I am alone in my hotel room, on a business trip, staying at a
Holiday Inn in Houston.
I am eating pretzels left over from the bag I brought on my
flight. They were a snack I bought for the
four hour flight from NJ to Houston. Airlines no longer serve meals on domestic
flights.
I am washing them down with the cheapest merlot money can
buy. It’s out of a juice box and poured
into a plastic cup. I suppose it would
be worse if I were drinking it directly from the cardboard carton, but I figure
that’s just a matter of degrees.
Is this a new low?
I’m not sure.
The wine was $3.99, and the pretzels cost almost the same. Airports can charge pretty much anything
these days. We buy it because we are
forced to be there.
It’s the middle of January and the thermostat in this room
reads 77. The environmental controls for
this room either seem to want it to be freezing or uncomfortably warm. I keep switching it back and forth because it
won’t stay at any one temperature. I
figure if I switch it back and forth enough times it will rain in the middle of
the room.
I’m not 100% sure why I am writing this stream of
consciousness. It’s not my usual
style and pretty meaningless. I think I just liked the title, “Wine
and Pretzels.”
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
Few people actually show the text. When England's government became oppressive and unfair to the colonies, it was necessary to raise an army of Militia soldiers to defend and fight for freedom. The authors of our Constitution knew, first hand what it was like to stand up to a bad government that was in power. In their wisdom, they kept this check in the foundation of the new government they were forming. This amendment was meant to keep a balance between the population and any government (like England) that could become corrupted.
Consider for a moment, Nazi Germany. Their government was a democracy similar to England. Of the 12,000,000 exterminated, if only 1% of them had firearms, there would be an armed force of 120,000. Think about what a difference it might have made.
It wasn't until after the war that Nokmim (Hebrew: הנוקמים), also referred to as The Avengers or the Jewish Avengers, a Jewish partisan militia was formed. Forming a "militia." Sound familiar? Pity it was AFTER the war.
In the 1970s we had landed on the moon and space seemed to be our Oyster. There was no reason to doubt that we would have lunar colonies by the end of the 20th century. The Space Shuttle, although only an orbiter, seemed like the first step in building true re-usable spacecraft. The planets like Mars and Venus seemed to be so close we could touch them next.
Even though we were in the middle of the cold war and competition with the Soviet Union was tense this (along with the release of Star Wars in 1977) actually fueled much of the advancement. In a race that began with Sputnik in the 1950s, each side was trying to "conquer space" first.
In 1989 the wall in Berlin fell and with it came the fall of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. With this epic event, which is regarded as one of the greatest moves toward peace on the planet, came the decline of our drive to push further into space.
I realize I am basing the entire civilization's ascension or decline on this one metric of space travel, but there are several points to this that I think make it a good indicator.
The Space Race itself was the catalyst for developing a lot of the technologies we use today.
It was one of the few items in our history as a species, that united us.
Space technology may become necessary one day as an escape for the human race
Space technology may become necessary one day to deflect a NEO (Near Earth Object) or Asteroid
When you stop looking up and exploring, you drive inward.
NASA provides the most compelling evidence in the arguments for climate change
This decade marks the retirement of our aging Shuttle fleet. While NASA insists that they are moving forward with their new non-reusable rockets, it's clear that this really feels like a step backwards. Where once, we looked to the Soviet Union with suspicion (and some admiration) we now see their once bold Orbiter fleet now sits and rots.
As some in power ignore the clear evidence of climate change, we may find ourselves rushing headlong into a world like the one predicted in interstellar. Please take a look at the clip below. If you haven't seen the movie, please watch this:.
While one might look up at the International Space Station and say that we ARE in space, consider the scale. If we used the scale of a regular classroom globe the ISS would reside at a point about 3/4 of and inch (1.5 cm) from the surface. Using the same scale the moon would be 14 feet away. By those terms, humans haven't left the planet in over 40 years.
What kills me is the "pick and choose" ability by so many people. You can't just pick a quote and decide this one is literal, but the rest are not.
According to Leviticus, eating shellfish and pork are a death worthy crime. Hell, if you follow the Old Testament (or the Torah to some of us) that closely, you shouldn't have a New Testament.
But let's look a little further here:
Leviticus 20:9 "“‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death." This would kill off most of the western world.
Leviticus 20:10 “‘If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death."
Anyone sensing a pattern here?
Leviticus 21 "“‘Priests must not shave their heads or shave off the edges of their beards or cut their bodies."- I wonder if he shaved this morning...or got a haircut...EVER!
Leviticus 19 ‘Keep my decrees.
“‘Do not mate different kinds of animals.
“‘Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed.
“‘Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.
Some time in 1976 I discovered that my favorite television show at the time, Star Trek was listed as "Science Fiction" in the TV Guide.
Since this was a fairly "dry" period for new science fiction television, I thought I would scan the guide and see if I could find more shows that were also "Science Fiction."
I stumbled upon a show on PBS called "Doctor Who." I had never heard of it before and neither had my parents or anyone else I had talked to at the time.
Now I grew up in the US in pretty big city, Doctor Who had been on the air in England since 1963, but it was still a pretty obscure thing in the states in the 1970s. It was relegated to the "Nerd-ier" section of TV on the PBS stations as an unusual import.
Without knowing any of this, I watched my first episode "Pyramids of Mars" and was totally confused. Still, the inside of the TARDIS seemed pretty cool, so I stuck with it. I watched other Tom Baker episodes, not knowing anything about the history of the show, it's mythology (which it had even then) or it's fans. I remember watching Tom Baker's regeneration into Peter Davison and scratching my head.
With Star Wars' release in 1977, pop science fiction and simple space opera became common. We got some great surprises like Battlestar Galactica and some abominations like Quark.
Doctor Who remained in obscurity in the US.
In 1982 I met a guy in school who was an overly serious Doctor Who fan. He was just happy to find ANYONE who even knew anything about the show. He was convinced that Doctor Who didn't need a fan club, it needed an "Appreciation Society." Yeah, I know it doesn't get any nerdier than that.
I knew he was a little overly serious, but the whole history of the show drew me in. The older episodes were not yet available in the US and I learned there where whole seasons of the show that were supposedly lost or destroyed.
He lent me books of older episodes, which I devoured quickly. It allowed me to catch up on the long history of the TV show without being able to see the old episodes.
In the months that followed, PBS aired some of the Doctor previous to Tom Baker, Jon Pertwee. Here is when I think I became a real "fan" of the show.
Unfortunately, the show's popularity was waning and it was cancelled in 1989. Other than a few rumblings, it seemed Doctor Who was going to fade into British Myth and US obscurity.
In the 1990s, there was a ray of hope with a US produced Doctor Who movie. The movie itself, featured Paul McGann as a rather like-able Doctor. The show had some beautiful sets and an excellent performance by Eric Roberts as the Master, but the show's publicity was lackluster and the story dragged quite a bit. It seemed to only appeal to a few Doctor-Who-starved fans.
When it returned in 2006 with Christopher Eccleston, I assumed it might last a season, if that. I figured it will either be so removed from the original that it will annoy fans of the classic Doctor Who (like the new Star Trek movies), or it just would not have enough promotion and it would die like the McGann movie did.
In an amazing turn this new Doctor Who (and BBC America) brought the show to the main stream. It also helped to re-ignite a lot of intelligent science fiction again. It's not completely uncommon for Americans to know what a Dalek is now. Torchwood spin off even made Doctor Who sexy (who knew).
The Doctor is now even in music videos! Talk about making it into pop-culture!
Here we are almost 40 years after my first viewing experience and more than 50 years since the first episode. It's come a LONG way.
I still find it gratifying that my favorite shows growing up were Star Trek, Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica. My favorite movie was Star Wars. I guess I picked ones that would last.
"As a NASA spacecraft approaches a dwarf planet in our solar system, Ceres, scientists are stumped by what appear to be two bright lights shining from its surface." This is interesting. It's probably nothing, but it opens the question (in my mind anyway), of what if we did find a sign of life. How hard would we work to dismiss it? We can say it's probably this or that, but truthfully, at this distance, we really cannot say for sure.
All of the below work is quotes from Stephen King:
On word choice One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you’re maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones.
Remember that the basic rule of vocabulary is use the first word that comes to your mind, if it is appropriate and colorful.
The word is only a representation of the meaning; even at its best, writing almost always falls short of full meaning. Given that, why in God’s name would you want to make things worse by choosing a word which is only cousin to the one you really wanted to use?
On grammar
Must you write complete sentences each time, every time? Perish the thought. If your work consists only of fragments and floating clauses, the Grammar Police aren’t going to come and take you away.
Take any noun, put it with any verb, and you have a sentence. It never fails. Rocks explode. Jane transmits. Mountains float. These are all perfect sentences. Many such thoughts make little rational sense, but even the stranger ones (Plums deify!) have a kind of poetic weight that’s nice. The simplicity of noun-verb construction is useful — at the very least it can provide a safety net for your writing.
Grammar is not just a pain in the ass; it’s the pole you grab to get your thoughts up on their feet and walking. Besides, all those simple sentences worked for Hemingway, didn’t they? On reading
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.
Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows. Waiting rooms were made for books — of course! But so are theater lobbies before the show, long and boring checkout lines, and everyone’s favorite, the john. You can even read while you’re driving, thanks to the audiobook revolution.
The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing; one comes to the country of the writer with one’s papers and identification pretty much in order. Constant reading will pull you into a place (a mind-set, if you like the phrase) where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness. It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn’t, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what just lies there dying (or dead) on the page. The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.
On writing
By the time you step into your new writing space and close the door, you should have settled on a daily writing goal. As with physical exercise, it would be best to set this goal low at first, to avoid discouragement. I suggest a thousand words a day.
With that goal set, resolve to yourself that the door stays closed until that goal is met. Get busy putting those thousand words on paper... In an early interview (this was to promote Carrie, I think), a radio talk-show host asked me how I wrote. My reply — “One word at a time” — seemingly left him without a reply. I think he was trying to decide whether or not I was joking. I wasn’t.
In the end, it’s always that simple. Whether it’s a vignette of a single page or an epic trilogy like The Lord of the Rings, the work is always accomplished one word at a time. On what to write about
Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want. Anything at all…as long as you tell the truth.
Write what you like, then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex, and work. Especially work. People love to read about work. God knows why, but they do. If you’re a plumber who enjoys science fiction, you might well consider a novel about a plumber aboard a starship or on an alien planet. Sound ludicrous? The late Clifford D. Simak wrote a novel called Cosmic Engineers which is close to just that. And it’s a terrific read.
John Grisham, of course, knows lawyers. What you know makes you unique in some other way. Be brave. Map the enemy’s positions, come back, tell us all you know. And remember that plumbers in space is not such a bad setup for a story.
