Product of Lying - Ethics in Christmas

According to Lindsey Williams, the globalists' plans involve getting rid of God in everything, because their plans will not come to fruition in a society that believes in God. There could be any number of reasons why this is true, whether the power of God and Jesus in people's lives deters and prevents demons and Satan from doing their work on evil people in the world. It could also just be that good and moral people are not willing to let evil acts happen, or perform evil acts.

Rifter #55

Six months ago I submitted some articles for publication in Palladium Book's Rifter magazine. Long story short, there was a huge mix up, and I was never notified that I was published, never received payment, and never received my four free copies of Rifter #55. I waited to give them the benefit of the doubt, and sent some communications to them, asking what was going on. Finally I got a response back, and it has all been settled.

Humanity Through the Eyes of Black Friday

I have yet to shop on Black Friday, but this year I was given the opportunity to work during it. It gave me a first hand glimpse at humanity at least in this small town. I saw the callousness of some, and the willingness of most to put up with anything, regardless of how illogical the situation was.

On one hand, I saw the ingunuity of humans as they errected a fenced barrier that could block off the line if the store got to be too full. Management came outside and said it had to be different because basically that is how corporate wanted it. The new design was a triangle of fencing that gave no indication that it was not the designated entrance. So instead of customers walking past to the entrance of "The Maze" (much like the zigzag pattern of a ride queue), they began making a beeline for that opening.

New Political Map

Growing up, I have been taught through the "mainstream" media that the political map is divided between left and right. On that scale is Republicans on the far right, Democrats on the far left, and Independents who can go either way, usually situated in the middle.

The more I looked at my own values, and my own views, I found that I was both on the far right and in the middle at the same time. If that is true, then the political map has to be wrong if that kind of inconsistency exists. Finally I came up with a new map that shows where your views and and values can accurately be shown.

Fractional Reserve Banking Explained

When you talk about the financial system, people's eyes glaze over. So I made this easy to understand flow-chart to explain how you have not been free for almost 100 years.

Body Language

I am no body language expert, and when you actually listen to these "experts" a certain motion of the body is translated as multiple things including the exact opposite. "A tilt of the head could mean he is angry, or he may be happy." Or he heard a noise that perked his attention. Oh wait, that is my dog.

What I have noticed that a lot of actors do is to shake their head "no" when saying something positive. You see women on shows shake their head when they say "I love you" to a guy. It is almost as if they are telling the truth while their mouth tells lies.

Once you see it, you will begin to notice it all of the time. And it does not only happen in TV shows and movies; officials will tell you a lie like it is the truth, but they shake their heads "no." People who lie like this have a compulsion to let you know you are being scammed so they always have an excuse or a way out. "You should have noticed I was shaking my head." Do not be scammed, watch their body language, and do your own research.

New Poems

I am finally getting around to posting some of the poems I have written lately. There are six all together. Hope you enjoy them.

Nymph

Her hair like the rich soil

Flowing as the river through the forest

Her day filled with toil

For flowers of a florist

Her hands are tired

Creating new life from a sprout

An artistry to be admired

To these she is devout

Her body curves

Like the rolling green hills

All she is I must preserve

For she gives me thrills

Latest Poems

I have finally been writing more poetry, so enjoy.

Escape
Crushing down
Blackness all around
Paralysis, I cannot move
All I want
All that needs to be done
I cannot move
Maybe this curse will lift
Maybe my body will waste away
I cannot move
Blind to any light
What is this crushing feeling
It seems to have no end
Maybe things will change
After time passes away
This void takes me now
I retreat to my dreams
Only there can I hope
That the pain will not welcome me
For now I look for escape
Away from this crushing feeling

Finished Project

Feels good to finish a project, but where one project finishes, another starts. I had originally planned to write a sourcebook for Palladium Books' Heroes Unlimited line. As all plans of mice and men, it did not work out. Not that is was particularly hard (in fact most of the work was just in the stat blocks and rolling up NPCs), I just ran out of ideas to fill an entire book. I did manage to get almost 25 pages written. All I need to do now is submit "Cruiser City" for publishing, and hopefully it gets accepted. Much like another sourcebook I tried to do a long time ago, but gave up on was Old Kingdom.

News and Updates

I typically do not like to talk much about the day-to-day going-ons of my life, but I felt that perhaps some of it would help other people who may be going through the same thing, or will go through it in the future. A few weeks back, for the first time, I had a panic attack, then within twenty minutes, I had another one that was worse. The problem is I had never had a panic attack before, so the whole "Feeling of having a heart attack, or fear of dying" is very much real. After having them, you can recognize the symptoms and realize that nothing really bad is happening.

New Poem

I was relaxing in the pool today when the urge to write a poem hit me, so here it is.

Normal
The feeling of invincibility
Long since past
Bliss gone away
Along with ignorance

Writing and Superspeedway Design

I started working on actually writing Cruiser City for Heroes Unlimited. I got as far as the commercial sector when I wanted to work on the race track design for a superspeedway that will be depicted in the book. Compared to Cruiser City's map (last blog post), this one was a bit more difficult. I had to figure out how Arcs worked and figure out a way to line them up to the back and front stretch. The front stretch is a reverse dog leg while the pit lane on the back stretch. The track in the book has a track inside for Formula 1 and GRAND AM racing, but it is not depicted on the map (that would be way too difficult/time consuming)

Good and Bad News

First the bad news. My PC is having problems, and I think I have narrowed it down to bad memory. I have submitted an RMA request from Patriot Memory, so hopefully I will not have to buy new memory. If I do, it will only cost around $57. As for the good news, I was able to create a drawing program in Visual Studio to create a map for a source book I plan on writing for Palladium Books.

Creative Writing Tips: Diction

I thought I would touch on diction in terms of writing. What exactly is diction? To put it simply, it is the level of speech one uses in their writing. There are different levels of diction from refined legalize down to Vulgate language. Obviously there is no wrong diction, only appropriate diction. That is to say depending on how sophisticated or learned a character is will determine their level of diction. For example, there is a difference between a character saying "I did not do it" rather than "I didn't do it" or worse "I din't do it." Contractions can be used to emphasize a person's lack of knowledge or simply social etiquette. This is not to say that only stupid characters use contractions, but there is a notable difference between a character who uses and another who does not use contractions.

What is Justice?

Maybe I have been watching too much Star Trek Voyager that I am adopting a Vulcan attitude, especially towards the Casey Anthony trial, but many people have become too emotional and more importantly irrational towards the verdict. This happens a lot with other issues that if you do support one thing, then you must support the other thing. For example, you either support health care, or you hate children and old people. In the case of the Casey Anthony trial, you are either outraged at Casey Anthony going free, or if you are opposed, you hate little two-year-old girls and have no feelings that she was murdered.

Possibility to be Published

A while ago I submitted some articles to be published in Palladium Books' Rifter magazine. One article is titled "Souls" is about how the soul works and about the afterlife for the Palladium Fantasy RPG. The other is "Blood Night" set on Earth where vampires have taken over and the humans are the resistance. Once "Blood Night" has been set to be published, it will open the door to writing more articles for the setting I created. This also leads to the possibility to helping to create an official RPG setting for Palladium Books.

Batman Begins Parody Part 2

Here is part 2 of my Batman Begins movie parody. Hopefully I won't run out of jokes before the end.

Bruce is pulled out of the well. The maid apologizes for not whipping her child more often so that this accident wouldn't occur. Bruce's father assures her that everything is okay. He'll simply dock her pay.

After having stolen the arrowhead, wanting it just for the sake of wanting it, Bruce gives it back to Rachel.

“Took a nasty fall, eh?” asked Alfred.

“Any why do we fall, Bruce?” asked his father.

“To post it on YouTube.”

“Exactly.”

Batman Begins Parody

After watching Batman Begins for the umpteenth time, I started making jokes along with it. It got to the point where I had to write them down. So enjoy my take on the movie.

A young Bruce Wayne runs after a girl, “Rachel! Let me see!”

He finds her, “Can I see?”

“Finders Keepers and I found it.”

“In my garden.”

Bruce snatches the Indian arrowhead from Rachel's hand and runs away.

“Dick!” Rachel yells.

Bruce runs to hide and falls through a covered well, breaking his arm.

“Pwnd!”

Bruce hears fluttering coming from down the tunnel. Suddenly Count von Count appears. Bruce Wayne is forever traumatized.

Autobiographical Fiction

There seems to be something inherently lazy about autobiographical fiction. An autobiography is a book about the author's life. Autobiographical fiction is a story that is based on the author's life but the names are changed. The characters are based on real people. It is possible that the story is interesting, but if it was interesting, what is the point of not just making autobiographical book? It shows little to no originality for a story and its characters to be based on real people. Of all the story ideas I have, 98% of it is not based on anything from my life. Even if I take inspiration for a story, I try my best to deviate from the original source so that it is my own work. Often times if I am taking from something, it is because the original did a piss poor job. If you are going to write fiction, write fiction; if you are going to write something about your life, write an autobiography.

Word Count Projector

Recently, I reinstalled Visual Basic 2008 to make a neat little program. I was curious how much I had to write each day to write a novel length book in a year's time. From there, I was curious how much time would be saved if I wrote more than the minimum required word count for the day. It comes out to being just under 137 words which is less than the average word count for a page (250) per day. So here is what the program looks like and the code I wrote.

Interpreting Literary Works

I have read a lot of literary analysis of poems, short stories, and novels over the past year. Each analysis finds some deep meaning to the literary piece; this can relate to some form of allusion, metaphor, archetype, or symbolism. What is not certain is whether the authors meant for those meanings to be there. If it is intentional, how well can their writing be if the purpose is so clear?

Word Association

Word association can be used to make a person believe something they normally would not do. Furthermore, it turns off the part of the brain that is critical and analytical. This is similar to the Pavlovian Effect where if you ring a bell and a dog will salivate because it knows the bell represents food he will soon get. It is also important that you have seen the movie Inception, but I will explain the basic points needed.

Sneak Preview: Short Stories and Novels

My final semester of college is almost to an end, and with it gives me much more free time to focus on my writing. I have a number of novels and some short stories already started, with some fresh ideas on those plus ideas for other novels or short stories. I will not give away too much, but here is a sneak peak at what I will be working on.

New Style of Wedding

In our society, we do weddings completely backwards. If you think of a wedding as one big celebration, shouldn't the marriage be the grand finale? I figure the whole thing should take a day and a half. The first day will be your typical reception where as many people show up to give gifts and party. Because it's an all day thing, the bride and groom can even open gifts on the first or second day while the guests are there. It is up to the bride and groom whether they want to be dressed up, or just wearing normal clothes.

Reasons Behind Writing

From my Short Story class along with my Poetry class, I have read a lot of personal essays written by the authors and their thoughts on writing. Most of them have this profound reason for writing because of their ethnicity, or trying to capture the human condition in a story. I will admit, I do not like to read poetry, and from the selection of short stories I have had to read, most were pretty lame.

Creative Writing Tips: Point of View

Today I thought I would share some insights into writing with a certain point of view. For the most part, your options are first person (I, me, we, our), third person (they, he, she), and the very rare second person (you). Third person can have certain levels depending on whose mind the reader can hear during the narrative. There is Third person omniscient (can hear everyone's thoughts), Third person omniscient limited (can typically only hear one person's thoughts), or Third person limited (can not hear anyone's thoughts, you are a fly on the wall).

Pictures: Reality or a Lie?

Taking photographs has been around for over a hundred years, and with cameras on cell phones, it has been even easier to snap a photo of something or someone. A deeper look into what a photograph is may lead to a different point of view of the very act of taking a picture.

Writing Tips: College Research Papers

It is my last semester of college; I think I have taken all the classes there is to take at ASC. For the past six years, I have written countless papers. Some were good, some were bad, or at least not well formatted in MLA. However, I have decided to pass along some of the knowledge I have gained for writing papers. My hope is that in the future, it will become increasingly easier for you to write research papers.

Writing Process

This will be a unique experience for me, and a exclusive look for the reader to see into the process of how I am going to attempt to write a villanelle. It consists of 19 lines of iambic pentameter. Certain lines are repeated in a specific pattern. Below is the initial poem:

Creative Writing Tips: Story and Characters

In this installment of Creative Writing Tips, I will be going over story and character development. There is not necessarily a right or wrong way to develop a story or character, but there are many ways to go about it. Each way can depend on your style of writing, and any can be used effectively. They will depend on how structured you want the process to be essentially.

Military Novels Revised

I finished reading The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien and started reading Shadows of Blue and Gray by Ambrose Bierce. Common criticisms for The Things They Carried is that it is written in such a way that the characters feel real, even though O'Brien has said the stories are made up. From that point of view, it could be true, but when looked at from the point of view that the stories are not real, the book itself is sub-par.

Social Commentary Rolled Up Into One Word

To understand this one word, it is important to know in what context it is, and what the entire meaning is. Our culture has a love/hate relationship with the human body, and the breasts in particular. It is flaunted everywhere, yet scorned and censored in movies and TV. There is very little reasoning behind it other than the well being of children. It is also ironic that once a child is weened off the mother's milk, the means in which it is given instantly becomes taboo.

Contemplations of the Subconscious

The subconscious mind is a powerful thing. It takes in all of the information from your senses. It also creates the dreams you dream. While your body rests, your subconscious can work against you. It creates an enemy within your mind that chases you, wants to kill you, wants to hurt you. It can even create the perfect lover, give you false memories within your dreams to convince you it is all real, and then tear it all away when you awake. It can also insult you, tell you hurtful and spiteful things with the mask of someone you know.

Allegorical Stream of Consciousness

I took the red pill, and I have gone down the rabbit hole. Certain things you cannot un-know, certain undeniable truths. You begin to see the lies everywhere, like seeing the architecture of a house for the first time. It was there all along. You could enjoy yourself in the house. All the forms of escapism are no longer possible. You cannot escape all of the lies.

Creative Writing Tips

I thought I would share some tips on writing that I have come across. The first problem is exposition, and how to deliver it. Exposition is essentially backstory, information about a person, place, thing, relationship, etc. It can also be grueling to read if not done right. Exposition can come out in two ways, narrative or dialogue. Depending on what your strong point is will decide where you think it should go.

History (or Scripts) Repeats Itself

When a show runs for so long, it tends to run into a rut within its scripts. For some shows like Smallville, most of the episodes are filler episodes while there are only a couple that push along a main-arc plot. This season, it is difficult to know what that plot is. However Smallville is ending this season, but Chuck is still supposedly going strong.

Writing is an Art II: Poems

It may be ironic that I do not like to read poems. To a certain extent, I do not even like to read my own poems, but for different reasons. Poems, like any form of literature, has a wide variety of styles. Because I do not like to read poems, it is almost like saying I do not like sculpture, a major category of art.

A Few Poems

I wrote some poems recently inspired/about someone special to me.

Disclaimer: Names were withheld to protect the innocent ;)

Perfect Imperfection

Veiled by an opaque mist,

Hidden from mortal sight.

Does a perfect woman exist,

With conviction and forthright.

Old Poem Revised

I recently found a document in my computer lost since 2000 (makes me wonder what my oldest file is). It was a poem I wrote (yet another sign that I was a writer first, and a programmer second). I have since edited it and present it to you for your reading pleasure.

Home

I hear the voices creep into the back of my mind

The voices like your conscience telling you right from wrong.

I feel the room darken and tell you to turn the lights back on

But I know it is not the lights, so I wait