Nom Nom Nom

Have you ever noticed how much fiction revolves around food? Well, science fiction and fantasy do quite a bit. The Chronicles of Narnia are packed full of descriptions of what the characters are eating. Particularly which foods are preferred by which species. Trees eat dirt (described in detail), beavers eat fish, dwarves eat sausages. Pages of this stuff in each book. Remember the Hobbit? Mutton, and honey, and cakes, and beer, and mushrooms. Whole banquets described. In the Night Watch series, the characters are constantly in possession of cognac, vodka, salami, and pickled eggs. Horror, not so much, though Stephen King's Dark Tower series talks quite a bit about beef jerky and deer meat. Then, of course, science fiction is all about food OF THE FUTURE! Sometimes reconstituted and vat-grown, often alien, periodically trying to eat you back, but always, well, nearly always delicious. There are some genres that I (much to my shame) have not really cracked open, but I wonder about them. Westerns? I bet there's a lot of ink devoted to chili. Apparently Jane Austen puts enough food in her books to inspire a cookbook. Probably all puddings and things on toothpicks. I am a firm believer in the principle that a reader will be less likely to notice the quality of poor writing if they are thinking, "Man that sounds good."

No Blog Today: A Study in Contradiction.

The explanation as to why there is no blog today (I assume you are not actually reading this):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migraine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aura_(symptom)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scintillating_scotoma

In the meantime, and in keeping with the theme:

Clown-face

As I see it, telling a story is in many ways like putting on make-up (Not that I wear make-up). If you look like you're wearing make-up (so I hear) you're doing it wrong. If the person hearing the story, or watching the movie, or listening to the song, can see you telling the story, you're doing it wrong. You see this when characters act unnaturally in order to advance the story or to explain points of the plot. If you've ever watched a horror story and have found yourself shouting at the screen "Don't go in there!" you've seen this in action. Why is the character acting so stupid? Because if they didn't, the story wouldn't advance.

I remember my wife complaining about a scene in the version of "Pride and Prejudice" with Keira Knightly. The scene involves one character explaining "entailment" (The rules by which property is inherited according to stodgy old English law) to another character. It is set up fairly poorly, and seems awkward to anyone who knows Jane Austen, because anyone back then would be very familiar with the concept of entailment. It is like having a scene where one character explains to another how a can-opener works, just in case someone in the audience has never seen one. Of course, many people who watched that movie didn't know what entailment is or how it works, so the filmmakers may have been justified in their attempt to fit an explanation into the story. Perhaps there is a better example.

How about "The Mist?" (Movie Version). In case you haven't seen it:

SPOILER ALERT.

But don't worry. The end pretty much spoiled the story already. Have overcome various dangers and horrors, the Hero and his followers have run out of gas in the middle of the road, presumably with monsters all around. Seeing no way out of their predicament, and not wishing that the others suffer, the hero pulls out a gun and shoots them all.

Ok, stop.

The man who never gave up hope no matter what is undone by an empty tank of gas? It is completely contradictory to his actions up to this point. I would expect him to perhaps sit in the car (where they are completely safe, btw) and ponder his options maybe. Or give the gun to one of his companions and set off on his own to look for help. I would not expect this from him though. This is starting to smell like "because it's in the script"

Continuing on. Having used up all his bullets on the others, the man jump out of the car hoping some monster will finish the job on him. He hears a loud rumbling and suddenly out pops the military, somehow blowing away the mist with leaf blowers or something. Everything is ok, nothing to see here folks, this guy's has just killed his child and friends for no reason. At this point, Stephen King and the Director both pop out from behind a tree, point at the hero, and shout "Hah, Gotcha! In your face!"

I mean, seriously.

It's almost as if there was a subtitle on the screen right before the end that said, "Wouldn't it suck if this happened?" It's senseless, it's doesn't improve the story in anyway, and it was obviously put in there to shock the audience. Your storyteller is showing, Mr. Movie, and it's not pretty.

Modern Christmas songs, and country songs all year long, are also prone to this. In particular, the shameful "Shoe Song," which is what inspired me to write this in the first place. The songs basic story:

"Hello, I am a poor little boy whose family cannot afford food or clothes and I am using all of my Christmas money to buy my mommy a pair of shoes because she loves shoes so much. I love my mommy so much and even though she can't walk I know she'll love these shoes, only I have to get them quickly because she is dying and I want to make her happy before she dies and then my daddy and I will go back to the cardboard box we live in behind the 7-11 and likely starve to death but we will be happy because we have each other and because we made mommy happy by getting her new shoes. Aren't I pitiful."

Bleah.

It would be incredibly sad if the songwriter HADN'T MADE THE WHOLE STORY UP JUST TO MAKE US FEEL BAD! What is the point of that? It is so ridiculously over the top in its attempt to be pathetic that it becomes a joke. It is one thing to write a story or song that is meant to evoke emotion in the reader/listener. In fact, a good story or song should evoke emotion. It doesn't quite work when you write across the whole thing in big red letters "YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO FEEL SAD NOW. PLEASE PROCEED"

WooHoo

http://www.fearandtremblingmag.com/item.php?sub_id=4362

All Right Dudes

Today I am in Geek-babel mode. I have a theory about artificial intelligence, based primarily on my own musings while staring at the inside of my windshield while barrelling down 380 between McKinney and Denton. It goes something like this:

The processing power of a mind is inversely proportionate to the amount of "personality" that mind possesses.

Within the human range of minds, the two extremes could be represented by Raymond Babbitt on one end, and Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel on the other end.

Raymond Babbitt is a powerful number cruncher, able to count toothpicks instantly, counting cards in Las Vegas, and remembering every case ever to appear before Wapner. He also has no personality whatsoever.

Cletus is a goldmine of personality. You might even say he has it in excess. He also can't count to 11.

The idea is that as a computer is made more human in personality, it will begin to lose processing power, till it reaches the point where an A+ Turring-tested A.I. would spend it's time, not using its vast intellect to solve extremely complicated global issues, but making "pull my finger" jokes. And not understanding why that joke isn't funny when you don't have a finger. Anyway, it's a thought.

I really miss having people to talk to. I think I'm going peculiar.

Big Kids

God speaks to me frequently through my daughter. Not that she realizes it, I'm sure.

[obvious]Children can be incredibly frustrating.[/obvious]

Over and over, in the times when I am at my wits end with them, it seems I can feel God looking over my shoulder, nodding, and saying, "Yeah, I know exactly how you feel."
He then clears His throat and looks at me pointedly, and I say, "Oh, right. Yeah. Sorry about that."

I haven't figured out whether it is chance, divine intervention, or some underlying natural law beyond my understanding, but I find over and over that my children's bad behavior mirrors my own bad behavior. On the one hand, it helps me in my dealing with them, because I can empathize with them, and on the other it makes me very thankful that God loves children of every age, and that He's a lot more patient than I am.

Last night I saw Revenge of the Sith for the first time. My daughter really wanted to see it, and I needed to preview it to determine if slowly burning alive and mass slaughter of jedilets is something I want my daughters to watch. Whenever I watch any Star Wars movie it gets me thinking about really bad dialogue.

There is a certain species of phrase that we constantly hear from action heroes and chisel-jawed adventures. These are phrases that we are all familiar with because we hear them all the time, and yet, we probably have never heard a real person say them. In fact, if we imagine ourselves in a similar situation, we realize that we can't even imagine ourselves saying them. This is because nobody talks that way.

I think the problem is that in real life, people do not dialogue. They talk. If I am having a conversation with you, I am not concerned about whether or not a bystander understands the back story or how the two of us are related. I'm not going to try to feign confusion in order to give myself a chance at further exposition. I'm not going to think out loud when I'm by myself.

Consider the following:

It's so crazy it just might work!

These two statements are rarely ever simultaneously true. Furthermore, nobody is going to trust their life to a plan that they consider to be crazy. Even a crazy person is not going to trust their life to a plan they think is crazy. They will simply consider fewer things to actually be crazy.

For Example:

The outlaws are trapped in a saloon while a lynch mob is waiting outside for them.

Outlaw 1: Let's just run out there, guns blazing, and take 'em.
Outlaw 2: It's so crazy it just might work!

In this case it's desperate but not in any way irrational. If you charge, you'll surprise them and cause confusion, and maybe one of you will escape.

Outlaw 1: Let's stuff tinker toys up our noses and pretend to be robot monkeys!
Outlaw 2: It's so crazy it just might work!

This really is crazy, but it won't work.

Basically, if you have to tell a reader that an idea is crazy, it's not crazy enough. If you have to tell them that others in the group feel that the idea is crazy, there are more elegant ways than having one of them point a finger like Donald Sutherland and shout "That's Crazy!"

What are you saying...

This phrase is usually used rhetorically, to show that what the speaker suggested sounds unbelievable, but really is true. It also allows for the speaker to continue on with his or her original thought and elaborate. It also sounds dumb.

Example:

Hero: The giant alien killer ants are trying to break through the door!
Heroine: What are you saying? We're about to be eaten?

Listen, kitten. If you are going to survive this, you need to develop at least a small amount of critical thinking. If we're confronted by a ravenous man-eater, I don't want you stopping to wonder whether you run toward or away from.

We've got to try!

The hero is desperate to save whoever it is he is saving. Things look bleak, everyone is telling the hero that it's never going to work and that they are all going to die. The hero gives them a steely eyed stare. Maybe he snatches his glasses off of his face Horatio Caine style. Maybe, if he's particularly feisty, he pounds his fist into his hand. He growls, "We've got to try!"

No, see, here's the thing. Nobody is impressed or inspired by this. It sounds like you're saying, "I agree. We've got a snowball's chance in hell of getting out of this, but lets have some action anyway. Besides, I'm bored."

A more likely response when stuck with a bunch of whiners who have no survival instinct: "Fine, you guys stay here while I escape. I'll probably send some sort of rescue... helicopter, or something. Say, while I'm running away, you don't suppose you could scream and jump up and down and, oh I don't know, look tasty? That'd be great."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

*snrk*
If you should ever find yourself experiencing unbearable grief, don't react in a way that makes those around you laugh. This is not the reaction of someone gripped by a powerful emotion. This is a 3 year-old who was told to go to bed. Actually it was exactly the sort of thing I would have expected from Pouty Vader, but it would have been better if he had thrown himself on the floor and done a full kicking and pounding his fists tantrum

There was this one time...

Some people have hundreds of great stories to tell, and others seem to live lives in which nothing happens. The story tellers, if given a chance to utter the words, "There was this one time," will talk your ear off until they are shushed. I have actually heard people of the other type claim that nothing interesting has ever happened to them.

I don't buy that.

I think the difference has to do with what you find interesting yourself. This morning my son took off his diaper, climbed into the dishwasher, and pooped in it. To another person this might simply be the kind of annoyance you put up with as a parent. To me, it's a funny and interesting story (and after all, cleanup was a breeze. I just threw some detergent in and started it up.) It might be a great start of a scene in a novel or a short story, or just something to make a scene more interesting. Take for instance, the story of Faust. The devil comes to see this guy to make an offer on his soul. Ok, a potentially interesting scene. What if, when the devil shows up, Faust was on his hands and knees trying to fish a turd out of the dishwasher? How might the conversation go? It seems like my more successful attempts at writing have made use of my own experiences. The only story I've been able to sell so far was almost entirely made up of my own memories. Nothing is ever as strange as real life.

The Road Heavily Trafficked

Every blog must have a first post. Let this, therefore, be that post.

I used to blog, and then I didn't.

I realized today that I kind of liked blogging when I did it, so I should do that again. This page before you is the result of that immomentous decision. It will not necessarily be funny, but it may be more frequent, so you get more content with less motivation to read.

I need something to make me think about writing everyday. Otherwise I get lazy. So this blog is going to be at least partly about writing. I expect this will be part-time ranting and part-time throwing out ideas I have to see if they are interesting.