female relationships—sorry, but I’m unashamedly into the male-female thing—and how they play out, and what they mean, not only to those having the relationships, but to our ‘nature’ as human beings. For most of our lives, sex, at the physical and the spiritual level, is a crucial component of what motivates us, what we think, what we strive for.

And the exposure to danger and novelty very often actually acts as an aphrodisiac; and one could suggest that it might be more appropriate—quite without being gratuitously vicarious—that lingering on the resultant sexual antics might actually be more narratively honest. Certainly, I’ve tried to keep the matter in an appropriate perspective in Seladiënna. Hence my buddy’s reaction. I think—I maybe wrong; but that happens every now and then—he subconsciously expected it to follow the habitual pattern, which has become so much of an ingrained stereotype that few people actually think about its silliness.

That was Seladiënna. What about Tethys? Right now, at word-count 35k, our protagonists aren’t really in a position to engage in too much horizontal recreational activities. I’m not going to insert sexual antics just for the sake of doing it, but if it happens naturally, who am I to pan away?

Two more things:

1) There are some new clips on the iaijutsu page on my website. I thought I’d nuke the old ones; they were becoming a bit dated. These ones are less in the formal style of the previous ones, and represent what I consider the ‘essence’ of iaijutsu—trying to express what can’t be put into words. I’m not sure how much it ‘works’, but I’m trying. Maybe one day I’ll get it right.

2) Since we haven’t had a kick-ass girl for a while—well, sort-of a ‘while’…—here are more pics of Kate and Jessica. They aren't playing ‘Cupid’, just in case you’re wondering.

Oh, and check out Aynia's blog. Maybe the kick-ass girl picture thingy is rubbing off, hehehe.

Nyla Nayla Naela

2006-05-13T06:42:00.000+12:00

And I thought and thought, and pondered and searched, and fretted and agonized, and imagined and followed her around like a stalker. And I couldn’t see anybody but ‘Nyla’—or something close. No matter what face I tried to put on her, what color hair, what dress, what stature, what voice, what gestures, what…whatever.

Failure of imagination? Maybe. But I guess that after occupying such a prominent part in my mind, ‘Nyla’ is who she is. But I really, really don’t want her to be visually associated with that ghastly thing in NYC—even though, let’s face it, ‘my’ Nyla came first, though she didn’t see the light of publication until 2004. But she was ‘there’, and I should have first dibs on her. Not fair, not fair, not fair.

So I took the word, the sound, the flavor and she became ‘Naela’. That’s pronounced like ‘Nayla’, but I didn’t want to spell it that way, because ‘Nayla’ is too close to ‘Nyla’, visually—and then there are too many ‘Nayla’ around, from singers to politicians to companies marketing ‘hygienic cleaning equipment’. Thanks, but no thanks; not for my lady, who deserves better than that. On the other hand ‘Naela’ is, at worst, an acronym, and at best a name of women of various backgrounds, nationalities and persuasions, all of whom qualify as at ‘interesting’. A ‘Naela’ is also a character in a role-playing game, and another lives in Hawaii and apparently likes to belly-dance. Not bad company, as ‘real’ connections go. It seems almost impossible these days to find any name even approximately ‘real’ that isn’t held by someone in the world. And—let me say this for those who really haven’t figured this out—Google is an amazing tool for writers.

Oddly enough, the Gaelic flair of ‘Naela’—related to such names as ‘Keaen’, ‘Caelar’ and maybe even ‘Sacrael’—is misleading. The ‘Naela’ you’ll find when you google them are typically Palestinian, Cuban, Hawaiian. Cool! I love that kind of ambiguity.

So, with the magic of my Mac’s ‘Duplicate’ function (command-D) a new universe has been created for Keaen, Tergan and Fontaine. With the other magic of find-and-replace ‘Nyla’ has become ‘Naela’, and if she knew me and knew how her name has been abused in that place-we-shall-not-mention-again (and maybe others?) she’d pat me on the back—at the very least!

Mandaroccaboodoowabbapish

2006-05-12T08:54:00.000+12:00

Consider 'Mandaroccaboodoowabbapish'. It's a word I just made up, almost at random—as much as anything contrived by our brains is ever 'random'—as I wrote the title for this blog.

Say it out aloud to yourself: manda-rocca-boodoo-wabba-pish.
And again (come on! just do it!):

manda - rocca - boodoo - wabba - pish

And now several times, each time a little faster...

manda - rocca - boodoo - wabba - pish
manda-rocca-boodoo-wabba-pish
mandaroccaboodoowabbapish
mandaroccaboodoowabbapish

It's a bit of a tongue twister, and maybe more so for people who just speak English, because there's some heavy mouth-moving going on; the kind more familiar to speakers, say, of Spanish, Japanese, Maori, Australian Aborigine, German. Especially the first part, 'mandarocca', is much better said pretending that it's Spanish.

Some sample sub-words of Mandaroccaboodoowabbapish are:
mandarocca
roccaboodoo
boodoowabba
wabbapish
manda
rocca
boodoo
wabba
pish

Consider now ‘Mandaroccaboodoowabbapish’, ‘Mandaroccaboodoowabba’ and ‘Mandaroccaboodoo’. Which one works better for you? Do they both work the same? Not at all? Do you sense a difference, subtle or overt, in tone and possible meaning? Does one, more or less so than another, suggest noun, adjective, or verb? A place-name? If so, what kind of a place: mountain, meadow, stream, village, town, city? What kind of setting? Could it denote a culture or population? A tribe? Which version flows better from the tongue, and which looks better written down? Are these different? Which one has more poetry and rhythm—and what kind of rhythm? Which one suggests—if at all—different linguistic sources/origins/roots? Does the word, as it is decreased in length and decomposed into fragments become more sensible—connectable to things, actions, qualities already familiar? If you had to use the word, or any combination/concatenation of its components listed above in a piece of imaginative writing, which would you use and what for?

Do you think this thing is totally daft?

Well, maybe so, but I just thought I’d suggest some trains of thought about ‘naming’. Maybe ‘Mandaroccaboodoowabbapish’ isn’t the best of examples, but if it isn’t, think about ‘why not?’ What’s wrong with it? What’s right—if anything? What makes it better than some other ‘fantasy’ naming schemes you might have come across, or maybe even contrived yourself? What makes it worse?

I’m not expecting you to send me answers; these questions are intended for you to ask yourself. This is, after all, what story-tellers should do: ask questions.

Here’s a practical one, taken from Keaen and sequels.

There’s a lady called ‘Nyla’, whom we first encounter in Keaen; briefly, in a minor role, as what turns out to be a ‘Circe’ hiding out under the guise of a farmer’s wife…

[Sidebar (ignore and come back to this later, if you want; or not):

I’m seriously thinking that, for the paperback release of Keaen—implemented at sometime in the future; if necessary, through Lulu.com—and its sequels, I shall ditch the appellation ‘Circe’, used for the near-immortal female healers scattered across Keaen and Tergan.

That—as those who have followed the stories of ‘Circes’ throughout Keaen, Finister, Tergan and Fontaine, as well as the under-construction Tethys, will agree with—is a major change. It’ll set a different tone, in a subtle kind of way, for the entire genus, and therefore for the stories themselves.

How did this come about? Because it didn’t ‘work’—not when I tried to use it for a screenplay, which used themes loosely adapted from Keaen and sequels, and which actually also provided the first germ for ideas fleshed out in Fontaine. The screenplay was called The Circe’s Gift. A few years ago it was placed in the top 10% of the Nicholl screenwriting competition, which was cool, but not enough to get into the quarterfinals. So, this year, being busy and all that and not having the time to write a completely original screenplay, I decided to fix up some issues with Circe’s Gift; and one of those was the naming. ‘Circe’ was, of course, a witch that could turn people into animals. Odysseus encountered her on his voyages, and the experience was less than pleasant. She’s not a nice person; but then again, witches or sorceresses in any kind in folklore seldom are.

Apart from that, there were always ‘issues’ with the appellation. The revision of the screenplay forced my hand. How to label—without using the obvious, stereotypical ‘witch’, or even translations or modified translations: ‘bruja’ (Spanish), ‘mu-yecha’ (Mainland Chinese), ‘oni-baba’ (Japanese), ‘boloi’ (‘witchcraft’ in some African dialects), and so on? How to incorporate some of the attributes ascribed to the ‘Circes’ without making them into witches that turn men into swine? What aspect of who they are have I emphasized in the popular prejudices delineated in Keaen and sequels?

I struggled with this for several days while tidying up ‘Circe’s Gift’ for submission; google-ing (or it is ‘googling’ or ‘googeling’??) words, translations, meta-meanings; trying out words that might or might not roll off the tongue and that might or might not look good spelled-out, appearing moderately or obviously suggestive, and yet-not-quite-the-same; trying to find that delicate balance between meaning, allusion, appearance and sound. It was a tough one. I’m still not certain I got it right, and, when you read my solution, you might not think it particularly good either; but I think it’s way better than ‘Circe’—especially when placed in the context of a screenplay, where people might be forced to say the word out aloud; and ‘Circe’ just doesn’t roll off the tongue that well, except maybe for folks interested in the ‘classics’.

The aspect I decided to focus on was the formerly-so-called-Circes’ tendency to lure men into their arms and to their ‘doom’, in the sense that, since they were barren, the men they espoused invariably ended up without offspring; which could be considered a bad thing. (You gonna shoot me for the social metaphor? Hmmff. First you’ve got to figure out what meta-message, if any!, there actually is.) In classical literature, ‘Sirens’ did this to sailors passing within reach of their song.

‘Siren’ seemed like a promising appellation, only that I didn’t want to use it as it was. One of the problems with ‘Circe’ was that it had been left unmodified. So, and in line with the need to make the word pronounceable and readable at the same time, there followed a number of variations, all of which ended up in the word ‘Sareen’. That would be pronounced “Suh-reen”, not “Se-reen”—that is, not like in the word ‘serene’, which would emphasize a positive quality about these women; inferring ‘serenity’ maybe. And “Sai-reen” would still be too close to ‘Siren’, which would be too much in-your-face as well. So it became ‘Sareen’, with the emphasis on the ‘ee’. The title of the screenplay became ‘The Sareen’s Gift’, which takes it away from immediate associations, has a faintly exotic ring to it, and yet hints at its origins. A delicate balancing act, I admit, and possibly one whose wisdom and final outcome could be disputed. But I feel good about ‘Sareen’; about the way it sounds and looks on the page; about the way it changes Keaen and its sequels, merely by being there. I wish I had thought about it years ago, but, let’s face it, better now, before all the sequels are published as well.]

Back to Nyla.

In Keaen we meet only three Circes: Ailin, Nyla and Zygie. ‘Ailin’ is derived from ‘Helen’—a name also used for the female protagonist in Seladiënna. ‘Zygie’—I have no idea where that came from. And ‘Nyla’, a minor character, who just needed a name, wasn’t derived from anything but me saying out names and syllables out aloud to myself.

What does ‘Nyla’ evoke? Should I even keep it? Thing is, Nyla has been around for years: since 1996 in fact, when she was first invented. Problem is, there’s now a restaurant with that name in NYC, with connections to—here’s a gross-out!—Brittney Spears. When I found out, I thought I was going to puke. I bet you, until you found out, you might have thought that was a nice name, too—and maybe you’re feeling pretty nauseous right now as well. Don’t blame you.

So, poor Nyla might have to become someone else. And I might have to effect this soon, because I’m in the middle of writing a book in which Nyla plays a major role; not quite as major as in Fontaine, but close enough. I’d hate to lose her, but on the other hand I’d hate to have her—a character I’m growing increasingly fond of, and possibly the most interesting female in the world of Keaen—associated with something as vapid as an NYC restaurant with pervadingly truly tasteless design features (click on the image on the page and see more pictures of the truly hideous interiors).

The lesson here is this: no matter how hard you try to get your names right, some dumb-fuck is going to come along and screw everything up for you.

In the next blog I’m going to tell you who ‘Nyla’ turned into. I honestly don’t know right now. However, I hope that, as has so often been the case, this apparent fracas may have unexpected benefits. I have no idea which, but that’s the in the nature of the ‘unexpected’. Remember? Things you didn’t know you didn’t know. The atrocity in NYC called ‘Nyla’ was one of those.

Already I mourn for Nyla. Let's hope someone even more interesting and engaging rises from her ashes.

Back to pictures

2006-05-08T15:13:00.000+12:00

The rose still stands strong, coming up to twenty days on...

And today I shall speak about incest.

Oops! Shock-o-meter reading just went off-scale...

Sorry about that—not!—but there are things I would like to mention, and they have to do with censorship and taboos.

First of all, allow me the vanity to quote myself from an earlier blog, when I was reflecting on the obligations, if any, of a teller of stories:

The world is full of curios; little facts or even factoids that all hang together in some way, sometimes deep below the surface indeed, and understanding how they hang together may well reveal something about who we are that's never been revealed before. But you've got to go there, and not be afraid to do so, even if the places you go can get very dark, frightening and sometimes terribly strange indeed. There are dragons there, to be sure; but also treasures.

Dragons of visceral reactions. Treasures of hidden meanings.

Incest is a good example to hang some comments onto, because in most societies it qualifies as a 'taboo'. Unlike it has happened to a lot of other former taboos in current 'western' societies, it hasn't been absolved by the PC crowd and declared to be something even vaguely 'acceptable'. Even the perversion of voluntary sado-masochistic cannibalism—recently in the news, mainly in Germany—has received a more favorable treatment. Or maybe 'favorable' isn't the right word. But it appears that overall those of liberal disposition are much more likely to forgive these twisted creeps for their perversions, mainly by labeling them as 'sick' and in need of help, than they would people committing incest, for whatever reason.

Indeed, if anything, incest has become more of a perceived perversion than it has ever been. This has been accomplished, as is usual in such cases, by labeling it an act of violence and perversion—which it very often is!—and ignoring those instances where it just simply isn't; thereby demoting said instances to freak deviations from a postulated norm, rather than looking to them for an understanding of the psychology, physiology, biochemistry and sociology of the phenomenon.

Fictional accounts of incestuous relationships, including those of 'accidental' and definitely non-violent ones between siblings, usually focus on their negative aspects. They're almost always represented as 'twisted' and 'bad', and even if they aren't they're shown as doomed by circumstance.

The classic version of the tragic-doomed-sibling-incest relationship—the most 'benign' variant, and the one least likely to attract howls of vituperation—is the one where it starts without them knowing they're siblings, falling in love, then finding out; and then horror strikes—either as a direct result of their having a 'relationship', or because there's just got to be tragedy involved here, and how could it be otherwise, right?

Examples about, from Greek tragedy to Shepard's Fool for Love. A sympathetic and unbelievably sane treatment of the issue happens in the movie Lone Star. Then there's Robert Heinlein, who was inclined to represent social and sexual experimentation in a benign way—for which he copped a lot of flak in his day.

Incest is the result of the failure of certain control mechanisms that usually prevent it from occurring. These can be biological and social; or, in some populations, both. Biological controls can involve such fundamentals as our sense of smell. Social ones are too manifold to enumerate; and they may fail for the strangest of reasons, as so often happens in the colorful spectrum of human social configurations.

What is more interesting than the act itself though, at least in the context of a writing blog, is how a slight tweak in its representation can tell a completely different story. And it is this I want to talk about.

Suppose we contrive the following scenario. Brother and sister are in in love in an 'incestuous' way. They haven't consummated it yet. In truth, without them knowing it, they're actually not related at all.

(Yeah, I know, it wouldn't be 'incest'—but would it? Hear me out. And please take into account that in many legal systems sex between even non-related, step-siblings is considered 'incestuous'.)

Two possible scenarios here.

1) They admit their illicit love for each other, but refrain from having sex, because they're still afraid of the social consequences and feel bound by the morality drummed into them during their upbringing. Later they find out that they're not related at all, and then they do 'consummate'.

2) They have sexual relations even though they think they're siblings; allowing their desire to over-ride social constraints and morality. Later they find out that they're not siblings and thereby feel less guilty.

Question: in (2), did they commit 'incest'?

The answer is: biologically 'no'; socially ('morally'?) 'yes'.

The stories told by (1) and (2) are completely different, and the decisive factor is the sequential arrangement of the sexual act and the acquisition of some information. (1) depicts the social framework as being more powerful for the 'siblings' than their personal desires and mutual attraction. (2) does the opposite.

The view we have of the protagonists is completely different, as must be the tenor and implied 'moral' of the tale; because in (2) they weren't punished for their deviant behavior; and this in turn could be taken as the author's endorsement of such behavior. A truly moralistic tale—and remember that 'moralizing' is always about social behavior—would have had them punished in some form, with some suitable tragedy following; and only after that someone might have found out that they never actually committed the 'incest'—technically/biologically speaking.

Version (2), without said punishment, is a fundamentally subversive way of telling the story. Defying fundamental taboos and getting away with it: how dare they? Somehow the notion that there was something disgusting about their behavior appears to linger—with some people anyway. Believe me, it does. I have proof.

All of which demonstrates that one of the main points I was trying to make in Keaen is entirely valid. What that point is I leave as an exercise to the reader. Of course, you might have to buy the book. Knock yourself out!

I should add that I wasn't allowed to make the point. Ironic, isn't it, that this prohibition demonstrates its validity. Life, to paraphrase Peggy Noonan, is an irony factory.

Kick-ass girl du jour: River from the Firefly series. And there's Zoë in the background as well.

The Vance Integral Edition

2006-05-08T06:11:00.000+12:00

I should be spending this time writing my novel, but sometimes circumstances intervene, and this one here is closely related to the business of writing and story-telling, and it really cannot wait.

For the last few years I have been associated, in a comparatively minor role, with an enterprise called The Vance Integral Edition (VIE), whose aim it was to re-publish, in as 'pure' and unadulterated a form as possible, the complete works of Jack Vance. This enterprise, an effort totally 'volunteer' driven, was labor of love and gratitude to one of the greatest story-tellers of the 20th century. The only one comparable is R. A. Heinlein.

The enterprise, which resulted in the publication of 44(!) volumes, collecting Vance's work, involved the cooperation and coordination of hundreds of volunteers over several years, and uncounted hours of dedicated, painstaking labor. It was an amazing undertaking, and when I say I am proud of having been a part of it—well, in this instance that's not just empty talk. In the context of this work I have met some interesting people, some amazing people, and a few I'd like to call 'friend', even though I have never met them in the flesh. Such is the nature of cyber-relationships.

Without ignoring all of those who put so much work into it, it must be said that the one who ultimately drove it, with merciless zeal and dedication, and who ultimately took it to completion, was its designated Editor In Chief, one Paul Rhoads, an American artist living in France, who conducted this diverse and unruly orchestra with an iron fist, and who somehow got it done. I still don't know how he did it, but he did. If by his actions a man shall be known, here's one monument—primarily to Jack Vance, of course, for ultimately this is about his work!—to dedication, persistence, doggedness and affection for the task at hand. I call Paul a 'friend', because he has never done anything but show friendship toward me, and in a world of expediency and disposability of relationships on the altars of meaningless 'reasons' and deluded 'ideals', this is a rare and valuable thing. By their action shall you know them—and by their actions shall you know the others as well.

Paul is not a man of opinions, but of convictions—almost all of them fervently held. He appears incapable of being bland regarding any issue. Some people just are like that, and Paul is. I disagree with him on many of them. I still call him 'friend'. Paul also has a tendency to make his opinions known, on everything and sundry. Predictably, in the course of the work, and maybe even more predictably upon its completion and ultimate triumph, those who can't handle opinions which do not resonate with their own world-view, took to attacking Paul in various cyberspace forums, some connected to the VIE itself. Paul defended himself with...let's call it 'vigor'.

Things went along predictable ways: people got 'offended', called each other names, cast aspersions and executed ad hominem attacks. Unpleasant stuff like that. No need to dwell on the details, which unfortunately are public record, since cyberspace is terribly 'open', if only one knows where to look. I am continuing to try and remain neutral—except for the one over-riding factor: Paul's my friend, and he has never done anything to make me think that there's any reason why I should not say this out aloud.

The most disturbing aspect of this whole kerfuffle , however, is one that affects everyone of those who is in the business of telling stories. It's about that canard called 'free speech' and the universal practice of explicit or implicit 'censorship'.

We are all subjected to 'censorship' in general on a daily basis—be it self-imposed, dictated by circumstance or imposed by others. In general such things become an implicit, and accepted, 'part of life'. Without censorship society would not be able to function. One could argue that without it—on a mental/thought level—individuals could not function. Censorship is, in its essence, exercise of choice; for choice ultimately is nothing but the imposition by the chooser of a limitation on thought or action.

But the 'censorship' we're talking about here is of a different kind—and I have a personal emotional aversion to this type, because I have felt it in action. Keaen, as it is published, is a 'censored' novel. Over and above purely editorial issues and matters of story-telling technique, it was censored on what amounted to 'moral' grounds. The publishers conveyed to me their strongly-held opinion that a certain element in it was socially corruptive and therefore unsuitable. Hence I was asked to remove it, or else. Hence I know what it means to be at the receiving end of the kind of censorship we're talking about here. Hence I am not indifferent—I can't be—regarding this issue. Hence, one of these days, Keaen will be re-published, revised and unexpurgated; and people will know that it will be a better book because of it.

However, there's no point in getting emotional about it either. After all, it's not about 'emotion'. It is about 'choice', and the choices made regarding the muzzling of Paul Rhoads on the same forum that allowed—still allows? I haven't checked up on that—his detractors to express their opinions, are troubling. The choices were made, and continue to be made, by what, to those who make the choices and the decision, are perfectly valid 'reasons'. Some of those making the decisions are also people I respect highly, but with whom I must disagree. And I would like to remind them that, at its heart, there are no 'reasons' for doing anything but those we choose to pay attention to. There's an infinite pool of 'reasons' available for justifying anything—a truth few people will admit to when it comes to applying it to their own thought processes!—and we pick those that suit us to justify what we have already decided we want to do. It's as simple as that; and I've yet to come across an example where it's different.

I want to make this clear: I don't believe there are any 'God-given' or 'natural' rights of anybody to anything. The reasons for this are simple: there's not a shred of evidence that there's a 'God' capable of giving anybody anything; the whole concept of 'God' as the source of the cosmos makes no sense anyway; and there's even less evidence that the cosmos itself gives a sparrow's fart about anything but 'equipoise'.

Every 'right'—which is an ethical term—accorded to anyone, is granted to them, or not, by other people. What rights are given to people by others are based on contingency, chronological and otherwise, as well as the choices made by individuals or societies. The choice of 'freedom of expression' and the 'right to reply' for an accused to his accusers is part of what makes up the matrix that holds 'Western' societies together. It's often violated, of course—routinely in fact, explicitly and implicitly, on all sides of the philosophical spectrum, but mostly by those living on the extremes while being blissfully unaware that they are extremists. Hypocrisy is possibly, next to stupidity, the most common element in the human psychological universe.

One of the reasons why I truly admire Jack Vance is that he has, throughout his writing, helped to reveal these truths about the human condition. And—and here I'll allow myself to 'moralize' about something, which I hate doing—if we want to honor somebody, we endeavor to do so in all our deeds regarding the person to be honored. The imposition of censorship, for whatever contrived reasons, no matter how apparently benign, on the expression of opinion, no matter how potentially offensive—is there any opinion that will not offend somebody?—is more demeaning and potentially damaging than anything that could possibly be expressed in words by anybody expressing themselves in the media in question.

'Offense', as I've said before, is mostly in the eye of the beholder—but, maybe more than anything else, it reveals something about the offender and offended alike: their choices. Somebody close to me made the point the other day that s/he couldn't see the purpose in somebody like the South Park creators going out and basically offending everybody. Well, look at it this way: if you want to offend, at least don't play favorites. Anybody offended by anything thrown at them by the likes of South Park—which seldom, if ever, actually commits the crime of intentional malice, but merely skews existential perspective by the manner in which it presents facts in a fictional context—deserves the ridicule leveled at them and whatever it was that was being 'offended'. The recent example of the 'Scientology' episode is a case in point (you can view the whole 22-minute episode here, if you have the time). So, by the way, is the infamous 'bleeding-statue' episode—only that it's a completely different group of 'offended ones' screaming murder and asking for censorship; each of them determinedly—and pathologically pathetically—righteous in their wrath.

The best way—to finish this on a positive note—to deal with any putative offense, is for the offended to ask themselves the following, questions:

1) What, in the offending material actually is it that offends me?
2) What is its actual impact on my life—beyond the mere fact of 'offense'?
3) On what grounds do I have a 'right' to do what I can to stop the offense from being committed?
4) What does the mere fact that I am offended by material XYZ actually tell me about me?
5) What am I afraid of?

My counsel to you all: have at least one thought every day yourself that you find offensive to beliefs or convictions deeply held by you.

Trust me, it's much, much harder than believing six impossible things before breakfast. Harder because such thoughts reveal things about ourselves we'd rather pretend aren't so.

Appearances may not deceive

2006-05-05T13:55:00.000+12:00

Picture-blog time. Take a look at the picture above and try to find the two spiral storm systems. Then look at the collage underneath, where I've put together some hurricane images.

They bear a striking resemblance to spiral galaxies, as anybody will agree.

Nothing new here. And, of course, here the resemblance appears to end, because the pictures of hurricanes are basically images of water vapor condensing in what is basically a system controlled by fluid-dynamics; while galaxies are large systems of stars, gas, dust and a mass of 'invisible' matter, held together and with their structure methodized by gravitation and energy flows.

Here is a picture of the branches of a tree I took this morning.

And here are some images of the kind of structures we find, for example, in the human brain; though you'll find similar patterns in images of blood-vessels.

We are usually warned about concluding that just because things look the same, they might actually be constructed by similar processes. The hurricane-galaxy juxtaposition is a particularly good point in case—except that, as of recent, people have concluded that maybe understanding 'space' as a kind of 'fluid', rather than as the kind of 'space' described, for example, by Einstein, might actually help to explain a lot of things about physics that are currently obscure. So maybe there's something to thinking about stars as condensations of some 'stuff' in the great 'fluid' of space? Who knows?

The notion that 'things' might behave similarly, or follow similar operational principles, even though they bear no obvious relationship to each other and indeed appear to exist in quite different conceptual spaces, can be extended to such matters as the 'conservation laws' extant in physics. The idea that the 'law of cosmic equipose'—a term coined by Jack Vance in his Dying Earth stories—may be universal and extend right across all levels of existence, physical or not, might appear odd to some; and yet the ethical/moral precepts that one reaps what one sows or that one should do unto others as one would have them do unto oneself state essentially the same thing as the notion that 'energy must be conserved'. And so on.

(Yes, I am getting to writing, and I know this is meant to be a writing blog. Besides, it's my damn blog, and so I approach this any way I see fit. After all, I tell stories—and discursiveness sometimes throws light into dark nooks that brevity will pass over.)

Otake Risuke, Master-Teacher of the Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu school of Japanese swordsmanship, in the first volume of this trilogy, The Deity and the Sword, writes about 'Iai-jutsu and the Practical Sword'. Instead of copying it all out, I just scanned the relevant text and insert it here as an image (on the right, and it goes on for a long way down). Since the books have long been out-of-print I don't feel badly about it. I know it's long-ish, and if you click on the link it should open a new window with an easier-to-read picture, but it's worthwile, albeit not for ADD sufferers, because, like many other worthwhile things, it may require work and effort of thought to appreciate it.

Thing is, that—while this little piece speaks specifically to practitioners of Japanese swordsmanship—as I was reading it, it struck me how much it could be taken as a metaphor, applicable to life in general and story-telling in particular. In other words, it's one of those examples of something being what it is and also being many other things besides; of the contents and principles delineated here being universal and applying to just about everything else we do. I only mention story-telling specifically, because this is a writing blog; but I could see it applied to just about every activity practiced by individuals as individuals—as opposed to them acting as members of groups or teams, which isn't really covered with what's written here, though, of course, 'swordsmanship' has a dimension that is concerned with the swordsman as a member of a social structure.

The temptation is to 'interpret' the metaphor, but I'd like to leave it as an exercise for the reader. It's possible that some folks won't get anything out of this without some significant prodding and hinting; well, that's too bad.

Maybe I should add that, among swordsmanship schools, the discussion about whether a heavy sword is better than a light one—or not!—can get very passionate. Personally, I practice a version of Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu that favors long, heavy swords; and indeed actively encourages their use.

However, that doesn't mean I favor them myself. Big swords are a bit like big, long-barreled handguns; think of a 4" barrel revolver compared to a 7" one. If you can get the latter into line it's pretty good and accurate at a greater distance—but the extra time it takes to pull it out and bring the heavy barrel into line and then stop it, with its much larger moment of inertia, might well make the difference between life and death—yours, I mean.

Or, to continue with a handgun analogy, compare big and small caliber weapons: .22. vs .45. Sure, the .45 has a better 'stopping power', but it's also invariably heavier, has a whooping recoil and far less rounds in the magazine, be it in a semi-auto or a revolver. Unless you're a huge guy with massive hands and arm-muscles to rival Hercules', you're likely to get to squeeze two small rounds off with far higher precision in the same time as getting one the target with the large caliber. Way I see it, a precise shot or two to the head is probably a better 'stopper' than a single one to the body.

By the way, sorry about the bloody, violent imagery, but, as Otake Risuke says "Iaijutsu is an art with which to kill an enemy." It's not about maiming or disabling, but killing. That's because in the days of its creation, being wounded, unless it was a trivial cut—and even then infection was a potentially serious issue—meant that the wounded one was probably going to die; hence the practice of delivering a coup-de-grace after the initial, decisive cut.

Anyway, for those so disposed, enjoy the metaphor. It's very relevant to story tellers and story writing. You just got to find the conceptual correlations.

And to those who feel that I'm not living up to my sort-of-promise to deliver kick-ass-lady images on a regular basis: well, excuse me! However, I must admit, pictures of treetops, brain slices and hurricanes aren't half as cool—and since I've already wasted plenty of bandwidth with pretty large images, why not add another one: Kate Latex (sorry, that should be 'Beckinsale') in full battle attire. Of course, she's supposed to be a vampire, but who cares? The two Underworld flicks were good fun; lots of blood-sucking, sex, violence and mayhem. That's why we go to see vampire/werewolf flicks, right? I know I do. Call me shallow. Sticks and stones...

Taking it seriously

2006-05-04T06:11:00.000+12:00

FYI: As of tomorrow, for those who care, the visitor's map on the right will be updated on a monthly basis; which means it'll be reset to zero occasionally. I'll archive previous versions, so I have a record of who came from where. This is just in case somebody wonders why suddenly the map changes.

By the way, these maps are fascinating. Readers appear in all sorts of odd places, like what looks like either Spain or Portugal and another one in north-eastern Germany. A lot of them map into visitors to owlglass.com, which isn't surprising, given that there's a link to the blog on that site. How do these people get to my website and this blog? Are they going to re-visit—the blog anyway; not so much the website, unless they use it to get to link to the blog, which has a somewhat longer and by no means as snazzy URL? On the other hand there are some visitors for the blog that don't appear on the owlglass.com map. Like the one in Turkey and the one on the Iberian peninsula. How? Hmmfff.

Back to writing-matters.

Every year I get shanghaied into giving a talk at the local astronomical society. I've been doing it for I-don't-know-how-many-years; and the talks, which used to be at least tangentially related to astronomy, have kind-of diverged a bit. Year before last I talked about Heinlein; last year it was about how movies often 'wing it' when representing physical reality and events; and this year it was about 'prognostication', that is the tradition, art and practice of predicting the future. The whole thing, of course, came about because of System Crash and associated cogitations.

So I gave that talk, and tried to make it clear that there are basically two kinds of prognosticators: story-tellers and those I call 'Cassandras', who are people who take their predictions just about as seriously as Cassandra did hers (and look where that got her!); the enviro-doomsayers and such like.

Anyway, when I pointed out that, in my attempts to write near-future stories, despite them being 'only stories', I would like to be reasonably 'right' as far as the background goes, somebody in the back piped up and basically said "What does it matter anyway? In a few years it won't matter, and when you're dead, why should you care?"

Now, I doubt that he would have said that if I had been giving this talk from a 'Cassandra' point of view. I mean, then what I said and thought and wrote would have been serious and consequential and weighty and significant and blah blah blah. But I was just writing stories, which presumably, in the mind of the interjector, are essentially trivial and so who cares? Never mind that I was trying to point out that all prognosticaion is inherently 'fiction', because, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, everything we know or even know that we don't know pales into insignficance before the things we don't know we don't know.

Somehow that message didn't quite get through. Even worse, my admission that I come down on the side of the honest story-teller prognosticator (surprise!) rather than that of the self-important and ultimately deluded Cassandra-type, seemed to trivialize whatever I might have said, or my motivations.

The notion that a story-teller might have a sense of responsibility or sense of purpose regarding what he does never seems to occur to some people. The notion that stories may have more power to change the world than Cassandra-type 'predictions', 'projections' or maybe 'extrapolations', and that they therefore need to be written with a sense of responsibility—

On the other hand, who can blame him for thinking as he does? The world's full of people who tell stories purely for the purpose of making money. People like that give the rest of us and our venerable tradition a bad name.

But then again, the world is full of Cassandras who have vested interests as well; wether they be monetary or ideological.

So what else is new? The truth doesn't really matter, does it? What truly counts is what is perceived as being true. I dare anybody to come up with a significant example where this wasn't so.

Kicking it

2006-04-30T21:35:00.000+12:00

Here's a more 'real' femme fatale than we've had so far. Real people are more interesting than South Park characters or even Royo paintings. This one is Jessica Biel from Blade: Trinity.

So, how'd you like to be taunted into proximity and engagement like that and then...

Ouch!

Is there a serious point here? Well, yes, of course. Dumb question. For one thing, these two images are part of a 'sequence', and maybe even a 'scene'—so hark back to the previous blog...

On a different subject, touched on in a blog long ago: publishing and popularity.

Here's the first page—remember how important first pages are!—from a novel by Stephen Gould called Blind Waves.

The page is representative of the book itself; great story-telling, blending exposition almost seamlessly into action and 'scenery' (double-meaning intended). And Gould isn't exactly an unknown author either; look him up on Amazon and you'll see.

And yet Blind Waves, or so it appears, it out of print.

The same fate is shared by many books of Steve Perry. Try to find Spindoc or The Forever Drug—both still my favorite Perry novels. For the former there isn't even a cover picture on Amazon!

Here, as if it were really needed, is a strong argument for doing what I've done with Seladiënna and Continuity Slip, and what I will probably do with the sequels to Keaen; screw the publishing industry and make sure the book is out there and available as 'new' for anyone who's interested. Since lulu.com now provide proper paperback sizes, the only thing stopping people should be their ability to do layout and cover design. And even that's not really an issue. Anybody with a Mac or Windoze machine should be able to do it. The tools are free or almost so; use OpenOffice or something like that for layout and something cheap like Photoshop Elements for the cover. Something more professional would be good, of course, but it's not needed per se.

Yeah, I know it's like someone writing, producing, directing, editing and marketing their own movie—some people still find it somewhat odd, and those with vested interests, some of them crawling out from under the strangest logs like the centipedes over Naomi Watts in King Kong, will frown and hum and ha and make all sorts of disapproving noises. But the publishing world isn't what it used to be, and the creaking structures will ultimately have to readjust themselves to the new circumstances. Remember that a book 'out there', and be it ever so poorly marketed, is at least visible. Better than on your hard-drive somewhere. Right?

Let's make a scene

2006-04-30T10:25:00.000+12:00

So, why a picture of a rose? Well, this one was cut from its bush in our garden about eleven days ago, the evening before our eldest daughter returned to London. So, today, instead of a kick-ass lady, here's that rose. So I'm whimsical. So what? It's my blog, right?

Here's some more stuff for writers:

In our dojo we sometimes play a 'game' of 'Good Samurai, Bad Samurai'. It goes like this:

On one side a single person, the 'Good Samurai', armed with a sheathed bokuto (a wooden sword; also sometimes called bokken). On the other, between five and twenty steps away, one or more 'Bad Samurai'.

The rules: Good Samurai may not 'take action'—like even reaching for his sword—until the Bad Samurai have, in some way or other, indicated that they are about to attack him. The signals in question are flexible, but ultimately, when the following action is over, the Good Samurai must be able to justify why he took whatever action he took.

The purpose of this exercise is to practice pre-fight tactics, rather than engagement; decision-making about what's what; timing and distance assessment; movement and positioning of all parties involved; etc etc.

The purpose/intention of the Good Samurai should, at all times, to end up getting to where he originally wanted to go. The pub maybe, or his home. He should only do what is necessary to accomplish that goal. Fighting, and fighting against multiple opponents in particular, will probably mean that he isn't going to get there in time or unscathed or at all. Hence the focus of intention. In order to get there, he also needs to be on guard and attentive to his environment—in other words he must practice YUDAN NASHI ("never-off-guard")—and he needs to be competent.

This could, of course be seen as a recipe for life in general, which, above all contains the prescription that one really shouldn't ever 'relax' entirely; a prescription with which I entirely agree. But in this instance the example has an somewhat different purpose, namely to illustrate the basic structure and nature of a 'scene'.

So, we're suddenly back with writing? You bet.

A scene has the the following basic structure:

---> IN ---> SCENE ACTION ---> OUT --->

I made a point of putting arrow-heads in here; which are meant to indicate that those coming into a scene have a direction, a purpose, an intention. They may just be going to the pub. They may be even just be waiting for Godot. Or they may be racing along on horses toward a battle. But they always have a direction.

In order for a scene to work, its direction/purpose needs to be kept in mind—unless it is the purpose of the scene to change the direction/purpose, in which the vector coming out may not point in the same direction as that coming in. For example. the Good Samurai may, after having survived the attack by the Bad Samurai, not go for the pub anymore, but to the house of the bad guy who ordered those fellows to have him killed. Still, there is 'direction' and 'purpose'.

The action in the scene, in itself, only has meaning if it serves the purpose—of the story in this instance, whatever that purpose may be. The moment the story-teller forgets that the scene becomes vapid, rambling, pointless.

Scenes are parts of 'sequences', which essentially are a series of scenes that belong together and have some direct hookup. Sequences need to have a focus in a similar way.

Recent sequence (actually it's a chapter) from Tethys. Each sentence that follows describes a scene.

Mac and Nyla talk before going down a staircase.
Mac and Nyla got down the staircase and meet two men coming up.
Mac and Nyla enter the subterranean bar and go to the counter.
Nyla decides she needs to go to the toilet and heads off.
Mac starts talking to the barman.
A guy called 'Fayed' and four bodyguards enter the establishment.
Fayed and Mac have an unpleasant conversation, which reveals that, next to their current problems, they know each other and may also have 'unfinished business'.
Nyla enters the ablution facilities and there's an exchange with a women near the door who takes money off her.
Nyla investigates the disgusting toilets and decides to leave without availing herself of their use.
Nyla has another exchange with the woman near the door.
Nyla opens the the door to the bar, realizes something's wrong, stops.
Nyla pulls a gun and fends off the attention of a male toilet-user.
Nyla re-enters the bar room and makes her way closer to where Mac and Fayed are..
Nyla terminates the about-to-turn-violent argument between Mac and Fayed by killing the latter.
A bloody fight ensues.
Mac continues his interrupted exchange with the barman.
Mac and Nyla leave the bar.
Mac and Nyla go up the stairwell, during which Mac reveals his back-story with Fayed.
Mac and Nyla stop before leaving the building.
Mac talks to Fayed's drivers.
Mac talks to Nyla.

The whole thing is just under 6k words. It may be a useful exercise for those who feel so inclined, to analyze the scene-descriptions in terms of their direction/purpose and flow—and especially how this relates to, most importantly, the intention and motivations for action by the characters.

If it looks, from the above, as if the chapter/sequence was deliberately structured in the way outlined—well, it wasn't. But I also write screenplays and I've found that I have started thinking in terms of scenes. Hopefully, when someone reads the chapter, they won't notice the structure, but at the same time it should help them to follow the story better than they would have if the whole thing had random-walked all over the place. Some scenes represent obvious shifts of focus, location, point-of-view. Others should blend into each other seamlessly.

Learn to think in scenes.

The best way to do that is to write visually, and using limited point-of-view. It helps to work out what can be done, by whom, at what point and in what sequence and time-frame. Use a mental camera.

The complete chapter—first draft only; warts, typos, punctuation and misplaced-apostrophe issues and all!—can be found here.

A warning. Despite a recent trend in very trendy and fashionable Hollyweird screenplay-writing advice, ignore any advice that suggests for you to go to great lengths to micro-manage the scene prior to writing it down. You can do that later, during the actual writing.(And, in a screenplay-writing context, during the even later stage of 'shooting script' writing.)

Why? Back to the dojo and Good Bad Samurai games.

Advance micro-management assumes that the plans you make for this exercise will actually be appropriate. In truth they never are. One of the difficult things about these practices is that they are never quite the same. Even if people take the same paths, say, as in a previous exercise, small things like step-size, speed, angle will add up to configuring a situation in which distance-timing considerations alone will suddenly change the entire tactical situation.

The same goes for your story and its sequences and scenes. Your brain is not a computer, but—in it's anticipatory/planning function—more of a simulator of external reality scenarios. Said scenarios may or may not be pertinent to what actually happens. It is extremely likely that, as you feel your way through a sequence and its myriad texts and subtexts, you'll find that what you had anticipated probably won't work; for any of a gazillion reasons, which have to do with everything from physical contingency to motivational/response issues. You'll only discover some of these at the point of writing them—and if you advance-micro-managed the scene you won't. Which means you'll almost certainly miss something that will make the story more interesting, gripping, engaging.

It's a lot like life. Control-freakery isn't a good thing. But focus and preparation are.

So am I saying that story-telling is like living?

At its best it is.

Mathematics and story-telling

2006-04-29T06:11:00.000+12:00

Ok, ok, so I've been teasing you with South Park kick-ass girls; but, let's face it they lack some zing. So...

This is a part of a picture by the Spanish artist and illustrator Luis Royo. A bit more zing here...

Actually, I'm thinking that I should make the picture of a kick-ass lady a regular feature. See what I can come up with.

From kick-ass ladies to dipshits. A big leap, but why not?

Here's a question: Why would anybody make a total irredeemable dipshit into the protagonist of a novel or screenplay, unless said dipshit actually turns out to be 'competent' (see a previous blog entry) after all?

Friend of mine and fellow Vance Integral Edition worker once noted that I seemed to have a tendency to create 'competent' protagonists. He cited my novel Seladiënna as an example, which, he noted, made him think of Heinlein, especially with regards to the characters involved. Thing is, after thinking about it some, and especially in the context of my recent brief exchange with Steve Perry, I realize that the characters are more Perry-esque than possibly any others I've ever created. I don't know why or how, and it wasn't like I was in a Perry-phase or anything when I wrote Seladiënna in late 2000. But sometimes things are just right, and Seladiënna just 'flowed' from one moment to another, and was never any real effort, except for typing it in.

It's great to be in that zone, and if you're slaving away on your own work and you're not there...

Teachers of writing will give you sage advice that basically centers around the idea that there are techniques that can make up for it. There's software that'll help you develop story-lines, sub-plots, characters. Just plug in your requirements and Bob's your uncle.

Few, very few—any?—of the teachers giving this advice will ever have written a good story; one that goes for your viscera, turns you inside out and makes you into someone you weren't before. If they had they wouldn't give the advice they're giving. Either that or they've forgotten what they 'had' when they wrote them.

People lose themselves and their souls; usually when they stop dreaming. And writing stories is all about dreaming. Daydreaming and following it through; not in the vague sort of way that one does when idly daydreaming away about this or that, but in a focused kind of way, following the threads of the 'idle thought' where they lead.

The other day, on the radio, I listened to an interview with a NZ mathematician; a man who has received the highest mathematics award for his work on polynomials and knots, and who is profoundly interested in mathematics education. One things he said was shocking—and part of the reason why it was, to me anyway, was because it was so totally obvious—but, as is so often the case with the obvious, someone actually needed to articulate it.

Mathematics is difficult.

Contrary to the wishful musings of the PC crowd, who would have us believe that everybody can 'do maths'. What this guy pointed out was that maths, even basic counting and arithmetic, are immensely unnatural activities for humans, and that it takes _work_ to learn it; work that most educational institutions in 'Western' nations appear unwilling to demand of their students nowadays.

But that's an aside. However, in our current context, it occurred to me that maybe the same goes for story-telling.

Yeah, I know. Why should it? It's so totally different to maths, right?

But then, why would there exist a whole industry, making bucket-loads of money, trying to _teach_ people this thing? And it obviously isn't easy, because otherwise the industry would soon fold, instead of being in a growth phase. And, let's face it, if one reads some of the drivel people write when they think they're being 'creative'... Not trying to be unkind, but it's a fact.

Shall we say this out loud then? Dare to be un-PC and declare that...

...story-telling is difficult...

...and that maybe _not_ everybody can 'do it'—like some people will never be able to 'do math', no matter how hard they try?

Let's suppose for a moment that this is true. The interesting question now is, what attributes—psychological and/or physiological—predispose a person to being good at this? What can be learned and what needs to be innate?

Just wondering if in that line of questioning there is a possible germ for a story...

Nuncupatories

The root of much evil

The Outer Reaches of Inner Space

Dummies rule

Police officer moonlighted as prostitute20 July 2006

The flow of life

I kid you not...

Something Evil This Way Comes

Ahh, the drama...

Episode 1.1

Time to 'fess up...

Welcome to Paradise

Night Lamp

About this blog...

Skeptical... about 'skeptics'

Twists and turns

Bundles of joy and consciousness

The Last of the Mohicans

My new toy - nyah nyah nyah!

"WE DON'T TELL PEOPLE WHAT TO THINK—JUST HOW." Episode 2

The scariest sentence...

Michelle's adventures in Bali land

Faking religion

808

A room to live in

Be reasonable!

Post-KAL Blues... No, no, wait! I just had a thought! — Oh, oh, oh, this is really cool!

The KAL of all KACs

The long and the short of it

Thinking ahead

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things.

Die einen haben die Waffen. Sie ist gefährlich.

Dance the night away.

If you talk to God, you're religious. If God talks to you, you're psychotic.

Ban! Ban! BAN!

I'm thinking about...

Grrr....

Act out your fantasies

Do you really think so?

Spider, spider on my desk

Cool! Next one, please!

Editors and other strange people

Don't mess with Jess

"Excuse me, who's in charge here?"

Mirror, mirror on the wall…

"This is my finest sword. If on your journey, you should encounter God, God will be cut."

Why story-telling is good for you

Dirty Tom Rackham

Welcome the absurd, embrace the preposterous

A job well done—I hope...

Going with the flow—and getting washed away!

Nothing lasts forever

Adventure and sex

Nyla Nayla Naela

Mandaroccaboodoowabbapish

Back to pictures

The Vance Integral Edition

Appearances may not deceive

Taking it seriously

Kicking it

Let's make a scene

Mathematics and story-telling

Police officer moonlighted as prostitute
20 July 2006