Happy Easter.
And for them what don’t?
Happy Sunday!
Saturday Centus
Fallen off the wagon again, but I’m getting right back on! This week’s prompt suggested this direction almost immediately.
“Our fingers entwined like ribbons of light,
the Galaxy’s power provides all our might!
So let those who do evil flee with their dread,
lest we smite them down and make ‘em all dead!”He looked at her, expectantly. She returned his gaze, skeptically.
“I’m not reciting that every time we face a supervillain,” she said.
“Then YOU come up with a catchphrase,” he grumbled.
“Don’t get pissy with me! You’re the one who wanted us to be superheroes! Look at this costume! You can see all my–”
“Fine! Change the costume, too!”
Yeah…it was a while before Bobby and Sue were ready to fight crime….
That’s how the brain of a geek works, folks.
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On being less mean
Yesterday I had one of “those days”, when much of the external stimuli with which I had to deal seemed purposely placed in my path by some higher being in order to really test my resolve to think more positively. And yes, I found myself slipping back into old, familiar thought patterns, which left me feeling pretty icky the rest of the day. Maybe I need one of those wrist-snap things that Larry Hagman used to hawk for the Great American Smoke-out, and snap my wrist every time I feel myself slipping into familiar, but not undesirable, negative thoughtspace. (Here’s a quick Instagram reaction I had to yesterday at one point.)
Anyway, I just read a message on Facebook by SF author David Gerrold (whose place in SF lore would be secure if the only thing he’d ever written was the Star Trek episode “The Trouble With Tribbles”), in which, in the course of explaining why he doesn’t like laughing at photos of morbidly obese people, he says something that lines up with my thinking these days:
As human beings, we have the capacity to stand for each other, to support each other, to be compassionate and nurturing. We have the very human capacity to make a difference for everyone around us — not just friends and family, but everyone we come in contact with. Other human beings deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.
This isn’t a new realization for me. It’s merely today’s recognition that toxic behavior of any kind makes me uncomfortable. (Last year, I edited out of my life a friend of twenty years because despite her unerring moral compass, I couldn’t stand the way she bullied and abused anyone who dared to question her unerring moral compass. Instead of teaching, she attacked. Her unerring moral compass was applied to everyone else’s behavior but her own. I also culled her enablers and yes-men.)
I’m not perfect, I make mistakes, we all do. But as a rule of thumb — I make a continuing effort to NOT judge people by who they are. Instead, I respond to what they say and what they do. I look at their behavior. Because what a person says and does is the clearest expression of what he or she is up to on the planet.
I think Facebook (and all other social media) has the power to transform who we are as a society. We can learn from each other. We can learn to listen to each other. We can learn to respect each other. Or we can be a global circular firing squad.
Every time we post, we’re making a choice. We’re choosing to elevate ourselves and the people we connect with — or we’re choosing to kick ourselves a little bit farther down the muddy slope. I choose not to be an enabler.
Agreed.
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Further Observational Matters
After the last few comments threads here, I’ve realized that a goodly portion of my readership consists of early risers who prefer their delight to come in the wee hours of the morning as opposed to the famed cheesy song’s afternoon version, and that most, if not all of you, prefer the existing commenting system. So: there it is! Onward and upward.
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A Query for You Fine Readers
Does the commenting system currently in use here suffice? Or should I switch to a system like Disqus, which allows a lot more mechanisms for signing in to leave comments? Please weigh in! I’m not sure that Blogger’s existing commenting system is really serving my needs, or readers’ needs, as well as a commenting system should, and I see no sign that the Google/Blogger people have any intention of revising that system any time soon. Thanks in advance for your input!
(And for that matter, in keeping with my general new approach of eliminating snark and negativity to the highest degree possible from my life — and therefore this blog — as of this post, consider all commenting permissions restored to any and all. Thanks!)
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Something for Thursday
A brief observation
Based on responses to this week’s Random Wednesday Conversation Starter, this blog seems to appeal to an awful lot of early risers. Maybe I should start scheduling all of my new content to run at three in the morning!
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PEROT IN ’92!!!
Psst! Hey! Wanna waste your vote?
As far as Buffalo’s recognition of blogs goes, ‘personal’ blogs such as this one might as well not even exist, but hey, a fellow can dream! Or he can pout. Or he can have pouty dreams. Yeah, that’s it! Anyway, go to Artvoice.com for details on how to either join the rest of the sheep or throw your ballot away.
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A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter
Notes with a fountain pen
On a break today I decided to jot down some notes on the plot of Princesses In SPACE!!! II: Just When You Thought It Was Safe For the Princesses To Go Back in the Water (not the actual title), as well as some random plot ideas and notions that may or may not bear fruit later on.
I’ve written in the past that I don’t, as a rule, do much by way of outlining. I find that even when I try to outline as specifically as I can, invariably I reach a point where my characters start doing other stuff, and I either write a lot of unconvincing stuff as I try to force the story back into the shape of the outline, or I end up tossing the outline altogether — in which case, the original work was pretty much a waste of time.
So I don’t outline much. About the only outlining I will do is very low-level, and high-focus, work in which I plot out no more than the next chapter or two. And even then I find that I can wander off the planned course, so I still tend to lay off the hyper-specifics. And if I outline the entire story, it’s extremely high level — no more than a blurb or two the describe the entire story. I simply cannot work from a detailed outline, and nowadays, I don’t even try to do so.
That particular notebook, by the way? I’ve had that notebook for about fifteen years. Maybe a little longer. When I flip through it, I find story notes from The Promised King and, going back to even several years before this blog even started, the Star Wars fanfic that I was working on around the time I got married. Seeing those notes again always feels like an artifact from someone else’s distant past…not even mine….