Walking Day is Saturday, June 29, 2024.
First up...Happy JULY! My eBooks will be promoted/discounted on @Smashwords for the month of July as part of their Annual Summer Sale! Be sure to follow me for more updates and links to the promotion for my books and many more!
I just realized something. When I was a kid reading comic books I loved the grab bag from Johnson Smith company ads where I got my gimmicks and magic tricks and gags that my older sister hated so much.I refuse now to spend money on a grab bag of anything. But that's what my walkabout thoughts are. Sharing my walking around in my mind thoughts from while I'm walking about thinking. Wel, it is what it is...Welcome to SchizoLand.
Weather for the day… nice day, starting out, 64° with a no wind and mostly blue sky 75° back at home, 75° .
Podcast is The Playlist about the Apple+ show Dark Matter from the novel. Love this show. It takes physics as we understand it and shows you how bad it could get.
Weather for the day… nice day, starting out, 64° with a no wind and mostly blue sky 75° back at home, 75° .
Podcast is The Playlist about the Apple+ show Dark Matter from the novel. Love this show. It takes physics as we understand it and shows you how bad it could get.
'Dark Matter’: Joel Edgerton and Showrunner Blake Crouch Dive into Finale Spoilers, Season 2, ‘Star Wars’ & More [Bingeworthy Podcast]
Which is what I did in my first published dystopian sci-fi story back in 1990 in a horror quarterly magazine. “In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear “ is a story I wrote back in 1980 about a genius who turns himself into a computer.
I forgot the history of this story till just now. I blasted this out on social media today because I saw Ray Kurzweil being interviewed about the AI singularity and how he viewed things coming.
My short story: I had been through the Air Force. I had yet to get my university degree or even think about getting one.
When I got out of the Air Force, I got a divorce, and couldn’t seem to get a good job. After all the responsibility and I guess. prestige I had in the USAF, I was surprised I couldn’t even seem to get a job at McDonald’s (no I didn't apply there). I did interview with RadioShack.
Finally, I decided on what are my dream jobs were since childhood, of a sort, and had started to apply for those thinking, what do I have to lose? Radio Shack seemed like a no brainer.
I went to the unemployment office and they said I was refused compensation to carry me over to another job. I appealed and the guys from the store I was working at on 6th Avenue in Tacoma Washington showed up. Three of them for some reason. They thought it was a lark and were smiling. Screwing the guy who didn't want to be part of their crew. They did indeed make sure I didn’t get any unemployment compensation in quitting over their questionable issues of ethics.
I ended up losing my 1975 very clean, very fast 350 Camaro RS I had configured for doing 140 MPH when I spent weekends with my wife home in Tacoma until Sunday when we'd return so I could get to work on Monday at Fairchild AFB. I could take that 4 1/2 hour drive and turn it into 3 1/2 hours. When that car hit 100MPH, it settled down and became an entirely different car.
Couple of times I got a ticket on the other side of the river going uphill on some great winding curves that were great fun to drive in a Rally Sport Camaro. Both times that happened I got chewed out by a cop for doing 70+. I had to bite my tongue, considering how fast and how long I'd just been going on a straightaway (only with no other traffic).
My belief had always been as it was I believe on stretches of the German Autobahn, one should have good equipment to drive and the skills to handle whatever speed you choose, and not drive in a reckless fashion.
Anyway, being after quitting my job, losing my car, I had no bills. But, I ended up living in the shed in the back of my brother's house. I fixed it up, set up the wood stove he had in there, and spent the winter there. He changed me by cutting up all the wood so both the main house and my loft would have heat. He worked construction and would bring random wood and cut-up trees home that he had scavenged.
They had laughed at me. So, I said, "OK wise guys, come up with a story you think is impossible to write and I’ll write it." They came up with a "guy turns himself into a computer chip." And so I wrote a story that later got titled, "In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear". Titling it as a homage to Isaac Asimov‘s first autobiography “In Memory Yet Green“. An author who was one of my childhood writing heroes.
They used to give me a hard time about stories. I would write because I never gave them an ending. They complained about it. "We love your stories, but a write a damn ending!"
I enjoyed that so much that I begged her to wake me every time she watched a late-night horror film. Being a good mother, she tried to dissemble over that. She offered to try flashing a flashlight in my eyes while I was sleeping when the show was starting, and if I wake up, I could watch the movie with her.
I don’t know if she ever did that. She may have because she could be like that. But I don’t think there was any way I was going to wake up. But it shut me up for the time being.
I have to say in the show Dark Matter, in a very reasonable and I think realistic way, they touched on a trope in a different way that was very disturbing and fun to experience.
Blake says he’s envious of those who came up with the show Severance (I like that show too) and said he'd bet when they came up with the conceit of that show, they were punching in the air in celebration.
Blake loved Red Rising, a book that is sci-fi and fantasy. A Game of Thrones sci-fi fantasy set on Mars. He said he’s not usually into leaving Earth for such things, but this is a good series that should be made into a show.
He said he really likes the show Primer. He said he heard they made the show for like $7000. I’ve seen it and I enjoyed it myself. I was a voracious reader through the first half of my life, slowed down when I started needing reading glasses when I turned 40. Now I’m having all kinds of vision problems, making it difficult to read and at times even to watch TV. I don’t know if it was 30 years of sitting in front of a computer screen, or not.
I was used to having better vision than anyone I ever met. I could read road signs down the road from further away than anybody who was ever in a car with me. Sometimes they thought I had memorized all the street signs or something. My hearing was checked in the Air Force and was so good it went right off the edge of the IBM punch card that was recording the session. Te technician running the test thought the machine was broken. But apparently no matter how faint the sound or high-pitched it was, I could still hit the button when they sounds started and exactly when they ended.
In that USAF test, everybody who worked on the flight line near jet engines had to be tested. I realized during the test that I couldn’t quite hear sound at a certain point. I started to think if I couldn’t hear the sounds, I could sort of “feel “them. So I started hitting the button and letting go by a feeling in my chest. Apparently, I was spot on.
We also had to be careful about being a 25 or 50 feet too close to the exhaust of a jet engine due to radiation or simply being picked up and blown backward. That was the USAF 92nd Field Maintenance Squadron from 1976 to 1979. Interesting times. Even got to meet a Russian agent once off in the woods, in a camper on a truck monitoring the base's signals communications. Nice guy. Base said they didn't care. Fine for the enemy to expend resources counting jet deployments (flights) or unsecured communications but wasn't worth their effort to stop it. Just part of the mission.
Then there was the security police I ran into in the woods across from the base main entrance. Just sitting in their cars getting blasted on cannabis. That next year after that I came to base in the morning from my house near downtown Spokane to be met with heavily armed security police with guard dogs everywhere. Randomly all over the bast, on the streets, which you never saw on base.
Got to our shop and I was told what happened. There was an inspection in the security police barracks and they found 14 cannabis plants growing on the roof so they busted 3/4 of that squadron. On a nuclear SAC base you have to have security police at full staffing. So they called in SP’s from around the nation, over night and while we slept.
I got tasked along with one person from each shop to go around and find mattresses so these guys would have something to sleep on, on the floor somewhere because there was nowhere to put them all. That only lasted few days, a week or so until we got actual replacements requisitioned.
Podcast: apparently, in 2014 the author sold Dark Matter to Sony features. He had only written about 140 or so pages at that point. Damn that must be nice. He said they had sold it to a publisher and somehow the pages got leaked.
He said he and a few other really good screenwriters tried to write a script to make it a feature film, but they could never really crack it. Apparently, I needed a series. They must have done a good job because I’m liking the series.
He said they were having to "kill their darlings" (as we do as writers and filmmakers) and remove the character emotions and character beats that were so important to the story and so eventually gave up making a movie and it moved over to Apple.
This makes me think again that maybe I should take my screenplay “A Teenage Bodyguard” a true-crime drama, that I put massive research into over the years. A story I lived in 1974, though I didn't have a clue the world I was being immersed in. It’s been an interesting journey, living it, forgetting it, decades later writing it, researching it and rewriting it. I just want to get the damn thing out there for people to experience it.
It’s sad because if that story had come out in say 1980, it would be impressive. There were a few people around like I was back in the '60s and '70s as young people who had, let's say, an interesting history. Now partly because of advancements and from social media, everybody knows somebody who did something utterly amazing and none of this is really all that impressive now, which is in a way, too bad.
Still, it did get me a producer a few years ago who works with Michael Douglas. He did get three directors interested who I thought misunderstood the genre or just the story. I see it is a true crime drama. They saw it as a teen romp of some sort.
About Dark Matter, I do like stories about the Multiverse. Like the one based on Thor’s brother, Loki.
Starting mile three…
Apparently, there’s no season two coming as of yet for Dark Matter, and he won’t say at this time.
I agree with the author that in his stories, he likes to leave things open ended, and then hand the baton over to the reader. I like to do that with my own stuff. “In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear“ that story can continue. But you could also argue that it does have an end.
I’ve been wanting to have spaghetti and meatballs lately so yesterday I did. Also drank a half bottle of Malbec red wine. Great fun lunch. Had some fun dessert. But then suffered for in histamine levels I think from the red wine. Had to take half a Benadryl in the evening. Then before bedtime another half. Good times.
I don’t know if that’s a leftover from long Covid or still some long Covid happening. If it's temporary or permanent. But histamines are a big deal with long Covid. It gives you a feeling that is uncomfortable to the point of thinking that something serious is happening.
Anyway, also took half a melatonin (2.5 mg) and I was able to sleep through the night. Woke up feeling an allergy hangover though, maybe a histamine hangover.
I do not feel like walking 3 miles today, as I am. But here I am.
Since I’m having trouble reading anymore, I should make a list here of fun sci-fi TV shows I’ve been watching. Because of long Covid and Covid starting in February 2020 when I first caught it, I’ve watched more TV in a shorter span of time than in my entire life at any one point. That being said, I have tried to learn from it since I do write screenplay and make films. I also watched a bunch of "the making of shows." Love those.
Blake also says he thinks his show exploited the subject matter of the book better than he had. For instance, the primary nuclear family in the story has one son in the book. But at some point in the show, they are a family of four. And that does make the show more interesting. Blake is talking about the difference between writing a novel and producing a show.
I think in a different kind of genre I would’ve written it for a feel-good ending. But I was trying to write it for what was more realistic.The world that woman had lived in was very realistic. People were abused, people died.
I think the final scene would’ve been one hell of a scene for a movie's post-credit position. So after turning down three directors, I stopped getting calls from Robert and I started to pursue my original screenplay again. He's a very nice guy. Good at his job. I liked working with him.
I’ve sent both screenplays off to screenplay contests and so far my version has won more awards. So I think the problem was that Robert was simply trying to make a screenplay, a spec script, that would sell. And it did. But his view of production was at a far lower level than what I see for it as a film. Maybe he's the more realistic one and it will never get made. If not, that would be too bad.
I’m thinking $5 to $7 million and I think he was thinking around 1 million. Take or leave a few hundred thousand. Better to leave a few. But I think that doesn’t do the story justice. I think that doesn’t do the lead female character, justice, and over time I’ve gotten to where I more wanted this to be her story being told, more than my own. I didn't write it from her perspective because I know this story from my own experience in living it.
Originally it wasn’t my story I wanted to get out so much as I wanted to get something produced to acquire some money toward my retirement. Because in the last 20 years, things were rough as a single parent. All of my 401(k) retirement is gone now. Which is fine as my kids are up and living on their own, functional and happy as adults. But we had some rough years there.
Now I have Social Security and my original retirement from the 1990s that was shut off when they switched to a 401(k). So luckily, I still have that but at some point, especially with how politics are going and some wanting to kill things like Medicare and Social Security. Or that Social Security is having problems because of the baby boomer generation being so large… I still don’t quite understand that. If we paid our retirement into Social Security, where the hell is our money in that we won’t be getting it all? Or what?
As I understand it instead of getting increases in Social Security every year, soon we’re going to get decreases. Fun.
So yeah, let's make some money!
I did pretty good this week getting the blog articles up from a walk every day of the week at 6 AM. Missed today's though. I didn’t get around to working on the blog until after lunch and by then the wine had taken affect and I had another extra glass. Usually, I get two meals out of one bottle of wine. Two glasses for the one meal leaving two more for the next one. But I was having so much fun, I took a little bit more and then a little bit more up to less than another full glass. But as I’m learning, especially with red wine nowadays due to whatever reason, if I go over two glasses, I’ll regret it at bedtime.
I had written a manual that two major Seattle hospitals loved and used for years after I left that job. The Digital publisher said I would be making about $50,000 a quarter with worldwide sales of the manual going out with every VAX computer and PC they sold. Then things changed.
He had told me to rewrite the manual, not to use the specialized format I composed that everyone LOVED. He showed it to Digital Equipment and they didn’t like it. They suggested a way that I had originally designed it to be! And then the bugs were their final straw. You did not admit, surely not in a manual, to having bugs in your software, if you were DEC, back then.
Which is what I did in my first published dystopian sci-fi story back in 1990 in a horror quarterly magazine. “In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear “ is a story I wrote back in 1980 about a genius who turns himself into a computer.
I forgot the history of this story till just now. I blasted this out on social media today because I saw Ray Kurzweil being interviewed about the AI singularity and how he viewed things coming.
My short story: I had been through the Air Force. I had yet to get my university degree or even think about getting one.
When I got out of the Air Force, I got a divorce, and couldn’t seem to get a good job. After all the responsibility and I guess. prestige I had in the USAF, I was surprised I couldn’t even seem to get a job at McDonald’s (no I didn't apply there). I did interview with RadioShack.
I had the bad luck of their district manager being there that day. I could tell from the get-go he didn’t like me. People usually do, so I couldn't figure out what the problem was. The manager of the store was also there and I was reading something from his looks on his face in listening to the interview. Embarrassment? Irritation at the District Manager who would say some things and the store manager would kind of wince.
As it turned out, he made it clear he didn’t like ex-military and thought they were all thieves and lowlifes. Though I would’ve been a very good employee. I was long into RadioShack. But I couldn’t seem to find a decent job at the level I should’ve been able to get one. Considering what I did in the Air Force. I was parachute shop supervisor responsible for the lives of certainly anyone who jumped chutes. I packed the parachutes the Pararescue guys, Known as the PJs, jumped, daily out of helicopters. I was responsible for over $1 million in equipment, which back then was quite a bit.
As it turned out, he made it clear he didn’t like ex-military and thought they were all thieves and lowlifes. Though I would’ve been a very good employee. I was long into RadioShack. But I couldn’t seem to find a decent job at the level I should’ve been able to get one. Considering what I did in the Air Force. I was parachute shop supervisor responsible for the lives of certainly anyone who jumped chutes. I packed the parachutes the Pararescue guys, Known as the PJs, jumped, daily out of helicopters. I was responsible for over $1 million in equipment, which back then was quite a bit.
Finally, I decided on what are my dream jobs were since childhood, of a sort, and had started to apply for those thinking, what do I have to lose? Radio Shack seemed like a no brainer.
I had been going to the unemployment office and finally did get hired at Colortyme TV and Furniture Rental. I told them upfront I will not do repossessions and they SAID, "No problem. Show up tomorrow."
When I got there the next day, they said I would be doing repossessions. I said no, I made it clear I wouldn't do that. But they just smiled and said, "If you refuse this job now, no unemployment benefits and we will go against you for that with the unemployment office." Outside of questionable ethics, they were actually pretty nice guys. Just not if you rented from them.
When I got there the next day, they said I would be doing repossessions. I said no, I made it clear I wouldn't do that. But they just smiled and said, "If you refuse this job now, no unemployment benefits and we will go against you for that with the unemployment office." Outside of questionable ethics, they were actually pretty nice guys. Just not if you rented from them.
They had a scam of letting you fall behind on payment, if by one day we picked up what you were renting, were told to tell the customer that it wasn't a problem, just come into the store tomorrow and sign a document and we'll bring it all back. What we didn't tell them was, didn't give them time to right then pay it off, call someone or something, was that once we picked stuff up, their contract started from scratch. Some people had only a month left to pay after a couple of years, but they then started it all over again. Keeping them on the hook. Which to me was a rip-off. I couldn't do it.
I finally just quit when I had picked up a TV from a very nice black couple with two of the cutest kids. Seemingly middle-class family. Just got a little behind. I felt I was lying to them the whole time I was taking their 8' console stereo TV console. The kids had been watching cartoons and they were crushed and it broke my heart.
The week before that I had tried to repo a tv and a guy's wife answered the door. She was pretty attractive wearing a tank top. We were a few blocks north from the north end of McChord AFB runway in a run-down area of low-cost single-family rentals.
She told me her husband wasn't home and had told her not to talk to anyone about the TV. She said he also told her to tell anyone trying to take it that he has a gun.
This job wasn't worth my life.
Not that it was something that would typically stop me, ever. Fuck him. I have a gun, too. Probably knew how to use it a lot better than he did. Big deal. But doing a job like this? Being threatened over what I didn't even want to be doing anyway? No.
Then there was that family with the cute kids...during CHRISTMAS time? No, no, no.
I quit the next day. To be fair about the gun guy? The store manager told me that wasn't any of my concern. It was his job and he'd handled it. Go out there with a Sheriff's Deputy the next day. Whatever.
I went to the unemployment office and they said I was refused compensation to carry me over to another job. I appealed and the guys from the store I was working at on 6th Avenue in Tacoma Washington showed up. Three of them for some reason. They thought it was a lark and were smiling. Screwing the guy who didn't want to be part of their crew. They did indeed make sure I didn’t get any unemployment compensation in quitting over their questionable issues of ethics.
I ended up losing my 1975 very clean, very fast 350 Camaro RS I had configured for doing 140 MPH when I spent weekends with my wife home in Tacoma until Sunday when we'd return so I could get to work on Monday at Fairchild AFB. I could take that 4 1/2 hour drive and turn it into 3 1/2 hours. When that car hit 100MPH, it settled down and became an entirely different car.
Couple of times I got a ticket on the other side of the river going uphill on some great winding curves that were great fun to drive in a Rally Sport Camaro. Both times that happened I got chewed out by a cop for doing 70+. I had to bite my tongue, considering how fast and how long I'd just been going on a straightaway (only with no other traffic).
My belief had always been as it was I believe on stretches of the German Autobahn, one should have good equipment to drive and the skills to handle whatever speed you choose, and not drive in a reckless fashion.
Anyway, being after quitting my job, losing my car, I had no bills. But, I ended up living in the shed in the back of my brother's house. I fixed it up, set up the wood stove he had in there, and spent the winter there. He changed me by cutting up all the wood so both the main house and my loft would have heat. He worked construction and would bring random wood and cut-up trees home that he had scavenged.
It was a good deal and for a while on food stamps, I had a small fridge, my stereo amp and speakers, I took some time to post-military service decompress. Those would good times. Some weed may or may not have been shared there at any hour reasonable or unreasonable when friends dropped by off the alley.
The friends who would come over were my girlfriend's friends. We'd sit around and get stoned. Then one day three of them were over and I jokingly said that I could write anything, make any storyline premise work. Which wasn’t quite true but soft of and I was kind of kidding. Years later after getting my university degree and more so after being a senior tech writer, I really was able to. I also tried to write everything I could in all formats and disciplines. The more you stretch your capabilities the better you are at your chosen or favored ones.
The friends who would come over were my girlfriend's friends. We'd sit around and get stoned. Then one day three of them were over and I jokingly said that I could write anything, make any storyline premise work. Which wasn’t quite true but soft of and I was kind of kidding. Years later after getting my university degree and more so after being a senior tech writer, I really was able to. I also tried to write everything I could in all formats and disciplines. The more you stretch your capabilities the better you are at your chosen or favored ones.
They had laughed at me. So, I said, "OK wise guys, come up with a story you think is impossible to write and I’ll write it." They came up with a "guy turns himself into a computer chip." And so I wrote a story that later got titled, "In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear". Titling it as a homage to Isaac Asimov‘s first autobiography “In Memory Yet Green“. An author who was one of my childhood writing heroes.
They used to give me a hard time about stories. I would write because I never gave them an ending. They complained about it. "We love your stories, but a write a damn ending!"
Fair enough.
That didn’t really happen until after my second-degree when I graduated from Western Washington University. I spent the 1980s sending off my “Ahriman” screenplay about a prince/profit from another planet who gets accidentally sucked onto Earth by our scientists. I also sent all of my short stories off in a round-robin of submissions that led nowhere. I did get to correspond with Clive Barker in London and met him a few times, which was fun.
Finally, in 1990 an East Coast horror quarterly magazine offered to publish my story. If I cut 1500 words. That freaked me out. My wife at the time suggested I look in the story for a block of 1500 words, just to see if either there was a cuttable block, or the publisher was trying to see if I was smart enough to figure out what passage of text he was asking to be cut.
Oddly enough I found nearly an exactly 1500 word section and cut it. It wasn't necessary to the story but added flavor to it. I submitted the story to him and it was published. When I republished that story myself as an e-book in 2012, a little later as an audiobook, I put that 1500 block back in. It wasn't necessary to the story, but it was kind of a fun scene. It did offer some more information about how the famous surgeon and friend was experiencing what was happening.
The story is about a world-famous surgeon whose son disappears in the Amazon. His son had a childhood best friend who asks for help saying he needs life-saving surgery, on his brain. The surgeon helps the guy. It turns out the guy is turning himself into a crystaline computer chip.
With the help completed, the son's friend goes online, gathers advocates, sycophants, and protectors around him, and eventually eases the surgeon out. The problem is the guy was always a little mentally off, as geniuses can be. To fund his research and existence he starts to take on projects.
He does some adverts for TV that are so good, over a brief period, a few and then all American businesses hand him their advertising campaigns.
What happens when a mental defect and narcissist is handed leadership of a country? And the guy basically controls America’s minds. Because for one person to control all media and advertising they would become positioned to re-orient how America thinks.
This effort takes very little of this guy’s processing power and soon most of the world wants him to do their advertising. Because what he produces is so perfect and beautiful and moving. However, Canada and Mexico both start distancing themselves from America. Because they're so close and are better positioned to see what’s actually going on.
It wasn’t until Trump became president that I started to see the similarity between this story, Donald Trump, his authoritarianism, and his narcissistic and pathological lying.
I believe the story ends the only way it could. And I hope that’s not true for America. We may find out in this election because if Trump becomes POTUS again, all bets are off on maintaining democracy in America or in the West. Because Russia and the East have been pushing us in that direction and have been for decades.
Back in the 1990s, oddly enough, the Republican party picked up on this and started going in this direction. Authoritarianism has been creeping back, growing in the democratic West, and needs it to be stopped. ASAP.
Basically how you can tell if anyone’s playing into that is if they support Putin or are against aid to Ukraine. It’s gotten that simplified. Also if you support Donald Trump, then you’re obviously supporting the demise of Western democracy. He has tried to distance us from NATO and other international alliances that are for the betterment of all humankind. You hear from them Christian nationalist speaking points and isolationism
We can change this. We just all need to wake up. Including all of those against Trump. Because even a lot of them aren’t seeing what’s been going on.
This is not a conspiracy theory. That’s not how I came into this information or my understanding of what’s been happening. I had been studying something else completely, when the comparison became clear.
As I’ve said many times before, I didn’t come into this by being a Democrat. Most of my life I was an Independent. I voted for the best candidate of any party. I came into all this by studying the Soviet Union and its expertise in disinformation. Suddenly I'm seeing it in the 1990s coming out of the Republican Party. I thought it had to be something Russian, but it was coming out of the Republican Party who was utilizing those techniques... against our own Americans.
That didn’t really happen until after my second-degree when I graduated from Western Washington University. I spent the 1980s sending off my “Ahriman” screenplay about a prince/profit from another planet who gets accidentally sucked onto Earth by our scientists. I also sent all of my short stories off in a round-robin of submissions that led nowhere. I did get to correspond with Clive Barker in London and met him a few times, which was fun.
Finally, in 1990 an East Coast horror quarterly magazine offered to publish my story. If I cut 1500 words. That freaked me out. My wife at the time suggested I look in the story for a block of 1500 words, just to see if either there was a cuttable block, or the publisher was trying to see if I was smart enough to figure out what passage of text he was asking to be cut.
Oddly enough I found nearly an exactly 1500 word section and cut it. It wasn't necessary to the story but added flavor to it. I submitted the story to him and it was published. When I republished that story myself as an e-book in 2012, a little later as an audiobook, I put that 1500 block back in. It wasn't necessary to the story, but it was kind of a fun scene. It did offer some more information about how the famous surgeon and friend was experiencing what was happening.
The story is about a world-famous surgeon whose son disappears in the Amazon. His son had a childhood best friend who asks for help saying he needs life-saving surgery, on his brain. The surgeon helps the guy. It turns out the guy is turning himself into a crystaline computer chip.
With the help completed, the son's friend goes online, gathers advocates, sycophants, and protectors around him, and eventually eases the surgeon out. The problem is the guy was always a little mentally off, as geniuses can be. To fund his research and existence he starts to take on projects.
He does some adverts for TV that are so good, over a brief period, a few and then all American businesses hand him their advertising campaigns.
What happens when a mental defect and narcissist is handed leadership of a country? And the guy basically controls America’s minds. Because for one person to control all media and advertising they would become positioned to re-orient how America thinks.
This effort takes very little of this guy’s processing power and soon most of the world wants him to do their advertising. Because what he produces is so perfect and beautiful and moving. However, Canada and Mexico both start distancing themselves from America. Because they're so close and are better positioned to see what’s actually going on.
It wasn’t until Trump became president that I started to see the similarity between this story, Donald Trump, his authoritarianism, and his narcissistic and pathological lying.
I believe the story ends the only way it could. And I hope that’s not true for America. We may find out in this election because if Trump becomes POTUS again, all bets are off on maintaining democracy in America or in the West. Because Russia and the East have been pushing us in that direction and have been for decades.
Back in the 1990s, oddly enough, the Republican party picked up on this and started going in this direction. Authoritarianism has been creeping back, growing in the democratic West, and needs it to be stopped. ASAP.
Basically how you can tell if anyone’s playing into that is if they support Putin or are against aid to Ukraine. It’s gotten that simplified. Also if you support Donald Trump, then you’re obviously supporting the demise of Western democracy. He has tried to distance us from NATO and other international alliances that are for the betterment of all humankind. You hear from them Christian nationalist speaking points and isolationism
We can change this. We just all need to wake up. Including all of those against Trump. Because even a lot of them aren’t seeing what’s been going on.
This is not a conspiracy theory. That’s not how I came into this information or my understanding of what’s been happening. I had been studying something else completely, when the comparison became clear.
As I’ve said many times before, I didn’t come into this by being a Democrat. Most of my life I was an Independent. I voted for the best candidate of any party. I came into all this by studying the Soviet Union and its expertise in disinformation. Suddenly I'm seeing it in the 1990s coming out of the Republican Party. I thought it had to be something Russian, but it was coming out of the Republican Party who was utilizing those techniques... against our own Americans.
Because in using Russian techniques, they found themselves rising in power. Do not think Russia did not notice this. It's where their expertise really lies. Observing, assimilating, weaponizing, feeding back into the opposition system, applying pressure in the right few places, hidden from sight, magnifying using useful idiots and cutouts, then sitting back and cheaply reaping the benefits. Republicans loved that concept.
It’s a heady mix.
Getting back to the podcast, the guy who wrote the novel Dark Matter, Blake Crouch, I’m really enjoying his show based on it. Heavy on physics, but that’s something my son and I communicate back-and-forth about all the time.
This author is apparently written several books that have been made in the shows I have watched, never knowing where they came from. Like Wayward Pines.
Starting my 2nd mile… The sun is kind of warm, but not too bad yet.
Blake Crouch, and then actor Joel Edgerton are interviewed on the podcast. I've enjoyed Joel's projects.
It’s a heady mix.
Getting back to the podcast, the guy who wrote the novel Dark Matter, Blake Crouch, I’m really enjoying his show based on it. Heavy on physics, but that’s something my son and I communicate back-and-forth about all the time.
This author is apparently written several books that have been made in the shows I have watched, never knowing where they came from. Like Wayward Pines.
Starting my 2nd mile… The sun is kind of warm, but not too bad yet.
Blake Crouch, and then actor Joel Edgerton are interviewed on the podcast. I've enjoyed Joel's projects.
I've been a consumer of horror books, films, and shows for decades, since the early 1960s? I believe it was one night in 1959, in Philly, I got up at about midnight and my mom let me watch a late-night vampire movie with her in her bed. Being up at a time I never was allowed up at. Hanging with mom. Watching a scary movie in the dark? Life, is good..
I enjoyed that so much that I begged her to wake me every time she watched a late-night horror film. Being a good mother, she tried to dissemble over that. She offered to try flashing a flashlight in my eyes while I was sleeping when the show was starting, and if I wake up, I could watch the movie with her.
I don’t know if she ever did that. She may have because she could be like that. But I don’t think there was any way I was going to wake up. But it shut me up for the time being.
I have to say in the show Dark Matter, in a very reasonable and I think realistic way, they touched on a trope in a different way that was very disturbing and fun to experience.
Blake says he’s envious of those who came up with the show Severance (I like that show too) and said he'd bet when they came up with the conceit of that show, they were punching in the air in celebration.
Blake loved Red Rising, a book that is sci-fi and fantasy. A Game of Thrones sci-fi fantasy set on Mars. He said he’s not usually into leaving Earth for such things, but this is a good series that should be made into a show.
He said he really likes the show Primer. He said he heard they made the show for like $7000. I’ve seen it and I enjoyed it myself. I was a voracious reader through the first half of my life, slowed down when I started needing reading glasses when I turned 40. Now I’m having all kinds of vision problems, making it difficult to read and at times even to watch TV. I don’t know if it was 30 years of sitting in front of a computer screen, or not.
I was used to having better vision than anyone I ever met. I could read road signs down the road from further away than anybody who was ever in a car with me. Sometimes they thought I had memorized all the street signs or something. My hearing was checked in the Air Force and was so good it went right off the edge of the IBM punch card that was recording the session. Te technician running the test thought the machine was broken. But apparently no matter how faint the sound or high-pitched it was, I could still hit the button when they sounds started and exactly when they ended.
In that USAF test, everybody who worked on the flight line near jet engines had to be tested. I realized during the test that I couldn’t quite hear sound at a certain point. I started to think if I couldn’t hear the sounds, I could sort of “feel “them. So I started hitting the button and letting go by a feeling in my chest. Apparently, I was spot on.
Anyway, my hearing was fine. I was always very protective of my hearing, wearing sound Protectors around jets or the wheeled "ground units", or "ground power units". Generators, basically engines on wheels generating power for the jets to warm up so you didn’t have to burn jet fuel on board. More modern one shown above.
We also had to be careful about being a 25 or 50 feet too close to the exhaust of a jet engine due to radiation or simply being picked up and blown backward. That was the USAF 92nd Field Maintenance Squadron from 1976 to 1979. Interesting times. Even got to meet a Russian agent once off in the woods, in a camper on a truck monitoring the base's signals communications. Nice guy. Base said they didn't care. Fine for the enemy to expend resources counting jet deployments (flights) or unsecured communications but wasn't worth their effort to stop it. Just part of the mission.
Then there was the security police I ran into in the woods across from the base main entrance. Just sitting in their cars getting blasted on cannabis. That next year after that I came to base in the morning from my house near downtown Spokane to be met with heavily armed security police with guard dogs everywhere. Randomly all over the bast, on the streets, which you never saw on base.
Got to our shop and I was told what happened. There was an inspection in the security police barracks and they found 14 cannabis plants growing on the roof so they busted 3/4 of that squadron. On a nuclear SAC base you have to have security police at full staffing. So they called in SP’s from around the nation, over night and while we slept.
I got tasked along with one person from each shop to go around and find mattresses so these guys would have something to sleep on, on the floor somewhere because there was nowhere to put them all. That only lasted few days, a week or so until we got actual replacements requisitioned.
Podcast: apparently, in 2014 the author sold Dark Matter to Sony features. He had only written about 140 or so pages at that point. Damn that must be nice. He said they had sold it to a publisher and somehow the pages got leaked.
He said he and a few other really good screenwriters tried to write a script to make it a feature film, but they could never really crack it. Apparently, I needed a series. They must have done a good job because I’m liking the series.
He said they were having to "kill their darlings" (as we do as writers and filmmakers) and remove the character emotions and character beats that were so important to the story and so eventually gave up making a movie and it moved over to Apple.
This makes me think again that maybe I should take my screenplay “A Teenage Bodyguard” a true-crime drama, that I put massive research into over the years. A story I lived in 1974, though I didn't have a clue the world I was being immersed in. It’s been an interesting journey, living it, forgetting it, decades later writing it, researching it and rewriting it. I just want to get the damn thing out there for people to experience it.
It’s sad because if that story had come out in say 1980, it would be impressive. There were a few people around like I was back in the '60s and '70s as young people who had, let's say, an interesting history. Now partly because of advancements and from social media, everybody knows somebody who did something utterly amazing and none of this is really all that impressive now, which is in a way, too bad.
Still, it did get me a producer a few years ago who works with Michael Douglas. He did get three directors interested who I thought misunderstood the genre or just the story. I see it is a true crime drama. They saw it as a teen romp of some sort.
About Dark Matter, I do like stories about the Multiverse. Like the one based on Thor’s brother, Loki.
Starting mile three…
Apparently, there’s no season two coming as of yet for Dark Matter, and he won’t say at this time.
I agree with the author that in his stories, he likes to leave things open ended, and then hand the baton over to the reader. I like to do that with my own stuff. “In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear“ that story can continue. But you could also argue that it does have an end.
I’ve been wanting to have spaghetti and meatballs lately so yesterday I did. Also drank a half bottle of Malbec red wine. Great fun lunch. Had some fun dessert. But then suffered for in histamine levels I think from the red wine. Had to take half a Benadryl in the evening. Then before bedtime another half. Good times.
I don’t know if that’s a leftover from long Covid or still some long Covid happening. If it's temporary or permanent. But histamines are a big deal with long Covid. It gives you a feeling that is uncomfortable to the point of thinking that something serious is happening.
Anyway, also took half a melatonin (2.5 mg) and I was able to sleep through the night. Woke up feeling an allergy hangover though, maybe a histamine hangover.
I do not feel like walking 3 miles today, as I am. But here I am.
Since I’m having trouble reading anymore, I should make a list here of fun sci-fi TV shows I’ve been watching. Because of long Covid and Covid starting in February 2020 when I first caught it, I’ve watched more TV in a shorter span of time than in my entire life at any one point. That being said, I have tried to learn from it since I do write screenplay and make films. I also watched a bunch of "the making of shows." Love those.
Let's see, sci fi/fantasy shows I've been watching that I like in no specific order.
- Silo
- Dark Matter
- Various MCU shows
- Various Star Trek shows
- Various Star Wars shows
- Snowpiercer (thought the concept, ridiculous, but still watched the film & TV shows.
- Fallout
- Beacon 23
- 3 Body Problem (Or another version, Three Body, in Chinese)
- Outer Range
- Sweet Tooth
- The Umbrella Academy
- Orphan Black
- The Boys
- For All Mankind
- Foundation
- Monarch
- Severance
- See (thought the concept ridiculous, but very well done show)
- Hello Tomorrow
- Wheel of Time
- Game of Thrones (obviously)
- House of Dragons
- The Last of Us
- Peripheral
- Carnival Row
- American Gods
- Good Omens
- Outlander
- The Magicians
- The Witcher
- His Dark Materials
- Russian Doll
- The OA
No doubt I'm forgetting a few. Not to mention some you should already know like Stranger Things, or Supernatural, or many of the standards. I'm focusing more on the streaming shows here. So many more than I'd realized. So much great stuff to watch.
Blake also says he thinks his show exploited the subject matter of the book better than he had. For instance, the primary nuclear family in the story has one son in the book. But at some point in the show, they are a family of four. And that does make the show more interesting. Blake is talking about the difference between writing a novel and producing a show.
Which has a lot to do with why my own Bodyguard screenplay has yet to be made into a movie. It could’ve been a movie already at this point, I just had to say yes. The director was interested. The producer was excited about it. But that was off the screenplay I rewrote with the producer's input.
I now call my screenplay "the original". Which is far more historically accurate. My first drafts were more like a docudrama. Lost that format very quickly. But I tried to stay true to the facts. So the screenplay is pretty accurate up to about the halfway point where it becomes necessary to fictionalize somewhat because it is after all an entertainment narrative film.
There were things about the lead female character I simply didn’t know about. So as difficult and frustrating as it was, I took my best guess, and I think what I wrote was entertaining and bittersweet.
When producer Robert Midas read the screenplay the first time he said when he got to the end, his heart broke. That was my goal, at least in part for the story. Because that’s how that story goes.
There were things about the lead female character I simply didn’t know about. So as difficult and frustrating as it was, I took my best guess, and I think what I wrote was entertaining and bittersweet.
When producer Robert Midas read the screenplay the first time he said when he got to the end, his heart broke. That was my goal, at least in part for the story. Because that’s how that story goes.
I think in a different kind of genre I would’ve written it for a feel-good ending. But I was trying to write it for what was more realistic.The world that woman had lived in was very realistic. People were abused, people died.
I think the final scene would’ve been one hell of a scene for a movie's post-credit position. So after turning down three directors, I stopped getting calls from Robert and I started to pursue my original screenplay again. He's a very nice guy. Good at his job. I liked working with him.
I’ve sent both screenplays off to screenplay contests and so far my version has won more awards. So I think the problem was that Robert was simply trying to make a screenplay, a spec script, that would sell. And it did. But his view of production was at a far lower level than what I see for it as a film. Maybe he's the more realistic one and it will never get made. If not, that would be too bad.
I’m thinking $5 to $7 million and I think he was thinking around 1 million. Take or leave a few hundred thousand. Better to leave a few. But I think that doesn’t do the story justice. I think that doesn’t do the lead female character, justice, and over time I’ve gotten to where I more wanted this to be her story being told, more than my own. I didn't write it from her perspective because I know this story from my own experience in living it.
Originally it wasn’t my story I wanted to get out so much as I wanted to get something produced to acquire some money toward my retirement. Because in the last 20 years, things were rough as a single parent. All of my 401(k) retirement is gone now. Which is fine as my kids are up and living on their own, functional and happy as adults. But we had some rough years there.
Now I have Social Security and my original retirement from the 1990s that was shut off when they switched to a 401(k). So luckily, I still have that but at some point, especially with how politics are going and some wanting to kill things like Medicare and Social Security. Or that Social Security is having problems because of the baby boomer generation being so large… I still don’t quite understand that. If we paid our retirement into Social Security, where the hell is our money in that we won’t be getting it all? Or what?
As I understand it instead of getting increases in Social Security every year, soon we’re going to get decreases. Fun.
So yeah, let's make some money!
I did pretty good this week getting the blog articles up from a walk every day of the week at 6 AM. Missed today's though. I didn’t get around to working on the blog until after lunch and by then the wine had taken affect and I had another extra glass. Usually, I get two meals out of one bottle of wine. Two glasses for the one meal leaving two more for the next one. But I was having so much fun, I took a little bit more and then a little bit more up to less than another full glass. But as I’m learning, especially with red wine nowadays due to whatever reason, if I go over two glasses, I’ll regret it at bedtime.
It’s interesting to think in the Multiverse there’s another version of me somewhere from decisive moments in my life that failed where they succeeded for them elsewhere. I can think of at least three times in my life that, I had something gone the other way, I would have made a lot more money.
In 1980 I almost published a manual with Digital Equipment Corporation's Digital Publishing with a book I wrote based on a wordprocessor app on the VAX 11/785 mainframe. But because I pointed out where their bugs were and how to get quickly past them, which usually took people hours, Digital proper got pissed off and threatened me. Literally threatened me. They said if I tried to publish it elsewhere, they’d crushed me and they could do it. That was a comedy of errors, that whole process.
I had written a manual that two major Seattle hospitals loved and used for years after I left that job. The Digital publisher said I would be making about $50,000 a quarter with worldwide sales of the manual going out with every VAX computer and PC they sold. Then things changed.
He had told me to rewrite the manual, not to use the specialized format I composed that everyone LOVED. He showed it to Digital Equipment and they didn’t like it. They suggested a way that I had originally designed it to be! And then the bugs were their final straw. You did not admit, surely not in a manual, to having bugs in your software, if you were DEC, back then.
Dialing into our modem. We caught Digital one time dialing into our modem, applying a patch that brought the mainframe down the next day for two hospitals: UWMC and HMC who we supported. I actually worked for the University of Washington's MCIS handling Pathology and Radiology for those two hospitals
Digital denied putting in the patch. But we could clearly see it in the logs. So my manager said always to keep the modem turned off. They'd have to call and ask us to turn it on for access from now on. And that fixed that. They were kind of shady back then and now? They’re out of business.
When I decided to look for another job from that position, all the jobs around Seattle, all the available jobs were for people who could run IBM mainframes.
So things in my life like that screwed up. What if in another universe, I had fixed those issues and they published the manual? My whole life would’ve changed. I would’ve still gotten divorced though perhaps not for a few more years. Maybe she wouldn’t have become the alcoholic she did, that she was trying so hard to be when we were married, and that I could not see.
Maybe my oldest son wouldn’t have some emotional issues because of when he had been with his mom. Then maybe I wouldn’t have married my last wife which also gave my son even more issues because they hated each other. He was challenging and she didn’t have the maturity or expertise to handle him. My youngest son would be gone now though. I’m pretty sure. Because they had said if I hadn’t been there after the divorce, they wouldn’t be alive now. So maybe things are just how they're supposed to be...
On that note, I’ll bid you adieu…and leave you with that.
Digital denied putting in the patch. But we could clearly see it in the logs. So my manager said always to keep the modem turned off. They'd have to call and ask us to turn it on for access from now on. And that fixed that. They were kind of shady back then and now? They’re out of business.
When I decided to look for another job from that position, all the jobs around Seattle, all the available jobs were for people who could run IBM mainframes.
So things in my life like that screwed up. What if in another universe, I had fixed those issues and they published the manual? My whole life would’ve changed. I would’ve still gotten divorced though perhaps not for a few more years. Maybe she wouldn’t have become the alcoholic she did, that she was trying so hard to be when we were married, and that I could not see.
Maybe my oldest son wouldn’t have some emotional issues because of when he had been with his mom. Then maybe I wouldn’t have married my last wife which also gave my son even more issues because they hated each other. He was challenging and she didn’t have the maturity or expertise to handle him. My youngest son would be gone now though. I’m pretty sure. Because they had said if I hadn’t been there after the divorce, they wouldn’t be alive now. So maybe things are just how they're supposed to be...
On that note, I’ll bid you adieu…and leave you with that.
It’s noon and time for lunch.
Cheers! Sláinte!
Cheers! Sláinte!
