There's a time for seriousness. Not now, not here.

Got an idea from my profile page on Protagonize (Interactive Writing site where I like to go play - There's a link handy page-left). Figuring anything I might post up for a so-called bio-blurb is just gonna bore, there or here, or worse sound too much like an advert, instead I tacked up some interests, current, or recent enuf, so'z it feels pertinent: books being read, re-read, movies and websites perused. So as good as showing enough of who I am for anyone curious.

And it should be simple to keep this current, simply by editing, by posting up what I'm doing - short of the dreaded Dear Diary, Good oatmeal for breakie! - and updating the...um, date.

Here then some glimpses into the less shadowy stretches of my mind.

Currently re-reading:

The Conquest of New Spain, by Bernal Diaz:

Cortez, Mexico, and Montezuma. Conquest and Adventure: the combination sold books, but the chroniclers really had ventured no farther than their writing desks. Despising these story sellers, and figuring he might as well benefit some little from the adventure he actually shared with his Cortez, Senor Diaz, retired conquistador with an attitude, sets the record straight.

Currently browsing:

Regia Anglorum (www.regia.org):

Anglo-Saxon re-enactors living the life...up to that nasty business against land-grabber William the Norman at Hastings.

Ever wonder how was it like, really like, to be a charcoal burner? And how much the smith might pay for the basketful? Or how to cut a scribe's goose feather quill, and brew up some nice dark ink, so somebody who knew his letters might record the sale in a churchman's book of vellum? Not forgetting to brew up the mead - never forgetting the mead!

An actual village, evident fun along with the experiments, and handy lifestyle articles. All fodder for the fantasy writer building a believable world.

The Association for Renaissance Martial Arts (www.thearma.org):

Forget Hollywood. Actual fighting techniques. Real tactics. Weapons and their use. Historic sources and modern experiments.

More world-building fodder.

Current diversion(s):

Age of Empires, Age of Kings (Nintendo DS)

Because I like her sweet French voice, playing as Joan the Zealous, trusting less in steel and more in her army of heathen-converting super battle-monks!

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 (PC - PC's basic, so it's this FS version or I'm grounded)

Virtually flying around the world, because it says I can, and in a small Cessna, because ocean crossing in my little Cessna will be very interesting. Wanting to post screen captures from my flights: First, better check that publishing such pix doesn't constitute some definition of theft as far as Microsoft cares.

Meanwhile, just my log:

No-joy hunting all night for UFOs above Roswell, New Mexico, tho lotsa practice tailing air traffic coming and going. Dawn, northwest to Alamogordo, heading for Trinity, where a bomb went...(spreading hands apart rapidly to indicate a stupendously world-changing event).

An Admission

[The following section appears in my author profile on Protagonize. It's my content, I like it, and don't wanna change a word: just right that I say where first posted]

I contracted Chronic Seriousness right after puberty. It has since shadowed my every heavy step.

Determined to remedy my sad condition, I've begun a flexible course of treatments, nothing too intense for my brittle constitution, because as with all medicines too much too soon of any good thing can be as bad.

Currently dosing with:

The King of Kong

Monty Python and the Holy Grrrail! (dvd extras)

...and pawing the shiny new cover of:
Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett

Air Frame = Pressure Hull + X

Feel so...dumb. As in stupid, that I didn't see this sooner. And as in not able to communicate effectively. Only just comprehending just how dumb I've been, 'coz I've just had a Eureka! moment.

Outlining ... y'know, The Project, which because it's so big a project really should be outlined, not so inflexibly set that it allows no further step of exploration nor joy, tho enough plan for building the house on, putting the main bits where they should properly go, and the thing looking like a house when I've finished.

I was convinced I had the right POV, y'see. Only I hadn't, it wasn't, and in fact my choice of POV was not ever going to summon up a living breathing story before me. Not with one thousand years of tinkering and the synopsis dead-text-book perfect.

Because I had the entirely wrong point of view character struggling to tell the story impossible for him to tell. I might as well have tried cobbling together an aeroplane from mini-sub parts.

But. But it's my beloved project, y'see! he exclaims, as if being blinkered so long explains.

And it doesn't. First-Person voice worked in that longago when it first blazed along so very nicely: then it was all idea, a character, and getting his story down before gone forever, like a dream forgotten come waking. And not a thought about outlining, not then. But a story is like exploring an unknown land: writing it enlarges the map. Soon enough, in his effort to tell the larger story, his voice sounded less natural. Starts and stops jarred. I thought a road map, an outline, should restore story flow. Because I'd set it in motion using First-Person, and sprinting so promisingly in First-Person, then in First-Person it logically should continue. Shouldn't it?

[Cusses out self for the mistake that wasted quite a lot of time: none of which is appropriate to record here.]

No. But now I hear the best fitting voice, and it's all He, She, and They. Simple.

Once upon a time, there was this guy, and his name was Guy. And this is what happened to this guy, Guy, one fine morning when Julie Andrews, young and irresistible, invited him to picnic with her, and the pack of kids she was herding, high in a wide-angle sunny alpine meadow...

I can feel it writing itself!

Mountain Lesson Lessened

Beijing's Olympics' flame atop Mount Everest. Mountains, for some folks, are sacred places. The Olympics, for some folks, has become an affront. Maybe it's just me. Feels as if that Highest among the high dry spots today became a bit lower: lessened to little more than video filler on the morning news; a gas flame sputtering where a human usually draws air from a bottle; meaningless as an Olympics publicity stunt.

How might the I.O.C. have responded had the summit team met disaster, I wonder? The place since Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund has become a climber's cemetery.

Chomolungma, Goddess Mother of the World. Sagarmatha, Ocean Mother. Mount Everest, named for a surveyor from an empire half the world away. No pun intended, but while growing up it used to give me chills watching those rare climbing documentaries on tv. Eventually, other docs opened my eyes about cultures in our wondrous world, and their reverence for such places. And then we come to our current-day mindset. The un-ending train of climbing expeditions, where so many others have already been and all the routes imaginable already climbed. Elite, and Extreme, the descriptors for the adventurers: some certainly seeking something less tangible than coming away with another checkmark in a logbook. And others ... Well, there are said to be untold ways to enlightenment; so how is it any less right if they do make their career climbing every high place in succession?

Still, my way isn't any less right, either - and I can dislike a thing I dislike!

And I dislike seeing something very like this mountain lessening happening even in my pre-Olympics Vancouver. The Grouse Grind, named so for the attitude of so many who use what once was a hiking trail up Grouse Mountain: now in the main no longer experienced as a hike, that might possibly refresh the soul plodding step after step higher above everyday concerns. Instead used, like a piece of exercise equipment, like a stair climber is used, for the cardio work-out, for burning off the fat of a sedentary lifestyle; (and now I'm being snarky) -- and afterward, the adherents head off for some over-priced coffee cocktail!

Of course, their way might not be any less right, either.

Jottings on the Go

Got me this notion of writing a thing using this shiny-new mobile I'm tipping about in my hand so it catches the light just right. Sure, not a new idea: using a cell phone’s techno-nifties, creating short somethings, such as all those video bits and photo albums incessantly posted to YouTube, MySpace, blogs, and even news providers. Thought I heard someone made a movie using one of these.

And just an idea for now, this Jottings on the Go. Needs researching. The 140-character message limit certain to severely hobble things, if it's Ulysses, wandering the town. Well, maybe not a novel, then ... unless some novel kinda novel, told in one hundred and forty character installments. Hmm, right, at fifteen cents per chapter.

And then there's the language to choose. Standard English? - nyet, and not even if only the essential most concisely picked - certainly not compact enough. Nor enuf. Not even in same dialect as that shortened enuf. Not in weird, as in uncommon abbreviations, perhaps only confusing. Logically, the most must be said with less: every word where it can doing multiple duty, for the meaning and the emotion it might possibly convey. The compressed thing prob'ly best told in a compressed language, such as this Text-Chat-Shorthand ... uh,I.M. currently all the bee's knees, especially with the young’uns.

Dug out a yellowing print-up of a Chatters' Dictionary from 2001. Tho...[Hah! as in Although], quick googling has already returned a promising couple of more modern Texting and Instant Messaging info-sites. So, it's back to school for me!

Lesson: Are y'really gonna try Posting during Lunch?

Exasperated! Big mistake today -- almost -- trying to post to Protag from work, tho not after work, as I have done, when co-workers have gone and the quiet conducive to the exercise. Instead, during what should’ve been a quiet moment. Takes more than one moment to post any story!

I had sense enough to make the effort to ready my submission in advance, thru the morning fleshing it over from bits of plot and character‘s next move, but impatience got the upper hand.
I had it tapped into a Word doc. One of those workdays when lunchtime came late. Came at last the quiet moment, my lunch, and I committed.

Well. Phone calls. Warehouse calls. My post posted. Trying O’TRYING to read it thru! Checking. The very final edit. Of course it had to read right. Truck’s arrived and must be unloaded. One hour -- ONLY ONE HOUR remaining for any last edits! -- and I won’t be back any time soon.

Drakon having escaped the beargirl, in Bolsheviki’s Mage Hunting.

Hope she likes it. [He sighs].

Frustration - dot - dot - dot.

Snow over the weekend here -- latest snow on record for Vancouver, for mid-April, any-year. Yeah, sure sign of Global Warming.

Heavy wet snow bringing down green branches, and power-lines in some parts. So why shouldn't my phone-service go dead?

Frustrating, I'll admit, mainly because the dead phone-line killed for the weekend currently my only access to internet. Currently, I only have dial-up (Guess I've belly-ached that point a few times here). Ruined my weekend plans for my rather obsessive preoccupation these days with posting stories, or branches, to Protagonize.

Just the gamer in me needing -- no, wanting it (that's heathier!), my...um, session at recreational story posting.

Vancouver April 19 '08...Uhhh, Global Warming?