Despotism and the Tea Party

Just a quick observation. There are those — and I am not saying all or even a majority — within the Tea Party movement that like to call the initiatives of the Obama ‘socialism’ or a move towards tyranny. This sort of hyperbole is pointless. However, as I watch the Arabic world erupt with people longing to overthrow the despots who have ruled over them. (Often in very socialist-like setting) I can’t help be feel that these people who like to hurl Nazi themed insults and comparisons are acting like spoiled teenagers. They live in a system free enough for them to whine that they are not free.

(edited for clarity)

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Solution Found

So less than a day after diagnosing the problem with chapter 2 of Love and Loyalty (it was not character driven and did not reveal anything about the character) I have mapped out a solution to the problem. It will entail rewriting nearly all of chapter 2, but I think I was have a much stronger chapter and novel for the work.

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Another Epiphany

This is why being a member of the Mysterious Galaxy Writers Group is worth it. Not only do I meet great and interesting characters — not just the fictional ones either — and hear some great pieces of writing, but the feedback from fellow writers open up vista in my mind to where I have been blind.

I can see clearly fault in the plotting and form of chapter 2 that have nothing to do with the prose style. Now, to figure out a way to fix them.

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Sunday Night Movie: The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension

So it looks like I will get to my Sunday Night Movie feature after all! Anyway after a spate of fairly serious and heavy films I was in the mood this sunday for fare that was lighter and just fun to watch. It had been a piece of time since I last pulled out my DVD of The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension so between time and mood this was the perfect film for me.

Buckaroo Banzai is a film that has a very idiosyncratic response in people who see it. Either people fall in love with this stranger quirky movie and quote it for years, or they scratch their heads and wonder how anyone could like something so utterly stupid. There seems to be almost no middle-ground reaction.

This film is at heart a pulp adventure, much along the lines of say a Doc Savage story, if you are familiar with those books. The titular character, Buckaroo Banzai is at once, a physicist, a surgeon, and a rock star. On all these fields he is perhaps the best. He has surrounded himself with a talented team of characters at the Banzai Institute. They combat evil, improve mankind lot in the world, and play concerts to adoring fans. If this is all too over the top for your, then this movie is not for you. It has the feel not only of a pulp adventure, but also of someone role playing game writ large and with credible actors playing the parts. Continue reading →

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A quote that cheered me up

“Books aren’t written. They’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.” Michael Crichton.

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The potential Arab Awakening

I fully support the rights to peoples across the world to overthrow their dictators and live in freedom. I hope that the events from Tunsia and Egypt are the pebbles at the start of a landslide.

I;’ve heard commenters here in the US framing this both as indicative of the success and failure of Bush 41 policies. I will not sully the courage of democratic protesters by suggesting that every event in the world is about our liberal/conservative squabbles.

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Depression Lifting

Last Friday I slipped into a fairly deep funk. Most of it had passed by the next day with only lingering effect through the next week. Today was the first day I truly felt like I had shaken off this depression. I know exactly what prompted this feeling.

As you know if you have been reading my blog I recently got my official rejection from a major publishing house for my military SF novel, Love and Loyalty. When I looked at chapter one with an eye to reading it at the Mysterious Galaxy Writers group I saw that I could improve the quality of the writing and decided to do a new line edit through the enitre novel.

Friday at my day job I was working on Love and Loyalty ,(during breaks and lunch, my boss get his money’s worth out of me) and suddenly I was struck just how ineptly I had written the book the first time. Mind you this was a manuscript that I had written, edited, gotten beta-read feedback on, re-written and then re-edited.  It had been through at least two full line level of editing.

Despite that the lines looked utterly crappy to me. I had been blind to my crap and the enormity of it staggered me. I was so upset that I think if someone had said a cross word to me I might have wept.

Just look at the number of changes and corrections I have scribbled onto this one page. A page that has been changed and corrected more than twice before. I don’t know why it hurt and devastated me so badly Friday, but there is no doubting that it did do just that.

I have kept working at it, hoping that the crap I am blind to is not as major as the crap I had been blind to.

I will not quite. I adore my characters and the adventure, but I do get discouraged.

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A very pleasant surprise Juggernaut

Last week when I stayed home from the day-job with a migraine one of the things I did in the afternoon when I was feeling better was surf the Netflix instant view queue.

For those not in the know, if you have a Netflix account and a Netflix compatible device, such as an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, you can stream select movies from Netflix directly to your television. Sometimes even in high-def.

Juggernaut was a film I discovered by surfing what was available for streaming. I did not watch the movie that day, my headache was still too intense to allow full concentration. Last night after we finished watching our recordings of The Daily Show & The Colbert Report my sweetie-wife and went to the Netflix queue for something to watch. She spotted the Juggernaut in the ‘recently viewed’ queue — I had watched a few minutes to get a feeling for the quality of the production — and after a short bit of internet research she decided she wanted to watch the film as well.

Damn, this was one well made movie. The plot is simple. An extortionist has planted several large bombs on an ocean liner, he his demanding a large sum of money or he will not reveal how to deactivate the bombs. 1200 people are aboard the ocean and a mid-Atlantic gale prevents them from being evacuated. Time is running out until the bombs explode.

Now a plot like that can be done well and you will get a taunt suspenseful film, or it can be done badly and you get mindless action and explosions. This film was done well. For a bonus look at this cast. Richard Harris, Anthony Hopkins, Omar Sharif, Ian Holm, and a slate of character actors you’re sure to recognize when you see them. The tension in the film was quite strong, watching at home, with a headache, in a well lit room, I still felt it tightening my muscles. This is a movie I would never hesitate to show to someone. See it if you can.

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