The backhanded compliment dissected

  I am not an author. This may seem a strange way to start a post, but the truth is, I am not. I hated grammar in school, my handwriting is atrocious and I couldn't tell the different between a gerund and a participle if they smacked me in the face. Not that I wouldn't recognize the difference if some one said 'Here, this is a gerund and this is a participle', but I can't just tell you what one is. I'm sure Grammar Girl will know.
  REGARDLESS, I never went to school for writing, or literature or any of the things one would associate with becoming a writer, the possible exception being I love reading books. I am, and probably will always be in my heart, an engineer. I loathe imprecision and lack of specificity, I would rather design a solar array or a computer than study literature or art. The design of the Scion Xb literally offends my sensibilities. Yet, here I am with a completed book in my hands. A work that I never sought to write or, indeed, thought I was capable of writing. Needless to say, as I'm sure many writers can attest, I think my own book is pretty darn good. I like that characters, I've read it cover to cover between five and ten times for editing, and have yet to tire of the story. I've even started writing a second book in the *gasp* series.
  So what does this have to do with backhand compliments? Plenty, I say. Because the first person who read it is the one who gave me the unwitting backhanded compliment. I had given this person the first three chapters of my fledgling work and steeled my heart as I knew I must. It didn't matter, but it helped. When she put down the pages and looked up at me, I had hopes, but her words were not the glowing praise I yearned for:
  "I've read worse."
  These were the three words she had to say about my masterpiece. I felt a little of my soul die, but then a sparkling idea came to me. I followed her lack luster comment with:
  "So when you say that you've read worse, do you mean in print?"
  Her answer will forever be etched in my heart:
  "Yes. I've read worse books than this."
  I've got my manuscript out in my writing group mow, and I'm hoping for a few more detailed comments than "I've read worse", we'll see. I've also come to a decision, I know I'm not a writer, I'm an engineer. But, perhaps, in addition to being an engineer, I can be something altogether better than a writer or author, a little phrase uttered by a five-year old who doesn't know the words author or writer yet, a phrase which suits my technical heart.

  I can be a Story Maker.

Nerd and Turds

So, you ever have one of those days where you're just plain stupid? Well, I do. In fact a day like that cropped up recently where I was able to do something that I had not thought previously possible. I go a sunburn, inside, in a WINDOWLESS LAB. How had I achieved this remarkable feat of weirdness? Well first you have to understand what I do for a living, the short version is people send me stuff and I shoot it with a laser until it either breaks or burns. Sounds cool right? It can also be wicked dangerous. I have, personally, set fire to bricks and aluminum, vaporized arsenic, and pulverized selenium. If you want to check out the relative dangerousness of those various achievements go right ahead, I'll wait.......

Ah, you're back, great, where were we? Oh yes sunburns inside. Well this particular oddity was achieved when I was using a mercury lamp to illuminate a test sample for purposes that need not be discussed here. A mercury lamp in just like a regular lamp except that it emits light only in the UVB spectrum. Yep, that's right, the same stuff that give you a sun burn. I was being super careful, I was wearing the right protective glasses, keeping my face away from the lamp, the whole bit. I just forgot that a lamp is is like a flashlight, the beam expands the further you get away from it. So, long story short, I ended up with a sunburn, a perfect negative image of a mounted optic on a post burned into my arm.

This job has really weird hazards.

"Next time I'll be serious next time!"

   Well, I guess joining the writers group did not make me post more, maybe I'll set a calendar event or something. The Group is nice however, the mediator (we have one of those) is a research librarian who generates the writing prompts and lends her experience to the commentary on the group pieces.
   Before the last meeting I contacted her (let's call her Miss Librarian), and asked a favor. I wanted to present the book that I had finished to the group and ask for their response. Miss Librarian said she would love to do that, and I received many affirmatives from the group for their willingness to read said story.
   I realized when I read the hook for the story that not only was the hook inaccurate but it was actually bad and sappy. So, I have been working on creating a new hook. I have a few that I've been mulling over and I think I have a couple that may be winners. Here they are:

  Amnesia, slavery, attempted rape, murder, deceit, backstabbing, missing organs, deadly secrets, Monsters, microscopic robots, decapitation, dismemberment, blood and incredible super powers. And that's just in the first two weeks after I woke up in a dark cave wearing nothing but a hospital smock.

   A powerful and well respected company, a prevalent technology, and an unspeakable and deadly secret. These forces revolve around a seemingly ordinary young woman who has no useful memories to speak of, no clues to her identity. Yet she must unravel these mysteries and the only things she has are a strange tattoo, a piece of paper and a hospital smock.

   I'm partial to the first hook, but its first person, not the POV of the book . The second one is OK, but it feels formulaic. Maybe POV won't matter in the hook, we'll see. I also worked on "The Pitch". This is the one sentence that is supposed to summarize the entire novel, entice the imagination and encompass what makes the book stand out. This is nigh on impossible. Imagine condensing "Harry Potter" to one sentence, and making it good enough that everyone wants to read it. Daunting. But here is my go for "The Book":

How do you find your friends when you can't even remember who your enemies are?

   Not bad, it's compact, to the point, pertains to the story and gives just enough hint to make you ask questions. Who are your friends? Why do you have enemies? And why don't you remember who they are? Hmm, on second thought, that's not that bad. I think I'll keep it. 

   I'd really like to post an excerpt from "The Book" here but that would be silly if I ever want to sell it. Maybe if no one touches it, I'll post the first few chapters and list it on Amazon myself, but until then, here is another tid-bit of mine from the writers group:

   

   “YAAAAAA!”

   CRASH! Damn, that hurt! I nurse the top of my head and try to stand as the contents of a curio cabinet rain down around me, small figurines and plates shattering on the floor. I lurch to my feet and stumble over to the computer. Typing in a few quick commands, I shut down the cleaning field. I hit the enter key to issue the last command and the painting I was cleaning, Van Gogh's Starry Night, shudders slightly and topples gently forward off the easel.

   Fear stabs my heart and I dive forward, sustaining another blow to the head and a sprain to my wrist as I crash into the wall. It's all for naught though as I miss the painting by several inches and it crashes to the floor. Heart pounding, I crawl over to the Van Gogh and gently lift it off the floor. Luckily, it's still intact, no damage was done to the canvas. The frame has only a few new blemishes, and since it was “distressed” to look old I figure a few more dings won't be noticed. Sighing with relief, I lay the painting face down on the floor and lean back against the wall, recovering for a few minutes from my ordeal.

   You'd think that after having done this a few dozen times, I would have mastered the re-entry. In my defense I was being chased when I jumped back through the portal, so a certain amount of disarray was to be expected. I've had a few close calls since I discovered what I could do, but none like that. It started some years ago when I invented a new method for cleaning paintings using buckyballs and encapsulated quantum singularities. I found that if I captured the painting digitally on my computer, sprayed the microscopic balls on a painting, and exposed them to a computer modulated EM field, the singularities inside the buckyballs would remove the grunge from the paintings, no mess, no precautions, no damage. I first noticed something was weird when I was cleaning a painting for the Boston MFA and tripped holding a cup of coffee I had just poured for myself. I fell head first and slammed into the floor, coffee flying. I looked up just in time to see the cup disappear into the Monet I was cleaning. Intrigued, I put on a pair of Nitrile gloves and gingerly reached out for the painting. Imagine my shock when I didn't touch the painting! My hand went right through the canvas!

   Ever since then I've been experimenting and taking trips into the larger paintings. This last one, though, was almost enough to make me re-consider my adventures, or at least make me swear off Van Gogh. Sure, those adventures were wonderful fodder for my blossoming writing career. Of course, I had to publish under a pseudonym. It was the only way I could continue cleaning paintings and get fresh material. It meant that I had to stay anonymous, but hey, I was willing to trade off fame for fortune.

   Shaking out of my reverie, I glance down at the painting, glad that I managed to shut off the cleaning field in time. If that thing had followed me back.... The problem with paint jumping was that the worlds the paintings led to were complete un-knowns, brought into being by the artists imagination. At least that's what I thought at first. The truth was these artists were actually quasi-psychics, able to see through time and dimension. At least that's what I've come to understand from my limited research. That stuff about making political, social or economic statements? Total crap. And don't get me started on Escher or Dali! It's amazing those guys never went insane! Well, maybe Dali, just a little.

   At least now I have an inkling why Van Gogh was such a tortured artist. The worlds he saw? Well let's say they make Picasso's look like Sesame Street. The one I just came from, Starry Night, was a hellish world. Humans kept in villages, used for food and bio-electricity, Matrix-esque, by the most intelligently evil creatures ever to grace the dimensional continuum. That big black thing in the foreground? That's actually one of the beasts, a giant mass of tentacles and venom that strangles its paralyzed victims for pleasure. That was what I was fleeing from. I was just glad I escaped with all my appendages in tact. Turing off the portal would have been difficult without two hands.

   RATTLE!! I cease all movement as a wave of cold grips my heart. Please. Please no! I tilt my head slowly down and stare at the upside down painting. It rattles again and shivers on the floor. Dear God. They're figuring out how to open it from the other side! This is so not good.

Don't worry, you're in a safe place.....

   Sounds like the start of some sort of drug, alcohol or anger management group meeting doesn't it? Actually its part of the writers group I just found. I had been thinking that maybe I should try to find a writing convention or symposium or something similar, there's a word for it, but it escapes me at the moment. Don't worry, I'll remember it in time. So I was trolling the Internet to see if anything was happening in my area and LO-AND-BEHOLD! there was a writers group that meets once per month at the library just down the street from me! Awesome! Now I can inflict my pedantic writing on others, not really, but I thought it would be a good place to get some criticism from others besides immediate family and friends, someone who didn't have a vested interest in NOT hurting my feelings.
   Needless to say, I missed the meeting by a few days, but I contacted the group leader and got the stuff for the next session. Then that one was canceled because of poor attendance. The next one I'm going to miss because of vacation. Geez, what does it take to attend a writers group, huh? Well, since there is no one else to listen to what I have to say, I'm going to post it here. Maybe I can convince someone to visit my rather sparsely visited and updated blog and read it over. I thin that once I join this group, my postings will increase. But that's for another time I suppose. An now, without further delay, here is a REALLY short story on the most recent group assignment:
   Topic: The devil needs more people to sell their souls. You have been hired to come up with an ad campaign.

   My fingers ache, and not in a good way. I've been hunched over this computer for far too long. But despite my discomfort, I'm excited, a few more minutes work and I'll have finished the toughest assignment ever to come through the firm of Barton and Farrel. The end is in sight, five more words, three more, two one and PERIOD!

   I lean back interlacing my fingers and stretch my arms over my head, tilting to each side to relieve the strain I feel in my back. My neck cracks as I roll it around in a circle, glorious sharp pain and then relaxation follow the popping. I look down at the glowing screen in front of me, marveling at the complex simplicity of my work. Novelists! HA! Convincing a reader to believe in something using 400 pages is a breeze compared to advertizing! Cramming that much emotion, subtlety, coercion and sex into a sentence? Now that's hard!

Cigarette and alcohol companies have been doing it for ages so there are ways and ways. That's what makes my job so unique, I have to convince people to sell their souls. What university is going to teach that? Still staring at the screen my mind starts to wind down. The lassitude that I have been fighting for the past hour now settles on me like a blanket. I don't fight it, I can relax now. I have just taken the second long blink on the way to oblivion when a knock at my door startles me out of my torpor.

I glance over at the lighted face of my kitchen clock: 1:22 AM. Who would be calling at this hour? I stand up and stretch, loosening my tired back. My muscles protest as I stand, the ache in them screaming at me to go to bed, ignore the door and just fall onto the blissfully soft pillows waiting for me. Trudging over to the door I check the peep hole before grasping the knob and gasp in surprise. There is a woman dressed all in black on the other side! I've never seen her before but there can be no doubt who she works for, the tattered black wings are a dead giveaway. I lean back from the peep hole, contemplating not opening the door. The client can surely wait until morning?

   “Sir,” I hear her voice from the other side of the door, “open the door, or I will.”

   I know I haven't made a sound, but I do as asked.

   “Let me have it.”

   That's it, no introduction, no please or thank you, but this has always been the way with the client, or rather his representatives. Rather than try to be pleasant, argue about the time of night or the complete lack of social niceties, I decide it's easier jut to give her the assignment. I move over to the laptop to print out the slogan and advertizing campaign when she interrupts me.

   “Just give me the computer. We'll pay for a new one.”

   Shrugging I hand over the laptop, and just like that, she's gone. Disappeared in a golden flash. I stare at the place where she was for another second or two, and shuffle over tot he door to close it. Just before the door closes, a hoof sticks in the jamb and the door bounces crazily open again. Oh damn. Its him, the client himself, resplendent in red, a cloak hiding his wings, That's all I can make out, the rest of him is kind of fuzzy, like my brain is refusing to admit it exists. I've been told that would happen as my brain erases elements of this ultimate evil to protect itself. I take tow hurried steps back, trip and fall on by butt. From the floor I hear a voice, both silky and full of horrible tearing gravel. Seductive and repulsive.

   “Where is the assignment?”

   I think I'm in trouble.

Sometimes my brain surprises even me.....

   I was standing in the shower the other day, well not really the other day, more like two years ago when my brain did something that I really did not expect. It came up with an idea for a book. I was following a thought train, as often happens when you have nothing else to do but wash, when I jumped from experimental alternative energy sources to a fabulous idea for a book. I repeated the idea over and over in my head (at least seven times, that's how long it takes me to remember stuff) and then when I finished my shower I wrote the idea down. I took me about 30 minutes of writing to get all the ideas I had down on paper. I did run into one stumbling block, I could not figure out what the motivation of my antagonist was. "Do not bother me with fiddling small details, I'm going to be a Novelist!" I thought in hubris. A day or two later, I was regretting my words. Then a few days later the motivation hit me and there was another flurry of writing. Since then I have written seventeen chapters. I think I'd like to follow the example of David Wellington's serialized publishing model, but I have some reservations on that point.
   Now, I would never dream to consider myself a writer, but isn't there an old saying that everyone has at least one book in them? It might not be a very good book, but I digress. So, after finishing a section (two or so chapters), I asked  DocMaureen to read it to see if it was any good at all, anything worth wasting a significant chunk of my time on, or was I just fooling myself. After the longest few minutes of my life (save for the time DocMaureen had to have an emergency appendectomy) I got my answer. In the spectrum of goodness mine was the equivalent of.... toilet paper. Soft, there when you need it, and useful for wiping your @$$. Not really, she was much more gentle, but that's how it sounded to my sensitive ears. She followed up with "But I've read published books that were worse than this," which made me feel a little better. I've since learned that one must develop callouses on their heart when exposing it to public scrutiny, go figure.
   Since then, more than two years have passed, and I have written many more chapters, in fact, I have just finished the book. The only problem was, that tight ending I had planned? Yeah, that didn't happen. I realized halfway through the climax chapter that there was no way I could end the book as I had originally planned. It simply wouldn't work. Then the unthinkable happened, the story told me what to write, not the other way around. I had always heard of characters in a story taking a life of their own, the writer loosing control of them, etc. I had thought that was nonsense, a form of self aggrandizement to make the pretentious feel better about themselves. I mean, I MADE them, who were they to tell me what to do? Any of you Kurt Vonnegut fans will probably see the connections to Breakfast of Champions in this inference. If I ever offended any fledgling authors out there by stating this point of view, I humbly beg your forgiveness and mark myself an @$$. Get the tar and feathers.
   So, now all I have to do is find some poor schmuck to edit it, polish it, edit it again and we'll be ready to go. Go find someone who wants to publish it, that is. I've heard this can be monumentally hard to do. Especially if it is deemed that the genre you have written in is not "the next big, hot thing". 
   Whether it is paper or electrons, I have news for all you Sci-Fi /Action /cyberpunk /Anime fans out there. Anyone want to read a new book? 

Coming up: Saliva causes cancer, film at 11....

The last time I went all number-crunchy on you, it was in response to the hyper-sensationalized media warnings of nuclear fallout from Fukushima, specifically in reference to dosage and radioactive iodine, NOAA Studies now show that radiation levels are well below the danger levels, even in fish swimming in contaminated water. Go Figure . We're going that route again, though on a slightly different subject, and now:

Everybody FREAK OUT!!! at least that's what the people in California and at NIH want you to do. They have found that a key ingredient in Coke and Pepsi causes CANCER!!  

OK, now that I have your attention, lets dissect this headline a little. I heard this little tidbit while I was dutifully watching C-Span like every responsible citizen should (OK, so I'm a nerd, you did read the title of this blog right?) and there was a meeting of the Society for the Promotion of Women in Politics or something and one of them mentioned that regular people can have power too, just look at what the people were able to do concerning the cancer causing agents in Coke!

Now, this is of no small amount of concern to me since I usually have 1 coke per day, and I savor that moment. If my favorite carbonated beverage is causing cancer, I'm going to be a little put out. So I went and checked it out. I looked at the actual NIH Study and did some number crunching (this is the math part). Given certain facts like:
A. The cancer causing agent is in the caramel coloring (its called 4-Methylimidazole or 4-MEI)
B. There are about 130 micro-grams in each can (roughly the equivalent of a single grain of salt in your salt shaker)
C. The amount of 4-MEI given to test rats is ....large
D. Using their own dose numbers (30, 55 and 115 mg/kg per day), we can calculate that the average human (5' 8", 175 lbs.) would have to consume  levels of 2.4, 4.4, and 12.3g of raw chemical, per day.
E. That amount of raw chemical is enough to color between 18,400 and 95,000 cans of coke PER DAY. 

These numbers are shown not to cause cancer in laboratory test subjects (rats and mice). It not until we reach the extremely high dosage level of 24.6g/day (190,000 cans of coke) does the evidence of cancer shows up. Now, I like Coke, but I think that it is not physically possible for one to consume 190,000 cans of coke in a day, anyone?

the Crazy Carrots

I recently received this letter from my cousin, and since i like my cousins, I thought that I would do my little part to help out. So, without editing, here is the transcription of my cousins letter:

Good morning!


   Lilah's team (Crazed Carrots) has raised 1/3 of the money needed to pay the entrance fee to the Global Destination Imagination Tournament in Knoxville, TN. Our website www.crazedcarrots.bbnow.org has been onfire the last two days with donations coming in from friends, family and blog readers. I am asking for your help in spreading the word about this website so that the momentum can continue and we can raise the entire $5,000 needed. 


Would you resend this email to your friends and family members who know Lilah or would be interested in supporting a group of children who have the opportunity to have a life-changing experience? 
Would you post our website on your Facebook account? 
Would you Tweet it to your followers? 
Would you send it to your co-workers? 
Would you post on a homeschooling yahoo group or coop site? 


    To summarize their project: The group of children (age 8-11) chose Project Outreach, a community service project. They were  to identify a need in their community and create a project to address the need. At the State Tournament, they presented their project in a skit to a panel of judges and answered questions about the work done. The Crazed Carrots identified their community as our Planet, the need was raising money to help threatened animals (specifically sea turtles, sharks and polar bears) and the project was hosting a free screening of the documentary Shark Waters, which brings awareness to the industry of shark finning, which is killing thousands of sharks each and every day. At the screening which was held at Westport's Earthplace, the children sold 60 hand designed and painted canvas bags to bring awareness to ocean pollution, sold handmade clay figurines and paintings. They presented their research in a brochure and on a presentation board. Organic apples and bananas were also sold. Over 100 hours of work was done by this amazing group of children. They raised $530.00 which was donated to Earthplace, The Mystic Aquarium and Sharkwater Productions. Their skit highlighted this is in a clever theatrical production recreating the event while educating the audience on the need to protect these animals. They won first place. 


    In Tennessee they will be competing against 1,000 other teams from around the US and world. The opening ceremony includes a parade of nations, similar to the Olympics. 20,000 people attend this week long event. It is a once in a lifetime opportunity to meet new friends, learn about different cultures, and perform their presentation to a huge audience. Please help me to get this team there. Every dollar donated will go towards the expense of the entrance fee. If someone wishes to make a tax deductable donation, checks can be sent directly to Destination Imagination with the subject Global FInals and team #107-87713. The receipt will come from Destination Imagination directly to the donor. Otherwise, non-tax deductable gifts, or donations can be made through our website: www.crazedcarrot.bbnow.org. 


Thank you! Jess and Lilah