Comment on Recursive

I didn't make 1000 words today. I sat down to write about not writing. I followed Humpty Dumpty's advice (from Lewis Carroll): "Start at the beginning, go through until you reach the end and then stop."

It was a one-time gag. I won't be able to do that again, at least not in the same way.

At least it's better than daily complaints about the relative state of my headache (although I did sneak that in).

Recursive

Charles sat at his desk, fingers on the keyboard, staring at the blank page in the word processing program. Nothing came to him. He leaned back in his chair, scowling while he looked at the monitor. He looked around the room. No help. Maybe check my email, he thought, knowing that he had checked it ten or fifteen minutes ago.

He started to open a browser, thinking about checking Facebook, then pulled his hand away. If I do that, next thing you know I’ll be on YouTube watching videos for hours. He pulled the chair forward, sat up straighter and faced the screen. Faced the music.

Then he thought, Yeah, music. Maybe that will help. Of course then deciding what to listen to would stop work. Yeah, like I’m getting anything done now. He put on something soothing, resisting the temptation to check out the podcasts already downloaded but not watched or listened to yet.

Then back to being poised at the keyboard. He started to think about chores needing to be done. He needed to trim the bushes. There were pictures still waiting to be hung.

He was trying to start a new short story. All those characters in his head that clamored for attention when he was driving or in the grocery store stayed silent. All those plot threads unraveling without characters to be in conflict.

Maybe if I start with a name, he thought. So, he began: Abe, Bobby (a different sort than Bob), Charley (no, too close to his own name), Don (not The Don). He continued through the alphabet. Nothing sparked any ideas. Wait. What about Sparks? Nah, too retro SF.   

Zed. Zed’s dead, he thought. Zoe. A female lead? Some male writers can pull that off. Not me.

The self-doubt echoed about the room. He got up and went to get something for the headache which was getting worse with the stress. It was cool in the office, so he stopped to put on a sweater.

Sitting back down at his desk, he thought about the computer. Some writers do first drafts on yellow legal pads, in pencil. He chuckled. At least then I’d have an excuse for all this pencil sharpening. For ten minutes or so. Except that I don’t have any classic number two wood pencils. Only auto pencils with half millimeter lead.

His thoughts continued. Some guys still use old typewriters. I wonder if they use carbon paper or just photocopy the pages. He frowned. This line of thought is getting me nowhere. Then he returned to the same line of thought. Maybe, I could dictate it. The computer has a program to record my voice.

He smiled wryly. “I know what you’re doing,” he said aloud to himself. “Just get to work -- NOW.” His voice sounded desperate to him.

Fingers back to the home keys on the keyboard. He began typing: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."

He stopped. Next thing you know I’ll be talking to Floyd the bartender and hallucinating whiskey. He wasn’t sure whether Jack Torrance drank whiskey in The Shining. Or whisky either. He typed “whiskey” and whisky” to see if the spell check dictionary recognized both. It did.

He sighed. All he wanted was to be able to create a thousand words a day. Four pages (double-spaced, of course). He knew that the more he wrote the better his writing would become.

So why can’t I just start something.

He cleared the page and typed: “It was a dark and stormy night.” That’s it. Burn the clichés out of me. “A shot rang out. The maid screamed. A pirate ship appeared on the horizon.” God bless Charles Schultz and God bless Snoopy.

Then he started typing what he was thinking. 

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. 

Thoughts on Star Wars prequel trilogy

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

Oh, for the sake of the Force. It’s not far, far away. It’s not even far away. It’s our own galaxy, the Milky Way. And it’s not very long ago -- the mere blink of an eye in geological terms, never mind Galactic terms. It is the unfashionable western arm of the Milky Way galaxy[1].

I recently watched Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Jedi again. That and the recent purchase of Lucasfilm by Disney made me start to think (always dangerous). This is an opinion piece. In fandom it takes very little to create controversy or get fankids upset, so please remember this is mere speculation. Don’t Panic.[2]

It came to me that if it were possible to re-do the prequel trilogy, not in the minor way that George Lucas did with the original saga with pointless digital character and/or just silly inserts (Han shot first. Otherwise is out of character and he would have been dead as a result. Who in their right mind would think a thug like Greedo could miss at that range?), but with substantial things. If that were to happen, there are some things I would like to see. These improvements do not include any redone digital effects.

Anyway what follows is my idea for a quasi-reboot of the Trilogy.

Eliminate The Phantom Menace[3], after distilling important plot points down to about fifteen minutes or so. Drop the nonsense about a fourteen year old princess falling in eternal love[4] with a nine year old slave. Drop Jar-Jar (off a very high cliff, please). His main plot function was to provide an unmotivated Senate motion (in Episode III) to shelve the ideas of freedom and democracy. You think Darth Sidious couldn’t use a Sith mind trick[5] to get another puppet to make that motion?

Episode II (new Episode I) could still be called Attack of the Clones. The opening of the movie would be the distillation of The Phantom Menace as described in the previous paragraph. The rest of the movie would include a tightened up version of Attack of the Clones, maybe an hour and a half. The rest would be the first part of Revenge of the Sith. I would hope that more could be made of the threat of the clones turning on the good guys (in episode III) at the flick of a switch/press of a button. I also would like to see and more detailed and better motivation for Anikin’s descent into the Dark Side. There should be concern expressed by Obi Wan and Yoda of his beheading of the unarmed/disarmed Count Dooku. He should resist more instead of just being a whiny nine-year-old (in behavior) who ultimately says something along the lines of: “OK, boss. If I can save Padmé, I’ll just nip off and slaughter some sweet little cute Jedi younglings[6] to make my descent permanent.” He doesn’t say “Couldn’t I just try the Dark Side long enough to save Padmé?” He doesn’t think about how Padmé would react. How do you think a pregnant woman – or any woman, for that matter – would react to the slaughter of children? I think one ending for Episode two (as re-envisioned) would be the reveal of Palpatine as Darth Sidious and Anikin reporting this to Mace Windu. Anyone in the audience that did not know this had never seen any of the other films, but still would not find it a surprise. This would provide a good amount of dramatic tension leading to Episode Three and also give more room (in III) to explore the tragedy of the descent of Anikin to the Dark Side.

The new version of Revenge of the Sith would start with the brutal murder of Mace Windu by Palpatine. Instead of this pushing Anikin toward the Dark Side, it should increase his anguish over his struggle. If he trusted Palpatine/Sidious, would he have reported his treachery to Master Windu? Would he have argued or even fought Windu over the plan to arrest Palpatine? The whole motivation thing is very muddled here. Apparently you just can’t force persuade someone to turn to the Dark Side but have to allow them to make the decision internally or it won’t take. It should end similarly but perhaps a touch of “What have I done?” and resignation to his fate on the part of Darth Vader. It is important to link to Return of the Jedi by showing the “spark of good” still in him.

I know some people like Hayden Christensen’s performance. I am not among them. I am not alone: Roger Ebert, who had praised all of the other Star Wars films, gave Attack of the Clones only two out of four stars, noting, "[As] someone who admired the freshness and energy of the earlier films, I was amazed, at the end of Episode II, to realize that I had not heard one line of quotable, memorable dialogue." About Anakin and Padme's relationship, Ebert stated, "There is not a romantic word they exchange that has not long since been reduced to cliché." (My thought – they started out as cliché.) Leonard Maltin, who also liked all of the previous installments, gave only two stars out of four to Episode II. Maltin gave the reason for his dissatisfaction as an "overlong story" adding, "Wooden characterizations and dialogue don't help."

I suggest that what went wrong is that the story is so plot driven that character fell by the wayside. Characterization is critical here; a tragic tale of a descent into evil needs to be character driven to succeed. Episode III was better received that I or II. I thought it flirted with greatness but was not committed to it so ended up as still less than any episode of the middle saga. The failure to make more of Anikin’s internal struggle is what I found lacking in the first trilogy.

[1] Oops. Wrong universe.

[2]. See footnote 1.

[3] What does that title mean, anyway?

[4] Excuse me. I think I mean "Twue Wuv"
      (another fictional universe heard from.)

[5] Kind of like a Jedi mind trick but ee-vil.

[6] Now there’s a stupid word. Is “children” hard to pronounce?

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By William C. Francis

Claiming Fair Use for Graphics

11/18/2012.

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That said, I would like to add an off-topic afterword. ALERT: Bad pun ahead. Could we call the whole 6 episode saga Farewell to Arms?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License

Rise is all you're getting today. I am not going to shine.

Another Day, Another Headache

There is a possibility that this journal will reflect my life all too well and end up being of little interest to anyone. There is already too much whining and complaining and I am adding more.

I went to bed early last night. I was tired and thought it might have had something to do with getting five hours sleep the previous night. Then five hours later I woke up and could not go back to sleep. After laying in bed for over an hour, I got up. The day's headache is worse than the one yesterday. I am now sitting in the office, before dawn, waiting for the medications to kick in. </whine>

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I am preparing to check out one of my older computers, the one I called the Dell from Hell until I installed a higher watt power supply and almost all of the weird glitches and fails became part of the past.

It did not boot up last time I tried. There is something on the hard disk I need, and I have a hard disk purchased for this system awhile back that I never installed or deployed. Before I try, I will center myself (and take the generic Xanax) to remain calm.

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I will now go bring in the newspaper and lie down and read some of Polterheist by Laura Resnick.

See you, Space Cowboy.

Journal

I went to sleep at 4 AM. I woke at a little after 9 AM and was unable to go back to sleep. The morning sun is bright and reflected off ripples on the lake. The sky is clear. I have the shutters set in the office to keep direct sunlight from coming in but the reflected light is luminous.

Another day brings another headache. It is mild but I know it is there. I have the tight feeling in the skin on my forehead that sometimes accompanies the dull discomfort.

I am listening to Janis Ian "Welcome Home (the Nebulas Song)" (available free here). This song is the tune of "At Seventeen" with lyrics about her love of fantasy and science fiction. She did a filk of her own song. It always serves to cheer me up.

This is me now, cheered up. 

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This is part of my program to write something -- anything -- every day. A journal of sorts. Somethings I write will appear here and some will not.


I hear the TARDIS. The Doctor is in. Got to go.

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Corporations are not people. Soylent Green is people.

Day after Election Day

Find the common ground.

Yes, I believe the United States as envisioned by the foundling founding fathers as a nation where people are free (and they did not include corporations in that, since they didn't really know that much about them) is in serious trouble.

Abraham Lincoln, slightly edited for today:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal

Now we are engaged in a great civil war uncivil and polarized debate, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."

 So. My thoughts are turning to how to stay involved in the political process now that the election is over and how to find the common ground. Lincoln said that "...It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us...".

I hope that now, as then,

"...this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

Beginning

Journal

03:25 hours EST 11/07/2012.

Maybe the U.S. Presidential election is over except for the wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth. We'll see tomorrow evening.